mihinam-bary BE

that means "to eat a LOT of rice"

this week i went to my first malagasy wedding, an affair full of food, fun, dancing, a LOT of dust (my first dirt dance floor), and more rice than i thought i could eat...but i was wrong.

i want to take this opportunity to emphasize once again what i see i wrote about in may, that is, that i have very little left to speak of in the way of communication or social skills. i was talking to sarah yates, in cape town, about how we never talk on the phone anymore (except with our parents, who must not except good phone skills from us) so we don't really remember how to talk on the phone. you wouldn't think that requires much skill, but you'd be surprised. you pay by the minute here for phone calls, within or without madagascar, so volunteers do a lot of our communicating with each other by text, and most conversations are pretty to the point, meaning when you call somebody just to talk, it's surprisingly difficult to do so. i think the same applies to my writing in my blog, and probably to writing letters as well, as many of you are aware. so, sorry. also, as i didn't know in may, i'll be home in november, for about three weeks (including THANKSGIVING ahh turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing oh my...i'm going to eat an ENTIRE pumpkin pie and i'm not kidding). kanene and jason, friends from w&m who many of you know, are getting married and even a hemisphere or two can't keep me away...so my lack of american social skills will be readily apparent to you all sooner than i thought when i last wrote about that.

so, i've been around vohitsara and the lac alaotra area for several months now, since sydney left in april, and in a few weeks that will change, perhaps drastically. i'm leaving for tana around the 12th (next tuesday...and dan's 25th birthday...that's old) and from there heading to morondava, a town on the west coast, to help out with HIV/AIDS education at a festival going on there. it sounds like it'll be a good time, business- and other-wise, and i've never been to any malagasy coast, so i'm excited to finally get out of the plateau bubble. as i learned from a certain religious studies professor at w&m, what does she know of the central plateau of madagascar who only the central plateau of madagascar knows? thanks, mr. holmes.

i'll be back in vohitsara by the 25th or so, but i have a lot of additional plans, most of them tentative at best, in the upcoming months, hence the aforementioned drastic change in my lac-alaotra-focused life. in early september a friend on the other side of the lake is having an HIV/AIDS education week in his town, so i'll probably help out with that, and then in later september/early october i'm hoping to help train the new health volunteers who arrive in country, and also perhaps work with other volunteers on a bike race on the east coast promoting HIV/AIDS education/prevention. you might think HIV/AIDS stuff is all we do around here, but that's the focus of a lot of our projects in spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that madagascar has a much much lower HIV-positive rate than most of mainland sub-saharan africa. it's sort of like madagascar has a chance to see what's happening just across the water and learn how NOT to let that happen here, so we talk a lot about preventing the spread of HIV while it's as easy as it is now.

after all that training and AIDS education, i'm planning to work with some other volunteers in the lac alaotra area in late october/early november on a weeklong camp for middle school/high school age girls in our towns, something some of them were involved in last year and are continuing this year. THEN a week or two after that i'll be home on vacation (november 14-december 4), and back here for a couple of weeks before my parents and dan come for christmas and new year's!

more information will be forthcoming about all of the aforementioned projects...but that's a tentative schedule of my life for the rest of 2008. the battery's getting low on this computer...and i haven't eaten rice in a few hours...so i'm going to go. send me a letter when you can!