silky smooth malagasy dancing

Our silk-making tour in Ambalavao finished strong with a little dance rehearsal for our entertainment--and now yours!

it's raining avocados

I love Mexican food. There is no doubt that this is the thing I miss the most when living outside of America. I don't just mean when I'm in Africa. Even in Paris I couldn't find something as simple as hot salsa. What they call salsa is actually tomato sauce.

I do my best to satisfy my cravings by making what I call queso (I'd rather not tell you the recipe—unless, of course, your pity inspires you to send me packages of hot pace picante salsa and meltable cheese). Now that I have an oven, I can also bake my tortillas into some kind of chip. Not the same as regular tortilla chips, but they crunch and they scoop queso and I'm happy.

When I lived in Madagascar before, once I year I would supplement this self-Mexican-medication with guacamole. For a brief period of time, avocados were in season. A certain merchant would get them, and he'd call out to me during my daily market trip—and I would promptly purchase every single avocado he had, which usually meant 4 at most. And then I'd have a few glorious meals of guacamole. Every bite was heaven. This was no fake queso. This was the real thing. Better than most Americans eat. For a few days every year, I had my moment in Mexican sunshine.

I'm about 5 months into my second tour of the island, and needless to say, the Mexican cravings are strong. Here is the general schedule: First 2 weeks fine—you haven't realized yet what you've given up. Weeks 3-7 so so much pain—you never knew you could dream about tacos or that they would feel slightly like nightmares. Weeks 8-10 fine—you appreciate where you are and you know you'll be eating free chips and salsa while waiting for your meal in no time. And then weeks 11 until the end are depressing. You know you love Mexican. You know you can't have Mexican. Even the last handful of weeks are hard—you are so close yet still a half a world away.

Note: If during the course of this reading you at any moment pity me or decide to eat Mexican some time soon—please feel free to send me something as simple as Taco Bell hot sauce packets (I mean, they're free, right?). It's the little things that count. I'm told to just make sure to package them in such a way that if one bursts open the rest don't get messy. No, scratch that—I'm not that picky. A little pre-cleaning will only prolong my possession of those little spicy packets.

As I was saying, I've reached the point where Mexican is among the top ten things I think about every day.

And then it hits me. The avocados. They have arrived.

I heard rumors while I was still in Senegal (oh sorry—I'll explain that some other time). But I played it down, not wanting to get my hopes up. And then our first weekend back in Fianarantsoa, we walked to the market.

And there. Row. After row. Pile. After pile. Avocados. Everywhere.

I guess I always knew that a city like Fianarantsoa—large, near the rainy East Coast, the whole shebang--receives a larger variety and larger amounts of food. In Mahabo (my village on the West Coast near Morondava), I had rice, tomatoes, onions, bananas. I'm exaggerating, yes, but only slightly. I left out potatoes and mangoes. My apologies. Oh and beans. Dried beans. But in Fianar? In less than 5 months I've encountered so much more than I did in my 2 years before! Endless pineapples. Passion fruit. Litchis. Pumpkin. Grapes. Apples. Oranges. Green tomatoes. Random things I don't recognize. It's unreal. We eat so well here! Sure, we'd get a token handful over on the hot and dry West Coast. But usually in Morondava, not Mahabo. And usually expensive and already half rotten from the travel. So I've known and appreciated that my taste buds will be infinitely more satisfied now than the first time around.

But I never imagined the impact it would have on avocados. If anything, I was just crossing my fingers I'd get as many as I did before. But seriously—my old tactic of just-buy-them-all could never work in a million years here. I couldn't afford it—and I'd need a semi to transport them.

I can't think of a better scenario—cheap and giant avocados (10 to 20 cents each, depending on size) and an unlimited supply. I can literally eat guacamole until I burst. It's incredible. If I don't appreciate this experience to the maximum, shame on me—I don't deserve Mexico or her cuisine. So I will count my days in avocados and be grateful for every one.

Do I still miss queso? Obviously. Do I continue dreaming of tacos? Absolutely.

But my abundance of avocados makes the wait a little bit easier.

8 mars

I think I have a new favorite holiday: International Women's Day.

Let me back up a few steps here. I want to note that I was actually unaware of this holiday until I joined the Peace Corps in 2007. I'm not sure which is worse—the fact that we only celebrate women for one day of the year or the fact that in America it seems that we can't even pull it together and make a big deal of that one day. Of course, now that I'm aware of the holiday, I notice comments about the day all over. Perhaps I've simply met a more women-celebrating crowd since then.

In any case, so there I was living in my village, Mahabo, when suddenly the 8^th of March rolls around and let me tell you—it was huge.

One important step for this special day is to release all the women from those daily tasks like cooking and taking care of children so that they can go and get hammered with their friends. That's right. Not all of the women, sure, but man—being a daytime drunk is COMPLETELY acceptable if you are female and it is March 8^th.

So the next thing you do is throw a big party for the women. You put all the important people up on the stage in seats of honor—the mayor, the chef district, the provisor, the token white girl (that's right—me). Then let the dancing begin. Not like nightclub dancing (I mean, it's the middle of the day here). What I mean is that each possible grouping of women (from different neighborhoods, from different churches, police wives—you name it) has been preparing a special dance, traditional Malagasy style, which they perform in front of everyone. It lasts several hours. I have video proof.

Then you wrap up the celebrations by giving a big goose to important people (live, obviously—to be killed prior to consumption) and then send everyone on their merry little ways to drink more. Pretty great.

And the men? Where are they in all this? In America, you would assume creeping on the edges, ready to take advantage of the mass drinking and general elation. But no—not in Mahabo. This is WOMEN's Day. Men have no place here.

On a different note, I find this rather amusing. I can't think of another holiday where only the people being celebrated are allowed to partake in festivities. I mean, Americans celebrate Presidents Day even though the majority of us have never been elected President of the United States.

In any case, it was only a matter of time before I realized that Mahabo's celebrations weren't necessarily universal. Here I was, imagining all the ladies of Madagascar getting down in their town square. But it turns out different towns have different variations.

I expected Morondava to have wild celebrations. I mean, they were only 40k from us, but bigger and by the beach. Surely they know how to party. I was imagining punch coco and dancing into the sunset. But when I asked about the 8^th, I was a given a what's-so-great-about-Women's-Day grimace—half confused, half disapproving.

Apparently, in Movondava, International Women's Day? Not so great. It just means that all the women have to go out and sweep the streets. You know—celebrating women by making them clean. It sounds more like what International Men's Day might consist of.

In the end, I assumed that perhaps Mahabo was the diamond in the rough—truly celebrating women, perhaps by force thanks to our female mayor.

Oh but I was wrong.

Two years later I re-discovered International Women's Day with more delight than ever.

In Fianarantsoa, the 8^th of March is amazing. Imagine this: I had completely forgotten about the holiday. And then I show up to work. And then I discover: women don't work on International Women's Day. That's right. Men? Oh yes. 9 to 5 as per usual. But women? Free vacation day. It would seem that—even more so than in Mahabo—women and women only celebrate their day. I don't know about you, but it's pretty great to wake up early, head in to work, and find out you can go home and bum around all day instead. Especially when you know that not everyone is given that privilege.

Were there celebrations? Dancing? Drinking? Perhaps. I really wouldn't know, because I chose to celebrate being born female by reading a murder mystery on the couch all day.

So happy (belated) International Women's Day to the feminine half of the world! A whole holiday celebrates the fact that you are capable of doing anything, so celebrate by doing whatever you want.

Even if that means doing absolutely nothing at all.