Reflections on Madagascar

I slept in that bed.

Middle of nowhere.

7-11

Pirogue trip to Nosy Ve.

Vendor stand in Ranomafana.

Favorites...
food: homemade zebu yogurt
destination: Faux Cap
town: Morondava
park: Kirindy
beach: Lavanono
landscape: mountains leaving Ranomafana
plant: chubby baobab
animal: Verreaux's sifaka
word: tsara = good
saying: tsi mila = I don't need any
snapshot memory: girl running across hot sand sloshing water out of the bucket on her head TIES WITH naked young man on the side of the (busy) highway helping clothed young man with his broken 10 speed bike (think Hwy 1 at Davenport)
experience: getting bogged the first time and being helped by everyone within sight without hesitation and without request - they all just started digging and pushing until we were free... and them all cheering for my photograph
*Sandrine making animal noises*

Verreaux's sifaka

Chubby Baobabs

Least Favorites:
burning land
people using beach as toilet
broken 4WD
Ambovombe


Looking back, I realize how much of my Madagascar experience isn't recorded in photographs.  I have a hard time pointing my camera at the faces of people I don’t know, no matter how beautiful I think the image will be.  When I muster the nerve to ask permission, the moment has usually passed and the dynamic has changed.  I want the photo of the woman in a brightly colored and patterned sarong wrapped over her very unmatching brightly colored and other patterned blouse (that somehow works) gracefully walking barefoot down the street with a basket of who knows what effortlessly balanced on her head. I don’t want the photo of the posed woman looking stiff and uncomfortable and staring blankly into my camera.
Also, I spent a lot of time in the back seat of a moving vehicle and it wasn't realistic to stop at every scene that caught my eye. We drove 3800km in 25 days, passing through vastly different landscapes. The mountainous highlands with red dirt, bright green rice fields, lots of water and cooler temperatures.  The warm dense jungle teeming with wildlife and its calls.  The dry rolling grass hills of the southeast dotted with out-of-place-looking traveler’s palm and continually leading you to yet another valley river crossing.  The hot and dry spiny forest in the south that is a tangle of dead-looking trees, vines, bushes and cacti all sporting their own variety of painful daggers.  The remote southern Indian Ocean coastline with its end of the earth feeling, sand tracks and revitalizing breezes. The west coast fishing villages built right up to the waters of the Mozambique Channel.  The dry deciduous forest bursting with birdlife, lemurs and joyful chubby baobab trees.

We saw people existing in every environment with villages sharing a common layout but defined by the natural materials surrounding them.  Brick houses where the soil is clay, wood homes when there are trees around, stick and thatch houses where trees are scarce. There is always a source of fresh water, whether it be a well or a natural body of water and there are always people crowded around it, filling buckets, barrels or jerry cans for use elsewhere.  We drove past (and sometimes through) oceans, lakes, rivers, creeks, puddles and irrigation troughs where people were washing themselves or any other imaginable thing.  I saw trucks, motorcycles, zebu (ox-like animals) and clothing being washed and naked men, women and children bathing.  The smaller and more stagnant the water source (and the more trucks driving through it), the more I questioned whether a person was cleaner or dirtier after their bath.  How those clothes got clean, being washed in a muddy puddle and dried laying on a hot patch of red dirt, I'll never know... I'll just never take my washing machine (or tap water, for that matter) for granted again!
Small villages would appear "in the middle of nowhere" with 5 to 20 huts generally clustered together on a flat piece of dirt bordering the road. Any visible adults were mostly clustered together in a shady spot and children were scattered about, engaged in some form of play, until they heard the truck and came running to wave and smile and holler cheerfully after us.

Towns showed up on our map and usually had a couple of dirt streets besides the main one, a church, a school, some gargottes (local eating establishment), a few basic accommodation options and a small market. The main road, whether paved, dirt or sand is typically lined by crooked wooden stands and stalls with men selling all varieties of fresh (fly covered) slabs of meat or greasy, rusty metal parts from mechanical things long dead. Chicken meat is sold feather-covered and still clucking, just hang it upside down by its feet until you get it home. The women are vendors of grains, dry fish, fruits, vegetables and prepared items. Rice, yam and sweet potato were available everywhere. Mango, banana, papaya, coeur de boeuf, carrot and tomato were regularly available except in the far south. Fresh? salads of carrot or pasta would be displayed on tables or in cases, usually uncovered, so that the dust and bugs kicked up by the passing cars, trucks, taxi-brousse, pousse-pousse, people, bikes, zebu, goats, ducks, dogs, cats and chicken would inevitably add their flavor as well. My favorite item (and frequent purchase at 5 cents each) was the deep fried ball of rice bread batter offered fresh or stale, depending on your luck. The word for bread is pronounced moof... so these delightful treats are called moof balls. 4 donuts a day keep the hunger at bay.

Was that an overwhelming paragraph?  It was meant to be.

Making fresh moof balls.

 The big cities Fort Dauphin and Antananarivo are loud and dirty and hectic and contain all the people and their offerings of a small town amplified exponentially. Both wealth and poverty are visibly magnified, as is outside influence. I'm sure these cities have many positive attributes (culture, history, style, supermarkets and bakeries) but I'm not one to stick around long enough to flesh them out. Toliara was an exception to my dislike of big cities. Maybe it was because I arrived by boat and was transferred to shore in an ox-cart where the zebu were up to their armpits in water. Or maybe it was because I arrived on a quiet Sunday when everything was closed and locked myself up in my $56, 5 star splurge hotel room with WiFi to talk to my hubby for the first time in 2 weeks.  Either way, the city felt like a crumbling ghost town in the process of being reinhabited and for that reason, was charming to me.
Madagascar was friendly and safe beyond my expectations. Hiring a "4WD" and a driver allowed us to access parts of the country off the tourist track and for me to experience the most remote travel of my life. I loved the accessibility and variety of wildlife and could imagine returning to visit parks in the northern region of the country.

