Back in the saddle again...

Chim-chimney-chim-chimney...

Sunday, February 25, 2007

I’m in Tuléar tonight by myself at the Eden Hotel, whose outer façade is the color of mint chocolate-chip ice cream. The cheap kind. I’ve landed another contract with CARE to do some more proposal writing. This will probably my last hurrah before KP’s contract ends in mid-June, so when this opportunity arose I felt like I should take it to get all the experience I can before leaving. (As a side note to those of you visiting the blog: we’re looking for jobs, so any leads—or offers!—would be welcome.) I’m not in Tuléar to work, just to catch a flight to Ft. Dauphin, on the east coast. I’m going to be on the east side three nights before catching a flight back to the west side, doing background research and talking with the team there. It seems a silly commute, but the Fianar—Tuléar drive is A LOT better than the Fianar—Tana one. Having just done the latter yo-yo trip a week ago, I know what I’m talking about. The last 7 weeks of steady rain have left large stretches of the road in bad shape that prevent you from getting any decent head of speed from building up. Last Sunday we took 10 hours to do Tana to Fianar, and today I made it to Tuléar in just under 7. (Okay, full disclosure: last Sunday we had about a one-hour delay because we were stopped by the gendarmes and forced to pay a fine for not having our papers in order—our green plates were of no use that day—and we stopped so Owen could nurse. Today, I didn’t have any of those same issues.)

This is the first time I’ve spent a night alone since Owen was born and it feels lonely not being part of the usual routine with he and KP. It’s small conciliation that I have a working TV. There are only two channels that come in, both in Malagasy and one channel is showing a Madagascar version of American Idol; the other is showing how Tropical Cyclone Gamede is on target to make landfall on Madagascar on the eastern city of Tamatave. The best thing I saw on TV was a commercial using Bob Dylan’s Just Like a Woman for its theme song. It was an ad for a beauty salon in Tana. Being a Sunday, there aren’t many restaurants open, so I happened to find myself at same Italian restaurant I ate at when I was last in Tuléar. About a year ago—last Easter Sunday to be exact—we were here with the FTC group and, like tonight, this place was about the only place open. KP and Claire ended up both getting sick and Hugo and I left with our respective wives so they could convalesce back at the hotel. This left AB and Patrick to chit-chat with Claire’s college semester-abroad host-family brothers and their girlfriends for the evening. The next morning we boarded our rental van (a.k.a. rolling Super Fund-mobile) and 10 hours—and one snapped accelerator cable—later, we got to Fianar. Thanks to a poorly (absent) exhaust system we arrived looking like a band of traveling chimney-sweeps. Oh, good times.

Monday, February 26, 2007

I made it to Ft. Dauphin this morning just as the sky opened up in a burst of rain. I suspect this was the leading edge of TC Gamede; it’s been raining off and on all day since I’ve been here. At present, according to the weather map the storm still looks poised to hit Tamatave head-on, but these things have a tendency to change direction at the last moment. Regardless, there are going to be many coastal communities dealing with the storm surge and a lot of flooding. When I arrived, the CARE driver took me to the office first. What struck me most along the way was how bad the roads were. Last May, when I was here last, the roads were in terrible shape, and since then have really deteriorated. I suppose the weather has something to do with it, but also I think the heavy trucks from the QMM mine and the port-building operation are not what the road engineers had in mind when the road was originally built.

Turns out I’m staying at the guest house of the regional coordinator. I didn’t realize this, but was excited by the prospect of not staying in town (less chance of random booty-calls from the local prostitutes). He lives on atop a picturesque promontory overlooking the Indian Ocean. Upon entering the “guest-house” I began to wonder if this was, in fact, a good thing. First impression was that I was living in a sty: clothes were strewn about the place, dirty dishes were piled high in the kitchen sink, the commode doesn’t have a seat, and there’s no shower curtain. The cook, who received me since the coordinator was still at the office, led me through two rooms before showing me my “room”—what is essentially a glorified closet with a double-bed wedged inside. There’s just enough room to maneuver around, but only just. There is a mosquito net, thankfully. But, what really had me worried was the corpse I passed en route to my room. In the second room I passed through lay a body on a bed with a sheet pulled up over its head. The cook didn’t even glance at it as she led me by. Not knowing what to do, I did nothing. As I was putting my suitcase down I heard the corpse emit a low moan, at which point I assumed the corpse wasn’t a corpse. I tip-toed back past the corpse to sit outside and wait for the coordinator to come home for lunch.

And eventually he did, and he explained the mystery of the corpse over lunch. The corpse is a friend of his who is working as a consultant on the project that I wrote up for CARE last summer. He’s one of these dyed-in-the-wool development jocks who has lived in Africa for the past two decades and has decided to eschew such western “luxuries” like mosquito nets and malaria prophylaxis. The corpse-like state was a product of two things: 1) an acute case of malaria and; 2) an acute case of alcohol poisoning from a weekend bender. It was unclear which of the acute cases came on first, but the end result was the corpse.

