So last time I left you off with high hopes of lemurs and I am ready to deliver. But first I need to talk about the rest of the weekend that happened before we went camping. I spend a good deal of time at this internet café, and therefore spend a good deal of money at this internet café. On Saturday I woke up at a ridiculous hour to come here and bought hot chocolate, pineapple juice, and a chocolate croissant, totaling $9 USD. I think I need to slow it down a little. That day after shopping the markets with some SIT girls, I went to my homestay and made them French toast! It was really difficult for several reasons: the only bread here is baguettes but it was fairly easy to just cut them in halves and then in pieces; I had to use condensed milk but it was good because that way they didn’t need sugar; they only use vegetable oil and initially the boy who helped make the fire put in a ton of oil and practically smothered the French toast pieces in it; the stove is difficult to control the temperature on since it is just hot coals under the pan so several pieces were on the verge of burnt; we couldn’t get our hands on any syrup or honey in time so we just sprinkled a little sugar on top and ate them like little pastries. It actually turned out very well considering all the difficulties. That day I also chewed on a real sugar cane. It was so strange but awesome. Imagine a really sweet, juicy piece of celery that you can’t bite because it’s too fibrous. You just chew on it and suck the sugar juice out of it. It was a lot of fun.
That night, Kate (one of the SIT girls) was having a little party at her homestay house, courtesy of her homestay brother who wanted to meet us and practice his English. She is the one who lives on the beach right next to school! Since we were leaving to go camping the next day, I packed up all of my crap and went to Ally’s where I was spending the night. It was so strange for us to go out after dark since neither of us had done that yet. There are literally no lights. Ally’s homestay father walked us a few streets down where we got a cab to Kate’s party. The party was so island. It was up on a hill next to the beach so you could feel and hear the water but not actually see it past the little bonfire they had built. They were playing island music, both live and through itunes and speakers, and there were hot salted peanuts and crunchy snacks. The best part was her family made some homemade or homespiced rums! There was vanilla rum with actual vanilla sticks in the bottle and all naturally flavored ginger rum, which was my favorite, that was very spicy and delicious with the Coke that was also there. We got tired very quickly since it was a long day so we walked as a large group into town, escorted by Kate’s older homestay brothers. Ally’s house was pretty close to where we ended up so we decided to walk the rest of the way, just the two of us, and it was pretty scary. Everything was fine of course but we still got pretty nervous walking in the darkness by ourselves for just five minutes.
So camping in Ifotaka was wonderful. It took us several hours but we rode in our guide’s comfy 4x4s in groups of 5. We were told if we need to stop to use the bathroom, we say: "olombelo fa tsy akoho” which means “I am a person, not a chicken”. We were in our French groups (teams of 6) and had rotations of four different lemur related activities/experiments across the two full days of our visit. We had a discussion with the villagers on their views of the community conserved national park, did a population transect of the sifaka lemurs, observed the behavior of the sifaka lemurs by following them through the forest for two hours, and looked at their habitat by measuring and evaluating the trees they used. The sifaka are a wonderful species. They just hang out on the trees like bros and look at you all curiously. I actually found myself pretty badly tangled in several types of prickery plants trying to get pictures of these guys. The spiny forest is not one to stroll through casually. I look like the lemurs attacked me with claws but it was just the trees.
One of the nights entailed a night watch for nocturnal lemurs. We saw several adorable little mouse lemurs in the trees! When we shone our flashlights on the trees we could see their tiny little eyes reflecting colors back at us all over the place. We also ran into several chameleons and crazy huge insects that night. The stars at Ifotaka were just amazing. I had a small freak out when the epiphany hit me that there are that many stars out there. You could see billions and billions of them. You could see the colors of the planets and the cloudy Milky Way arm going across the sky and even a couple shooting stars if you paid close enough attention. It was breathtaking.
Our last day, we were planning a “fête” with the local villagers for tolerating our camping there for the week. This involved us eating a feast and later participating in their dances with them. For the feast, we were given a goat and a sheep. These animals hung around tied up to the fence for the first part of the day so we would pass them and get attached which was a big mistake. After lunch it was time to get them ready for dinner… we didn’t realize that this was happening right there in front of us. I see Ally’s face go into shock and she starts swearing and all of a sudden I hear the little cries of the animals as the men are pinning them down. I never thought I would have this reaction to something like that but I felt a pang in my throat and Ally and I both had to run out of there and walk to the river. Some people stayed and watched the sacrifice (even vegetarians!) but there’s no way I could even stomach the sounds. Knowing that this is a daily part of life and that the way we do it in the US is even worse, I did not expect the effect that moment had on me. That night we ate the meat and I felt a great deal of respect for the animals that were killed for the sole purpose of becoming our sustenance.
The party was really late after dinner and we were all exhausted but it was culturally expected that we dance with the villagers. I had been really excited about it all day to learn and sing and dance the traditional tribal village songs. But when it happened, it was just too much to handle. As I mentioned, it was very late and I was very exhausted from a day of chasing lemurs through pricker bushes, and it was pitch black besides the extremely bright white flashlight and strobelight headlamp the teachers were shining around in crazy directions. The village men were making a scary grunting noise in rhythm with the stomping we were all putting our energy into. The girls were singing repetitive high pitched tones. It smelled like village people who have never bathed in their lives and the latrine we were standing next to and we were breathing in all the dirt we were kicking up in the stomping. Needless to say, I was over stimulated. All of the flashing light, noises, smells, and exercises just got to me and gave me a headache which in turn made me nauseous. I was very disappointed in myself when I left early to crawl in my tent and go to sleep. But I will be able to make up for it next week during the Village stay when we stay in a rural village for a whole week and apparently dance like that every single night. At least I can prepare myself now!
