Third Goal

Portrait of Good Friday

This is Soajama, whose name means "Good Friday" in Malagasy.

Vingt-Six Dance

In celebration of Madagascar's Independence, the 26th of June ("vingt-six"), communities throw a large party.  In the South-East region, dances are performed in order to raise money for local groups.  Here men dance in a train as villagers come forward to contribute money at their feet. 

Health Fair Draws a Crowd in Northern Madagascar

Volunteers give health messages at a health fair in Antsohihy, Madagascar

Teaching English in Anketrakabe, Madagascar

PCV Dorothy instructs an English class at the CEG in a rural town in the North of Madagascar.

Home Therapy

A young girl, 14 year-old Brenda, applies ground curry root to PCV Dorothy's bruises to help heal it.

Gardening in Northern Madagascar

A host brother helps with watering gardens in Northern Madagascar

Entrepreneur in Madagascar

A woman sells regional hats and bracelets in the hot, arid town of Ambovombe.  Since the Malagasy tradition is to bring a souvenir, "voandalana", she makes most of her sales to travelers passing through in bush taxis.  

Roberta

Roberta is the granddaughter of a very good friend of mine!  They became my family away from home.

Always on time

When you get there, you get there.  Therefore the bush taxi always arrives on time!  In this instance, we didn't have a jack to fix our flat tire.  So we all got out and rocked the bus back and forth until someone was able to wedge a large rock underneath the vehicle so we could fix the flat.  We arrived on time to our destination nearly 4 hours later than expected!

Island of Lemurs

This little boy was so enthusiastic to have his picture taken, and he had the perfect background!  The natural beauty of this little island off the northern coast of Madagascar was truly one of a kind!

Hitching a ride in Madagascar

A fellow volunteer and I hitching a ride in the countryside.

Nosy Ve

Sailing to nosy ve in a dug out canoe

Playing with my students

Sometimes as a teacher, I took the kids outside to play English games.

Street Child with Child

One of the street children in my town.

Famadihana

Honoring their ancestors by dancing with them at the Turning of the Bones festival near Ambatondrazaka, Madagascar.

Malagasy Fisherman

A good day's catch for the man who lived across the street.

Basketball Court Repair

These two young men work hard to restore the town's basketball court.  They somehow shimmied up the posts without a ladder.

Not enough rice

Traditional way to eat food, plant the plates on the matt, rice dishes in the middle, small amount of protein on the side.  Communcal eating, sand subs in for salt.  For our group of 6, this was not enough rice because in Madagascar, you always want more rice!

Tradition Meets Technology

Villagers in Madagascar watch a video about the System of Rice Intenisfication (SRI) on the PCVs computer.

Mango Mania

Women drying mangos as part of a small income generating project.

Coloring Across Cultures

Twins proudly displaying their coloring artwork.  These children were my neighbors and loved to color.  WhenI first met them I had o show them how to hold a crayon in their hands.  They learned how to color quickly and would come by almost daily asking to color outside of my hut.

Neighbor makes his new lakana (canoe)

My neighbor built the roof on our hut from palm fronds around us, but his day job was to fish.  Here he prepares his office equipment.

New in town

Almost at the end of my second year, an eco-tourism minded yacht landed in our remote corner of western Madagascar in a village that had never seen so many vazahas (foreigners) before.  Neither side knew exactly how to act.

Each of us pulls..err.. pushes our weight

Our host family owned a shuttle bus.  They took us to a nearby park to celebrate Easter.  We pushed our way back home.

The airport at my site

Low maintenance and overhead costs at this airport.

Hanging out with my Boy Scout Troop

I was a troop leader with this Boy Scout Troop in my town.

Fishing boats in Diego

These boats were on the beach during my spring break trip to Diego in April 2002.

Malagasy man opening coconuts

This guy was preparing an afternoon snack for us on Ile St. Marie.

My house

Picture of my house in Betroka.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Making "Thanksgiving dinner" Malagasy style at my house. 

Making new friends

Hanging out with the lemurs in southern Madagascar.

Santa Claus

Getting ready to make my appearance as Santa Claus at the French School in my town. 

Pretending to be Preggo!

