Flying in a plane to Tulear was very emotionally confusing. It felt so much like we were going home! And I was sitting next to a couple strangers away from the group so it really felt like I was just getting on a plane to come home but I knew that I wasn’t so even though I was excited about the upcoming experiences, I was a little sad that I wasn’t actually on my way back home. But it was an extremely short flight and within an hour we were on the other side of the island. That day we went straight from the airport to this man’s house who studies renewable energy! He showed us several little inventions he created that use solar energy to cook food at his house and he created a system where they put their waste into a cement hole which then creates methane gas that they use in the house to cook as well! It was like being back with energy fellows on a summer field trip, except it was all in French. Then the same man traveled with us to an algae farm, where they are growing spirulina. Spirulina is a very popular algae that has many great benefits from health and diet to carbon sequestration. It was pretty cool. And we got to eat some with lunch at the farm. (Obviously dried and packaged already, not straight out of the swamp) After that we set up camp in an area right outside the city, where our director’s retirement home is located right on the coast by the mangroves. It’s a beautiful spot but it’s very confusing. I had never learned anything about mangroves before. They are basically lines of trees that grow IN the water along the beach. The tides come up and go out really really far over the course of the day so sometimes we would have nice ocean water right there and sometimes we could walk for 20 minutes and the water wouldn’t go past our knees. It’s really difficult to explain so if you need to understand it more, that’s what google is for. And you can wait for my pictures on facebook. After settling in to out campsite, we went to hike up Table Mountain with an Ombiasy (a healer who communicates with spirits and studies medicinal plants). It was a nice slow and education hike, not at all like Peak St. Louis, and pretty short. Once we reached the top, the Ombiasy needed to “talk to the powerful people” so he climbed into this hole in the ground and was speaking Malagasy while we sat around it quietly and listened respectfully. Part of the ritual is also to indulge in consumption of things while speaking with the spirits so he passed us some rum, some cookies, and a cigarette for all of us to share. Not too many of us were into the cigarette but we still paid respects with the other options. It was a little bizarre. At the end he said each of our names and something to the spirits about us… after my name we heard the word “president”. Very interesting.
Monday was a day full of lectures in a classroom in HSM at the University of Tulear, which is the oceanic study center. It was quite a long day. HOWEVER…. It was Ellen’s birthday. And for lunch, we went to this restaurant called “Le Jardin” (the garden). This place was a diamond in the rough, a tiny shack that you walk into and suddenly there is an endless maze of tropical themed rooms of tables and the walls and ceilings were completely covered in beautiful Malagasy paintings. This restaurant is run by a guy from Italy and we were served pizza, which was SO exciting for us since it was real Italian pizza with gooey cheese and sauce… but then more food came. Some lasagna.. and more… some ravioli.. and some beef… and more lasagna… and some fish… and more pizza… and eggplant parmesan with pesto. I don’t even remember what happened, I just have images of delicious food flashing in my mind. Then all of a sudden we were eating delicious cake that had a little Tenrec on it! That’s a little hedgehog creature from Madagascar. The cake obviously didn’t have a real Tenrec, but a cute one made of cake. Then they brought out icecream. Allie and I were actually crying. It was just wonderful. THEN they brought out different flavors of rum. It was just a beautiful lunch. That night I felt the need to go for a run to the water and go swimming. The water was HOT like bath water, even though it was technically the ocean (well, the Mozambique channel). Those mangroves really confuse me.
At dinner, we had the pleasure of observing gecko mating. Yup. We watched lizards doing it on the wall next to where we were having our meal. It made me very uncomfortable but it was also hilarious and many great jokes came out of it. At first we thought they were going to fight, because I guess that’s how it starts... but before you knew it, there was love. Quite a Madagascar experience.
Tuesday we stayed in the restaurant by the campsite ALL day having lectures and discussions and another delicious lunch of duck, pork, AND crab… At the end of the day, we invited the speakers from lecture as well as the restaurant owner to a party at our director’s house. After lunch, we were in need of a pick-me-up to sit through another lecture so I successfully requested more coffee for everyone. If we were going to sit and have lectures in a restaurant all day, we should be served beverages right? They roasted another lamb and goat, which I was lucky enough to NOT observe, but ate it because it was great. The locals came after dinner and danced with us for a while. It was a pretty nice, relaxing day.
Wednesday was city day!! We got up and went to our hotel, Hotel Tropical. It’s really strangely hidden behind this shell of something that resembles a parking garage, but when you walk in, there is a wall of nice rooms WITH BATHROOMS THAT HAVE RUNNING WATER!!! I took a semi-real shower for the first time in months. We had our meetings with one of our teachers about our ISP plans and then had the whole day free to explore the city. Well, actually, we were supposed to be doing research but there really wasn’t much Allie, Anne, or I could do in terms of our topics, so we got to just go out shopping and being tourists. When we were in an artisanal market, these guys running stands asked Allie to teach them how to make the string bracelets that we had on. It was a precious moment. Then they asked us to go for drinks, but we still had some shopping to do. We were walking back towards the hotel and stopped in a store where I found Kinder Bueno and some cold juice. We were walking down the street and this woman, who may have had something wrong with her, was basically attacking me and asking for my juice. I was trying to just walk away from her but she successfully just grabbed it out of my hand… I was a little shaken up but I guess it’s not a total loss. She didn’t pick-pocket me or anything. She was just really really thirsty I guess. It’s because of this that we are not allowed to go out in this city at night at all.
In Tulear, they have fewer taxis and more “pousse-pousse”. A pousse-pousse is a little seat with a canopy on big wheels that are pulled by men holding the big sticks attached to the front. It’s very strange because they are essentially ox-carts pulled by men. You feel a little bad sitting in this seat while this pour man is running and sweating, pulling your weight around town but it’s the way they choose to make money. Allie asked one if she could try to pull it and they let her lift it and pose for a picture but not really pull it on the street. It was still pretty funny to them, we all had a good laugh. Wednesday was our language professor, N’aina’s birthday. He’s definitely one of the coolest, he’s really animated and fun so it was a good birthday. He chose a restaurant right next to our hotel and we had ANOTHER 25 course Italian meal for dinner followed by more cake!! Oh goodness. I’m going to come home fatter than I had originally thought.
Thursday we left the city and went into PK32 which is a new protected forest area and I got loads of information for my paper and observed some pretty interesting discussions. A giant hissing cockroach was on my shoulder, too. No big deal. We stayed at this little touristy bungalow place near the beach and it was adorable. We split up into little bungalows that had pretty canopy beds and a bathroom with running water. That night we had a dance party and it was so island except with our teachers! Good times.
Friday was SNORKLING DAY!! We went snorkeling in the coral reef called “Rose Garden” off the coast of an area north of Tulear. I saw so many fish like Finding Nemo but they weren’t in an aquarium, they were in their natural habitat! My favorite were definitely the Parrot fish. They were the biggest and most brightly colored and they pecked at the coral with their beaks and flapped their fins to swim like little birds. The coral wasn’t brightly colored, though. It was still extremely healthy, but healthy coral of that type is meant to be brown. But it just made it easier to see the fish. After snorkeling and eating lunch with the Reef Doctor, we had a tour of mangroves and came back to Hotel Tropical in Tulear. We’re here for such a short time but at least we can do a couple things before leaving. Tomorrow we head out for some more camping on our way to Fianaratsoa which is the next place I should hopefully have internet!!
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