On our way back to Fort Dauphin on Wednesday, we stopped at the famous Berenty. This was the lemur forest where the majority of our assigned book Lords and Lemurs takes place. It was very bizarre to actually be in the place we had read about in the novel. Berenty is very touristy with little swanky bungalows for people to stay in, a nice restaurant, a museum, etc. next to the forest. First we went into the Musée d’Androy which had four rooms of exhibits with captions in both French and English all about the local Androy culture and history. I read and observed much about the cloths they used to make and how they are doing less of it and buying commercial clothing from the markets and it actually made me really sad. Most of what we saw in the museum we had already seen with our own eyes in the village at Ifotaka, but certain traditions mentioned in parts of the museum are obviously beginning to fade from the actual culture today. It’s sad to think about how many cultural traditions and hard but beautiful work that go into handcrafts of so many past cultures have been lost over time and we don’t think about it until we see it happening now.
Berenty’s lemurs are crazy!! When we started our trail tour, we were told that it was the lemur’s napping time for pretty much the rest of the day so we were pretty disappointed that what could have been potentially the best lemur experience would be disappointing because of our tardiness to the park. Throughout the trail we saw plenty of lemur tribes just hanging out in the trees though. They weren’t very lively but they were there and they were not afraid of us like the sifaka in Ifotaka. We also so HUGE awesome bats in the trees in one area. Their wingspans were incredible.
After we had the best lunch ever at the Berenty outdoor restaurant, (a buffet of just delicious different dishes and actual cold real orange juice!) a bunch of ringtails came hopping up around the restaurant tables. We got really close to them and they were just investigating and hoping we would give them bananas. Then one of them actually jumps up onto one of our tables and steals a piece of bread!! It was absolutely insane. These lemurs just jumped around the restaurant following us for the next twenty minutes. I was hoping one of them would hop on my shoulder but no such luck. It was still quite an experience.
This Thursday we had a field trip to a traditional doctor an hour away who explained to us through a translator how his business works and how he uses various medicinal plants and spiritual beliefs to cure ailments of the villagers. One girl asked what he does when a child shows signs of a mental malady or is developing slowly (aka autism, Down syndrome, some other disability) and he explained something about creating a solution from a certain plant in which the child is bathed. That sounds like it works… As we were leaving, there was a young man with very visible down syndrome running around with the children of the village and I wish I could have received more information on whether he was or had been “treated” by that doctor and how. I had a discussion with my host aunt recently about my brother and his autism. I explained that basically he looks his age but acts much younger and may make strange noises or sway, etc. She was very understanding but she said that in Madagascar, obviously, they are not aware of things like that and they would probably just think the kid was crazy. I have seen a few young men with obvious mental disabilities on the streets and it’s obvious that they are fed and clothed but it would be interesting to know more about how they are taken care of beyond that in a country where they don’t understand the disabilities. If I were doing the cultural program in Tana, I would do my ISP on that.
We have just three days before our week in the villages. It will essentially be a week of camping and participating in very traditional activities through a major language barrier. The people will not speak French, only Malgache, so two SIT students will be paired with one local ecology student who will act as a translator, but we will still only be able to speak French through them. We will be hot and dirty and stressed and participate in physical labor and dancing and all at the same time attempt to conduct some studies to help with our environmental issues paper for our biodiversity seminar. It’s going to be interesting.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Quatrième Semaine
This week I joined my host family at church. It was certainly a cultural experience. The church is called Apokalypsy because they believe the end of the world is coming soon and that all the pure people will be saved. They are Christian and follow the Bible, but not the same way. The women, including myself, wore white headdresses to cover our hair. Males and females sat on separate sides of the church on mats on the floor. We took our shoes off before going inside. It was very long and I did not understand a word, as it was spoken in Malgache. There was singing and dancing, which was often fun but awkward because I had no idea what I was doing. I can definitely say I was out of my comfort zone. But I’m glad I went just once to see what it was like. I appreciate my host family’s lifestyle a little more because of it.
We had made fresh lemonade the previous night! I beat up the lemons with the handle of a knife until they were squishy and cut them in two pieces to squeeze all the juice out with my hands. My aunt Nadia was impressed that I knew how to do it and she laughed and called me lazy when I told her I’d never done it before because we just buy the juice from the store. It was very watered down but it was nice to have something besides soda or hot water. After church we took the leftovers and “made more” by adding more water and tons of sugar to it. It was kind of hilarious… I just drank sugar water that smelled a little like lemon. That’s the “façon de Malgache”. On Sunday we went for lunch in “the bush” where my host mom’s fiancé lives. It was a fun little family outing and I ate a lot of good food. I cracked a coconut on a tree with my bare hands and ate the whole thing using a piece of shell as a spoon. We had to spend 5000 ariary each for the taxi though (which is only like $2.50 but here that’s normally worth 5 taxi trips around town). I explained to my aunt how we have to borrow money from the banks to pay for school and how some people can borrow more than others based on how well they pay things back, etc. (In laymen’s terms…) and she said that makes a lot more sense. She thought all of us vazaha kids just had lots of money to pay for this trip and everything and were just being frugal.
