Bike Trip

None of us really knew what we were signing up for. All we knew is that we were going to be allowed to travel to another part of the country with other volunteers without having to take vacation. Sign me up. I understood biking was involved and that we were doing events involving HIV/AIDS. In 11 days we biked to 9 different towns with long names surrounding Lake Aloatra.

Amparafaravola
The trip to Amparafaravola, at approximately 70k in length, was the longest leg of our bike trip and trip planners thought it would be a good idea to get it out of the way first. Our biking brigade, consisting of 22 eager PVC’s, hit the road like a bunch of eager lemmings and raced to our first destination. The road was paved and the terrain only slightly challenging, plus we had the wind at our backs. The Lake Aloatra region is known as the “bread basket of Madagascar” and like most “breadbaskets” world round, it is topographically uninspiring and there aren’t any tourists. We easily tackled the low rolling hills and long stretches of pavement through lowland rice paddies, but by the time we arrived in town we were exhausted and ready for bed. We set up camp in front of a city office. There was one toilet. As we set up our tents we began to collect a group of curious onlookers. Since there is zero tourism in the region, the sight of 20 white people erecting nylon habitations in the center of town garnered more than just passive interest. When we emerged dreary eyed and disheveled the next morning, there were already 6-7 Malagasy watching us intently like a bunch of kindergarteners watching eggs hatch.
The first run of our festival was a little rocky. We tried to build homemade-budget collapsible tables for each of our five learning booths. Alas, the finished product would implode into a pile of wood and string if there was so much as a gentle breeze. We attracted a crowd of eight or nine hundred people and stumbled through our respective speeches on condom use, nutrition, health, HIV/AIDS and budgeting. Unfortunately the majority of our participants were young children for whom a lesson on family planning was about as useful as a lesson in microbiology.

Vohitsara
The morning after our event in Amparafaravola we began on our ‘typical schedule’ namely biking and doing a festival in the same day. We packed up our tents (under the close scrutiny of our Malagasy observers who were up to see us off at 6AM) and hit the road for a 40 kilometer bruiser before Vohitsara where we arrived at lunchtime giving us just 90 minutes to set up before our festival starts. Vohitsara is a small sandy town located on a bit of high ground surrounded by an endless expanse of rice paddies. The entire town turned out to our festival. The ‘stage’ the village had constructed out of woven plastic sheeting for us to use for our speeches was torn asunder by the wind and had to be abandon in favor of a dirt clearing. The villages were so enthralled by the singing/dancing white people (we had written some HIV/AIDS jingles) that we soon found ourselves completely surrounded by a eager mob of 900-1000 Malagasy people. As program progressed the children sitting in front gradually encroached so that there was hardly room for us to stand.

Tanambe
Located a short 7k from Vohitsara, Tanambe is the market town and administrative head of the west side of the lake. It is also one of the dirtiest and least appealing cities I have ever visited in Madagascar. The streets were crammed and congested. It smelled like burnt garbage and latrine everywhere. The one hotel in town hosted some of our ‘daintier bikers’ and everyone was excited to take showers there. When I turned on the water a weak cold trickle came out and by the time I had my hair damp the water stopped completely and my shower was abandon. The festival in this town was a little lackluster, the wind was unbearable and it tore our paper information posters apart, nearly destroying our information booths. I participated in a new game we invented called “The-first-kid-to-catch-the-white-person-gets-a-free-pencil” To add some time to our already 4-hour program we began filling our dead-space with all-volunteer dancing to American pop-music on stage. The Malagasy would just stare at us not sure whether to be entertained or confused. It was after our event in Tanambe, we began to feel like a traveling white person circus.

Ambohitrampirana
The bike to this town was the 2nd longest but also most beautiful ride of our trip. We left early but I got a flat front tire about ten kilometers in. There was a little repair hut on the side of the road and I lost about 10 minutes on the pack so I had to bike quickly to catch up. This bike ride was also notable because half way in we ran out of pavement and the rest of the trip was conducted on dirt roads. We stopped for food in the market town where we wolfed down some bread as almost 60 curious Malagasy watched us from the street. Ambohitrampirana was the tiniest town we visited. Located on top of a hill composed almost entirely of crystallized quarts, the area was dry and was the closest approximation of Niger I have yet seen in Madagascar. The water in Ambohitrampirana is thirty meters down and looks like iced tea. Because the number of people in the town was small, four of us wandered into the countryside on a “rabble-raising” mission. As we wandered into the adjoining villages, children fled at the sight of four uniformed (we had made T-shirts) white people walking into town. They probably though the French colonizers were back.

Antanandava
This town is near the entrance of a National Park. It has received five tourists in the past 6 months, and for good reason, there was nothing particularly interesting about it. Once again our festival suffered due to high winds. It was a Sunday so many of the men showed up at our festival drunk. Stephanie lip-syncing to Eminem’s and Rihanna’s new duet became a permanent part of our program (with required backup dancers).We were served beans for dinner for the 5th day in a row.

Imerimandroso
Although the it’s the capital of the North-Western part of the lake Imerimandroso is a ghost town. Suffering from years of depopulation and decay, most of the buildings in town are falling apart and the stores are all closed. We are given a beautiful spot on top of a hill overlooking the lake to do our festival. The lake, as it turns out, is more of a bog. Most of the marshy areas have already been converted into rice paddies and long reeds grow in the shallow bottoms almost out to the center of the lake.

Ambatosoratra
Ambatosoratra is a pleasant town down near the lake shore. It required a considerable amount of effort to bike the 20k into the wind on a dirt road. The villages were very interested in our festival and we were served chick-peas and meat rather than beans. This stop on the trip was also significant because it was my first shower. It is also next to the only place in the region where one can see the Aloatra Reed Lemur, a rare and endangered species. Unfortunately the lemurs are nocturnal so a group of intrepid volunteers, myself included, woke up at 4, biked blindly into the middle of a field and paid a guy with a dugout canoe $2 to go find some with us. The mist was heavy and the full moon was out. In the east we could see a moonbow. Skimming smoothly across the lake between the reeds and bailing water out of the boat with a metal bowl, we heard something in the distance. It wasn’t a lemur, it was another canoe with a radio playing Justin Bieber’s new hit “Baby” on full volume. Proving once and for all that American culture can follow you no matter how far away you go. We found the lemurs; they looked like a mix between a miniature monkey and a muskrat, although they were really cute.

Ambohitsilaozana
After we docked the canoes we set off for Ambohitsilaozana. During our ride in, a beautiful rainbow emerged from the clouds in front of us and it sat magnificently in the sky for over two hours. Ambohitsilaozana was built around the now defunct train station in the center of town. A Peace Corps volunteer now calls the old ticket booth home. The village is also home to the best mofo akondro (battered and fried bananas) I have tasted anywhere in Madagascar. I worked the condom demonstration booth and did a very good session which included a woman who looked no younger than 90.

Ambatondrazaka
This town was both our starting and ending point for our trip. We all camped in front of one volunteer’s house near the high school and took showers. Our final HIV/AIDS festival was poorly attended (only a few hundred) but we were able to bring some doctors to do testing and 34 people were tested (all negative!). To celebrate the completion of the trip we went out the only dance club in town and stayed out late. The next morning we caught the early van back to the capital. The trip was 9 hours and we were all exhausted. Our driver was determined to play loud Malagasy music the whole time so Alison unwired the speakers in the back seat and we all passed out.