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!:)

My New House

I hear with windchill, it has dropped close to -40C at home. It's hard to imagine that it is almost Christmas when I am dripping in sweat sitting next to the Indian Ocean eating lychees and mangoes. The only hint of Christmas I've seen was hanging on the wall of of a little Malagasy Indian restaurant that I went to for lunch. I have to say that a fat white rosy-cheeked Santa looks rather out of place in this setting. But hey, it may be also be a bit bizarre that I was eating Chinese soup in an Indian restaurant in Madagascar with an American and a Brit.

On the weekend, I moved into a new and wonderful one room house. The Malagasy family who I am renting from have been amazing and have given me dishes and furniture to use, and even put a brand new (and bedbug free, I might add) bed in the place. I have my own verandah and a coconut tree to provide shade. In many ways it is idyllic, although there are distinct reminders that I am living in a third world country. The electricity rather unreliable, and recently, city wide power outages seem pretty standard around 7pm for varying amounts of time. After about 7am, there is a high demand for water and there isn't enough water pressure to reach the higher parts of the city. So I have buckets of water scattered around the house for showering, cooking, and washing dishes when the water refuses to flow. There is no waste management system in Fort Dauphin. Garbage is generally dumped along streets or off cliffs next to the ocean. I have a hole dug in my yard for this purpose. It really makes a person realize just how much we take for granted (as well as how much waste we produce) in the Western world.

Last night I was forced to laugh at myself when I got into a fight with a very large and very hairy spider sitting on the wall next to my bed. I am happy to announce that I won the battle at the cost of only a broom handle that I had as my weapon of choice. I'll take monster spiders and cockroaches over bedbugs any day!

English teaching is finished for the Christmas break. Yesterday I taught my class the 12 Days of Christmas. Highly entertaining. Who knew that partridge was such a difficult word to pronounce. After class, three of my students walked around the market with me to help find a find string and nails to hang my mosquito net. They also graciously offered to help hang it, which ended up in an equally as hilarious Malagasy debate that I wish I understood more of. But as you can see from the photo above, it seems to have worked out quite well.

I wish everyone a very merry Christmas!

God Bless

Sorry for the delay!

Life is carrying along here in Madagascar. I'm trying to get my head around the fact that it is almost Christmas. I haven't heard one Christmas carol or seen one Christmas decoration yet. And it is approximately one million degrees today.

I spent the weekend in the bush village of St. Luce with the Azafady Pioneers. One of the other English teachers and I braved the taxi-brousse system and managed to make the 50km trip in slightly less than 10 hours. We showed up at the "station" at 9:15 and managed to find the driver (who was under the bus with a wrench) and in Malagasy decifer that he was going to Mahatalaky and planned to leave at 9:30. Great. In the next 3 hours, he left and came back twice. Another very full camion departed, which we were tempted to join until so many people got on that we would have been hanging onto the back for dear life. At about 12:30, our taxi-brousse rolled out of town with Laurie and I jammed into the front seat with our knees up next to our ears and two military men with rifles as seat buddies.

We made it to the village of Mahatalaky after only breaking down three times. We expected the taxi-brousse to carry on past the village of Angazety, but were informed that they were actually going in a different direction from there. Okay fine, we collected our things and started the two hour trek to St. Luce. About an hour in, the full camion that we passed up in the morning drove towards us on the road from St. Luce. Hilarious. There is nothing like travelling in Madagascar if you feel in need of an adventure!

The weekend was fantastic. We spent the afternoon on the beach, and the evening on a night walk through the forest. I managed to see the tiny mouse lemur and a couple of the pygmy chameleons (the smallest in the world). The stars were unbelievable, and I got to fall asleep to the sound of frogs and cicadas.

For those of you who were with me in St. Luce last year, you can be assured that the camp is much improved. There is a new well that produces water that is the color of herbal tea rather than black tea, and has an equally improved smell. There is also a new maggot-free latrine and showers that aren't transparent to the person showering next to you. Oh, the small luxuries!

Back to work today. I co-taught two classes at the local high school. Although my stunning rendition of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes from last week was a tough act to follow. Haha.

Enjoy the snow at home for me! And thank you for all of the post that has been sent. I love it! I would be forever grateful if someone were to send Reese's peanut butter cups for Christmas!!

Lots of Love!

I've been in Fort Dauphin for two weeks already. It feels great to be back! Although it has been rainier than normal, we have also had our fair share of sun and have spent some time on the beautiful beaches of FD. I am definitely from Alberta...just had to start off with a weather report.

Things are on the verge of settling into some sort of routine. I spent the first week living in the Azafady 'crash pad', which is just that. I shared a room of bunkbeds with other volunteers and an astounding diversity of bedbugs, cockroaches, and mice. I have now moved into a great little house that I am renting from a Malagasy family. Pictures to be posted soon.

The long term volunteers are very much living within the culture and amongst the people. We do our shopping at the local market (also worthy of future photos). I managed to make my limited Malagasy understood and came home with a knife, sugar, salt, oil, and a variety of veggies. I feel a lot of motivation to learn the Malagasy language, so I can do better than just 'get by'. Thankfully, I am surrounded by wonderful Malagasy people who are always willing to teach a tidbit or two!

The English teaching program is about to get up and running. The local high school has one English teacher for 1000 students, so we will be helping the poor guy out until Christmas. About 110 unemployed adults have showed interest in taking English classes with us, in hopes of using that skill to find work. We are starting refresher classes with them next week, and will start modules in January. A year ago, when I was here as a pioneer in the bush village of Beandry, there were two boys who walked an hour almost everyday to practice their English with us. A few days ago, they walked for eight hours to Fort Dauphin so they could be placed in one of our English classes!

I hope all is well at home.

Aminy manaraka koa

London and Tana

I spent a fantastic week in London for a mini-reunion with a few friends from my Madagascar Pioneer scheme. We spent an evening reminiscing about the good times we had together a year ago. Wow, I still can't believe a year has already gone by since I last made this trip! And how strange to see everyone clean and in their 'natural' environments.

Of course, I had ample time to play the part of tourist as well as getting to experience life as a Brit. Tea in the garden, riding a double-decker bus, and eating fish and chips from a proper 'chippy'. I have to say that I am grateful for the person who decided it would be a good idea to paint "Look right", "Look left" at appropriate intervals on intersections for the foreign pedestrian. After a day of wandering the streets of central London on my own, I was mighty impressed that I only got honked at and almost became roadkill twice.

I flew from London to Johannesburg, and then on to Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, where I have been staying for a few days. Tana is a much larger, busier, and more polluted city than Fort Dauphin. My lungs have not been happy since I've arrived. While Tana is a much different experience than the part of the island that I know and love, I'm beginning to feel like I'm back at home.

The first night I arrived in Tana, I met up with one of the other Azafady volunteers and we went across the street to a little restaurant for dinner. The waiter gave us menus and took our drink orders. When we later ordered pizzas from the menu, the waiter shook his head and informed us that they didn't have pizza. Okay, so we chose something else. The waiter shook his head again and informed us that the restaurant actually had no food at all. Oh, Madagascar.

We have spent the weekend seeing the sights of Tana, including the old palace that was built for the last queen over a century ago. Today we went to the zoo, which strangely is also the place where we needed to go in order to get our working visas extended. Tomorrow we fly to Fort Dauphin. I have heard rumours that we may get to spend a couple of weeks out in the bush with the Pioneers. Hooray!! I can't wait to have some work to do, as I tire quickly of being a tourist.

Until next time!