That weekend I ate zebu kidneys, zebu feet soup, cassava and a real whole tropical coconut… so much better than anything you can find in the states. I also learned how to say “I love you” in Malagasy: “tiako hanao” just in time for Valentine’s day! That day we left for our first camping trip to Andohahela National Park. We crammed 47 of us and the local ecology students onto one bus and had the longest bumpiest sweatiest ride ever to the campsite. It took us about 4.5 hours… But it was a lot of fun because the Malagasy students were singing and shouting and getting us all pumped up. We were singing Celine Dion together!
There were so many bugs there. A huge praying mantis was sitting cleaning his face right by where we were sitting… spider crickets were jumping all over the place, as well as actual jumpy spiders. But there was the most beautiful sunset over the shallow rock laden river. It definitely didn’t feel like a school day. At the site, we had a plant surveying assignment where we broke off into teams of 8 and looked at a 10x10m plot of forest. We had to identify and count and observe the different plants in our plot and write a report about our findings for Friday. In the process, Sidonie walked into this tree (that we had not been previously warned about) that gave her a horrible painful burning rash on her shoulder and neck. Of course that was in our plot… immediately afterwards she was viciously bitten by a gigantic ant on her arm. It was a little scary to do that assignment after that.
Before and after lunch we had a lot of free time. I took my ipod and my camera and first took a snooze in a tree where I encountered an orange chameleon! And then I went through the river and found a dry rock to lay on with my music and just look around at the scenery. A butterfly was flying around me and I made friends with it. Listening to the music and staring out at the river and the plants and mountains and butterflies and sky… it was pretty much like a movie. I realized that his was also technically my school day and that I really have nothing to complain about here. It’s so relaxing and beautiful. I just have to get over my homesickness.
We had a “promenade touriste” and learned more about the local plants on our way to the piscine naturel. The swimming spot was awesome with a waterfall and giant boulders to sit on. One spot the boulders formed a semicircle around the side of the waterfall and made a tiny little pool. The water was so deep though and it was really a test to my swimming abilities. When it was time to leave, I didn’t have the strength to swim back across. My stuff was all on the other side (purse with camera, ipod, everything and my shoes and clothes) and half of us were walking back up the other side so we wouldn’t have to cross over. I had no way to let someone know about my stuff on the other side so I just strutted a mile through the woods in my bikini, barefoot, holding a piece of hedgehog skin I had found by the swimming spot. I was almost a true wild woman. Luckily when we got back to camp, the folks on the other side had seen my stuff and taken it back. Perfect!
That night the CEL students were playing music and dancing with a bunch of us late into the night. I was passing out so I went to bed early with Sidonie in our tent away from the rest of them. When I got up to pee around 11:00, they were still partying! I also thought I saw a fossa just strolling along a few feet in front of me when I left my tent! I thought it might just be a dog but it was the right color caramel brown and walking quickly and low to the ground. I couldn’t get a good look at the tail before it veered off into the forest. I don’t think it could have been a fossa though because one of our professors said the chances of seeing a fossa in the wild are pretty much nonexistent. But I also saw a snail crossing the path to the latrine and it was literally bigger than my fist! It was the biggest snail I have ever seen but I was still worried it might get kicked or stepped on so I picked it up and put it safely on the other side, assuming that was its destination.
This weekend is all about relaxing with the internet and possibly going shopping around town before we leave for our next camping trip on Sunday. This time we’ll be going to Ifotaka for a lemur study so be prepared for some lemur news pretty soon (I hope!)
We had made fresh lemonade the previous night! I beat up the lemons with the handle of a knife until they were squishy and cut them in two pieces to squeeze all the juice out with my hands. My aunt Nadia was impressed that I knew how to do it and she laughed and called me lazy when I told her I’d never done it before because we just buy the juice from the store. It was very watered down but it was nice to have something besides soda or hot water. After church we took the leftovers and “made more” by adding more water and tons of sugar to it. It was kind of hilarious… I just drank sugar water that smelled a little like lemon. That’s the “façon de Malgache”. On Sunday we went for lunch in “the bush” where my host mom’s fiancé lives. It was a fun little family outing and I ate a lot of good food. I cracked a coconut on a tree with my bare hands and ate the whole thing using a piece of shell as a spoon. We had to spend 5000 ariary each for the taxi though (which is only like $2.50 but here that’s normally worth 5 taxi trips around town). I explained to my aunt how we have to borrow money from the banks to pay for school and how some people can borrow more than others based on how well they pay things back, etc. (In laymen’s terms…) and she said that makes a lot more sense. She thought all of us vazaha kids just had lots of money to pay for this trip and everything and were just being frugal.
That weekend I ate zebu kidneys, zebu feet soup, cassava and a real whole tropical coconut… so much better than anything you can find in the states. I also learned how to say “I love you” in Malagasy: “tiako hanao” just in time for Valentine’s day! That day we left for our first camping trip to Andohahela National Park. We crammed 47 of us and the local ecology students onto one bus and had the longest bumpiest sweatiest ride ever to the campsite. It took us about 4.5 hours… But it was a lot of fun because the Malagasy students were singing and shouting and getting us all pumped up. We were singing Celine Dion together!
There were so many bugs there. A huge praying mantis was sitting cleaning his face right by where we were sitting… spider crickets were jumping all over the place, as well as actual jumpy spiders. But there was the most beautiful sunset over the shallow rock laden river. It definitely didn’t feel like a school day. At the site, we had a plant surveying assignment where we broke off into teams of 8 and looked at a 10x10m plot of forest. We had to identify and count and observe the different plants in our plot and write a report about our findings for Friday. In the process, Sidonie walked into this tree (that we had not been previously warned about) that gave her a horrible painful burning rash on her shoulder and neck. Of course that was in our plot… immediately afterwards she was viciously bitten by a gigantic ant on her arm. It was a little scary to do that assignment after that.