Goodbye Mada!

I'm a Terrible Blogger

 I'm a terrible blogger. I already knew that I'm terrible at journal writing but I thought the pressure of publishing for other people would make me better. It hasn't. I left Madagascar 12 days ago and still haven't completed my "Reflections on Madagascar" entry. What I have written is painfully boring. I can't even claim lack of internet since I've had excellent access in S. Africa and Mozambique (by Mada standards). So, I apologize for being a terrible blogger... but I'm having a fantastic time!

I arrived in Durban, S.Africa November 1st. It is now November 11th. I was a world traveler wearing dirty clothes for Halloween, by the way. It was culture shock for me arriving at the Durban airport, all bright lights/big city/flushing toilets and the like. I had to control my immediate urge to buy all the clean, cold, sterilely packaged food stuffs surrounding me. I hadn’t been missing Pringles but availability makes the heart grow fonder, you know.  It was a strange feeling to drive on a proper freeway with lines, lights and signs and without goats, zebu carts and potholes. People still walk along the road (yes, the freeway), though not nearly as many. I felt a little sad to return to “civilization” but a little excited too… internet!!!
We spent the next day getting our Mozambique Visa and exploring the beach area of Durban. My $7 lunch potato adjusted my wallet economy.  I was used to getting more food than I could eat for about $2. To be fair, we did have an ocean view (and a clean table cloth, and pretty dishes and clean drinking water and…). 
The next day I had the great honor to meet Jes Foord and volunteer for her foundation. She’s the girl next door, except that one morning she was out walking the dog with her dad and was raped by 5 men.  In the two years following, Jes has organized the cooperation of hospitals, police, counselors and volunteers to provide compassionate care for rape victims in the Durban area. She is 25 now and has already accomplished truly amazing things.  Please check out her website: www.jff.org.za

 I am traveling with my friend Lisa and her friend Pamela in Lisa’s truck Benny. Only 2 of us fit up front so one of us lays on the mattress in the camper/truck bed while en route. From Durban we headed north to St. Lucia for our first night (where Pamela discovered that she had already lost her wallet with all of her money and credit/ATM cards). Most of the next day (8 wonderful hours) was spent driving through the Umfolozi/Hluhluwe National Park on our way to Sodwana Bay. You are allowed to “self-drive” through these joined parks where the animals roam freely!  It was AWESOME! We saw white rhinos, giraffe, zebra, impala, elephants, buffalo, wildebeest, kudu, warthogs and some cool birds.

Sodwana Bay had a nice beach but unfortunately our attempts at snorkeling were foiled by... well, it just wasn't a good place to snorkel- surgey and shallow. I had hoped to dive but was congested from a cold I picked up on the flight to Durban. I particularly liked the thieving vervet monkies and packs of mongoose at our campsite.   By campsite, I mean our tent #5 in a row of 10 tents between two other rows of 10 tents. Oh yeah, and they had a big satellite TV where I learned that Obama is still my president. Yay!  Next up was Swaziland and our enormous 2 bedroom bungalow with kitchen, living room and loft inside the Hlane Royal National Park. Just outside of our palace was a watering hole where rhinos, hippos and warthogs were drinking and wallowing upon our arrival (the park office and bungalow area is surrounded by 2 strands of barbed wire for our protection- from 2 ton animals that can run 40 km/h. mmhmmm  Due to rain, we couldn’t self-drive in that park which is probably a good thing. Lisa and I did a guided sunset drive with “just do me” and at one point we were aggressively told to BACK OFF by a bull elephant protecting his females and offspring. Ndome (his actual name) found us a lion and 3 lionesses before the end of our drive. 

The next day we had a less than smooth border crossing into Mozambique. Portuguese is the official language and English isn’t so common, it turns out.  The stern lady at the counter took our passports, frowned and shook her head. No amount of hand gesturing or explaining slowly or in different tones or cadence could make her understand that the lovely gentleman at the Mozambique consulate in Durban had misdated 2 of our 3 visas.  Mine expires 1/1/13, theirs expire 1/1/12, 10 months before they were issued. At least I won’t be going to jail! Anyway, we worked it out and stumbled our way through the rest of the hoops into Mozambique. We spent a night in Maputo, the capital city, at Hotel Santa Cruz. It didn’t feel safe or all that friendly until I spent some time with the desk staff practicing some Portuguese phrases and pronunciation. Like in any country, they love it if you TRY. I get some good laughs when I accidentally garble French with Spanish to make Portuguese. Ugh. None of us really enjoy a big city and we all have these visions of snorkeling from sandy beaches so we left early for Tofo, by way of Inhambane (a nice enough town where residents party to bumping music til dawn). Tofo is lovely. Specifically, we found excellent accommodation with a kitchen right on the beach, next door to the dive shop, great food and wifi.

There are too many waves and jellyfish in the water for me to want to go swimming most of the time but the sand is really nice for walking and the weather is gorgeous. We have stayed 3 nights so far and are scheduled to leave tomorrow for Vilanculo. I have been on 3 deep dives and 1 shallow. I had a great encounter with a giant manta ray today, then saw 8 devil rays “flying” in formation. I have not yet seen a whale shark, which is why people come here. Which is why WE came here. There have been 2 separate sightings of one whale shark in the time we’ve been here. I have one more chance tomorrow morning...