Oh! I sent this on May 18th, sorry. . .

“What I think’, said Anna, toying with the glove she had pulled off, ‘is that as there are as many minds as there are heads, so there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

“I am unable to submit to a dark power that assumes the shape of a tarantula” The Idiot, Fydor Dostoevsky

“Honey, are you incapable of complexity?” Mountains beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder


So, it’s really not possible to fill you in on all the happenings of these last few months, so I won’t try. Instead, let’s just aim for a picture of my day, today, Wednesday the 18th of May, 2011 (the day of the apocalypse and the year of parrot fever). Hrm.

I woke up about five-thirty to a cat stepping in my ear, as she does most mornings and normally throughout every night. Her name is Killer, and she was hungry. However, since she is the most picky of cats, she stayed hungry until just now (about 9 am), as she refused to eat the fish I bought for her yesterday. What sort of cat doesn’t like fish? I ask you. The pump, about 50 meters away, wasn’t running yet, so I couldn’t get any water to wash my face or hands or dishes, but that doesn’t matter over much because I might not have washed any of those things were the pump running, and it always comes on eventually, so I just had to wait. So, I wrote up an exam, started a letter to my sister, and bustled down to a local bread-and-coffee shop for some breakfast before class.

The shop sells coffee, tea, and four kinds of fried bread—mofomeneka, mofosira, mofogasy, mofografe. My favorite is the mofografe, although I do not know what “grafe” is in English, or even if I am spelling it correctly. It’s a round piece of bread, about one inch in diameter and half an inch thick, and delicious. Class didn’t start until 7:30, so I had plenty of time to chat with the other breakfasters and wave to the waves of students walking by-- “Good Morning Miss!” “Miss Rebekah! Good Afternoon!” “Good Morning Ferdinand, morning Tojo! Hello Josianne! Akory aby!” Its lovely. I love mornings, even the cold ones that have now descended upon the Vatovavy region, mist and quiet and kittens and palm trees. If my family were here, life would be perfect.

So, after breakfast, I wander off to the CEG (middle school) to give my 6th graders an exam. Along the way my neighbor stopped me and said, not to worry, she filled my buckets because the pump started running, and then ran down the hill to catch me and let me know, so I wouldn’t worry during class. I also had to stop and talk to about 53 vendors of various things, so it took me half an hour to make the seven minute walk to class. All 60 of my students showed up today (as they knew there would be an exam), but after glancing over their tests it appears as though the large majority cannot yet remember what present simple is. Of course, there are a few kids that can not only conjugate in their sleep but also remember ever single word I’ve ever taught them, plus a few that have just fallen out of my mouth. So the realities of my work here represent themselves—the situation does not promote retention, to put it lightly. Sixty kids to a class, no lights, no books, class three hours a week if I’m lucky, no word for “to be” in their language, English puts an “s” on plurals but there’s also that “s” on the end of puts. . so many puts? Many people put? Poor kids. Malagasy doesn’t pluralize anything either.

However, the kids are awesome—all smiles. I’m so lucky to know them. Teaching the 6eme is an absolute treat.

And now I’m home. My way home from class took about half an hour as well, since the frip vendors were out and about. . . “frip” being the Malagasy term for second-hand Western clothing. Imagine the best thrift store you’ve ever been to, and that’s market day. We don’t sell cool little knick-knacks—those are at the tourist markets. For us, it’s all made in china or sent from America. As with any thrift store, the range in quality is astronomical—but never have I owned such hilarious and diverse clothing. For example: dress-pant-overalls, snake-skin pants, a kimono, t-shirts so priceless any hipster would murder for them. At about a dollar per item, it’s not a bad way to dress myself. The mother of two of the neighbor kids—my very favorite two, if you check on facebook you’ll see they’re everywhere—stopped me while I was looking at the frip and asked me why I hadn’t been to visit lately. . I was over on Sunday, and I’ve truly been busy ever since. . . it’s already Wednesday! I guess I’ll need to stop by.

But when? At 12:30 I’m meeting some other teachers for a volleyball game. I’m not sure where we got the net, but it appeared a bit ago and, as my Malagasy still leaves pretty much everything to be desired, I jumped at the chance to spend time around the other teachers doing something that does NOT involve talking. Plus, I’m pretty good at volleyball, for a Malagasy person. I get pretty discouraged sometimes, so it’s nice to feel like I’m doing anything well. . . even though, in America, my volleyball skills are such that I never left the bench in high school. There is a life lesson somewhere in that, but I’ll let you find it for yourselves. I’d like a paragraph of at least five sentences, due on Monday.

