Sundays

With the recent re-population of the Route National 25 corridor with new volunteers, I am suddenly facing a new and strange phenomenon: American neighbors. Rebekah and Ally are now 21 and 47 kilometers away respectively opening up the possibility of a day trip to visit one another. Accordingly, we planned a weekly Sunday brunch.
An excellent opportunity to spend one day a week with university educated Americans and to avoid spending an entire day alone in my house with my recalcitrant cat, our little dinners have become the highlight of my week. We make the most of our time by having an impromptu American cultural hour before we start chopping the vegetables. Complete with poetry readings, scripture, favorite music, and book readings it is easy to forget that we don’t speak the mother tongue for the other six days of the week.
Food prep is coordinated by the culinary despot Rebekah which is ok by the rest of us because it always turns out scrumptious.
Emerging from our collective food coma in the early afternoon, we embark on a walk around whoever’s site we happen to be visiting that week. Last week, when promenading about the district capital of Ifanadiana, we wandered up the palm-lined avenue to the Maison du Chef de District de Vatovavy (French speak for Governor’s Mansion). As the center of administration for one of Madagascar’s 22 regions, the hilltop château gracing the top of the town certainly left something to be desired. The splendid wrap around verandah was collapsing in places, the moss infested gutters hung distended from the roof like thick vines, and weeds had re-conquered the careful efforts of the evicted French colonial gardeners. Presently a portly Malagasy man bedecked in athletic shorts and an old pocketed t-shirt advertising a local laundry detergent met us in the yard. In the course of our ensuing polite banter, this unassuming character revealed he was, in fact, the Governor himself. Still reeling from this somewhat surprising revelation, we were further taken aback when he invited the three of us inside to play a few rounds of Dominoes.
Entering the dilapidated mansion, we were led into a room decorated like the operation center of an Eastern European drug kingpin. Painted a deep shade of blue, the outsized room contained no windows or light fixtures. The only furnishings were a semi-circle of gargantuan leather chairs facing a rugged coffee table. In the far corner was a pile meter high stack of official looking papers positioned ominously next to a blackened fireplace. The worn leather recliners swallowed us with ease, although I quickly realized that playing a game with my posterior only inches above the floor and my knees pointing straight up in the air would be challenging indeed. An underling arrived with the dominoes and the Governor asked seriously if we would be bothered if he smoked, as if we were really going to tell him to abstain. Though the governor insisted on sitting out while the three volunteers played, he dictated strategy to Rebekah and eventually assumed praetorian control of her little white rectangles. Though I got off to a disappointing start, I managed to win both matches we played, shutting out the governor in round two. We lingered and chatted while he choked down his 9th cigarette before we excused ourselves. Though we had a great time, I realize we should probably desist from spending our weekends with the upper echelon of regional government. Next Sunday will undoubtedly be less eventful.
In a brief prologue I would like to submit the following incident as evidence of the monumental incompetence of what masquerades as postal service in this country. Last Wednesday, the unfortunate little postal worker who has borne the brunt of my ire with ‘Postera Malagasy’ and their failure to perform even the most rudimentary tasks, excitedly indicated through intense gesticulation that for the first time in four and a half months I had mail. Overcome with anticipation for the mountain of letters and well wishes from friends and family back in the developed world, I gripped the counter as he disappeared in the back room for a few minutes, no doubt he was trying to consolidate all my envelopes into a single box or at least wrap them up in a thick bundle of happiness secured with a strong rubber band. Beaming with pride, he emerged from the back room bearing a single envelope addressed to “Katie Browne PCV, Madagascar National Parks AMBAJA Madagascar.” It was all I could do not to throw the mishandled mail back into his beaming face and lend him a piece of my mind. Instead I politely informed him that my name is not Katie and that the person he is looking for lives some 800k away on the Northern coast of the island. Knowing full well that if I resubmitted this letter for delivery it may never see the light of day again, I resolved to hold onto it until I see Katie again in January. To illustrate my point a bit further, when the letter in question arrived in Antananarivo via airmail, the nincompoops at Malagasy Post only managed to get the letter 435k FURTHER AWAY from its desired recipient. Meanwhile I still have no mail.

