Madagascar

               Yes, dear readers, I’ve managed to escape the country yet again. Don’t be so surprised; that’s most of the reason why I joined PC- to travel. I’m just typing what I’ve written out in my notebook, so this is an almost daily perspective over about a week and a half. As with Namibia, I’ve written a lot. Now then. On with the story.

                Sunday- As you may recall, I was staying with one of the Norwegian Red Cross girls the night after I was done resource volunteering. In the morning, I taxied to Maputsoe [ma-poot-sway], a town near Hlotse where a bunch of factories are. It also has a 24 hour border gate to South Africa. At the window, the lady originally gave me a 7 day visa. Nope, not gonna fly. I told her I needed a 30 day visa, and she said she couldn’t give that to me.  With another PCV’s situation fresh on my mind (a crazy turn of events starting with a too-short visa and ending with him Early Terminating and going back to the US), I was adamant to the lady that I needed 30 days. I had to do a little back-and-forth arguing, showing her the other 30 day visa I had gotten before, but I soon had my stamp with an adequate number of days allowed in SA. I headed to the taxi rank, where the taxi office (they actually have taxi offices in SA where you pay ahead of time) wasn’t even open yet. I soon bought my seat for Johannesburg, and was pleasantly surprised to see Cassie and Jeff walking toward my taxi. Turns out they were also going to Joburg on their way to Mozambique. Friends for the ride! After we got going, I was again surprised at the level of development just across the border in Ficksburg. Infrastructure? What are this?

                Monday- Yesterday after the taxi ride, which consisted of several hours of defending my open window, reading, and staring out into field after field, we arrived in Joburg where I met Mom and Mike, and I was finally able to hug Mom, who I had to remind again to stop crying. Leaky, this one. She had arranged a tour of Joburg/Soweto, and the driver picked me up in town at the train station, not far from the taxi rank. We went to the apartheid museum first, which would have been tons better had I had a better grasp on SA’s history. Next stop was Nelson Mandela’s old house, which was turned into a museum. The museum was 5 minutes from closing, but we begged to get in and had a speed tour of the place. Then we headed off to a plaza commemorating a student who was shot by police during riots protesting Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in schools. Next we went into a mall, in the middle of which we got into an elevator that took us 50 floors up to a panoramic view of the city, called the Top of Africa. You could see the grid arrangement of the blocks from way up there, as well as one building painted like the SA flag. Along the way from place to place, I was trying to snap photos of street art from out the window, which was not so successful. Guess I’ll just have to come back and wander around on foot. 

The tour guide got a kick out of me knowing Sesotho. He said that he knows 6 languages, and that there are so many languages spoken in the Joburg area. When you’re a kid, whatever language the neighborhood kids speak, you learn to speak those too. You can enroll a child in different schools with different languages of instruction. Ever interested in linguistics, I asked him what language you speak with someone you don’t know, that you may just run into in the street. He said you can guess based on their job/dress/appearance. He also said the ones form the north, who may speak Setswana (language of Botswana) are uglier, and the ones from the south, who probably speak Sesotho, are known for their beauty.

We got back to the hotel and Mom gave me what I had been waiting so long for: American shoes! Quality footwear at last! Chacos sandals and New Balance trail shoes- perfect! My current crap pair of tennis shoes, bought in Maseru (not cheap, might I add), were on their last leg despite being only a few months old. I promptly ditched them in favor of my new ones. So many PCVs here have Chacos. They should practically be a requirement on the packing list. They’re much more durable than my cheapo pair of Tevas, which promptly started coming apart in this country that devours shoes. I swear, so many PCVs here have Chacos, or if they didn't bring them, they had some shipped to them later. They should be required on the packing list.

Lovely Mom in the car

The fastest tour ever at Mandela's old house

Our tour guide showing us a memorial to the kids killed in the riots

Super cool cooling towers. You can bunjee jump from the middle.

The view from the...

