Well, the day before we left and the day I last updated the blog, Molly and Ellen and I went out to lunch at this little restaurant that I pass by every day to and from school, right in the center of town. Big news: found out they serve delicious, fresh gourmet PIZZA!! It’s run by a white French couple who are super nice and along with many other dishes, they have a whole list of pizzas that they make fresh by hand. All of the toppings are delicious and piled on there, the crust is thin and perfect, and they use real cheese… It’s just wonderful. It’s almost like being in Italy with Kaitlin, except probably not nearly as good. But it’s as close as I will get over here! It’s definitely something you have to share though so I hope at least one other SIT student sticks around Fort Dauphin during Independent Study Project (ISP) time in April so I will have someone to enjoy it with. Otherwise, it will be just me buying a $7.50 pizza and gorging myself, which I’m not entirely opposed to.
Also, as I was walking down the street to my homestay that day, I was being friendly and saying “Salama” to everyone I made eye contact with, as usual. So I see an old lady and say “Salama” only to be immediately accosted in Malgache to some degree of “VAZAH! GIVE ME MONEY!” It was pretty strange but I was able to just keep walking without a problem…
Anyway, this blog is about the village stay. This was a major turning point in the program and definitely an irreplaceable experience for us. I left with flea bites, dreadlocks, several scratches/cactus splinters and a broken water bottle but it was probably my favorite part of this entire trip. We were paired up in teams of two based on our research interests for our final environmental issues paper, and then teamed up with one or two CEL students.
For background, I have previously mentioned the “local ecology students” who are and will from now on be referred to as the CEL students. (Centre Écologique de Libanona) They are students who live in Fort Dauphin and study ecology and the environment at the same place where we SIT students have class. So they often join us on certain trips/classes including this village stay. It was great because they of course speak Malagasy and could translate through French between us and the villagers (who did not speak French). Molly and I were paired up with Hantra (a really nice, down to earth girl who shared our challenges with village life) and Fidele. (a very extraverted bro guy who is also Tandroy – the tribe of our villages) We were the best team, clearly.
It took an entire day by bus to get to Faux Cap, the beach where the trip was based out of. On the way there we stopped for a beverage at this snack shack and they had aloe juice. It was also strawberry flavored and there were tiny chunks of aloe in it. It was pretty interesting but I liked it a lot. I hope we can find more of it somewhere. We also got these “chocolate cookies” which were so not chocolate. Ally described the taste as “the smell of a gym that has a pool” which was completely accurate. During a portion of the ride, the CEL students in the back started passing up little mixes of rum and pineapple fanta and the bus kept bumping around like crazy so it was an experience to say the least. They also started passing up various pieces of poultry… where that came from, we have no idea.
The first night we arrived in Faux Cap, we all set up camp around the hotel where our teachers were staying, right on the beach. Let me tell you that camping on the beach is not as nice as it sounds. The wind was UNREAL and putting up a tent was nearly impossible. Sleeping in said tent was even more impossible. I honestly thought we were going to be blown away all night, it was pretty terrible. The next day we presented ourselves by attending the village market that is only held on Mondays. We basically had to push the bus the entire way there because it kept getting stuck in the sand. We walked around in our teams and bought straw hats and coconuts and I was searching for a lamba but didn’t have much luck that day. On the bus back to the beach, Eeny Meeny Miney Moe Lover by Justin Beiber was playing and Fidele asked me what it meant. I had to explain eeny meeny miney moe in French! That afternoon we were picked up by our village fathers and rode with all our stuff in the back of our director’s truck to our individual villages. We had accidently left our tent in the truck but it quickly came back to get it to us before the sun set. When we arrived in the village, we were brought to a matt under a tree and given some watermelon. The watermelon there is green the whole way through, and the seeds are bright orange! It tastes much blander than American watermelon but it was still very watery and yummy. They also gave us cactus fruits, which we call prickly pears, which were really delicious. They all sat around us and watched us eat which was a little awkward. We quickly got used to them finding everything we do just fascinating. The whole week we couldn’t read or write in our journals or anything without the whole village hanging over our shoulders.
Anyway, I was sitting on a mat and baby chickens were walking around so I held my hand out to one of them in hopes it would come over and BAM! One of the guys just grabbed it out of nowhere and handed it to me! It was so cute to hold but chickens here are still not as cute as the chickens we’re used to. They look slightly more like dinosaurs. Later, Fidele was teaching the villagers French and what little English he knows by asking them all how to say “hair” or “eyes” or “shirt”. It was pretty entertaining. I was also surprised at how much English they knew. They must be learning some in school while they learn French. But in a village, what do they really do with that besides talk to us once a year? We were sitting outside waiting for dinner and talking to the village elder (who must have been in his early fifties) and spoke pretty decent French. He says to me: “le président aux Etats Unis… c’est Barack Obama! Oui. Il est noir!” I don’t know how but they know the president in America is black! Haha He was very excited about that.
