Oh, Dance in the Dark of Night, Sing to the Morning Light!

The magic runes are writ in gold
To bring the balance back.
Bring it back.
At last the sun is shining,
The clouds of blue roll by,
With flames from the dragon of darkness
The sunlight blinds his eyes.

I have used the Lord of the Rings as a metaphor for my Peace Corps experience before; namely, when describing the endless treks over mountains. I recently re-watched the movie trilogy, and noticed a lot of other Peace Corps-related moments and quotes. A sampling:

-Gandalf arrives in the Shire on a cart, and everyone stares at this stranger as he enters the village. All of the children are simultaneously frightened and awed by him, screaming his name. Upon entering Bagend, the tall, awkward pale man hits his head on various objects in the much-too-small-for-him house. I have definitely experienced this, right down to the (much smaller) beard. No fireworks though…

-The way Legolas says profound things, seemingly only to himself (like while running endlessly in Two Towers). I do this a lot, although the things are rarely profound, and are actually usually in song-format.

-The thinly-veiled environmentalist message of the Ents (self-explanatory for this environment volunteer: don't cut down and/or burn all the trees!)

"Look for your friends, but do not trust to hope; it has forsaken these lands" – rider of Rohan

-When you're really down on site, and all of your projects are falling apart, and nothing seems to be going your way... you just want to go hang out with your friends in your banking town and complain over a few beers. But the movies/books also promote the theme necessary to survive two years (or more) in Peace Corps: There is always hope!

"It takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say. " – Treebeard

-This is the Malagasy way. Greetings can go on endlessly, with lots of "what's happening?/nothing," "what's new?/nothing," and "but seriously what's happening?/nothing" before eventually getting to the point of the conversation in a roundabout way. The focus is on the experience of interaction rather than the purpose of eliciting a result from the conversation.

"One thing I've learned about hobbits: they are most hardy folk" –Aragorn

"Foolhardy maybe" -Merry

-Surely this applies to Peace Corps Volunteers, who survive cyclones and squatting over fragile latrines and illnesses and harassment and failure and everything else in order to accomplish... something? Hopefully? PS the hardy part may only apply to environment volunteers, the most 'hard-core' of Peace Corps Volunteers... kidding, other volunteers... mostly.

-The awkward end of friendships forged through mutual suffering and adventure (end of the Return of the King, end of Peace Corps service). Some will embark on new adventures in foreign lands, others will remain in this new land, and still others will begin their long journey home...

Let's close with some all-around awesome lines:

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." - Gandalf

and of course...

"Not all those who wander are lost"

Applicable, I'd say...

Ridin' the Storm Out

Chris’ Cyclone Survival Guide

(Note: most natural disaster preparedness guides focus on safety issues and common sense [is there such a thing?] procedures. This is NOT one of those guides)

Well once again I have gone a while without a proper blog entry. I have been working on a variety of things recently, including a video for our rice project (which you may be able to view in March-ish), but not much that seemed “blog-worthy.” And then over the weekend came a cyclone[1] warning. This cyclone, Cyclone Bingiza, touched down on Madagascar soil today and will probably be bringing heavy rains and winds to our area for the next day or so.

Thus, I thought I would offer some of my personal strategies for Cyclones, in the format of “Do’s and Don’ts”

Cyclone Do’s:

1) Do put out all of your buckets for delicious, clean rainwater

2) a- Non-Electricity version: Do read that incredibly long book you have been saving by candlelight (some PCVs' examples: War and Peace, Count of Monte Cristo, Brothers Karamazov, Harry Potter heptalogy…)

2) b – Electricity version: Do watch an awesome movie trilogy. My available choices: Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Bourne trilogy, and Batman trilogy (which consists of Batman Begins, the Dark Knight, and the Dark Knight with special Ben Nemeth commentary in which he says all the lines)

3) Finally work on that secondary project you keep putting off, such as translating Lord of the Rings into Malagasy. Say, how do we feel about using “mpitsymaty” for “ring-wraiths”? or Randrianagandalf?

4) Do take advantage of lulls in the storm to take a quick walk around or visit friends, so you do not go stir-crazy. And to replenish supplies (Seadap – like ramen except awesome-er) But beware of the eye of the storm, of course…

5) Do take necessary precautions, such as covering up all glass windows.

6) Since you have no glass windows (and since your windows are already “boarded up”), do use the time you would have spent on number 5 writing a blog entry.

Cyclone Don’ts:

1) Don’t bring all of your pots and buckets outside to collect rainwater – you will still need some to catch water from all of the holes in your roof

2) Don’t drink the water from inside your house (rat and bat droppings can be dangerous!)

3) Don’t jinx yourself by talking about the electricity you will use to watch entertaining movies, unless you really want to lose said electricity and spend the next day(s) rereading old Peace Corps newsletters by candlelight.

4) Don’t wait for everyone to leave the office, put your backpack on, then your raincoat over it and you. You will likely find that you cannot close your jacket, so you will need to take it off. Except that you cannot, as your arms are stuck in it and you will waddle around like a penguin as you futilely try to extricate yourself. This may take up to 20 minutes.

5) Don’t admit to number 4 on a publicly-shared internet blog.

6) Don’t joke about cyclones until after they are over. Oops…

Be safe everyone!

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[1] A Cyclone is the same as a hurricane, except that it originates in the Indian Ocean. A quick nomenclature guide: Pacific Ocean = Typhoon, Atlantic Ocean = Hurricane, Indian Ocean = Cyclone (actually, I think all are technically "cyclones"). Also, because of Madagascar island nature, cyclone prediction is especially difficult. They can go north or south along the east coast, cut across the island, regain strength on the west coast and even come back across to the east. No one ever knows what to expect from a cyclone in Madagascar.