...Top of Africa

On the way to Madagascar: In the morning, we drove to the airport and barely made it on time to board. The flight was great- I sat under the wing, not over it which is what normally happens, so I could see the landscape of SA turn into ocean turn into the coast of Madagascar turn into the forest and, surprisingly, some mountains too. Right before we landed, the ground looked like a patchwork quilt of farms, some terraced into hillsides, some being rice paddies tetris-ed into each other. The capital city of Antananarivo (or Tana, as people like to call it) is so unique. People were carrying enormous quantities of anything (sacks of grain/rice, mountains of leafy vegetables, mattresses, other people) on huge carts in the road. There are small houses in the rice fields where I’m assuming the farmers live. There’s a distinct French vibe in the center of the city in terms of the architecture and general city layout. We went wandering through a street market after we dumped our stuff at the hotel. In the market, I felt very adventurous and got lots of things to eat just because. Why pay (a reasonable amount of money, actually) for a great restaurant meal when you can get random street foods and risk diarrhea for dirt cheap? That was basically my philosophy at that point. I got an assortment of crackers and sesame snacks, a small circle of cheese and a sausage, a fried banana, and a coconut. The coconut dude cut a choice coconut off the bundle, then with a machete carefully cut a hole in the top. Then after I drank the juice inside with a straw, the guy chopped it in half and I ate the meat with a chunk of the husk as a scooper. All this food is crazy cheap. For example, the fried banana was 200 Ariary, the equivalent of about 7 cents. Just seeing the vast amount of fruits- mangos, lichis, cherries, plums, coconuts, etc. etc. etc. readily available makes me really sad to think about Lesotho in comparison. The only fruit that grows abundantly is peaches- and they only grow  one or two months out of the year. Sigh. I’d better get to bed, as I have to wake up at 2am to get to the airport for our flight to Morondava at 5am. I’ll just sleep on the plane.

Taxis

Fruit galore

A farmer's house in the rice paddies. Tana in the background on the hill.

There's no telling what you'll find on a truck. Today it's chickens.

Tuesday- I’m writing this as I’m sprawled out on the floor of my hut in Kirindy National Park, on the western coast of this lovely island country, trying to find some relief from the humidity. I’m sweating so hard doing absolutely nothing. I’m not used to this humidity; in Lesotho, it’s so dry, and finding some shade instantly lowers the temperature. This morning, we got to the Morondava airport at about 3am, since Air Madagascar decided to change the flight from 11am to 5am. I was the first one through security for the day; they hadn’t even set it up yet, so we had to wait a bit for the staff to get into place. We got on a little 15-passenger plane with school bus-style bench seats. No instructions, no briefings, no frills. We just boarded and took off. Beneath us, I saw that we were flying over miles and miles of jungle. We got our bags out of the little compartment at the back of the plane and met our guide, Ludo, at the exit. He and the driver took us from the airport and toward the amazing baobab trees- some near ponds and reflecting on the surface, some twisting around each other, some 1000+ years old, one very sacred one, etc. After about 2.5 hours of driving on a sandy dirt road, us admiring the wood/mud houses with baobab fibers and palm leaves as thatching, we made it to Kirindy park.

Almost immediately, Ludo took us on a walk around the dry deciduous forest, and right away we saw Sifakas (white lemurs). Side note: Ever since I was really little watching Zobomafoo on PBS, I’ve always wanted to see lemurs in real life. Childhood dream accomplished. We also saw iguanas, lizards, snakes, and many birds including black parrots, which were super loud as they squawked in the trees. Also, there are huge spiral shells on the ground from forest snails. Along the way, there was a baby lemur that, with its big eyes and curled tail, just stared us as we snapped photos. As I write this, I just finished eating lunch, including two entire mangos, so juicy that my forearms were all sticky from the juice running down them. Mangos are few and far between in Lesotho (and expensive!), but you can’t escape the abundant mangos here- not that I’d want to.