Before and after lunch we had a lot of free time. I took my ipod and my camera and first took a snooze in a tree where I encountered an orange chameleon! And then I went through the river and found a dry rock to lay on with my music and just look around at the scenery. A butterfly was flying around me and I made friends with it. Listening to the music and staring out at the river and the plants and mountains and butterflies and sky… it was pretty much like a movie. I realized that his was also technically my school day and that I really have nothing to complain about here. It’s so relaxing and beautiful. I just have to get over my homesickness.
We had a “promenade touriste” and learned more about the local plants on our way to the piscine naturel. The swimming spot was awesome with a waterfall and giant boulders to sit on. One spot the boulders formed a semicircle around the side of the waterfall and made a tiny little pool. The water was so deep though and it was really a test to my swimming abilities. When it was time to leave, I didn’t have the strength to swim back across. My stuff was all on the other side (purse with camera, ipod, everything and my shoes and clothes) and half of us were walking back up the other side so we wouldn’t have to cross over. I had no way to let someone know about my stuff on the other side so I just strutted a mile through the woods in my bikini, barefoot, holding a piece of hedgehog skin I had found by the swimming spot. I was almost a true wild woman. Luckily when we got back to camp, the folks on the other side had seen my stuff and taken it back. Perfect!
That night the CEL students were playing music and dancing with a bunch of us late into the night. I was passing out so I went to bed early with Sidonie in our tent away from the rest of them. When I got up to pee around 11:00, they were still partying! I also thought I saw a fossa just strolling along a few feet in front of me when I left my tent! I thought it might just be a dog but it was the right color caramel brown and walking quickly and low to the ground. I couldn’t get a good look at the tail before it veered off into the forest. I don’t think it could have been a fossa though because one of our professors said the chances of seeing a fossa in the wild are pretty much nonexistent. But I also saw a snail crossing the path to the latrine and it was literally bigger than my fist! It was the biggest snail I have ever seen but I was still worried it might get kicked or stepped on so I picked it up and put it safely on the other side, assuming that was its destination.
This weekend is all about relaxing with the internet and possibly going shopping around town before we leave for our next camping trip on Sunday. This time we’ll be going to Ifotaka for a lemur study so be prepared for some lemur news pretty soon (I hope!)
Friday, February 10, 2012
Troisième Semaine
We spent a lot of time recently learning about the Rio Tinto mining site in Fort Dauphin. They are digging for ilminite in the sand to create titanium dioxide for various paints and cosmetic whitening purposes. The project is run through Qit Madagascar Minerals (QMM) and involves about 40 years and three large areas of littoral forest destruction. They plan to restore the forests when they are through digging through the sand by replacing the trees and some of the animal species. It’s a pretty big deal. And it’s very complicated. I’m about 91% positive I’m going to do my Independent Study Project on some aspect of it.
We got to visit a few of the sites related to the project which is quite a privilege since many people living in the area don’t even get to see what’s going on in their backyard. On the way home from one, we walked through the main market in town and bought cheap notebooks for our field journals. (And by cheap, I mean 500 ariary which is like 25 cents. Everything here is cheap by our standards. Very little costs more than one US dollar) And many of us have been trying to find lambas. A lamba is basically just a large piece of pretty cloth that Malagasy women use as skirts, dresses, towels, baby holders, hair wraps, blankets, wall hangings, ANYTHING. You see women with them everywhere yet somehow they are difficult to find in the market. Most of the clothes you see at the market are imported second hand clothes from the US or Europe. I bought a piece of cloth that I planned to use as a lamba but it’s much too small to serve the right purposes. I still have a while to get some legitimate ones though.
My appetite is raging here. Maybe it’s all the bread and rice we eat that won’t stick to my ribs but I am always hungry now. I can’t stop buying cookies at the market. They’re just so cheap and convenient and delicious it’s hard not to. Good thing I walk everywhere and hike mountains and all that nonsense. I’m also eating literally almost the same exact things every day: baguette with butter and hot chocolate for breakfast. Then some baguette with jam that Clare always brings to class. Then we have a snack (at least one banana and maybe some peanuts) between classes. Lunch is usually pretty big and always involvs either baguette sandwiches or rice with some meat and veggies. Then I might get some coco cookies on my way home. Then dinner is always rice with something. Nine times out of ten it’s the little fish that’s served whole and you dissect the meat out of yourself. I actually really like it but I’m surprised how often we eat it. I forget what it’s called…
Not having communication with home more than once or twice a week is really frustrating. I woke up early to go to the internet café, Kaleta, before school one day just to find the internet had been cut that morning. In a fit of rage, I sat in there for a long time just to pass time and one of the other SIT students came in to use the bathroom. He told me that, during the previous night, his homestay’s latrine had set on fire!! So he currently has no bathroom at his house. That made me feel a little better about not having internet. At least I have a toilet… even if it doesn’t flush.
I experienced the first real rainstorm in my homestay house this week. My bed is in a small room with a low tin roof and pane-less windows. The rain was so hard and loud it woke me up every five minutes. I actually thought the world might end. Or worse, we might have a cyclone! It was the most terrified I have been my whole time here and I was supposed to be safe in my bed. Luckily when I woke up after an hour of sleep, it was a beautiful day and we went to the beach after classes.