Now back home after working the afternoon at the office, the corpse was awake briefly and spoke, but has now turned off his light and is sleeping. I’m thankful that tomorrow I’m going out into the field; I don’t predict a good night’s sleep.

Sam's 30th Birthday

The other night Owen attended his second 30^th birthday party (not his own, though he did achieve the 4-month mark last week). His first was his Aunt Marian’s in DC in November, which I believe he slept through as he was only 6 weeks old at that point. His second was this week, when Kristen’s colleague and our friend Sam (a Brit who’s transplanted herself to Madagascar) turned 30. We had Sam over for a drink (or two) to welcome in her third decade. Left to right: Abel (Sam’s boyfriend), Dan & Owen, Kazaku (Japanese volunteer for the NGO Sam heads up), and the birthday girl herself. The highlight of the evening was Sam’s story of the massage she received in town as a birthday present. Specifically, how the masseuse commenced with her feet (living as we all do in Fianar, which is a bit of a dump, and seeing as it’s summer here so we’re all in sandals…let’s just say it’s hard to have squeaky clean feet by 5 pm on any given day), and then spent an inordinate amount of time rubbing the front side of her upper torso instead of her back, and finished up with her face. Abel said he wanted to watch next time. I hope no one gives me a present to that masseuse for my next birthday.

Why I hate Malagasy Banking

Friends, let me tell you a story about banking in the country of Madagascar. This story begins in April before KP’s dad came over with the rest of the FTC group and we needed to hire a car to take us from Tuléar to Fianar. We found one (it turned out to be a rolling Superfund site, but that’s another story) and to seal the deal I had to transfer money from my account into the account of the person renting us the car. I had never done a wire transfer before, but I went to my bank, was given a form to fill out, and le voilà. It was easy and quick. But, reader, I assure you it was a false sense of security because it was here that things went pear-shaped on the whole deal.

Fast forward to May and KP and I are balancing our account with the most recent statement. We’re reconciling the account and I see that my bank transferred about 30 bucks more to the car rental dude than supposed to. Okay, shit happens; it was probably an honest mistake. A quick trip to the bank should sort things out. Right. Wrong.

The next morning I go to the bank. With a false smile, I calmly explain to my bank what happened. They’re dubious. Could they have made a mistake like this? They tell me that I’ll have to come back in the afternoon so they can go back and cross-check the original transfer order. Okay, no problem. Afternoon arrives, and, what do you know? Golly, they made a mistake and transferred too much. Then the banker puts on a solemn face to tell me that it’s going to be up to me to contact car-rental dude and ask him to return the excess amount. I don’t know how he was able to tell me that with a straight face, but he did. No “I’m sorry we made a mistake, and because we value you as a customer and want to make things right, we’ll eat the cost and credit your account.” More like, “Yeah, we’re dumb-asses, but we’re going to make you spend your own valuable time cleaning up our mess.”

So now with the onus on me, I email car-rental dude and explain the situation. A week goes by with no response to my email. I call him and he doesn’t pick up. Now I’m pissed. Letter #2: I pull out the big guns and explain that if he doesn’t respond to me the next time he hears from me will be through my lawyer. (Thankfully, if there’s one thing in abundance in Fianar, it’s lawyers.) My bluff worked. Next day he responds and he says he’ll return the excess money.

It’s July now and I’ve been away for a month, but today I picked up my mail and looked at our bank statement. True to his word, car-dude paid the money. But here’s the kicker: the bank charged me a 10% on the transaction—for the mistake they made in the first place. This afternoon, somehow I calmly explained that I didn’t think I should have to pay this fee. In a span of 5 minutes I made it up two links in the chain of command before I had to explain my story for a third time to the bank manager. He was very sympathetic and understood perfectly my complaint. He explained the fee was automatically assessed when the transaction took place. He also explained to get my refund I was going to have to write a letter to regional director explaining why my bank should refund the transfer fee. Miraculously, he managed to do all this with a smile. Prick.

Thankfully, I’m getting off the island for a while and can shrug this off as just another one of the little quirks that make living in Madagascar such an adventure. It also demonstrates why the Millennium Challenge Account is working to reform the Malagasy banking system. Where the average time to process a transaction is 24 days, my problem seems insignificant in comparison. Still, a little customer service would have be nice.

The Tana Waterfront

The office where I'm working in Tana is part of a mini-mall, seductively called The Waterfront. From a positional perspective the name fits, but that’s about it. In water-body taxonomy, the water to which the mall fronts is closer to a swamp than anything else. Real estate developers must have thought this name was preferable to Mall de Moustique, which would have been more descriptive and truthful. In previous times the swamp was bigger, covering more area than it does today. Some of the land was initially drained during construction of the mall, and more was done later to create space to build one of Tana’s gated-communities. Upon entering the community you pass through a wrought-iron gate staffed with 24-hour security, then drive along a tree-lined avenue with speed bumps every 100 meters, and take in views of the “waterfront” before you reach the mall. At times you could think this was somewhere in the US.