Random observations: just like in Lesotho, the kids ask for candy. Unlike in Lesotho, people are actually wearing hot-weather clothes in the summer, not blankets. Must be the humidity. I’m surprised that even the very rural girls have their hair longish and braided. In rural Lesotho, no one has any hair whatsoever.

Wednesday- After a total of 4 nature walks in Kirindy, 3 yesterday at different times and 1 this morning, we saw all the things. Basically. In addition to being chased by a fosa (an animal that hunts lemurs, and apparently, also people who get too close), we saw white/brown/mouse/Madam Berthe lemurs, mongooses (mongeese?), big headed lizards, chameleons, iguanas, cicadas, 3 snakes, and tons of birds, including a very rare red pigmy kingfisher. During the night walk, our guide was amazing at seeing all these animals. He said he was “born in the bush,” whatever that means exactly, so he has super spotting eyes. I would have seen absolutely nothing, but in the dark he saw lemurs in far trees, and even when he shone his big spotlight on them, it still took the rest of us a few minutes to actually see them.

On the teeny plane. It's 5am.

Heyo

Out the window

Just arrived in Morondava

Our car and a coconut palm

Loaded up

Outside of Morondava

Texas crackers

Wow, Mom got tall.

Weaver nests

Boys climbing the baobab trunk

If only I could be as tall as these baobabs

Typical houses

Some nuggets in the shade

Selling baobab fruit on the side of the road

Twisty baobabs

Baobab trunks are super bumpy

Insanely red dirt

Arriving at Kirindy Park

Curly-tailed baby lemur

Forest selfie?

Dudes playing petanque/bocce ball. How French.

THB- Madagascar's signature beer

This little guy built a perfect, cone nest just off the ground in this bush

Tiny chameleon

Mom and one of the many, huge forest snail shells

Treetops

Mom's the photographer for once

Jumping lemur butt

Chilling in the lazy boy

A pair, intertwined

Fosa!

Room in Kirindy. The mosquito net is so essential.

We left Kirindy and drove back into Morondava, then arrived at our super swanky hotel on the beach- Côte Ouest Palissandre. Right away, I took advantage of the coastal setting. I walked on the beach (didn’t swim in the ocean because Mom said there were nasty oil slicks- and there was no one else swimming either), swam in the pool, and just marveled at the little bungalows. They’re made out of this beautiful Palissandre wood. The bathroom was kind of an open floor plan, with no separation for the shower. The floor boards on that side of the bathroom were a bit farther spaced, and the water just ran down between them. I filed that concept away in my brain’s “future dream home” folder.

I went out walking through town and got some ridiculously delicious street food: tiny samosas, meat/veg-stuffed rolls, green onion pancakes, and potato-stuffed fried green peppers. Then on the way back, I got some ice cream, then on a whim grabbed some baobab juice and a little cake thing from a very nice vendor woman. Near the hotel, there were some girls selling baobab fruits by the side of the road. The fruits are very light in weight, brown fuzz covering the outside, with something with a texture just like astronaut ice cream surrounding big seeds on the inside. The inside fluff was kind of tangy, and made my mouth feel like I’d just eaten a whole bag of sour patch kids- unlike anything else I’d ever eaten.

Bike taxis

Cattle market

At the hotel

Walking to town

Awesome purple mini truck

This guy was super pumped to have his photo taken as his tuk tuk flew by

Meat stall in the market

"Hey there, fish ladies," says the ice cream man

Hardware shack

Temporarily out of commission

Dried fish, etc.

All the fishermen had these awesome painted boats

A typical public taxi

Outside and inside of baobab fruits

 In the afternoon, we drove out to the very touristy Baobab Avenue for sunset. It’s the low season, but there were still a good number of people out there to take photos of the trees at sunset and of the village kids on the road or playing soccer in the fields.