Every morning they gave us some water to wash our faces and then we had the best coffee EVER before breakfast. The village mother made the best coffee, roasting it fresh every day and pounding it in a hallowed tree trunk. It was amazing. The first morning, breakfast was rice (obviously) but with eggs that she had spiced with a little curry! That is a recipe I will be taking back home with me. Every other day was really just rice though. The first day we went out into the fields with our parents and learned about how they cultivate and why they do certain things during certain times of year. They grow watermelon, corn, beans, etc. all mixed together in the same plots. They do this just because it saves space but they don’t realize that it’s actually better for the plants to grow that way. We picked some watermelon and ate it while we worked picking corn and learning about the different medicinal values of certain plants and finding roots that they use for soap, etcetera. It was really interesting and it got basically all of our studying done within the first few hours. We found a little chameleon crawling around in the plants and they said I could just pick it up… so I did! I finally held a chameleon! He was really tiny and really scared so I felt bad but we put him back soon enough. It was really exciting.
Every night we danced before sunset for over an hour. They were preparing us for the party that was planned for the end of the week and had turned it into a competition. Each village had to be the best, so they were basically training us to do it perfectly. It was hilarious because they would teach us something and then change it on us and argue amongst each other in Malagasy while we stood there looking confused. They’d often tell us “Mahay!” “Good job!” when we danced well or they would repeatedly tell us we were stomping wrong and just grab at us to show us the proper way. Definitely an experience. The last couple days, this all happened in the rain. I have lost my vulnerability to rain throughout this trip. Also, part of one of the songs/dances was for us to go up front and do an “American dance” so we decided to do the cotton eye joe. It worked out pretty perfectly. We wanted to teach it to them but they were really only interested in us learning their dances.
The second day we decided to go to the beach, which was about a mile and a half walk from our village. We arrived at this area with a bunch of wells where they get some drinkable water and also share it with the zebu in little trenches that they made on the beach. It was fascinating. Along the way to where the good swimming water was, I found so many shells and pieces of coral and sponge, and best of all: pieces of egg shells from the extinct elephant bird! They were everywhere. I know that’s what they are because our director showed them to me the first day. I was imagining a million giant ostrich like birds walking around the beach hundreds of years ago, laying giant eggs. We met up with two of the other teams there and tanned and swam until lunch time. It was a pretty great day.
The next day, it was very rainy so we all stayed cooped up in the little hut most of the day, napping or reading or talking. Our host father was a fisherman but he said the weather has not been good for catching any fish which I was really disappointed about. I insisted that we try to go out anyway. I really wanted to go out on the pirogue (their tiny wooden canoe-like fishing boat) so he finally agreed to take us. We were making the long walk to the beach again when a zebu driven “charette” came by and we were told to hop in! It was really scary and bumpy and painful but so much fun! The zebu would run so fast over the bumpy sand and then they’d swerve around cactuses and make us hold on for dear live. When we got to the beach, the pirogue wasn’t much different!! Five of us in this tiny wooden canoe thing in the ocean with huge waves and wind!! I sat right up at the front too. It was so exciting. The boat just rode right over the waves, even when you thought they would just knock it over. It was like an amusement park ride except it was actually the real thing. We were only out for about five minutes because “the weather was too bad” but I was so glad we got to do that.
On the walk back that day we found a tortoise just chillin around the farms. My camera had died so I have no pictures of either that, or the pirogue ride, but Molly was able to pick up the tortoise and he was so cute! I’m glad it’s fady (taboo) for the Tandroy culture to eat tortoise.
The villagers were all talking about wanting to go to the states and how much they will miss us when we leave. One guy even offered Molly a zebu in exchange for taking her place back to the US. We really grew to love our village even though they were a little pushy and invasive sometimes.
Throughout the trip we would run into some of the other groups. It was nice to speak a little English and share everyone’s different experiences in the different villages. Listening to some of the others it seems like we were having one of the better times. One girl had a broken toe, which made it very difficult to dance and the villagers did not seem to understand that so it was a little stressful. Others just didn’t really do anything most of the time. So I’m glad we had the opportunities and the people that we did.
The last day, after lunch, was the “grande fête”! They woke me up from a nap, threw some earrings in my ears (which was really sweet and unexpected. Although one of them broke the next day) and made us start dancing and charging our way to the hotel area where our teachers were. They had done our hair earlier in the day, real Tandroy style in braided buns all over our head. It was terribly ugly on us but really funny. We made our way, all excited with the whole village behind us, to the party where all the other villages were with their student teams. All the girls had their hair done. We each danced individually with our villages in front of the crowd and then we spend the rest of the afternoon dancing together, both Tandroy style and hip hop style. Before dinner, it was time to present our villages with a sheep and say our goodbyes. I was really sad to say goodbye, especially to our mother who, despite the language barriers, I had bonded with a lot the past week. Then we set up our tents, had dinner, and danced a little more with our teachers and the CEL students. Not too late, of course because we were all exhausted.
The ride home was another full day and involved more pushing of the bus and random Malagasy music but it was really not that bad. We had many hilarious conversations and even though we were all filthy, we were just having a blast on the bumpy uncomfortable bus, bonding and falling asleep on each other. Overall it was a pretty great week. I had to take two buckets to wash myself when I got home but it was all worth it.
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