Happy Easter!!!

Happy Easter to all you fantastic people!
Easter in Madagascar is apparently one of the biggest holidays right next to Christmas. How do we celebrate? With massive community wide parties.
Our festivities kick off starting Saturday night with a gospel concert featuring a famous Malagasy singer and dance. Sunday is prayer all day long in the many churches framing the center of our community. The topic of so many conversations this last week has been what church I will be attending. I am getting very good at Malagasy subtlety and sidetracking the conversation or completely answering a different question all together. You have to be careful here with what you say and how you say it. If you say something that is taken completely incorrectly the people here are respectful enough not to question you on the topic so that is taken as your fact. Which can work for and against you in many respects. The last thing I have an interest in doing is insulting one of the many facets of Christianity that are here. Hopefully as my language grows stronger I will be able to have some cultural/religious conversations with some of my friends and see what the community’s less than obvious view point on the religious state of affairs is.
Sunday night begins the second most glorious of the parties at one of the very large houses here that has been converted into a movie viewing room ( on an old school projector) and dance hall. (It has electricity and is old south plantation style huge). I will be going to the dance with two of my friends who I will have to introduce in my next blog. Many of my friends in the community will be participating though and I am excited for it. Lots of dancing to Malgasy tunes- which are fantastic for moving yourself all over to- and hip hop… also one of my favorite style for dancing or working out in my room!
Monday is the pinnacle of the holiday festivities since on Sunday so much of the day is lost to prayer. The Malagasy over compensate for this loss of party time by having a community wide picnic in one of our local fokotanys( kind of like a mini town usually consisting of about 10-20 houses). This is not the American version of a community event, this is an actually community event. Our community will be completely closed down, with the exception of a few vendors I’m sure, and everyone is going out to picnic. Dacing and eating are automatically assumed at any cultural gathering. Malagasy love their music, and there will be karaoke of course, loud and out of tune singing that only gets worse as the drinking continues. Living in a very wet culture has its benefits and drawbacks… lots of great parties but an equal number of completely intoxicated people in one area. You have to give in to it though in whatever way works for you and while I will be in charge of bringing the drinks for our large family that is going, I won’t be blaring myself out of tune on the giant speakers to Brittany Spears or Enrique Iglesias. Yes, the American music here is sappy, horrible, and about 5 to 10 years behind us. Which makes both Joanna and myself wonder what is happening in the world of music and film in our continent!
I hope all of you at home have a great Easter/Passover/Ostara holiday and that you are all in health and are happy people! Love to you all!