Back at the hotel, dinner was divine and I’m still so stuffed from it. It was smoked fish on top of vegetable gazpacho, fish with vegetables and potato fritters, and merengue-covered coconut ice cream-filled brioche on a grilled pineapple for dessert. I died. Things taste SO much better after being deprived of this kind of food for so long. Absence makes the taste buds grow fonder.

Baobab Alley

Air Jordan

Just reflecting on the trip so far

Sunset baobabs

Friday- Yesterday, we landed back in Tana from Morondava around noonish. When we got back to the airport, there was some thick rush-hour traffic, so it took us a good hour and a half to get to the hotel. We took some short cuts through the tiny, narrow, cobblestone streets. On either side were little shops and lots of people milling around. There was barely enough room for the car. The narrowness reminded me of taking these kind of tiny streets in Spain a few years ago with Mom.  When we arrived at the hotel, I promptly just went to bed with a stomach/head ache and laid in bed until 4:30am this morning. I only threw up like twice…Anyway. As I was sick in bed, Mom and Mike went walking to the queen’s palace. They said that they learned that most people in Tana/the east coast are of Malaysian/Indian/Indonesian origin, and now that I think about it, they do look it. On the west, they’re more of African descent. To add to the diversity, as I laid in bed, I heard the call to prayer from a nearby mosque. It was really nice to hear, actually, as it reminded me of living in Morocco.

This morning, we arrived on an island off an island- Saite Marie. Were at the hotel now. It’s crazy beautiful here:  forests, beaches, all kinds of palms and flowers, etc. I’m still kind of recovering from my sickness (probably due to the tap water in Morondava that I noticed was cloudy but drank anyway, as I was too bold in my confidence in what I thought was an iron stomach). We wandered around a little bit this afternoon in the quest for some food. Not ten seconds out onto the street and I almost stepped on a huge chameleon! I’m definitely not in Kansas anymore. We found a spot for lunch where I still didn’t feel like eating, but tasted a bite of Mom’s vanilla chicken- a very delicious and unique flavor. It came with fresh vanilla pods, probably grown somewhere nearby. Continuing to wander, we found ourselves among hoards of kids coming back to school from lunch all wearing their school’s uniform smock thing over their clothes. Then we took a yellow, three-wheeled tuk tuk back to the hotel Whoo! I think we are legit the only guests at our hotel. It’s definitely not tourist season. We should be getting downpoured on with the approach of monsoon season, but by some lucky fluke it’s been clear this week.

Teeny plane

The huge chameleon I almost stepped on

Raised house

Boats off the west coast of Sainte Marie

I started out in front because I'm taller, then Mom was like, "No, I'm first because I'm the mom."

Kids coming back from school

Everything is so brightly painted

Cinnamon and other spices drying in the sun

This house's walkway is made of shells

The houses are lifted off the ground because of all the bugs

Saturday- It was weird- when I was lying in bed sick 2 days ago, all I wanted to do was to go home- not home to the US, but home to my cool, quiet rondaval in Lesotho. That tells you something, doesn’t it.

This morning at breakfast, I learned just by randomly ordering from the choices that “oeuf à la coque” means a hard boiled egg. The more you know…I got to use tons of French today on a tour of the small island of Sainte Marie. We met this guy Gregorie (who spoke only Malagasy and French, so I had to translate) and we walked to the east side of the island where he pointed out all the plants (jackfruit, cashew, cinnamon, vanilla, mango, lychee, cloves, pineapples, rice on dry ground, rice in water, coconuts, etc. etc.) that grow on a huge piece of land that he owns. He then took us to his house for a coconut break. Drinking straight out of the ‘nut itself is so fun. Then he grabbed a long pole and a paddle and we bushwhacked down to the beach, us following as he barefootedly led the way. Then we hopped into a dugout canoe and he gondaliered us (I felt so fancy) past the shallow, hot bath water section of the ocean, way out to where the water was not much deeper, but much cooler. The waves were crashing onto the shallow sand and onto the coral heads (“fat potatoes,” he called them in French). We had borrowed a snorkel from some people on shore and were able to swim around and see a good number of fish and huge sections of purple coral. Swimming in the ocean was divine, but we soon went back for a lunch of fish, rice from the field, and shredded and pickled mango stuff, with fresh mangos for dessert. We then walked a long way across bridges and past mangrove swamps to the pirate cemetery, which sounds more awesome than it actually was- but the tombstones were made of coral, which was super unique. Several famous pirates, including William Kidd, did some of their pirating from the island of Sainte Marie. Then the tour was over and we hauled our tired and sunburned selves back to the hotel. Shout out to Mom who walked around all day on her bum hip, for which her recent steroid shot thankfully held out.

