packing list

+ 1 fleece jacket
+ 1 warm hat
+ 1 pair of gloves (with rubber grippies on them)
+ 2 bandanas
+ 1 camo baseball hat
+ 1 straw brim hat
+ 3 button up work shirts
+ 3 pairs of nice slacks
+ 2 polo shirts
+ 1 tie that matches all shirts (brown)
+ 1 pair good shoes
+ 1 pair rugged shoes
+ 1 pair tavo sandals
+ 3 toothbrushes
+ 3 disposable razors
+ 1 nail clipper
+ 1 bike helmet
+ 1 nalgene bottle
+ 1 bicycle u-lock
+ 1 flashlight
+ 1 towel
+ books: soduku, logic puzzles, anna karenina, war and peace, the brothers karamazov, the glass bead game, back on the fire, the dragons of eden, french-english dictionary,
+ 35mm camera
+ led flashlight
+ compass
+ toothpaste
+ soap
+ 1 high-quality poncho
+ leatherman-like tool plus a couple bicycle-maintenance necessary tools
+ battery powered travel alarm clock
+ money pouch
+ cassette walkman + a handful of tapes
+ solar powered battery charger + batteries for electronics
+ sewing kit
+ 3 belts
+ 1 shitty sleeping bag (perhaps a nice ultra-light will fall from the sky?)
+ 1 33 lb 14 oz backpacking tent
+ waterproof jogging pants + jacket

all of this surprisingly fits well inside my two checkable bags, although i haven't chosen which casual clothing i plan on taking. my bags fit to just about the maximum size allowed, plus i'm taking a regular backpack as carry on. i can't decide if i should pack up my army duffle pack for travel or...not?

in other shitty news, someone stole my bicycle out of our garage. this is a bigger deal than you think, i spent countless hours toiling over that bicycle and it was like a child to me. a part of my body.

someone who i will be spending my time in madagascar with made a facebook group for us!

that's exciting to get a look at the people i will be with so that we can all bounce things off each other. it's a bit intimidating though because most of these people seem more capable than i. but i'm self-deprecating.

it seems like joburg might not work out as perfectly as i've been hoping. i guess i should stop hoping and expecting and just wait and see what happens. it's already september 6th (a birthday i can't forget but want to), 22 more days. 22 more days.

itenerary

it seems that i get to spend a day in johannesburg, south africa in-between the united states and madagascar. there is the origins centre there at witswatersrand university, and its a place i've wanted to go since i first started studying human evolution. the opportunity to actually go there seems to me just another favorable omen towards this whole project. well, hopefully go there. south africa! madagascar!

my staging is in philadelphia. i've not been there, so that should be cool to have a couple evenings there. fly out of ole jfk. i've never flown so far, 17 hours on a plane? damn.

i'm going to miss someone a lot, the reality of my impending departure is getting heavy in that sense.

getting there.

jumping through lots of hoops, filling out passport and visa forms (the precision of which makes me nervous - i hate red tape paperwork and stuff, it seems like such minor mistakes could get my application rejected), insurance forms, travel details, powers of attorney, etc. i applied to correspond with an american elementary school classroom and it says that i can request a certain teacher if i have one in mind. i can't think of my elementary school teachers, or if i'd want to write back and forth with any of them, but i was thinking of my friend's mother in cincinnati, or a childhood best friend's mother (who is a principal but could probably set me up with someone in her school). i think random would be best.

i've been spending a couple hours a day reading either a. about madagascar, b. malagasy language, c. malagasy news, or d. health related / hiv information. i've been thinking about approaching someone i went to high school with who is now a paramedic to teach me some of the basics he knows about more in-depth aid for injuries. the way it sounds, i will often be mistook for a doctor and brought various sorts of injuries and illnesses. i don't want to let anybody down.

i've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a representative of the united states. i am american. i hope that i'm really allowed to be me, not according to malagasy restrictions or taboos, but according to the peace corps. i want to be free to say that i disagree with american foreign policy and with our shameless capitalism. i want to be free to tell them, "i am an american and i am an anarchist." because i am an american. not all americans are who you'd expect to join the peace corps. the peace corps to me is bigger than the government which i despise, and even bigger than it thinks it is. it's so policy driven, it's so country-based.

what the peace corps means to me is this: me, steven mingus, an individual person, is going to go and share experiences with some yet unnamed and unknown people in their home, and its going to affect not the united states and madagascar but me and them, personally. people get caught up in how large the world is that they forget how very small it really is.

madagascar!

a shorty.

so i've officially accepted my assignment and will be leaving september 28 to go to washington, d.c. and then on the first i'll leave for madagascar.

i don't know if i posted this above (perhaps over the course of this entire journal i'll repeat myself endlessly) but i learned that i will be given instruction and be working in malagasy, not french. i already know french all right, i don't know a lick of malagasy and looking it up online makes it seem difficult. whatever.

it's hard to know what to say right now.

day 1: invitation

today i was sent an invitation to the peace corps service in madagascar. i've been in the middle of the application process since december, and have patiently been waiting for a while now to hear some news. it's not easy knowing that sometime soon, i'm going to leave the entire world that i know and head off to somewhere completely new and different, where i won't speak the language fluently and will be very alone, and yet i don't know when i'm leaving (i do now though). i'm currently sitting in the library reading the welcome packet that was just emailed to me.

my placement officer was initially concerned that my visible tattoos could be a problem (note: one of them is brand new, antarctica around my left elbow in blue). she called back and said it was ok. i'm very bad at being interviewed and she asked me probing questions such as how i would handle people asking me for things all the time, being an outsider, having to explain my tattoos and whatever religious or personal meanings they might have, how i would do being a leader, things like that. i was nervous but i guess i said the right things.

i'll be leaving in 5 weeks.

i don't plan on taking very much, i'd mostly like to buy clothing that will fit in with what they're wearing, and use the hygeinic options they use (i want to learn how to brush my teeth with a stick). i will be taking a medium - largish bag of some minimal backpacking equipment for holidays and things like that. i assume that will be fitting, plus i'm hoping to travel more after my service is over.

a beautiful mailing address:

steven mingus, pct peace corps
corps de la paix
b.p. 12091
poste zoom ankorondrano
101 antananarivo
madagascar

and email: pcvstevenmmg@yahoo.com (nice of the peace corps to give me a government email, cheapies.)

as for now, there are some things i need to do before my public computer time is up.

lemurs, ho!