Yet Another Epic Gasy Road Trip

Originally, Yvon and my trip to Antananarivo, the capital city of Madagascar was supposed to take about 10 or 12 days round trip. 23 days later, I have finally arrived back in Fort Dauphin.

Going to Tana was exhausting but in retrospect, smooth sailing and reasonably quick. Two days and two nights on a taxi-brousse headed up the middle of the country. At one point I was sharing a seat with four men, a woman who smelled like sour milk, and a chicken.

I enjoyed the capital city more this time around, perhaps because after eating rice, rice, and more rice for nine months, Indian food, pizza, and ice cream seemed like a real treat. As I was sipping a chai latte and eating a chocolate cookie at The Cookie Shop, a north american style coffee shop, I almost forgot that I was in Madagascar. A bit strange.

The 50th anniversary of Madagascar's independance day was celebrated while we were there. The streets were filled with temporary markets, carnival games, and food booths. We went to watch the fireworks, but got caught up in a bottle neck of people trying to get closer. We spent most of the show trying not to get trampled, and then helping the husband of a fainted pregnant woman to put her on a motorbike and push her out of the crowd.

The trip home is the truly epic part of this story. Nine days, a train, 7 taxi-brousses, and a mail truck later we traveled the 900km. Being that there was no direct brousse to Fort Dauphin on the Friday we decided to head down the east coast. A train ride, on which I saved the life of a drunk man who came dangerously close to teetering head first onto the tracks, took us through some beautiful scenery to the coast town of Manakara where we got mobbed by crazy pousse pousse drivers and waited for a taxi brousse headed south. We managed to find one early the next morning that took us to the village of Vangaindrano where we spent time with some of Yvon's family who he had never met while we waited for yet another brousse. It was a tiny village, where apparently a vazaha had visited about 10 years ago, but a foreigner hasn't been seen since. Needless to say, I was the main attraction at the village soccer game that evening.

The next morning we found another taxi brousse headed south to the village of Manambondro where we were told that there were no taxi-brousses going any further south, but there are always 4x4s willing to take passengers. We spent the evening and the entire following day sitting by the road with our luggage waiting for a car to drive by. Not a single one. We tried hiring two guys to take us on their motorbikes 70km to a village where there might have been a taxi-brousse, but they were asking a ridiculous amount of money (vazaha price). The next day, we decided to head back to Vangaindrano and then to Farafangana. We couldn't wait any longer for a car that might never come in a village with no cell reception or any other communication with the outside world.

In the end, we decided that we would have to go all the way back to Fianarantsoa and south through the center of the country. In all, a detour of about 600km. The brousse that took us from Farafangana to Fianara arrived at 2:30am so we slept in the car in the station. The bus from Tana passed by but was jam packed full, but we were told that the post office had a truck going directly to Fort Dauphin that morning. The post worker said he would be happy to pick us up, but only from Ihosy (200km south) as he was afraid to take passengers in the company truck past the gendarme check stops. After a brousse ride to Ihosy, the driver again said he would be happy to give us a lift, but only after we took a taxi out of town past one more gendarme checkstop (note that the gendarme here aren't the scary variety that one often thinks of when in Africa... although perhaps still somewhat corrupt. Numerous times I saw brousse drivers slip gendarme bribes to be allowed to continue with their over capacity cars through checkstops). We traveled in the back of the truck with the mail, or more accurately, on the mail for the remainder of the afternoon.

The Chariot

We stopped in a small village just after dark. Apparently a taxi brousse had been attacked by bandits or zebu rustlers a few days previously, so no one was driving through the night. I'm half convinced this was only rumours... I never once felt at all unsafe. The next day we set out again and traveled until mid-afternoon when the post truck broke down in another middle-of-nowhere village. I think I shed a few tears at this point, due to a combination of being tired, a little bit ill, and having to wear the same pair of underwear for three days. Luckily for us, Yvon's grandparents live in the village so we had a place to visit. They were surprised and happy to see us, and I was given the gift of a live chicken. We were informed that the truck had been fixed and would be ready to head out again at 4am. After pushing it up and down the road for 1.5 hours in the wee hours of the morning, we managed to get it jump started and after a few more hours finally arrived back to Fort Dauphin.