Then, at 2, there is English Club for my 2nd students (10th grade). I think I’m going to make them write poems today. Last week we did American Easter—complete with hunting and dying and eating eggs. Tell me, why exactly does a rabbit leave eggs? English Club is either the best part of my week or the worst—usually dependent on my mood going into it, if you can believe that. Soon as this letter is finished, I’ve got to do some lesson planning for that—just a little. Lessons are, in my opinion, much better if you plan less and just focus more on what’s going on when you get there and start learning. (Kitten is now trying to eat my face.)

English Club will be done around four, at which point hopefully I’ll correct these papers. There will be an exam in the second section of 6th grade tomorrow, but I really dislike correcting more than 60 papers a day, so if I do today’s today, and tomorrow’s tomorrow, I’ll be all caught up and ready to leave for the city on Friday after class. It’s a volunteer’s last weekend, so we’re all going in to say goodbye. Also, I have the chance to go to a famadiana (when you take your ancestors out of their tombs and rewrap them) on Saturday, which I really hope works out. At some point I’ll make cookies, as I have no oven but there’s one I can use in the city. Make cookies and drink beer. Heavenly bliss of activity. Then, Sunday, there’s some sort of poetry slam that I’m going to try to find. I met some of the poets a couple weeks ago, and my friend introduced them to PennSound and Andrea Gibson—I was too shy to talk to them, of course.

I mean, it’s a village teacher’s life. It’s really not all that exciting, but I like it—I like making fun of the ducklings that live right by my house and think they’re chickens, playing with my kids. I like teaching and teaching again, reading and reading again, feeding the cat and making soup for myself. There is still a lot of work I need to do before I can hope for any big projects—for example, making friends with adults—but I’ve started talking with the other English teachers here in Ifanadiana and we’ll see what happens. For some reason, May has been a homesick month—probably because everyone is graduating and I have no idea what is happening in anyone’s life—also likely because I was sick the first bit of it. Also, I think living on your own in a new culture teaches you more about yourself than you ever really wanted to know. I mean, living itself can also teach one more about oneself than one wanted to know.

In other news: MY SISTER IS HAVING A BABY. Which is probably the most unbelievable and amazing fact I could possibly communicate. It also means that I’ll likely be coming home (courtesy of MomDadKatie’s frequent flier miles) in December. So if anyone wants to hit up the Grand Forks / Fargo holiday hotspot. . . it would be great to see you! And to Eva, David, and Besty. . . I look forward to your visit every day. Bella, Valeria, Stephanie. . I expect you to purchase tickets soonsoon.

Tomorrow, May 19th, marks the 10th month anniversary of my departure from America. Just fyi.

Let’s see, what else? If you have access to facebook, you’ll see that I was able to take a trip up to Mahajunga—a city in the Northwest—for Easter. Saw the Mozambique Channel, baobabs, spent a lot of time in taxi-brousses, listened to too much Paul Simon. (never too much Paul Simon!). Then I went all the way back through Ifanadiana and over to the East coast—to the Indian Ocean, a city called Manakara. It was lovely to get to see more of the country, that’s for sure. I’m looking forward to the end of school (July 15th!) and getting to take another trip somewhere. Also, I’m buying a computer off this volunteer that is leaving, so hopefully I’ll be able to resume writing individual emails, like I did that one time in January—and keep in contact with each one of you. Erica, Philicia, Bella, Tim, Eva, Mel, Family—I already owe each of you long emails. They will come, I promise! For your constant support and friendship I am so grateful—I was so afraid of being forgotten, but here I am 10 months in and as remembered as when I was next to you, chattering away. You can’t know what a gift that is to me, and how it encourages me in my work and life here.

And I’m off! I’ll send this out on Friday, return the computer I’ve borrowed to its owner, and try to catch as many of you as possible on gchat.

xx
Rebekah Rose

“The only real, practical, hope-giving way to remedy the fragmentation that is the disease of the modern spirit is a small and humble way-a way that a government or agency or organization will never think of, though a person may think of it: one must begin in ones own life the private solutions that can only in turn become public solutions.” –Wendell Berry