Coconut and machete

Pineapple plant

Cashews

Gregorie

Mom + rice plant

This photo pretty much sums up the island: coconuts, water, boats, sand, ocean

Lunch

At the pirate cemetery

Sunday- If Lesotho had this many mosquitoes, I would absolutely go cray cray. I’ve been bathing myself in bug spray and having to wear long sleeves and pants in this heat. The hotels have mosquito nets over the beds, too, without which I might be reduced to a body-shaped mass of itchy bites. I wonder if in other PC countries like this one they issue volunteers gallons of bug spray at a time, instead of the 2 oz they give us Lesotho PCVs in our med kits.

Today we basically did nothing. After yesterday’s trek all over the island, we just hung out at the hotel. The only thing of substance we did was get a tuk tuk into town and get lunch and ice cream (very necessary given the heat). Then I took another one of many cold showers to relieve myself of the heat/humidity and took a nap. Those are the two best words every put together in the same sentence: shower and nap. I’m hanging out in the lobby now. I washed some clothes in the sink and I’m wearing a wet t-shirt, which is much less refreshing than I expected it to be- more like “a wet mop,” as Mom said. As I write, I’m watching the blue/pink/purple layers of clouds in the sky as the sun sets over the faint mainland, while little green lizards skitter along the walls around me.

                Holy #%!*& I’m so itchy.

Tuk tuk!

THB boxes

Mom's not so amused holding my ice cream

Truth

Insanely beautiful

Rainy morning

          Tuesday- Yesterday was our last day at the beautiful Île Sainte Marie. It was a rainy and Harry Potter-filled morning. We decided to hop on a tuk tuk to go to the south of the island, then we transferred to a dugout canoe “pirogue” that took us to Île aux Nattes. I have no idea what a natte is (update: natte means mat), but it was a lovely little island off an island off an island. Any more removed and we’d just be standing on a rock in the middle of the ocean. We wandered through the island for about two hours. There are so many little guest houses! Some locals started to talk with me as we wandered through on the path that cut the island in half, their first question to me being “fille ou garcon?” Story of my life. Anyway, when we reached the other side of the island, we found a little hotel that had a hammock suspended over the water. I also filed that away in my list of things I need in my life eventually. Then I scrambled over some rocks and watched a kid standing on a raft thing push himself through the water with a pole. Nearby, I saw fishermen jetting around in their pirogues.

Transport to and from Ile aux Nattes

Cool hibiscus species

Shades of blue

Trash baskets

Kid pushing himself along on his raft

View from the tall rocks

Pirate tuk tuk

Le Petit Pirogue Prince

            Last night, we arrived back in Tana and went back to our trusty hotel, La Varangue, where we ate an amazing dinner and an assortment of desserts: pan-fried zebu (the cows they have here that have a hump behind their neck) with hearts of palm gratin, so many tiny desserts, and warm bread rolls with real butter. Oh my bob, I’ve been so food deprived, as I (and probably you, dear reader) can tell if I’m raving about having real butter. The hotel has all kids of antique stuff- saxophones, oil lamps, cameras, microscopes, gargantuan wine bottles, etc. and apparently it serves as an informal museum of sorts.