Me and my chicken

If you feel in need of a grand adventure, I highly recommend Madagascar:)

See you in Canada in a couple weeks.

Going to Winnipeg...

The last month and a half was spent in the bush village of St. Luce, where I was helping out with the organization's conservation programme. We spent part of our time there camping on a narrow penisula bordered by a river on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other. Among other things, we searched for lemurs, amphibians, and reptiles, and saved an endangered species of palm. Previously, there had been only 50 Dypsis stlucii individuals left in the entire world, there are now an additional 523.

The boys and I also tried our luck fishing in the river (which has had numerous crocodile sightings). We used a significant sized chunk of chicken intestine as bait, convinced we were going to catch a big enough fish to feed everyone on camp. We didn't catch any fish, but had one bite that broke the line and almost pulled Martin into the river (okay, slight exaggeration). But you can't tell us we didn't almost catch a crocodile!

I'm back in Fort Dauphin at the moment, but will likely be heading out this week for one last epic adventure that is the taxi-brousse system of Madagascar. Three days and two nights driving up the east coast to the Capital city of Antananarivo. Stories to come.

In other news, I have decided to return to Canada a bit earlier than expected. I will be home on the 1st of August and shortly after will be moving to Winnipeg (yup, going to Winnipeg...) to start a Masters degree program at the University of Manitoba. I'm already beginning to dread the inevitable reverse culture shock of returning to the 'developed' world, especially when I'm leaving a place that I have such a deep love for. But it will be good to see friends and family again.

Holiday in Madagascar

Having mom here in Madagascar has reminded how completely strange this place is, and yet how completely normal it has become.



For example, a few days ago I heard one of the bungalow/restaurant staff members talking to mom. When I asked her what he had said... "Oh, he just needed to get past our bathroom so he could get some chicken." As she finished telling me this, we heard the unmistakeable sound of a squawking chicken before it meets death. Mom had expected him to go to a freezer and pull out some frozen chicken. When the sound registered we looked out to see the beginnings of our fresh chicken soup lying dead beneath our window, and proceeded to laugh to the point of tears.

We spent part of the morning wandering through the market looking through the 'frip'... piles of second, third, or possibly even fourth or fifth hand clothing that were likely Value Village and Salvation Army rejects. The skill of bargaining has become very useful here, and since mom has been here we have negotiated decent prices for a flannel bush shirt, a pair of flip flops, a variety of fruit, and a three foot long tuna.



Mom had flashbacks of her childhood when seeing the overwhelming popularity of the game of marbles among the kids here. However, the feelings of nostalgia only went so far; we've also seen a kid carrying a leashed chicken on his head with a younger sibling following behind holding the leash in her teeth, boys playing soccer around their herd of goats, and I've even seen kids climbing on the bloody head of a zebu. Some games just don't translate.



Mom has also been introduced to the endurance test that is a Malagasy road trip. I knew she she was becoming accustomed to it when on the road back from Andohahela National Park she groaned when seeing a sign saying Fort Dauphin was still 22km ahead of us. At home, we could cover 22km in a mere 10 minutes. Here, I'd say we'd be doing well if we covered 3km in 10 minutes. And a road trip wouldn't be complete without getting stuck in the mud, having to scout out a partially collapsed bridge, or having to walk multiple kilometres around sections of impassable roads.

It has been a great holiday for both of us, and time has slipped by very quickly. Mom's flight is "scheduled" to leave tomorrow morning, although 'schedule' is a loose term when talking about Air Mad. Soava dia!

Sometimes, Being Robbed Has Its Upsides

In my last post, I mentioned the unfortunate robbery at my little house. In a somewhat amusing turn of events, I have recovered my computer. I returned to the police station to pick up my declaration in order to submit my insurance claim, only to find my computer sitting behind the commissioner's desk. I was amazed, mahagaga even, as the competency of the authorities was previously questioned by all. Nice work team. The amusing part of this story goes like this. Pre-robbery, the computer was suffering from some old-age health issues. The backlighting worked only some of the time, so more often than not I had to sit with my back to a window in order to see what I was doing. It turns out the thieves reconfigured the computer, fixed the backlighting, and installed updated versions of everything. So among other things, I now have Office 2007 as opposed to 2003. It works better than it ever has before. Love it. Now I'm just waiting for my stolen tin bowls to be transformed into fine china.

