Update on politics in Madagascar!

So we almost got evacuated from the country... repeat of Cedar Rapids last summer?

This guy Andre "TGV" (like the fast train in Paris) apparently had a love child with the daughter of the current president, Marc Ravalomanana, who won't let them marry cause of religious differences or something. So TGV is pissed and trying to take over the government. His people have tried to take over ministries by just walking in and like sitting down at desks and starting to work... unsuccessfully, obviously. Their logic is hard to follow. Another questionable bit is that TGV is legally too young to even be president here. What is he even thinking. This is such a big hysterical failure. Except also scary cause people have died. Not a lot, but some, via political demonstrations that had to get calmed down I think. Don't worry, I'm staying far away from those.

Oh and also Ravalomanana is just a jerk who's getting rich off of all his Malagasy industries and buying expensive airplanes instead of, say, repaving their awful roads here or, you know, helping out the hunger/unemployment situation. Which is kind of an issue here, with Madagascar being in like the top 15 poorest countries in the world. So there's that reason to try and kick him out of office. I just think their might be a better means of going about it? Maybe? I'm no expert, but this completely illegit method is not seeming to have any kind of success.

It started out with protests, walk-ins at the ministries, some looting here and there... Now rumor has it that more than half the military has joined the opposition. Some of them definitely have, but it's really hard to separate fact from fiction here. Negotiations were supposed to happen and didn't, several times.

The Peace Corps program here is temporarily suspended and its volunteers are being pulled out and moved to South Africa. (Which is ironic since a lot of Malagasy really hate South Africans - I think it has to do with QMM, the ilmenite mining company in Fort Dauphin that employs a lot of Vazaha esp Sud-Afs, who are kind of inconsiderate and get in fights a lot at the bars and discothèques and try to steal women... who knows.) Anyway the Peace Corps is like a barometer for SIT, so it wasn't looking good for us for a while. We were all really nervous that we'd have to go home. It was a real possibility for a few days.

We were just given the news today that SIT has decided to continue our program - hooray!!! We're cautiously avoiding the dangerous areas, especially Antananarivo, the capital. We're in Tuléar for the afternoon, where there's been a couple lootings, but we're sleeping at this gorgeous place where our director Jim has a house, we're camping around it. It's right on a mangrove coast. I love it. Very safe, and isolated except for a couple neighbors including a guy whose building an alternative pirogue, a guy with a catamaran that I really want to sail on (but won't), and a Swiss guy and his Malagasy wife that own a restaurant/bar that we eat at and hang out at in the evening. Pretty good ambiance. Tonight is the big sheep slaughter party! Probably gonna sleep in a bit tomorrow morning...

Now the bad news - there's 2 students in our program, Erin and Matt, who are being forced to leave by their universities' stupid policies that are just obnoxiously cautious... The travel status was upgraded to a warning, and there's a BBC article with the words "civil war" in the headline (it is not a civil war.), so I guess since they're public universities (UNC-Chapel Hill and CU Boulder) funded by the government, they have to go. They might join a program in Botswana. We're all really upset that they have to leave. Maybe we'll organize some kidpnapping scheme and make them stay. What? Erin and Matt? Last I heard they were lost in the spiny forest, being raised by a pack of lemurs, who knows...

Gotta go meet up with the group again.

Safe and sound and happy to be staying,

Love Karen