A REAL volunteer :)

5/4/2011

It feels strange to think that training is over! Yesterday, I officially swore in as a Peace Corps Volunteer!  The ceremony was really beautiful. It was definitely a little bitter-sweet as well because it marks the end of our training and tomorrow we have to part ways with the first 50 people we have gotten to know and love in this country.

Tomorrow I will start my journey to my new home for the next two years! This is what I know about my new home… first of all, it is a big town (or a small city) called Maroantsetra and I will be living there for two years and working with an NGO that teaches farmers how to raise silk worms and produce silk. All the Malagasy people who asked about my site smiled really big when I told them I was going to Maroantsetra (I’m going to take that as a good sign). One person even told me that the city was founded by pirates, which of course made me extremely happy and I promptly packed all my bandannas.  I received a series of information packets from the Peace Corps about it over the past couple of weeks (all in Malagasy) which informed me that the town may have a population of either 4000, 8000, 18000, or 38000 people… angamba (maybe).

Apparently it is somewhat of a tropical paradise. It is surrounded by two huge areas of protected rainforest and is one of the few remaining places in Madagascar where the rainforest meets the ocean. Because of the two protected areas, it is also one of the most isolated cities in Madagascar. The Peace Corps is going to send another volunteer from the environment sector (David!) to Maroantsetra as well (which is essentially unheard of) because of the isolation of our site. The roads are said to be virtually impassible for 6-8 months of the year and the only other way to get to the city is to fly in from the capital of Madagascar, or take a speed boat up the coast for eight hours. Since the area is also hit annually by a series of cyclones, the Peace Corps is not too keen on the speed boat idea. All of the above leads me to believe that Maroanstetra is truly a pirate city and I’m super excited to build a boat and adopt a parrot.

It is also supposed to be really hot… which I am more than a little nervous about… but maybe I will learn to be a warm-weather creature…. or hopefully at least I will learn how to “not die” (as Anne put it). My house is supposedly only five meters from the river (which should help), and it has two rooms, one of which I will live in, and the other will be used to store silk (or silk worms… or something... I’ll let you know when I learn Malagasy properly).  I am also going to be VERY spoiled because my house has not only “running” water, but electricity. Whoa. Electricity can be sort of a loose term in Madagascar though, because it usually just means you have some power for some portion of the day, so I’ll have to see when I get there, but I’m already feeling fairly spoiled.