Mom has been in town for over a week already. We've been staying in the Dadamanga Bungalow on the beach - a bizarre little oasis of luxury that includes daily hot showers. Okay, maybe I'm just extremely easy to please. We also went on a two day bush excursion and entered the wonderful world of tents, long drop toilets, and rice and beans. Even though it was the first time in a tent for mom in 25 years and likely the last for the next 25 years, we both thoroughly enjoyed the croc hunt in a pirogue, the forest walk, and the drive through the countryside. We are now sitting in our cozy little bungalow waiting for the rainy day to pass so we can get out to the lemur reserve.

Misy Vaovao

It seems like a lot has happened in the last few weeks.

The cruise ship day was a bit of a flop. It was extremely strange to see so many very obese, very demanding white people wandering the streets of Fort Dauphin. I had forgotten how large Western culture is. Sadly, it was a case of the rich get richer. Fort Dauphin isn't what you would call a typical cruise port. For one, there isn't really anything to see. A lot of them just went straight to the one upscale hotel, had drinks, and went straight back to the port. At least the taxi drivers had a good day.

My English teaching days have finished... a bit of a relief I have to admit. I spent the last couple weeks in the bush village of St. Luce. I was doing some monitoring work where fast growing tree species were planted to serve as a source of firewood for the village in the future. I love the bush! There is nothing better than a night sky in rural Madagascar or waking up to the sound of frogs and roosters.

A Peace Corps volunteer is living in St. Luce and is currently working on a bee project. Yes, bees. Now that I've learned how to build a bee house, capture bees, protect them from enemies, and harvest honey, I'm determined to start a couple hives when I get home. In fact, we were all so excited about the project that part of the lunch break was spent coming up with semi-clever bee-related puns to include on the 'to do' list.

In not so terrific news, I arrived home to Fort Dauphin to find that my house had been broken into and everything was turned inside out. They stole my computer, ipod, dishes, and foam mattress. Luckily I'm living in a country where there is no use for credit cards. Although they were obviously found, they weren't taken. I'm just thankful that I wasn't there when they broke in. I've spent the last couple days in and out of the police station filling out declarations and drawing maps of Canada in an attempt to explain why I don't speak French.

Because of the whole ordeal, I spent last night at a friend's place. She's one of the few people in town who has hot water, so I had my first hot shower in six months.

It's been one of those times that just makes me want to talk to mom. Lucky for me, it just so happens that her plane is landing in Fort Dauphin in 4 hours from now! Hooray!

Vazaha Invasion

Fort Dauphin is buzzing with the news that a South African cruise shipping is sailing into port at the end of the month. Almost 2000 wealthy, demanding vazahas will pour off the ship and invade our little city for the day. This will be very strange (hafahafa, you might say). Fort Dauphin is a city where if you see a foreigner you haven't seen before, you wonder what they are doing here and have the urge to join the Malagasy children in a choir of "Bonjour vazaha!"

Taxi drivers will be charging extortionate rates (at least compared with the standard 50 cent trip), and I'm sure we will see similarly inflated prices for food and everything else in town for those 5 short hours. The local Chamber of Commerce is offering tours and is struggling to find enough English speaking guides in town cater to that many people.

I am tempted to take a chair to the market and just sit and watch the mayhem. We are all wondering if this will turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing for the locals and the economy. Obviously, there are upsides and downsides, and the looming risk that FD may just not have have sufficient infrastructure or organization to take on this type of tourism.

Anyways, I will definitely get some photos of the madness, and will let you know how it turns out.

P.S. For those of you who know what I'm talking about... the Bolo factory has come out with a new line. We now, in addition to the classic vanilla and banana, have orange and cappaccino! Exciting, I know.

The Last Month and a Bit

I promised myself I would make a good effort to keep this updated. I have failed so far this year.

Azafady!

Sitting on a bag of charcoal. The look on the woman's face beside me says it all.


Last weekend, I went out to the bush to take part in a tree planting event. It was quite impressive to see the vast number of villagers from the surrounding areas who came out to join in the work. About 1000 people turned up, all dressed in their best, and most colorful outfits. Although the truck carrying the 4000 tree seedlings broke down not too far outside of Fort Dauphin, there were enough already on site to go through with the ceremony.

