April 6th to May 12th 2024
After a hiatus from writing blogs, I am back with another edition of Madagascar With Charlie. A lot has happened over the last couple of weeks, but I got burned out from writing blogs every week and that’s why you’re just hearing from me now. I have been back in Majunga for the last month and while I can’t write about everything, I’ll give you some of the fun highlights.
American Corner Going Away Party
In mid-April, we had a party for one of the American Corner volunteers who was leaving Majunga to go start a new job in a different city in Madagascar. He was able to get a job with a Non-Profit where he would act as a translator for the Non-Profit workers that were coming over. This is really exciting for him because they gave him a 2-year contract and it is well paid. It also showed how all his hard work, including learning English and volunteering at the American Corner, had paid off. While this was all good news, when I talked to him, he was sad about having to leave Majunga because this had been his home for his entire life. That is life, an adventure filled with bitter sweet moments, and I think this was some foreshadowing for how I might be feeling once I have to leave Majunga too.
But anyway, we had an amazing beach party for him to say goodbye! The guys from American Corner rented a beach house and we had part of the beach all to ourselves for the night. It was a pretty crazy night, all the Peace Corps volunteers came in for the party, and there was about 40 people from the American Corner and other English clubs there too. I got there after sunset and there was already a big party at the house with music. We stayed there for a while and then at one point, there was a power cut and everyone moved out to the beach. We had a big fire and me and some of the Peace Corps volunteers got some of the Malagasy people to do chicken fights with us in the water. Also, at one point throughout the night, I may or may have not have eaten part of a cat because someone randomly offered it to me. Anyway, it was a ton of fun, but it was tough to say goodbye.
STEM Club
One of my proudest accomplishments since being here is how successful STEM Club has been. Since starting, we have been getting 25 people consistently every Saturday and we have a 50-50 split of guys and girls. That’s better than pretty much all university engineering programs in the U.S., which is pretty cool. The past few weeks, I have been teaching them about Computer Aided Design (CAD). We started with engineering drawings and then transitioned to making cube puzzles which they designed on CAD. The topic is rather difficult, and we are using free software that can be buggy at times, but they have done really well with it so far. I am also happy to know that STEM Club will continue after I leave because there are 2 other group leaders that have been helping to lead topics who are really good too.
Key Being Lost and Remade
A smaller highlight, or rather lowlight, was that one of the Peace Corps Volunteers lost one of the keys to my apartment. While it was not a good thing, it did mean that I had to go on a quest to make a new key. I ended up finding a place that was right next to where I played tennis, and I brought my key in for the guy to make a copy. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it was not what I experienced. I gave the guy the key and he had a whole bunch of keys that he went through and ended up selecting one that was similar to mine. He then looks at my original key and brings the plain key over to a lathe. He then eyeballs it and cuts me a new key on the lathe. Afterwards, he gave both keys back to me and I went home to try it out. Unfortunately, it did not work when I tried it on my door. So, I brought it back to him. He looked at it, made some more changes, and when I tried it again it worked. I guess that is how it is done, but it was definitely not what I pictured the process to look like.
Updates on Teaching
Since being back in Majunga, teaching has been less stressful because I haven’t had to go into the schools as much. The students have either been on break or taking exams which they don’t need me to be there for. I’m glad that it worked out like this because rotating around to so many different classes and seeing so many students has definitely worn on me, and I have felt burned out by it. The next couple weeks are busier with teaching but the students take their final exams the first week of June which means I only have 4 real weeks left of teaching which is pretty exciting.
I also did some teaching on a Saturday for the ACCESS program. The ACCESS program is an English program for impoverished high school students to help them become more fluent in English. It is a 2-year program with 25 students, and they meet every Wednesday and Saturday. When I went, I gave an American cultural lesson on American Holidays. Teaching at ACCESS was nice because it is sponsored by the U.S. embassy which meant that the classroom had a projector and Wi-Fi. With the projector I was able to give them a PowerPoint presentation on all the holidays and then once they were done, I introduced Kahoot! to them. They absolutely loved playing it and they got super competitive. It made me really happy to see all of them participating with smiles on their face.
Final Thoughts
Well, I have exactly 64 days left in Madagascar which is pretty crazy to think about since I started off at over 280. Some days I am really excited to be able to go home and see Sophie and my family, but as the days go, it starts to hit me more that my time in Madagascar is coming to an end. I’m glad that teaching will end beginning of June because then I can go on some adventures with my friends that I made here before I leave the county. I will try to be better about updating my blog but hopefully these updates will suffice for now. Also Happy Mother’s Day to my Mom!