Last week, starting around Monday, I began to hear reports on the BBC World Service that some funny business was going on in the capital. A teacher confirmed that even in Fianarantsoa there were strikes. However, it only ever made the nightly African news, and never the general world news, so I assumed it wasn't much to think about (though it was cool to finally hear Madagascar on BBC--we're routinely ignored).
On Friday, however, as I was walking down to my school I saw a Peace Corps car fly down my road, apparently having already been to my house and now checking the rest of the town to find me. I ran/jogged (flip-flops, and also people laughing) down there and our regional representative was already in a meeting with my Vice Principal. "Hey Adam. Have you heard the news about the strikes? We're all consolidating in Fianar and possibly evacuating." Let's just say I smiled.
What's happening, in a nutshell, is that the Mayor of Antananarivo (the capital) is leading a sort of coup d'etat against the President. He doesn't want to be the next President, but rather lead the transitional government which will then elect someone new. Over the course of the week there were rallies, protests, rioting, looting, and burning all signs of development that aid workers and entrepreneurs have installed for the past 40 years. All of the ex-pat supermarkets are gone, some tourist shops are gone, and everything the president owned (he sort of has a monopoly on all dairy products) is burned to the ground. In the process of looting, about 100 people died.
Last Saturday, the Mayor declared that he was now in charge of the country's affairs and began naming his cabinet. He is currently touring the country for support. Meanwhile, the actual President keeps asserting his power but not very forcefully and isn't taking it very seriously I guess. The African Union is on his side, but they aren't the most effective of the Unions to put it mildly.
So as I said, we're "consolidated." Part of our training involves a plan for emergencies, meaning what to do and where to go at each stage of the crisis. This means that right now, there are 11 volunteers at the Peace Corps house in Fianar, and then 14 other clusters of volunteers all around the country. (There are about 140 of us total). Peace Corps in Tana are in talks with the US Embassy about what to do--should we all stay here and wait it out, should we be evacuated to another country to wait it out, or should we just go back to the states.
For now, we all just sit around and twiddle our thumbs, read, watch movies, and cook big dinners. We're at day 5 of this today, and it's getting a little boring, though we could potentially be here for another 9 days. The "danger" is up in Tana (10 hours away) though there are also rallies here and the police/military are all over the city. No one feels at danger, though ennui would be something of an understatement. Luckily, I'm in a town with internet and good food, while others are stuck in places with absolutely nothing to do and are probably drinking themselves into a stupor. All day long we get conflicting updates from Peace Corps and then even more conflicting reports from the internet about what's going on. One hour we all think we're going home, and the next we expect to be back at site within a day or two. And depending on what goes down, both of these seem equally likely.
It's definitely been an interesting experience to have gone through, though we're hardly in the thick of it here. It would be really anticlimactic to just go back to site as if nothing happened, though many of the people here are too new to want to go home (a month at site or so). If nothing else, it got me through what was going to be a long, long weekend.
