What I did for summer vacation

As a Peace Corps Volunteer (one of the few professions where you are on the clock literally 24-7), Heaven forbid I have 3 months of vacation like my students. I’m required tohave a summer project. Did I teach special English classes or train English teachers? No no. I believe the 3-month break was created for a reason, and I intended to preserve my sanity. So instead, I played with lemurs.

Okay that’s only half true. Yes, I did get to hold lemurs and all that jazz, but it wasn’t like recess or something. I was an assistant to a researcher from Duke—the amazing Meredith Barrett, whose blog of the summer can be found at lemurhealth.blogspot.com. I could give you a long and legit explanation of what we did and what we were trying to discover, but where’s the fun in that? Besides—you can find that at her website. Random comments and observations are much more fun for me. And hopefull you too.

Before even meeting the girl, I promised to go into the middle of the forest with Meredith with no expectations except a lack of water and some kind of connection to lemurs.

On the camp in the middle of that forest (note: the camp is owned by Becca, an ex-Duke student who now teaches at UT Austin—and she was totally doing research in Madagascar while pregnant—what a rockstar): The Peace Corps apparently prepares you for a lot of things, like extreme heat, isolation, teaching a classroom of 70 preteens, and living in research camps. The bucket shower we were allowed every 3 days was not only an unexpected surprise considering the water conditions, but it reminded me vaguely of Mahabo. Different bucket, same concept. As did the rice and beans we had for EVERY meal. It was as if they were trying to make me feel at home. The bathroom was (sadly) better than mine (quite a statement, considering it was just a hole in the ground). There were 3 vazahas (2 more than me and Mahabo combined). Early to bed, early to rise. The lack of heat you can see and the addition of shade was confusing. It reminded me of something by the name of autumn. So THAT was all fine.

Here’s what was strange. Now . . . I realize some of you are into that whole biological field research stuff, but I have to be honest—I do not have the patience for all the rules and regulations. All must be even and random and big enough but small enough and often enough. And THEN—when all’s said and done—you have to PROVE beyond a DOUBT everything you say. One hint of evidence to the contrary and it’s all out the window. No. Definitely don’t have the patience. Like with Meredith’s project. She’s essentially (ha—sorry for the serious over-simplification—seriously, go check out her blog—she’s even got videos) proving that lemur health is negatively affected by human development (basically). But does she really have to spend time proving that destroying the homes of lemurs is bad for them? Is anyone silly enough to not get that? Why not let her ACT on it, instead of providing evidence to support the statement. In ANY case, so that was all very enlightening and makes me feel oh so much better about my decision to be an English major. Ha. Whatever that’s another story for another time.

But then again, science won me over for the summer, so I shouldn’t talk. It allowed me to stop teaching English for a moment, and start setting out little traps at night with pieces of banana inside which were magically replaced in the morning by mous lemurs. Or rats. Or ants. It all depends. It kind of reminded me of a video game. You go up to the trap and slowly open that closed door. You kind of hold your breath. You try not to jump if you open the door to an ugly (and smelly) rat.

If you’re lucky, you’ll see a groggy mouse lemur—confused and ready for bed (they’re nocturnal—which means big beautiful eyes). And I swear they stretch and yawn—I swear. I think mouse lemurs are a cross between mice and bats. You’ll see what I mean when I post pictures in November. And they’re all so different! We’d open the cage and I’d hold them while Meredith did her thing. Some looked TERRIFIED, making their big eyes even bigger. Others were sleepy and cuddly (those are scientific descriptions). Some opened their mouths and tried on their fierce face—only I’m afraid it was more cute than intimidating. Most wuld squish up their face at some point—usually in an escape attempt. Those pudgy ground bats. . . oh so cute.

So that was fine and dandy. But then we moved from the Morondava area to the East Coast. Hang on let’s make a list, just for kicks. You can get the more structured version of it all from Meredith. I’m less into narration than random reflections in any case.

1. Tamatave is a larger, rainier version of Morondava. I’m just saying . . . a live in the best part of the island, that’s all.

2. The aye-aye is quite possibly the most ridiculous animal I have ever seen. No wonder it is taboo to lots of Malagasy people. Would YOU want to run across that at night? That death face? If ever you have children, make them aye-ayes for Halloween, and they will be the scariest kids on the block.

3. The fossa, on the other hand, is incredibly beautiful. Your kids can be that for. . . prom.

4. Wait. I have to stop writing. All that painting has done a number on every muscle in my right hand. The price we pay for a little color in our lives . . . .I’ll write more tomorrow.

OKAY. My hand is fine now. So, there were several unexpected (okay, I was warned about some of them) differences that came with our change in location. I’ll do it in paragraphs but not lists, because this computer keeps trying to auto-format things for me, and I do NOT appreciate it—if I want to do something I’ll do it—I don’t need a computer telling me what to do. Also the space bar is not so stellar which is rather frustrating to say the least.