I ran into a bit of a moral dilemma while we were there. There were some VIPs from Tana and the multinational mining corporation in FD who came for the ceremony. When lunchtime rolled around, they brought out coolers full of sandwiches for their people. The folks from my organization were also provided with large sandwiches. I made my sandwich in a small hut and couldn't bring myself to leave the hut and eat in front of 1000 hungry villagers. Some of them could see inside. I felt guilty as I ate that sandwich. But what could I do? If you share it, who do you share it with? If you choose someone to share it with, you will likely start a fight. So we sat there eating our sandwiches. Feeling guilty.

In additional bush news, I talked for a few minutes with a man from Beandry (the village where I helped build a school a year ago) and found out that their school has never gotten a teacher and has been shut since we were there. I'm hoping to visit in the next month, so maybe I can find out what happened.

As for life in Fort Dauphin....

I'm still learning Malagasy, which I find is rewarding and frustrating at the same time. I can say quite a lot, but understanding is very difficult. But it always feels good to have someone say "Mahay miteny Malagasy" (You speak Malagasy well). One of my students from the high school has made it a habit to stop by once or twice a week to teach me a few words and phrases. Actually, often he writes up entire pages of vocab. Thanks, Skar!

I was excited to hear that lobster season had begun. I was then as equally as disappointed to find out that almost all of the lobster is exported to foreign markets, and you can't actually buy it here. Lucky for me, a friend of a gasy friend decided to turn his vehicle into a lobster car, which means that the freezer at his family's shop will often be well stocked with tasty lobster. Two days ago, I bought six lobster for 2000 Ariary. A dollar!!

Dinner

It has rained for the past three days straight, which might normally be a bit depressing, but this time has obvious upsides. I have water again! Before the rain, I was averaging about 1.5 hours per day of water flow to my house from about 5:30 to 7:00 am. It was a small window of opportunity to shower, use the toilet, do laundry, and fill up enough buckets and bottles to last me for a day of cooking, washing, etc. I've had water ALL day today.

I also bought an umbrella at the market today. It is my new favorite thing as now I can leave my house at any time instead of having to wait for a break in the rain to sprint wherever I'm going. I wonder why I didn't spend the $2 on one four months ago. Speaking of umbrellas, I had a humorous moment yesterday when one of my students showed up for class holding one of those huge umbrellas that come with an outdoor patio set. I'm pretty sure he doesn't have the rest of the set at home:) Right behind him, another student came in wearing the hood of a rain coat. Yes, just the hood. The rest of the coat was nowhere to be seen. It's little things like this that make me love Madagascar.

This post comes as a request...


While there is much more variety in food at the local market than I had originally expected, I have no cookbooks and am becoming bored of my various rice-bean-veggie inventions.

Here is a list of foods I have access to at the market. If anyone feels like passing on a recipe that includes said foods, I would be ever so grateful! They could be sent by email or facebook.

Please note that I have no oven or fridge. Only a two burner coleman stove.

Meat and meatish:

Various cuts of zebu (including ground meat)

Unfortunately, chicken is not an option (the only way to buy chicken here is alive) I don't like chicken enough to spend the time killing, feathering, and gutting it so I can can eat it for dinner.

Fish (fish steak, whole fish, shrimp) Oh, and lobster season has begun!

Beans of all varieties

Eggs

Peanuts

Fruits and veggies:

Tomatoes, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, sweet potato leaves, cucumber, leeks, carrots, eggplant, pumpkin, green beans, corn, cabbage.

Pineapple, mango, banana, passionfruit, papaya, coconut, oranges.

Others:



Noodles

Peanut butter, soya sauce, vinegar, milk powder


Spices: salt, pepper, curry, chili, others can be bought from the 'specialty' store

Thanks a million!

Adventures of Vazaha Ampela and Spiny Man in the Spiny Forest

Tratrany Taona! Happy New Year!

Over Christmas, I was fortunate to see a new part of Madagascar (the Spiny forests of the deep south) and had some crazy, to the point of almost unbelievable, adventures along the way.