I've titled this photo Pretending to be Preggo as my counterpart at the health clinic where I help out as a Health Volunteer asked me to pretend to be pregnant for a Women's Day parade they were going to have. The theme of the float was to encourage women to come to the health clinic for pre-natal consultations, why I had to pretend to be pregnant for the float I don't know. But it's a great pic!

Fetching Water

We saved our vacation days to spend a month in Madagascar during the second half of our Peace Corps service.  It was fun seeing how many things about Madagascar are different than South Africa and how many things are the same.  Here's one thing that's the same: kids trekking through the fields to gather water of questionable quality and haul it the distance back to their homes, with a good attitude about it all the while.  Here's one thing that's different: the fields the kids pass through in...

American Canvas and Malagasy Yarn Or Malagasy Yarn and American Canvas (It depends how you look at it.)

  I wanted to bring back to America something I could show my family and friends. I knew that Returned Peace Corps Volunteers’ stories ware out quickly with those who have not had similar experiences so I wanted something people could see that would, perhaps, lead them to ask me questions.  I had a piece of American needlepoint canvas with me. I remembered the amounts of free time I had had when I was a volunteer in Iran long before I went to Madagascar. Not having a TV really gives you lots...

Ifaty

The rains coming in at sunset in Ifaty, Madagascar

Race to the Finish

During an HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention bike tour, we held several condom races.  Teams competed to demonstrate propler condom use and ran to the finish (a trash can).  Here a woman runs to victory!

Saosihifatra Celebration

The village celebrates after the succesful installation of three large windmill generators!

Translation: Good Choices Camp

Volunteers from various sectors in the northern region of Madagascar came together to plan a camp focusing on life choices.  We each brought 4-6 youth from our villages.  Campers were provided with transportation, three nutritious meals a day, and educational activities regarding environmental issues, nutrition, safe sex, and why it is important to continue their education.

All the pretty colors...

Chameleon on my fence in Sakaramy, Madagascar

School Garden Project

The whole community got involved throughout this project!

Chameleon, Mangabe, Madagascar

One of a nearly countless variety of chameleons found in Madagascar

Children during Ramadan, Djangoa, Madagascar

These two little boys, while not participating in the village wide fast for Ramadan, donned special skirts to commemorate the event.

Ambatoloaka, Madagascar

Winter on the beach.

English Club!

Health PCV Raffaele Macri, learning how to dance Malagasy style with Fianarantsoa University English Club students.

Mother and child

Anketrakabe, Madagascar

Mody

Elementary school students walking home for lunch in the rain.

Manakara Be Sunset

After a relaxing day with Volunteers of the SudEst, it's really overwhelming how breathtaking the Manakara Be sunset can really be!  There is just nothing better than being with friends, toes in the sand, enjoying the comfortable 4th of July weather and capturing one of the amazing scenery shots of Madagascar, like this one posted here.  Mazotoa!  

The Mikes of the World

Though focused on an outside visitor to my site and not on the villagers with whom I lived, this journal entry chronicles a day's thought at site in September 2007: A little while ago, something unprecedented occurred in our small town. Three Americans came to Soalala within the same week. After not seeing any Americans at all during the past year and seven months, this was quite a shock. The first to arrive (and the only notable one) was Mike – a professor from the University of Illinois who...

Will the Real Santa Claus Please Stand Up

Typically when you think of Santa Claus, you think immediately of a jolly, older, plump man with rosy cheeks and a long white beard. Of course this image is universal, even for the students and teachers of the private École Française (French School) in my town of Betroka where I served as a TEFL Volunteer. And wouldn’t you know, a couple of the teachers at the École Française had the great idea to bring an authentic “vazaha” (white foreigner) Santa Claus to their students. Where could they po...

Mango Season, A Metaphor for all Things Wonderful in Life

On November 1st, it was though someone had flipped a switch and the rains began to fall. Six long months and many a fruitless rain-dance had produced hardly a drop, now, the opening of the sky is a daily event, one that requires due consideration for the afternoon schedule. For these are torrential downpours and venturing out in them is much akin in my my opinion to snorkeling: extreme difficulty breathing, high likelihood of drowning, thus high risk to low reward. Fortunately for the captive...