People here seem to have no sense of intrusion. Or they just think that vazahas have no real feelings. Laying on the beach, five little boys came up and surrounded me, blocking my sun. I said “Salama, Ino vao vao, etc.” (Hello, what’s up) and then they didn’t leave so I tried French: “Parlez-vous Franςais? Toi, tu aime la plage?... Au revoir” but they didn’t seem to understand that. They started touching me like they wanted to feel what white skin felt like. Trying to give them the cold shoulder and ignore them, they started putting their hands under the cloth I was laying on and I had to start swatting them away. I tried saying goodbye in every language: Bye! Au revoir! Veloma! But they just kept mimicking everything I said. I’ve never been so annoyed by children before. Finally Larissa said “Ciao” and they left… I forgot we went to the Italian beach in Madagascar?
Then almost immediately after that, two older guys (probably our ages) came over and started talking to us. I guess they had seen us there before. We were making small talk which is fine. I tried to stay out of it and let the other girls talk since I had enough with the kids. We stopped talking to them but they sat there quietly while we talked to each other. When we left the beach, we said “veloma” but they decided they were coming with us. One branched off with Sidonie when she parted ways and the other followed Larissa, Emily and I all around town for about half an hour! He even stood around while we stopped at snack stands and we literally ignored him the entire time. Emily even tried explaining nicely : “pour nous, les américains, c’est très bizarre pour quel qu’un suivre des filles qu’il ne connaît pas.” (for americans, it’s very strange for someone to follow girls he doesn’t know.) But he ignored that and stuck around until she finally said « nous voulons si vous ne nous suivez pas maintenant.” (We would like if you did not follow us now) He pretended he didn’t understand while earlier it was clear that he spoke French. He also spoke a little English… “You go that way. We go this way.” finally worked. It seems that there is really no humility in this culture. If you do not talk to someone who is walking with you, it’s not obvious you want them to go away. The best part is that this is a pretty small city so we WILL see them again.
Then we had the best day! We went to visit the fishermen village which was located an hour and half of dirt roads away. We packed into five SUVs and off-roaded it through the craziest roads and paths. It made me miss driving my jeep at home. The life of a fisherman is incredibly hard. They keep traditional methods of difficult fishing and go out on the water from 3am to noon seven days a week without breakfast. After interviewing them, we got back in the jeeps and drove to a huge isolated beach. At one point we were actually driving ON the beach, right along the shore. It felt like I was in that level of Halo… you know what I’m talking about. We had a big lunch and two hours of swimming and sunbathing without anyone bothering us. The water was gorgeous and the waves were coming from all different directions. I am now almost the same color as my host mother. We had Malagasy class on the beach and right as it started I noticed a strangely placed blister on one of my toes… it was a parasy!! I was officially the first one to get a parasy on this trip. Apparently it’s inevitable. A parasy is a tiny parasitic bug that lives in sand and gets under the skin in your feet and lays its eggs. So they took a sterilized needle and dug out this strange white blob of bug eggs from my toe. It was pretty awesome!! I didn’t feel a thing and everyone was impressed. I’m officially in Madagascar.
Oh and also, that day ended with chocolate mousse cake at Kaleta (the fancy internet café we go to) for Maddie’s birthday. Best day ever.
We got to visit a few of the sites related to the project which is quite a privilege since many people living in the area don’t even get to see what’s going on in their backyard. On the way home from one, we walked through the main market in town and bought cheap notebooks for our field journals. (And by cheap, I mean 500 ariary which is like 25 cents. Everything here is cheap by our standards. Very little costs more than one US dollar) And many of us have been trying to find lambas. A lamba is basically just a large piece of pretty cloth that Malagasy women use as skirts, dresses, towels, baby holders, hair wraps, blankets, wall hangings, ANYTHING. You see women with them everywhere yet somehow they are difficult to find in the market. Most of the clothes you see at the market are imported second hand clothes from the US or Europe. I bought a piece of cloth that I planned to use as a lamba but it’s much too small to serve the right purposes. I still have a while to get some legitimate ones though.
My appetite is raging here. Maybe it’s all the bread and rice we eat that won’t stick to my ribs but I am always hungry now. I can’t stop buying cookies at the market. They’re just so cheap and convenient and delicious it’s hard not to. Good thing I walk everywhere and hike mountains and all that nonsense. I’m also eating literally almost the same exact things every day: baguette with butter and hot chocolate for breakfast. Then some baguette with jam that Clare always brings to class. Then we have a snack (at least one banana and maybe some peanuts) between classes. Lunch is usually pretty big and always involvs either baguette sandwiches or rice with some meat and veggies. Then I might get some coco cookies on my way home. Then dinner is always rice with something. Nine times out of ten it’s the little fish that’s served whole and you dissect the meat out of yourself. I actually really like it but I’m surprised how often we eat it. I forget what it’s called…
Not having communication with home more than once or twice a week is really frustrating. I woke up early to go to the internet café, Kaleta, before school one day just to find the internet had been cut that morning. In a fit of rage, I sat in there for a long time just to pass time and one of the other SIT students came in to use the bathroom. He told me that, during the previous night, his homestay’s latrine had set on fire!! So he currently has no bathroom at his house. That made me feel a little better about not having internet. At least I have a toilet… even if it doesn’t flush.