Other Side of the Coin

Picture is of the Nursery Expansion

Back in September, sixteen Malagasy farmers came into Ranomafana and slept three nights on the hard concrete floor of the local elementary school for the privilege of receiving fruit trees from the tree nursery. Hailing from scattered villages in the district of Ranomafana, these farmers have spent the past month collecting their saplings from the nursery and arranging them in orchards on previously barren hillsides. As the trees start to go in the ground, it is my job to go out to visit the farmers to ensure the trees are spaced properly, remain healthy, and are well cared for.
My partner in crime is Mani, a taller Malagasy man with one front tooth and an impeccable tendency to show up late for our meetings. Our job description does not sound terribly arduous: Meet the farmer, investigate the orchard, and get a stamp from the Chef d’Fokantany (town mayor). The challenge lies in the getting there. All of our transportation is done on foot on ‘roads’ that even the most liberal of American cartographers would designate as a “strenuous hiking trails.” My first excursion required three hours of trekking to a non-descript village only to find out that the farmer there had not yet planted his orchard. This morning we had to ford the Namarona River’s waist deep water twice. Mani imprudently wore pants; removing them he arrived in the village of Morafeno in his underwear. Although appointments with the farmers were scheduled in advance, we often arrive weary and sweaty to find that the person we are looking for is panning for gold, planting rice, or practicing some slash-and-burn.
Many of the orchards have already been expertly planted by their enthusiastic proprietors who are keen to show off their handiwork. Sometimes we are greeted by the entire extended family, welcoming us into their house offering gifts of coffee and bananas. Not all the orchards, unfortunately, have met with complete success. One farmer’s wife led us nearly a kilometer straight up a mountain only to discover that their infant orchard was already a victim of rapine. Two of the newly planted citrus saplings had been uprooted and stolen. We found a jabotikaba tree was found in the bushes nearby bushes, likely discarded due to the fruit-tree’s uncanny likeness to a native tree species notable only for its uselessness.
My new peripatetic profession has helped me to uncover a new favorite activity, namely running barefoot through the rainforest. With the leech population reduced by the dry weather and assured by the knowledge that there are no poisonous snakes or other potentially incapacitating wildlife living in the forest, I feel free to wander freely with my denuded feet. Feeling the rich earth beneath my feet and cool thick air rushing through my lungs as I lunge between vines and mossy rocks gives me a sensation of absolute bliss. The tourists with their heavy hiking boots and thick socks never get to feel the water rushing between their toes as they walk through a stream or know what a patch of bamboo grass feels like underfoot. When the rains return in December, I’ll undoubtedly need to break out my shoes again, but until then I intend to do all my forest hiking without footwear.
Though my previous blog post concluded rather ominously, I take comfort in the fact that in these sixteen little patches of earth near Ranomafana National Park, there won’t be any more burning. As I mentioned before, the objective of this project is to give farmers the tools and opportunities to stop the devastating agricultural methods of their ancestors. Many of the orchards are plated within view of vulnerable unprotected forest. One farmer in particular lives in a meticulously deforested patch of land surrounded entirely by pristine jungle. There is still no one who can stop the burning that continues to ravage this fragile island. But maybe next year there will be one less fire as the fruit trees grow and propagate, and 10 years from now far fewer as our little orchards expand and turn the burned moonscape into a prosperous green hillside.

Reality Check

Picture is a fire burning above Ranomafana village

Though September and October are the high water marks for tourism in Ranomafana, it is also the season when all the Malagasy farmers take to the hills with their curved axes and burn the forest down. A few weeks of dry weather dries the underbrush and turns the entire male population of this formerly green island into frantic pyromaniacs. For the past six weeks, the valley of Ranomafana has languished in the smoggy haze resulting from all the burning, obscuring the forested mountaintops that remain in the East. While fetching water last week I was caught in a small flurry of ash descending from the sky. Ostensibly the purpose of all this environmental rape is to prepare the land for planting cassava, a crop with all the succulent flavor and nutritional value of a newspaper. Also, most of the land being subjected to slash and burn ‘agriculture’ isn’t forest; it’s already de-forested land that has been struggling to recover. However, there are still some parcels of the remaining forest included in the inferno every year as human progress marches forward.
Not to mention the extraordinary amount of erosion these fires are going to cause when the rains roll through in the coming months, or the astronomical cost of repairing infrastructure damaged by this erosion, the main loss to the people of Madagascar, and the world, is the permanent loss of biodiversity. Additionally, each fire set has the potential to grow out of control and burn through the Park, the economic lifeblood of Ranomafana. Just a few weeks ago, a fire set near Isalo National Park grew too large, got out of control, and proceeded to destroy most of the sites I hiked through and raved about last month. The leafy canyons, grassy landscapes, and even the picnic site with the friendly lemur families were all tragically reduced to ash. The Malagasy are trying to shoot themselves in the foot, but catching the bullet in the face on the ricochet.
For the past week I have sat on my back stoop watching the fires rage and light up the evening sky just across the river from my house and wondering how a supposed ‘environment volunteer’ can take all this so supinely. I want to form a bucket brigade and have the people responsible for the appalling destruction arrested. But blaming the local Malagasy farmers for this is like blaming the boiler-room workers on the Titanic for driving the ship into the iceberg. Compounding the poverty that inspires this madness are a truly Byzantine system of land distribution and ownership, a wild-west style of law enforcement, and a corrupt political system that ensures that the people on the bottom receive no benefit from the wealth of tourist dollars that Ranomafana is blessed with. As much as I want to end this post with an up-beat assessment of conservation or a clever quip about hope for the future, I feel that would be misleading. The forest is burning and there is nothing I, or anyone, can do to stop it.

