Happy New Year Everyone! (Corie email on 1/8/10)

Working on getting back to you all, thanks for the emails, it brightens my day!
I’m in Diego again, on my way to Tana. We’re staying here a couple days to uh…do some “business”. No, we actually did go to the bank yesterday, but today we’re gonna paaaaaarrrtay! One of my favorite Malagasy singers ever, Wawa (yep, that’s really what he calls himself...) is having a show today! Perfect timing. Tomorrow me and Brittany will fly to Tana and then go to the training center on Monday. Chris and Katie have been there a couple weeks now, and we’ll be taking over for them as trainers for the new Niger group. We heard they are “a good group”. We’re training on how to build some things…cookstoves and stuff, and environmental education and cultural
adjustment, and basically just be there to answer their questions...“OMG how will I get my mail? How do you shower from a bucket? But what will my JOB be??” Oh how the tables have turned.
Well, to recap, the holidays were good to me. Christmas was up here in Diego with other volunteers… full of eating lots and lots of good food, sunny warm weather, trips to the pool and one to the ocean, and we even watched “a Christmas story” and the Christmas episode of “Friends” on the tv here. But it still didn’t really feel like Christmas. Everyone was calling their folks and hearing about “white Christmases”.
I rolled into the village on the 29th and could feel the New Year’s excitement. I think I mentioned before that New Years is one of the 2 biggest parties of the year here in Madagascar (the other being Independence day on June 26th). A lot of people don’t have birth certificates or know what day or month or sometimes even year they were born in, so New Years sort of acts as a big huge birthday party for everyone too. “Well, it’s 2010, guess I’m 25 now!!!” It’s great. So the nights of the 30th, 31st, 1st, and 2nd there was Malagasy music bumping from across the field (not really all that far from my
house…actually, quite close) literally until the sun came up. The 31st was less of a big deal, but bright and early on the 1st, I went over to where my best friend and her family had set up camp in the forest for their party, and braided the little girls’ hair (I'm learning to cornrow!) while I watched them slaughter a goat. They gave me a huge hunk of the meat to take home, which I cooked right away. I got picked up by my
counterpart at 8am and we went into the village and sat down to a table set outside under mango trees. They brought out the tablecloths and the nice dishes (where does this stuff come from?! It was crazy to see that in the village) and we had breakfast of spaghetti Bolognese, basically. Then of course, we started drinking! Nothing says happy New Years like a little moonshine and Three Horses Beer (I’ll refer to it as THB from now on. Imagine Coors Light, if it were inconsistent in flavor and alcohol content from bottle to bottle). Being the new person in town, my glass was literally never empty all day (the polite thing to do apparently), and if any of you have ever gone drinking
with me, you know that I’m umm….a very cheap date. We sat around all of us, talking and telling stories of our respective countries and waiting for it to be lunch time. Then the women started cooking, and taught me how to gut a chicken (which I add, was still warm from being alive only moments ago). It was an interesting experience. We had a
huge feast for lunch and afterwards sat around holding our bellies and talking some more.
Then my counterpart announced that he had finally thought of what my Malagasy name should be, “Soa Vanona!” I was like, oh wow, I’m so honored, uh, so like, what does that mean? (If you read my last entry, Brittany’s village had already named me Soa, but my village added the Vanona part, which I can’t say I remember hearing, ever). They said it means “ to be successful/ dependable”. We hung out there until the sun started to go down, and then everyone went home and changed into their nicest clothes (again, where does this stuffcome from?!) and we went down to my end of town, to the source of the blasting music. We danced and drank more beer until it was dark, and I went home and ate my goat meat dinner and fell asleep with a very full
stomach and heart. I’m starting to feel really comfortable and as we say “tamana” (it means well-settled in a place) here.

OH! And I have 2 chickens now so far!! The first one was a present. He’s little and SO UGLY! He’s oddly really comfortable in my house too, it’s kind of obnoxious. The second one I bought, it’s way cuter and bigger. I’m excited, they’re fun!!

Hope everyone is doing good! Miss and love you all.
Corie / Soa Vanona