We lived in little huts. For the most part this was fine, but there were a few glitches. It rained a lot, and my hut had several holes in the roof. This meant that not only did I chill in rain by day, but I got the outdoor experience by night as well. When rain is allowed inside a small hut, you’ll find that the air is constantly moist. Soggy mornings are less than pleasant,but hey—it’s a change from Mahabo, right?

I did get a new hut, but lived in fear of fleas, as the person living there before me was an animal lover and let dogs sleep in her hut. Fortunately I turned out fine.

We would often do around 10k (the one day I kept track) of hiking into the forest and then back again (occasionally twice a day). Into the forest here meant UP. And up in mud an drain. The result of THIS was something of a rebirth of the trench foot. My feet were so constantly wet that most of my toenails actually separated from my toes. I had to cut them ridiculously short to avoid any possible snagging emergencies.

We also had leeches. They came up your pants (those naughty creatures), forcing me to tuck pants into socks (on the river forging days, I wore socks with sandales solely to avoid leeches), and they’d come down in the rain. One day I had 8—including one on each eyebrow. After you get rid of them, you keep bleeding, and as I tried to clean one shoulder, an arm would smear blood everywhere—to the point where my light blue tank top turned brown.

The commute to the village with the forest where we worked including hours of hiking up the mountain, and multiple river crossings. Add to that the complication that I puked violently for no apparent reason before we left—and once we got up there, we wouldn’t be able to get ahold of medicine if it ended up being anything. Fortunately it turned out fine.

We bought all our food before climbing up the mountain, as we couldn’t get it once up there (unless we paid someone to go down the mountain to get it). Now, I mentioned that we used bananas in the traps. I’m just going to say—bananas kept for 3 weeks start to get FUNKY. But while WE couldn’t stand the smell, the mouse lemurs apparently were into it. We think they were getting tipsy on fermented banana.

So the Malagasy student Meredith was mentoring was analysing poop. An interesting job, I know—thank goodness I was not assigned to poop collection. They created a little shit stove (seriously) in order to try the samples for analysis in the States. This was fine, okay whatever (I can’t tell you how many laughs we got trying to make superheroes out of him and a vet friend who was up there chopping off dog balls—you can get so creative with unusual jobs—we considered making action figures—but get real—we’re not THAT bored). But one day, he decided to put the oven near the kitchen/eating area. The smell is tattooed in my mind . . . it’s like a stew, gone very wrong. I’ll leave it to your imagination. Needless to say, the oven was moved.

Story has it that once someone put a toilet seat over the usual hole in the ground we use as a bathroom. I guess he didn’t want to squat. After a while, however, they noticed foot prints on the toilet seat. I guess the villagers didn’t get it and squatted on TOP of the seat. Awesome.

Shawn and JulieAnn will especially like this. I made a quilt. I guess I needed more work, so I made one out of the chunks of fabric we use called lambas. I’ll post pictures of that too, don’t worry. It’s funny, because in the States you’re so precise about measurements and everything is so exact. I had no ruler, so I simply tore the fabric up with a ‘’this looks about right’’ attitude. I then sewed it by hand in the forest. It’s SHOCKING that it actually worked out alright—especially since it’s a bunch of smallish squares. There are actually 2 quilts. I used 8 lambas, for the colors—but this meant a LOT more fabric than needed for one. In any case, I’ll show you eventually.

One other main thing, and then I think I’ll leave the rest to Meredith. Though I’m pretty sure she’ll mention this. So a nearby village invited us to a ceremony. The family throwing the party had connections to the forest we were doing research in—one of the men used to do work there. But so a family decides to celebrate their ancestors, so they throw a party, in which they buy a bull and kill it. Other families give a little money, and in return get some of the meat. So it’s kind of a good way for the village to have meat from time to time.

But the whole thing was much crazier than that. There was taoka everywhere (their moonshine which is ridiculously strong and some say it is the cause of every town’s crazy person). And there were BUCKETS of betsabetsa everywhere (the lighter wine-esque version)—and little kids would steal cups of it. And then the whole village was all gathered in the center, around the big bull tied up on the floor. And then—all of the sudden—they ran at it with a machete and HACKED at it’s neck. The guy next to me got blood sprayed on him. After the head came off, things got a bit hectic. Men squatted everywhere, chopped up meat into little cubes on giant leaves to later be put in piles to distribute (and the cubes could be anything from some good meat to nothing but skin and hair—no joke—waste not, want not). Little children played with raw meat (and then grabbed my hands). Little dogs thought they were in heaven. We walked in blood. We created our own private bathrooms behind somewhat desserted trees. And then we walked back up the mountain. It was all in all a good party. And the freshest beef you’ll ever eat.

Okay. I’ll leave it at that, throw in a couple other entries, and I promise the next ones won’t be so long coming. Plus pictures in November. And remember to check out Meredith’s website. It’ll give you an even better idea of my summer vacation.