Checklist of Chores to do Before Company Arrives

1. Remove visible dirt from the surface of the bed
2. Attack baseball-sized spider festering in the corner of the room. Preferably killing it, but wounding it and forcing the unfortunate creature to beat a retreat into the ceiling is adequate also.
3. Remove rodent, feline, and other feces from the floor.
4. Locate/unpack deodorant stick. Use liberally. Display someplace easily perceptible.
5. Inform neighbors and villages that the visitor in question is not your significant other. This will alleviate rampant gossip on the subject, but will prevent neither children from giggling and pointing, nor neighborhood women from discussing you and your guest’s relationship audibly as you pass by.
6. Remove wet/dank laundry from the furniture where it has been failing to dry since you washed it two days ago. Prioritize undergarments.
7. Open all windows/doors to air out the faint smell of urine.
8. Buy toilet paper or dismember one of the old notebooks from pre-service training.
9. Clean* dishes
10. Hide precious objects from America you are not prepared to share. (Oreo cookies, JIF peanut butter, some candies)


*any of the following are acceptable definitions of ‘Clean’
-Cleaner than it was before
-Clean enough
-I would consider eating of that
-It looks clean
-“Off-white”

Also while I am writing this at the Internet Café there is an overweight American man yelling into his blackberry at some unfortunate customer service representative. He can’t understand why his baggage wasn’t delivered to his hotel some 300k away from the capital by yesterday. He making me laugh.
In other news my cat caught the huge rat that has been menacing me for months this morning. She ate the head and the tail off it (which I can not imagine are the best cuts of rat) and then regurgitated most of it on my mat. I was very happy.