Working in a mall setting has its pros and cons. There’s definitely a convenience factor, especially when it comes to food. No food court, but there is a bakery with yummy French patisserie treats; an up-market café serves fast and tasty plates of Middle Eastern food; and if you wanted to pick up some groceries for home, no problem—there’s a Shoprite, a South African grocery chain, on the first floor. And, if I were significantly wealthier than I am now, I could do more than window-shop at some of the other stores that populate the mall. A men’s clothing shop sells top fashion house labels, and even though this is the developing world, the prices aren’t. Aside from not being able to fulfill my capitalistic urges, there are other downs like more traffic and—the purpose of my post—having to put up with bad neighbors.

Let me explain. The CARE office is on the second floor directly above the Shoprite. And when I get to work at 7:30 there’s still another 2 hours before the grocery opens to the public. I settle in at my desk, collect my thoughts, and then start a musical odyssey provided free of charge courtesy of Shoprite. While Shoprite employees are preparing to open they enjoy using the central P.A. system play music. And, fitting of a store specializing in choices, the range of music that drifts into my office is impressive. It’s also a bit repetitive because a few days into my contract I detected a pattern to the music, a more-or-less fixed progression through different genres. Early morning hymns get things off to a soul-stirring start. I can’t understand the lyrics since they’re in Malagasy, but sometimes I catch a “Jesosy” or two. The second movement is a bit of Malagasy Classic Rock. Musically, this stuff sounds like Boston, Journey, and every other big guitar band from the ‘70s. Again, I can’t understand what they’re saying, but whatever it is, they’re feeling it. After a good hour of straight Malagasy, things move into US hair-band territory, with Bon Jovi and Guns & Roses taking top honors in the playlist. This pretty much rounds out and wraps up the morning show before Shoprite opens its doors and the music gets turned down to more neighborly levels. But, every so often the concert includes something truly special. One morning last week, for example, a Disney animated movie soundtrack medley played for about an hour. Beauty & The Beast, Little Mermaid, The Jungle Book, and much more: the hits just kept coming. Needless to say, the hours between 7:30 to 9:30 aren’t my most productive.

I think if this was the only thing going on in the morning I might be able to block it out, but in addition to the music there’s another distraction. My “office” is actually a room where the public computers to access the internet are located, so there’s usually a pretty constant stream of traffic of folks coming in and checking email, news, Hello Kitty fan-club sites, etc. Most interlopers are quick and polite, recognizing that someone (me) is trying to work. But there’s a young French woman doing a summer internship that has me one step from madness. Her routine is to show up around 8 and check email until 9, and she’s a public talker. While she checks her messages, she talks to the computer, or maybe she’s talking to whoever wrote the email, or maybe it’s to ghosts, leprechauns or yodas. I know she’s not talking to me, because the first day we met I heard her saying something and I responded, thinking she had addressed her comment to me. There was an awkward moment between us as I realized she hadn’t spoken to me: the only other sentient being the room. I tried to shrug it off thinking she’s young, perky, and has a cute French accent when talking to and laughing with the monitor, but it’s too distracting. Partly it’s weird, but I think an equal part is me feeling jealous she’s having so much fun talking with her email messages.

SantéNet Staff Photo

From L to R: KP, Aimée, Mamy, Erika, and Jean-Jacques.

Here’s a recent photo of KP and her co-workers. Who’d have thought the phrase “tall drink of water” would apply to KP? (BTW, JJ’s standing on tip-toes.)

Madagascar Winter

I’m freezing my ass off in Tana’s winter. Woke up this morning to 8° C; no frost on the car windows, but I could see my breath. I suppose I shouldn’t complain, in Fianar it was 4° C. And, in the grand scheme of things, a Madagascar winter is still a thousand times better than a Madison one. (I might think about revising this statement had any of the winters been worth a damn—snow wise—and after having gone out and spent money on x-country skis our first winter that were then never used enough to justify the purchase.) Poinsettias are draining of color from their tips on down and remind me of bomb-pops, minus the blue. Across from where I’m staying is a tree that may be a sweet-gum: its star-shaped leaves litter the ground a little more each day. But more than anything, it’s the bone-cold I feel that lets me know winter is here. Each day, as soon as I reluctantly emerge from my comforter, I feel cold. The house is cold, the office is cold—I’m trapped in some cruel Dickens story. Aside from sleeping, the only relief I’ve found comes from running around the lake by the Score Jumbo, but only after 10 minutes of running have elapsed while constantly rubbing my hands together. And today at work when it got to be too much, I grabbed my laptop battery pack and held it between my hands like mug of steaming hot chocolate. Sad, but true. I only have myself to blame for my condition. I packed poorly when I came up to Tana with KP and didn’t bring enough warm clothes for the month that I’ll be here, and I’m too cheap to go out and buy a sweater when I have a dresser full of them back in Fianar. I’ve got my knitting with me, and could bust out a stocking cap in a day or two, but I’m in the middle of a project for Abinda, and don’t want to risk running out of yarn on a side project. Sadly, even this rant didn’t do much to take the edge off. I guess I’ll just go to bed and dream of Louisville in late August for some warmth.