I experienced the first real rainstorm in my homestay house this week. My bed is in a small room with a low tin roof and pane-less windows. The rain was so hard and loud it woke me up every five minutes. I actually thought the world might end. Or worse, we might have a cyclone! It was the most terrified I have been my whole time here and I was supposed to be safe in my bed. Luckily when I woke up after an hour of sleep, it was a beautiful day and we went to the beach after classes.
People here seem to have no sense of intrusion. Or they just think that vazahas have no real feelings. Laying on the beach, five little boys came up and surrounded me, blocking my sun. I said “Salama, Ino vao vao, etc.” (Hello, what’s up) and then they didn’t leave so I tried French: “Parlez-vous Franςais? Toi, tu aime la plage?... Au revoir” but they didn’t seem to understand that. They started touching me like they wanted to feel what white skin felt like. Trying to give them the cold shoulder and ignore them, they started putting their hands under the cloth I was laying on and I had to start swatting them away. I tried saying goodbye in every language: Bye! Au revoir! Veloma! But they just kept mimicking everything I said. I’ve never been so annoyed by children before. Finally Larissa said “Ciao” and they left… I forgot we went to the Italian beach in Madagascar?
Then almost immediately after that, two older guys (probably our ages) came over and started talking to us. I guess they had seen us there before. We were making small talk which is fine. I tried to stay out of it and let the other girls talk since I had enough with the kids. We stopped talking to them but they sat there quietly while we talked to each other. When we left the beach, we said “veloma” but they decided they were coming with us. One branched off with Sidonie when she parted ways and the other followed Larissa, Emily and I all around town for about half an hour! He even stood around while we stopped at snack stands and we literally ignored him the entire time. Emily even tried explaining nicely : “pour nous, les américains, c’est très bizarre pour quel qu’un suivre des filles qu’il ne connaît pas.” (for americans, it’s very strange for someone to follow girls he doesn’t know.) But he ignored that and stuck around until she finally said « nous voulons si vous ne nous suivez pas maintenant.” (We would like if you did not follow us now) He pretended he didn’t understand while earlier it was clear that he spoke French. He also spoke a little English… “You go that way. We go this way.” finally worked. It seems that there is really no humility in this culture. If you do not talk to someone who is walking with you, it’s not obvious you want them to go away. The best part is that this is a pretty small city so we WILL see them again.
Then we had the best day! We went to visit the fishermen village which was located an hour and half of dirt roads away. We packed into five SUVs and off-roaded it through the craziest roads and paths. It made me miss driving my jeep at home. The life of a fisherman is incredibly hard. They keep traditional methods of difficult fishing and go out on the water from 3am to noon seven days a week without breakfast. After interviewing them, we got back in the jeeps and drove to a huge isolated beach. At one point we were actually driving ON the beach, right along the shore. It felt like I was in that level of Halo… you know what I’m talking about. We had a big lunch and two hours of swimming and sunbathing without anyone bothering us. The water was gorgeous and the waves were coming from all different directions. I am now almost the same color as my host mother. We had Malagasy class on the beach and right as it started I noticed a strangely placed blister on one of my toes… it was a parasy!! I was officially the first one to get a parasy on this trip. Apparently it’s inevitable. A parasy is a tiny parasitic bug that lives in sand and gets under the skin in your feet and lays its eggs. So they took a sterilized needle and dug out this strange white blob of bug eggs from my toe. It was pretty awesome!! I didn’t feel a thing and everyone was impressed. I’m officially in Madagascar.
Oh and also, that day ended with chocolate mousse cake at Kaleta (the fancy internet café we go to) for Maddie’s birthday. Best day ever.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Deuxieme Semaine
So it happened. I got sick. The first week in a foreign country, particularly one that is less developed than others, often entails a bit of diarrhea and/or general stomach upset. However, when you mix that with potential food poisoning of 22 weak-stomached “vazahas” (Malagasy word for “white people”)… things don’t turn out so well. Many of us were very sick for the first two or so days in Fort Dauphin (we suspect the shrimp we ate the first day) which was not pleasant.
Other than that, Fort Dauphin is pretty beautiful. The ocean is almost anywhere you walk and it is so blue!! Our classroom, in Libanona, is a little cottage in the woods on the top of a cliff surrounded by the ocean. We spend our days in class with warm breeze blowing in and take pretty long breaks in between classes where we lay on mats in the grass and watch/listen to the ocean. I often take a little nap after lunch which is always a delicious full-fledged meal in the yard. It’s pretty unreal that this is considered school.
The first day in town, we were sent out on our own all day to find our way around and answer some questions like how much a taxi costs, where you can exchange money or buy a cell phone, and we were given money to find a restaurant on our own for lunch. Dan and I were paired up and eventually met up with Sophie and Zach and found a tiny French library in “L’alliance francaise” which we fell in love with, and later picked up Sam who had been sick earlier and was without a partner. It took us a pretty long time to find our school since it’s at the farthest point in town and a little secluded. Not to mention we had no real map. That night we met our host families at a big party thrown just for us at the Town Hall. We were brought in and stood like cattle while our host families came up to us, recognizing us from pictures they were given, and introduced themselves with three kisses on the cheek. It was a little strange. We all sat and ate appetizers (very little, still being sick) and there was a local music and dance group performing. They kept bringing Becca and me up to dance with them in front of everyone. I’m guessing it was because we were the most into it. It really just entailed a lot of energetic kicking. It was probably a bad idea though because by the end I was feeling too sick to even talk to my new family and ended up sleeping through dinner at the hotel.
