December 30th 2023 to July 5th 2024
Hi everyone! This week I said goodbye to my family and celebrated the New Year here in Madagascar. The beginning of this week was mostly uneventful because I did not have any classes to teach. However, I used the time to prepare some lesson plans for the next part of the school year and some activities for some of the clubs at the American Corner. For my lesson plans, I tried to put together lessons in which I can use some of the scholastic news articles that came in my big box from home. I’m excited to use them and I think the students will enjoy the material as well.
I also worked on some things for the American Corner. I finally feel more settled here and I’m excited by the idea of using my free time to fully immerse myself into the American Corner. This week the American Corner was closed to the public because they had a robotics camp. I stopped by a couple of days, and it was fascinating to see what they were working on. They had full robotics kits, and they were programming the robots, conducting the wires, and building the body, everything they needed to do to get it to move. I was impressed by the amount of coding they were doing and the projects they were working on. I’m also excited for the American Corner to reopen to the public because it means that some of the old clubs will get started again, including the debate club and discussion groups, as well as some new ones like girls club or STEM club.
Later in the week Katie, the other ETA from Tana, came to Majunga for a visit. It was nice to have her here and show her around the city. It was also nice to talk to her about our different teaching methods and compare what has worked and what hasn’t for us. One of the other Peace Corps guys, also named Charlie, stayed at my place for a few days too. We had a couple relaxing days and even got to go to the beach. Overall, it was a pretty slow week, yet I was able to be productive and get some lessons prepared for next week.
Now, since I had a rather relaxing week and did not do anything super eventful, I figured it would be nice to share with you 5 things that you might not know about Madagascar, also including things that my family was surprised by when they visited:
- Madagascar exports 80% of the world’s vanilla
- Madagascar has a ton of biodiversity. Approximately 95% of Madagascar’s reptiles, 89% of its plant life, and 92% of its mammals exist nowhere else on Earth.
- Madagascar is the world’s fourth largest island.
- The roads in Madagascar are bad. It would take 5 days of straight driving to go from the top of the country to the bottom. This same distance could be done in 14 hours on American highway.
- Most Malagasy people live without running water or electricity. Most people have to go to a tap in the center of their village to collect water for the day. 50% of the population does not have access to clean drinking water and 88% of people do not have access to basic sanitation services.