My Driver the Hallmark Card

I am not necessarily one for the Hallmark-ey things of the world. I do not watch Lifetime specials; I did not cry at the end of Titanic; Valentine’s Day makes me borderline nauseous. The last familial birthday card I sent was addressed, “From one deeply emotive heart to another.”But occasionally one encounters in life a person so delightfully cheesy and wonderful that even the least emotive heart cannot help but be swept away by their joy and charisma. It is as if one is suddenly and all at o...

Five Squiggly Lines

My January 14, 1997 journal entry is an award winner.   I like it because of the five squiggly lines that cascade down the page from the middle of words.   I shouldn’t be able to remember writing it but I have a vivid memory of laughing myself awake at the end of every squiggle.  The entries just before 1-14-97 were a little arbitrary when it came to writing a date.  I had a fixed date to write when I wrote the last entry in Washington, D.C.  The fourth group of Peace Corps Trainees bound fo...

Another, and another, and another...and one more for good measure.

Similar to various other Peace Corps countries, transportation in Madagascar was always very entertaining...as long as you had a bit of patience, and flexibility...physical flexibility. I was waiting for a car in Sakaramy for about 45 minutes, and at 7am one finally showed up.  Now keep in mind this car was tiny; a Geo Metro would have seemed to have luxurious amounts of space compared to this car.   While in my home village of Sakaramy, we loaded two huge bushels of bananas on top of the ca...

Lives of Quiet Dignity

Madagascar, one sometimes forgets, is a country of incredible crushing poverty, a result less of disease and not of war, but of decades of poor governance and missed economic opportunities. Of a population just over twenty million, 75% live below the poverty line. Half are under the age of eighteen and, with the average mother giving birth to 6.6 children (one of the highest birthrates in the world), the population is currently due to double every twenty years.  15% of Malagasy children don’t...

Rose-Tinted Glasses

my As much as we all may joke about Peace Corps goggles (it is not a joke: it is an affliction!), many of us have switched those spectacles for another pair of late. Long ago, when it meant little to me, I heard through the usual twisted, time-distorted chain of Peace Corps wisdom about the rose-tinted glasses. These, the legend went, slip down over your eyes during your last weeks in your village; they distort your once reliable vision and suddenly you find all that once irritated you to no ...

Alex's Peace Corps Madagascar House Tour

Madagascar in photos, overview

Playtime

Madagascar Music

Hokey Pokey goes to Madagascar

We taught out Malagasy Summer Campers some English vocabulary doing the hokey pokey.  They sang most of the song in Malagasy (to make it relevant), but see if you can pick out the words you know!

Famadiahana - Turning of the Dead

One of the interesting cultural events I have been privileged to witness during my Peace Corps service in Madagascar. One of the ways malagasy honor their ancestors. Each year ancestors' bodies are removed from the family tomb and then rewrapped in silk cloth. Like any good party, heavy drinking, singing and dancing is also involved. Reminded me of university football games --- people having a good time drinking, tossing up friends for every touchdown... except not so much in this case. Just ...

Visitors' Center Painting Project

In May 2011, eight PCVs in Madagascar met at Ranomafana National Park.  We worked to paint the interior of the new visitors' center with images of endemic species.  We also created a three dimensional topographical map of the park and surrounding area. 

Peace Corps Madagascar

Made in honor of Peace Corps' 50th Anniversary, this video specifically highlights the work of volunteers in Peace Corps Madagascar and the impact they have on their assigned communities. 

HIV/AIDS Bike Tour 2010

Peace Corps Volunteers speak about HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention in the Lac Alaotra region of Madagascar.  21 volunteers biked 220km in 10 days having a festival at each of 9 towns along the way after cycling into town.  The educated Malagasy people on the purpose of Peace Corps, gave talks on each sector represented in Madagascar, and focused on how it relates to health.  Using condom demonstrations, skits, games, races, speeches, and songs, PCVs prompted discussion of HIV/AIDS and other...

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes!

Education PCV Dorothy Mayne, teaches the middle school students of Anketrakabe, Madagascar how to sing "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes".

Trotro be

Traditional Tanala dance in Kelilalina, Madagasar.