The next day, after class, we were picked up by our families and taken to our new homes. My homestay house has a beautiful view, and really nice and friendly family members. The only problem I had is that there’s no running water or toilet paper. I will continue to take bucket showers for the majority of my time here but I’ve come to find them pretty nice actually. It’s never cold enough to need warm water anyway. As for the toilet paper, my “aunt” who speaks English explained to me that they just wash when they use the toilet. That is not something I can get used to so I went out and bought a pack of toilet paper for myself. I’m getting pretty comfortable in my house now. It’s pretty far from school but I can usually grab a taxi in town, which the program reimburses me for. My mother speaks mostly Malagasy but fairly good French. We’re probably on the same level, her maybe a little more advanced. And my two aunts, one of which is my age, speak very good French and one speaks very good English. So communication is never really a problem. It’s good practice to speak to them in French but I can ask my aunt a question in English if it’s unclear and she’s around. I have a little brother, Adolphin, who is 8 and very smart and sweet. He is always studying or trying to read Le Petit Prince, which was one of my gifts to the family, and softly sings songs all the time from Malagasy songs to Justin Beiber. We hum together at dinner a lot. My little sister, Assia, is 3 and very grabby and nuts-o. If I ever need to get anything done while she’s around, she just gets all up in my business. She also hasn’t learned much French yet so I don’t know how to tell her to calm down or that she can’t touch something. But that’s what 3 year olds are for, I guess. She’s still adorable. There are also two kids who help out around the house but don’t actually live with us. They cook and clean and eat with us. The girl is older (I’m guessing 15 or so) and she helps me practice my Malgache from my book. We learned the Malagasy national anthem the other day and I sang it with them! Another culturally moving experience.
Our first Friday night in town was pretty exciting. French class was cancelled so we had a half-day which ended with cake for Anne’s birthday so we all went down to the beach just below our school. There was some sort of fundraiser or party going on for Aza Fady, a local sustainable development aid group, so there was a number of people and loud music playing. It really felt like we were on vacation. The ocean is the warmest water I have ever felt. It was perfect for jumping right in for a swim, although the tides are really strong so we have to be careful. I need to go there more often and even out this tan. Everything has tanned so much in the past week except I have major shorts and tank top lines. My stomach is so much whiter than my arms and legs. I had three options for Friday night: most of the SIT kids were going to a local South African woman’s club for an 80’s dance party, which ran pretty late (way too late for me to be going home alone safely), Anne invited me to her homestay for birthday cake which is pretty far across town, and my Aunt invited me to go with her and a friend to Karaoke after dinner. This place is pretty exciting on the weekends! However, after being at the beach and playing with Assia for a couple hours, I accidently passed out before dinner. When they called me to eat dinner, I was total zombie status and had to just go straight to bed. It was probably a good thing because Saturday morning I had to actually wake up when the roosters told me to.
We had to meet at the Post Office (about a half hour walk from my house) at 6:45am for our hike to Peak St. Louis, the highest (or second highest?) mountain in FD. I finally found Sidonie’s house which is conveniently directly on my way into town so we can walk together to school from now on. Climbing that mountain was the hardest thing I’ve ever done!! (and apparently it’s not the hardest thing I’m going to do during this trip) It took four hours total, and by the end the muscles in my legs were trembling and I may have developed asthma. It was totally worth it though because the view was incredible from the top. And it was very fulfilling to say that I made it. On the way up, we were taking a break in the grass and when I got up I looked at my arm VOILA!! There was a little praying mantis or something crawling up my arm!! I guess I was a friend to the bugs, having not showered in three or four days. The local science students joined us, as they will on several other trips, and were playing popular American music, or translated in French, through their backpacks. It added motivation to the hike singing well-known hip hop songs. I had World’s Greatest by R. Kelly stuck in my head the majority of the time as well. When we reached the bottom, we had a picnic all together where they played live music and we sat in the shade. I had a cold fruity soda beverage for the first time in a while and it felt AMAZING. I take things like cold beverages for granted in the US. That day called for a nice bucket shower for sure.
Sunday was our first free day to catch up or spend time with our host families. A cruise ship was coming in the port from the UK or somewhere and my host aunt, Nadia, works at the port so she tried to get us passes to go in the ship and look around. We ended up just being able to go up to it. She tried to get me to look ligit and speak French to this guy and get us in but I’m obviously not that good at it yet. Getting a ride home was ridiculous since all the taxis quadrupled their fares for the vazaha tourists. But we eventually made it out and went to the market. I guess I have been eating meat from the outside market… but it hasn’t made me sick so I guess it’s mind over matter. I asked my host mom to teach me how to make fried bananas one day so I can bring that knowledge home with me. As well as these delicious coconut flavored cookies I found!
Other than that, Fort Dauphin is pretty beautiful. The ocean is almost anywhere you walk and it is so blue!! Our classroom, in Libanona, is a little cottage in the woods on the top of a cliff surrounded by the ocean. We spend our days in class with warm breeze blowing in and take pretty long breaks in between classes where we lay on mats in the grass and watch/listen to the ocean. I often take a little nap after lunch which is always a delicious full-fledged meal in the yard. It’s pretty unreal that this is considered school.