                This morning, since we had a little time to kill, after breakfast I wandered around the street market in the attempt to spend the last of my Ariary. I was heartily successful and soon I had bought some postcards and a few fat, hockey puck-shaped, coconut flavored cake things. I’m on the plane back to Joburg now. Almost home!

                Thursday- Yesterday, after we landed in Joburg and stayed at the very cool Protea hotel (with a “modern warehouse” kind of theme- tires, wooden boxes, wire, and the waiters in the restaurant even wore safety vests), we jetted off to Maseru in the most empty plane I have ever been on. A short 50 minute flight later, we were in Lesotho. After paying way too much for a shuttle to Maseru (the opposite direction we were trying to go), I spotted a semi-empty taxi going the opposite way toward Mohale’s Hoek, and we got off the shuttle and got onto that taxi. What a waste of time. Now I know that the junction to the road is only like 2 miles from the airport. If it were me, I totally just would have walked or found a hitch. But since it was 3 of us with too many bags, that wouldn’t have worked. This taxi on its way to Mohale’s Hoek was the slowest taxi ever, taking us almost 2 hours to get to Mafeteng, when it should have taken about one hour. In the taxi, we squished in there with all our stuff for the first of four taxis that day. We got to the Mohale’s Hoek hotel, my usual hangout, and found lots of other PCVs there. Mom, Mike, Aline, and Jen 4+1ed it (took a mini taxi) to the braai place while Lea and I walked there. On the walk, we had a nice vent about some dumb things PC had recently done and the needless dismissal of yet another fellow PCV. Then I talked about how on the taxi ride over, I had a sense of absolute dread for the coming year wash over me. Just being back in Lesotho on slow public transportation again after being so free in Madagascar was a little bit of a reality shock. But don’t worry; that feeling soon passed as soon as I was with my friends again and stuffing myself with spicy meat.

                Then we all squashed into a taxi going to Quthing, followed by one going to Mount Moorosi, followed by the one to my village. On the road again. This last taxi was insanely crowded with so much stuff. All the people were on board, and there was still a pile of bulk food and buckets of paint and bags on the ground outside the sliding door. “At what point would they just take another taxi?” Mike asked. “They wouldn’t,” I replied. Sure enough, all the stuff was wedged under seats and on top of laps, including an enormous bag of cabbages that I was holding in place with my knees. I wish I could tell you this was atypical. Then when we arrived in the village, we all hiked up my hill, taking several breaks along the way to cope with their sudden encounter with the altitude. We bestowed some gifts upon my ‘me and the family: yogurt I got from town, a calendar with photos of different things from the US, and one of the lemur mugs that the Madagascar tour company gave us. She looked at it puzzled, and I told my ‘me that it was an animal kind of like a monkey. I never know if anything I say in Sesotho ever quite gets across, but I try my darndest. I think she understood.

                Today, we just got back from a quite productive hike around the village. We went across the valleys to the primary and secondary schools, the cliffs that overlook the very sparse-looking Quthing river, another lookout behind the church, the shop and bar, the clinic (where we asked if they needed a dentist, as our dentist back home does free dental work in the Amazon and might be interested to come to Lesotho. They told us that a dentist comes once a month from town), the soccer field, and back on the upper road, where I lamented the lack of water in either of the streams or in any tap we passed. Just before we got back to my house, I went up to my nkhono’s (grandmother’s) house to pick some juicy apricots. It’s not even noon and we’ve basically exhausted all our entertainment options in  the village. Boredom has set in and we’re gonna watch the 5^th Harry Potter movie, since I just finished the book.

               Tomorrow we’ll go to the orphanage. And right there they were shown the gist of my life, and their earlier incredulity of how I was bored all the time was turned around, and we were all reduced to taking naps, reading, and just sitting outside because there was nothing else to do.  Mom later told me that visiting my village was the best part of the trip. I figured it would be, since I always told her about my life in the village, but she was finally able to experience it, if only for a few days.

                Sushi out.