Back from Halloween

Hello all. I hope you had an enjoyable Halloween with plenty of tricker-treater, candy corn, and "can you believe we used to think this movie was scary" 1980s era horror flicks. Meanwhile, over here in Madagascar, the Peace Corps was working very hard to save lives, improve living standards and promote intercultural understanding through a development project called operation Halloween. Ok, fine, I'll be honest we just had a Halloween party.

Halloween has not really caught on yet here in Mcar. Although in the capital and a few other major cities you might be able to find a Halloween party at a big nightclub. In Fianar, where we headed this year, there was a once club that even forced all it's employees to dress up in costume. The other Malagasy, however, still did not seem to understand what was going on. I imagine that the French have reluctantly brought the tradition over. I hear that Halloween is a big controversy over there as many parents refuse to celebrate the "Cultural imperialism of the American capitalist pigs."  Anyway, as this country moves away from the stifling influence of the French toward closer relations with America, Great Briton, and South Africa, as is the aim of the current president, I expect to see a rise in the popularity of Halloween. I might even go so far as to say that the popularity of Halloween in Madagascar could be used as an anecdotal indicator of development in so far as development in this country is linked to economic liberalism as championed by the Halloween celebrating Americans and British. But then again, it's just Halloween.

 So anyways some of you might be wondering what I wore as a Halloween costume. Well first, I went through many terrible ideas like an Abu Grab detainee (but political jokes never work very well, especially in a country where news is primarily received by radio and so most volunteers haven't seen the pictures), a Malagasy porn star (I have a giant wooden penis that I received for the purpose of doing condom demonstrations, but I couldn't figure how to make the rest of the costume work and I was worried about cultural sensitivity) and a MIF kit (an item found in our medical kits used for sending stool samples to Peace Corps). I finally settled on being a pizza delivery guy. I wore my pizza hut hat (which I bought in-country), then I taped a cut-out from a bag from a pizza take-out place in Tana to a red shirt. Finally I carried around a card-board box of approximately the size of a pizza. The costume worked well and avoid the awkwardness of a clever but culturally inappropriate costume.

Ok, I have to get going. Please stay in touch. I haven't been getting many letters lately, and I must admit I have not been terrific at sending them out either. Anyway, lets not keep track of who wrote who last. Happy Thanksgiving to all.