As
promised, I want to quick provide a bit of information regarding my new home
town, my counterpart organization and some of the potential work that I’ll be
doing for the next two years. As I’ve
previously mentioned I was assigned to Arivonimamo, a semi-urban town 48
kilometers from the capital city of Madagascar, Antananarivo. Barring third year extensions I believe I may
be the closest volunteer to the capital city and as I am working with a large
national development agency as my counterpart, work will be much more
structured and the pace of life will likely move at a faster clip than many
people would traditionally associate with Peace Corps. Arivonimamo is a replacement site, meaning
there was a previous volunteer living here and doing similar work. She was a very impressive volunteer I am told
which creates high expectations for me, but I am looking forward to the
challenge. Peace Corps requires that
during the first three months at site volunteers complete a Community
Diagnostic Survey, which is essentially an in depth report on all aspects of
the host community, ranging from health to education, income generating
activities to cultural taboos. As I am
just over a week into my time at site there is only so much I have gathered,
however I can relay a few of my observations.
Madagascar is subdivided into Regions, broken down further into
Districts which are comprised of smaller Communes, made up of individual Fokontanys. Arivonimamo is situated in the Itasy region
in which there are currently four volunteers. Anders, an education volunteer arrived over a
year ago and I have yet to meet him. The
other two volunteers, Emma and Sarah, come from my stage, or training group, and live in Ampefy and Miaranarivo (the
regional capital) respectively. The
district of Arivonimamo is comprised of more than 20 separate communes, and as
I reside directly downtown in the district, my commune’s name is the title
track of the district, Arivonimamo. As
I’ve previously mentioned the district is composed of an assortment of Fokontanys,
many of which can be classified as ‘ambany vohitra’ or countryside, so even
though I live downtown, I will likely be commuting on foot or by bike often to
work in the rural villages. The
different communes throughout the region have different days on which they
organize their large markets. Here in
Arivonimamo we hold ours on Fridays and for this upcoming market Friday,
following a discussion with the mayor, I was able to procure a small spot near
the commune building where I’ll be putting together a small presentation on
Peace Corps, and hopefully doing some community integration activities. I’m really looking forward to having such a
large forum to introduce myself and I figure it will be a great way to gather
some information about my community from a random sampling of Arivonimamo
market attendees.
The work I will be doing here in
Arivonimamo will be in association with my counterpart agency, Prosperer but
will be predominately self-directed. Prosperer is a support program for rural
microenterprises and regional economies. It is affiliated to the International
Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) under the Ministry of Agriculture, the
Ministry of Economy and Industry and in collaboration with the Federation of
Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The
organization works in five regions here in Madagascar with high population
densities and partners with host organizations within each community. Here they work in tandem with the Center of
Information, Technology and Economics (CITE), with the principal objective of
increasing the incomes of Madagascar’s rural poor by consolidating Rural Micro
Enterprises at local and regional levels. Prosperer, as my counterpart agency,
is the organization which put in the request for a Peace Corps volunteer so I
have an obligation to work within their framework to a certain degree but as a
Community Economic Development volunteer the focus is nearly identical. I will be most closely working with those
associations and cooperatives affiliated with Prosperer assisting in business
planning, trainings, identifying market linkages and potential export
opportunities. There is a plethora of
existing organizations I could choose to work with including sisal and raffia
weavers, zebu horn sculptors, blacksmiths, carpenters, and silk weavers, who
produce a particularly unique and beautiful product of Madagascar. Arivonimamo has a very well established
community of silk weavers who create a remarkable variety of products from a
silk produced by a worm that is endemic to Madagascar and found in Tapia
forests not far from the districts center.
I also intend to work with a youth fruit drying organization, which was
registered as an official cooperative shortly before I arrived. The president of the fikambanana
(association) has already become a close friend of mine and I’m especially
looking forward to that project. I
should also make note that all volunteers who are lucky enough to be partnered
with Prosperer receive the benefit of very
nice accommodations, since it is the counterpart organization that is charged
with securing housing for the volunteers.
As such I live in a beautiful two story flat situated in the center of
town, with 24 hour electricity and hot running water. To be quite honest I feel more like an ex-pat
doing development work abroad than a traditional Peace Corps volunteer. Still,
I couldn’t be happier because as a result I know I’ll have the opportunity to
engage in high profile work and cultivate skills that will serve me well when I
return home. The more I’ve thought about
it the more I’ve realized that even though I’m not living in a mud hut and
showering with a bucket, urban poverty is equally as devastating as rural poverty
and I still have the opportunity to immerse myself in the very rich cultural
traditions of Madagascar, which have in no way been whitewashed by the
westernization that often comes with urban modernization. What’s more, Madagascar is still one of the
poorest countries on earth, a victim of rampant inflation and a stagnating
economy, due in no small part to the political limbo that the country has been
frozen in since the 2009 coup. The
evidence of economic degeneration is staggering and the political outlook is
not promising so there will certainly be no shortage of work.
I’ll
quick end by letting you all know that before sitting down this morning to
write this blog post I was riding back from my banking town in a Taxi-brousse,
which is the primary Malagasy form of transportation between towns and consists
of 20 or so people crammed into a small van. I was riding back and chatting with the guy
sitting next to me, and though he was practically sitting on my lap for lack of
space, we were actually having a pretty good conversation…. and then his baby
threw up on me. So that was pretty
wild.
I
should also quick mention that between when I wrote the first part of this blog
post and right now (evening) I’ve gone out with a few of my new Malagasy
friends and was told that even though my skin is white, I’m already a Malagasy,
which is something I’ve been striving for, and we made plans to have a small
get together and kill a chicken this Sunday in my apartment. Until
next time, veloma.
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