The first day in town, we were sent out on our own all day to find our way around and answer some questions like how much a taxi costs, where you can exchange money or buy a cell phone, and we were given money to find a restaurant on our own for lunch. Dan and I were paired up and eventually met up with Sophie and Zach and found a tiny French library in “L’alliance francaise” which we fell in love with, and later picked up Sam who had been sick earlier and was without a partner. It took us a pretty long time to find our school since it’s at the farthest point in town and a little secluded. Not to mention we had no real map. That night we met our host families at a big party thrown just for us at the Town Hall. We were brought in and stood like cattle while our host families came up to us, recognizing us from pictures they were given, and introduced themselves with three kisses on the cheek. It was a little strange. We all sat and ate appetizers (very little, still being sick) and there was a local music and dance group performing. They kept bringing Becca and me up to dance with them in front of everyone. I’m guessing it was because we were the most into it. It really just entailed a lot of energetic kicking. It was probably a bad idea though because by the end I was feeling too sick to even talk to my new family and ended up sleeping through dinner at the hotel.
The next day, after class, we were picked up by our families and taken to our new homes. My homestay house has a beautiful view, and really nice and friendly family members. The only problem I had is that there’s no running water or toilet paper. I will continue to take bucket showers for the majority of my time here but I’ve come to find them pretty nice actually. It’s never cold enough to need warm water anyway. As for the toilet paper, my “aunt” who speaks English explained to me that they just wash when they use the toilet. That is not something I can get used to so I went out and bought a pack of toilet paper for myself. I’m getting pretty comfortable in my house now. It’s pretty far from school but I can usually grab a taxi in town, which the program reimburses me for. My mother speaks mostly Malagasy but fairly good French. We’re probably on the same level, her maybe a little more advanced. And my two aunts, one of which is my age, speak very good French and one speaks very good English. So communication is never really a problem. It’s good practice to speak to them in French but I can ask my aunt a question in English if it’s unclear and she’s around. I have a little brother, Adolphin, who is 8 and very smart and sweet. He is always studying or trying to read Le Petit Prince, which was one of my gifts to the family, and softly sings songs all the time from Malagasy songs to Justin Beiber. We hum together at dinner a lot. My little sister, Assia, is 3 and very grabby and nuts-o. If I ever need to get anything done while she’s around, she just gets all up in my business. She also hasn’t learned much French yet so I don’t know how to tell her to calm down or that she can’t touch something. But that’s what 3 year olds are for, I guess. She’s still adorable. There are also two kids who help out around the house but don’t actually live with us. They cook and clean and eat with us. The girl is older (I’m guessing 15 or so) and she helps me practice my Malgache from my book. We learned the Malagasy national anthem the other day and I sang it with them! Another culturally moving experience.
Our first Friday night in town was pretty exciting. French class was cancelled so we had a half-day which ended with cake for Anne’s birthday so we all went down to the beach just below our school. There was some sort of fundraiser or party going on for Aza Fady, a local sustainable development aid group, so there was a number of people and loud music playing. It really felt like we were on vacation. The ocean is the warmest water I have ever felt. It was perfect for jumping right in for a swim, although the tides are really strong so we have to be careful. I need to go there more often and even out this tan. Everything has tanned so much in the past week except I have major shorts and tank top lines. My stomach is so much whiter than my arms and legs. I had three options for Friday night: most of the SIT kids were going to a local South African woman’s club for an 80’s dance party, which ran pretty late (way too late for me to be going home alone safely), Anne invited me to her homestay for birthday cake which is pretty far across town, and my Aunt invited me to go with her and a friend to Karaoke after dinner. This place is pretty exciting on the weekends! However, after being at the beach and playing with Assia for a couple hours, I accidently passed out before dinner. When they called me to eat dinner, I was total zombie status and had to just go straight to bed. It was probably a good thing because Saturday morning I had to actually wake up when the roosters told me to.
We had to meet at the Post Office (about a half hour walk from my house) at 6:45am for our hike to Peak St. Louis, the highest (or second highest?) mountain in FD. I finally found Sidonie’s house which is conveniently directly on my way into town so we can walk together to school from now on. Climbing that mountain was the hardest thing I’ve ever done!! (and apparently it’s not the hardest thing I’m going to do during this trip) It took four hours total, and by the end the muscles in my legs were trembling and I may have developed asthma. It was totally worth it though because the view was incredible from the top. And it was very fulfilling to say that I made it. On the way up, we were taking a break in the grass and when I got up I looked at my arm VOILA!! There was a little praying mantis or something crawling up my arm!! I guess I was a friend to the bugs, having not showered in three or four days. The local science students joined us, as they will on several other trips, and were playing popular American music, or translated in French, through their backpacks. It added motivation to the hike singing well-known hip hop songs. I had World’s Greatest by R. Kelly stuck in my head the majority of the time as well. When we reached the bottom, we had a picnic all together where they played live music and we sat in the shade. I had a cold fruity soda beverage for the first time in a while and it felt AMAZING. I take things like cold beverages for granted in the US. That day called for a nice bucket shower for sure.
Sunday was our first free day to catch up or spend time with our host families. A cruise ship was coming in the port from the UK or somewhere and my host aunt, Nadia, works at the port so she tried to get us passes to go in the ship and look around. We ended up just being able to go up to it. She tried to get me to look ligit and speak French to this guy and get us in but I’m obviously not that good at it yet. Getting a ride home was ridiculous since all the taxis quadrupled their fares for the vazaha tourists. But we eventually made it out and went to the market. I guess I have been eating meat from the outside market… but it hasn’t made me sick so I guess it’s mind over matter. I asked my host mom to teach me how to make fried bananas one day so I can bring that knowledge home with me. As well as these delicious coconut flavored cookies I found!
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