The journey was made with my lovely Malagasy friend, Yvon. On the 18th, we arrived at the taxi-brousse station bright and early (okay, not even bright...it was 4am). Two hours later, when there were enough passengers to fill the seats, we hit the road. After a long and bumpy but scenic ride, we arrived in the relatively large village of Ambovombe where the taxi-brousse broke down and caused us to wait there for numerous hours. By the time it got dark, we lost hope that the brousse would be going anywhere that night so we ventured across town for a bowl of soup. Upon finishing the soup, locals told us that our ride was about to leave. After a quick sprint, we caught the brousse as it was pulling out and had a whole camion full of Malagasy people laughing at the white girl crawling up through the window. So after 17 hours and a mere 175 km, we finally made it to the town of Tsihombe where Yvon's family lives.

Baby Baobabs

We spent a day there and then caught a market bound camion at 3:30 am to the village of Faux-Cap. I wish I took a picture of this trip. The covered camion was mostly full of bags of rice, beans,

and many other goods to be sold. I can't acurately describe just how crowded, hot, and smelly the ride was. At one point, there were literally seven people touching me at the same time. What can you do but smile, and hope that your foot really is still attached to your leg despite the fact that you can't feel or see it.

Faux-Cap

We took a spin around the market to buy some fruit for the day and jelly shoes (yes, jelly shoes)for Yvon. We walked 4km to the beach where we spent the day in the ocean and then camped in the little village. Yvon spent some time reminiscing about his childhood as a mighty tortoise hunter and showed me tracks and informed me that the tortoise was walking in that direction....yesterday. We spent the next morning waiting for a car that was apparently supposed to arrive and be heading for our next destination of Cap St. Marie (the most southern point of Madagascar). Not shocking news, the car didn't show up. And this is about the point where the trip got very interesting....

We met with the vice mayor of the village, who graciously gave us food and helped us find a zebu cart driver to take us 15km to the next village as it was too late in the day to make it all the way to Cap St. Marie. He also wrote a note of recommendation to the mayor of the next village saying that the vazaha ampela (foreign woman) and lelahy (man) are friends and they should treat us as family and help us on our way. We pulled into the village of Amboatry and attracted a fair bit of attention. This is a part of the country where white people are very few and very far between and literally the entire village emerged from their huts and formed a wall around me. The president read the note of recommendation, and once again we were served bowls of rice and treated as family. Gradually the villagers drifted off and moved on to the next distraction.... a naked man running through the village. Apparently the villagers were convinced he was a ghost and formed a chanting mob trailing after him.

Lambosoa's zebu cart in the vice mayor's yard

After a very long, but typical Malagasy negiotiation, we agreed on a price for the next leg of our zebu cart journey. We were to leave at 3 am, and so were given a flea filled hut to stay in for a few hours sleep. Between the biting fleas and the drunken zebu cart driver Lambosoa (Good Pig) trying to break into the hut, I got approximately 0 hours of sleep. And I emerged with about 70 flea bites all over my body.

We travelled 40km by zebu cart and stopped in a village only about 15km from Cap St. Marie where the drivers refused to take us any further unless we payed fees which they had just hiked up by 500% On top of this, Yvon was suddenly ill. But once again, some amazingly gracious villagers gave us some rice and fish and a place to rest in a hut built with sisal stalks and zebu dung. Eventually we convinced the drivers to take us back to the larger village of Marovato where we thought we might be able to find a ride back to Tsihombe for Christmas.

From Marovato, we found two guys with motorbikes to take us the 45 km back to Tsihombe. We made it just in time for Christmas Eve where we caught the last 2 hours of the 4 hour long Christmas Eve service at a local church. We spent a relaxing three days with Yvon's family and even had fried turkey (heads included) for Christmas dinner.

We journeyed back to Ambovombe via 4x4, where I was crammed into the back with five sweaty bush men, two frightened turkeys, a pile of luggage, and a partridge in a pear tree. We were speeding down the terrible Malagasy roads with a guy who was using this as a way to learn how to drive. Yikes. We arrived in Ambovombe for market day, where we checked out the zebu market and had people trying to sell me goats. We found a taxi-brousse going back to Fort Dauphin which had about 150 chickens tied to the roof by the ankles. It was a bit unnerving having chickens staring at me through the window and one wrapped around each ankle for the entire journey.

There was an unfortunate zebu cart/camera accident that has resulted in only half of this adventure being photo documented. I have been waiting for about an hour for 5 of them to finish uploading. Enjoy!:)