Isalo

Route National 7 is perhaps the most interesting road I have ever traveled. It runs over 950 kilometers from the capital to the coastal city of Tulear in the deep south of Madagascar. In that span, this thin ribbon of pavement passes through some of the most diverse and interesting landscapes in Madagascar. Starting in the Central Plateau, the road curves up into the Irish-looking Betsileo Highlands, skirts the Eastern Rainforests near Ranomafana before passing though the beautiful city of Fianarantsoa. The highway then passes within view of the granite peaks of the Andringitra Mountains and spills onto the grassy rock studded hills of the Bara tribe. Past the town of Ihosy the landscape flattens into a brown plain that could rival any plains state for its apparent endlessness. Suddenly, however, sandstone peaks emerge from the semi-arid plane at the base of which glitters the boom-town of Ranohira (meaning ‘water song’ in Malagasy). This town and the National Park which towers over it in the cliffs were the destination of my most recent adventure.
Mark, my partner in fruit tree crime here in Ranomafana, and the organization he works for had made contact with a woman named Monique who is interested in using the organization Mark works for to start a fruit and native tree nursery at her hotel near Ranohira and Isalo National Park. Mark invited me to go down in his car with him and fellow volunteers Alison and Haley came along for the ride as well. We got the trip off on the right foot by stopping at a local winery and buying mildly alcoholic grape juice in old glass bottles from a street vendor for 45 cents a liter. Lacking cups, we drank to the journey straight from the bottle like a bunch of pirates.
Passing the valleys north of the Andringitra Mountains we drove though a Malagasy edition of the 8th plague, namely locust. They covered the sky like a thick black snow and passed over us in a heavy cloud. After lunching in Ihosy we emerged on the vast Bara Plains where vast swathes of the brown grasses were being burned to encourage new growth in the spring for cattle. Arriving at our destination in Ranohira, we checked into our hotel and began sorting out dinner. In a truly Peace Corps attempt to save a few bucks we had packed the entire gas tank and stove apparatus into the back of the car with my pots, pans, dishes, and all the ingredients to make a Szechwan stir fry. Although we were staying at one of the lower class establishments in Ranohira, the sight of four Americans huddled around a single dome light chopping carrots and green beans in the parking lot of the hotel restaurant still garnered a few judgmental glances from other guests.
We took advantage of the Sunday work siesta to find a guide and journey into Isalo National Park. One of the largest parks in Madagascar, Isalo boasts some of the most spectacular landscapes, plant life, and unparalleled beauty I have yet encountered in Madagascar. The arid cliff faces that give the park its panoramic drama are peppered with a squatty relative of the baobab tree that can live up to 500 years old and present a truly impressive display of bright yellow flowers. Descending from the high cliffs into the valleys one finds themselves in a lush forest fed by natural springs emanating from the center of the park. These modest creeks cut canyons hundreds of feet deep creating deep clear pools of water that just begs to be cannon balled into by hot and sweaty hikers. These low valleys are the perfect home for all sorts of rare plants including palms and pandanis that grow into sizes and heights I had heretofore considered impossible. There are also large populations of lemur that inhabit these Eden-like microhabitats. Our peaceful picnic of packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches was crashed by two troops of Ring Tailed and Brown lemurs. It was all we could do to keep these ostentatious primates out of our food. When shooing them like chickens produced few results my beleaguered comrades and I tried to box the invaders off the table. In the end the assailants got off with a cracker and a banana peel and we got some neat pictures out of the ordeal.
Meanwhile, our entreats to meet with Monique were coming to nothing. Ignoring the itinerary she had e-mailed us in days previous she had flow to Paris and would not be back until after our group was leaving. Facing the complete failure of the ‘business’ portion of our trip, the elderly proprietress of our hotel recommended we go and meet M. Bernie. She made a few phone calls and arranged for this ‘Bernie’ to swing by and take us to his orchards on the morrow. Once arrangements had been finalized, the old hotel owner began making strange foreboding comments about our pending visit. “Well you know how Bernie doesn’t like people on his property sometimes… He doesn’t speak any English… Well, whatever the case your visit will certainly be interesting!”
Bernie screeched to a stop in front of our hotel at 9 AM the following morning in an oddly shaped white pick-up crammed with some mysterious irrigation equipment. A shockingly old man in a trucker hat was behind the wheel listening to piano show tunes at a level clearly audible from a solid 20 meters away. He stuck his head out the window, yelled something in French to our driver, sounded off his clown-car horn, and we were off. Bernie’s estate is on the boarder of the park where he owns 100 hectares of arid grassland and rock. There is one small oasis some distance from the paved road where Bernie was presently leading us. Upon our arrival, Bernie leaped from the truck and greeted each of us in Malagasy with a firm handshake. He was wearing knee-length rubber waders and a pair of tiny white shorts that displayed a surprisingly generous amount of thigh. Born in Madagascar in 1926, Bernie was on his 5th wife (the most recent of 15 years) had learned French and some eight different Malagasy dialects but had never learned English thus we would spend the entire visit talking with this Frenchmen in Malagasy. Once we introduced ourselves he looked me straight in the face and asked me if I was Catholic. I fumbled through an explanation alluding to my Catholic university years, but he interrupted me to point out a statue of the virgin up on the rocks. If I was Catholic, Bernie declared, I could say a prayer to her, if I wasn’t I could say a prayer anyway but I would have to pay him for it. I gave him a perplexed look and he erupted in a peal of laughter.
After he learned that we were Peace Corps volunteers interested in fruit trees his deeply tanned face lit up and he took off into his orchard gesticulating heavily telling us to follow. For the next 45 minutes we struggled to keep up with this loquacious octogenarian as he hopped from tree to tree pointing out his seemingly unreal grafting abilities. He also demonstrated for us some of his truly innovative methods for making pots out of pounded earth and his expansive gardening facilities. He was continually cracking jokes in Malagasy and continued lecturing us on his projects until he suddenly got back into his car, told us he was off to Tulear (some 200k away), and left us in a dazed cloud of dust. Somewhere between the jokes, excited jabbering, and solid advice Bernie gave us permission to hike around his beautiful property which we did enthusiastically for about 40 minutes before our hungry stomachs forced us to retreat for lunch.
This week I am doing a big training at my house for 16 farmers with SAF/FJKM. I also would like to point out that I have not received any mail at my ranomafana address since July so I fear that my mail is no longer operating here. My Antananarivo address is still working.

Domestic Life

Haley’s presence in my house over her ‘grande vacance’ has provided a welcome respite from the solitude that typically awaits me in my humble abode. Haley’s normal Peace Corps work, force-feeding English to pot-smoking Malagasy middle schoolers, does not provide her with much free time so she has been enjoying her time off in Ranomafana writing letters, reading books, and helping me with the occasional project. Most significantly, she has been assisting me in bringing out my inner homemaker.
Haley’s arrival coincided with a visit at the neighbor’s by Rodrigue’s mother-in-law, making room at the dinner table scarce and compelling Haley and I to scrounge for our own supper. Normally, this would have propelled me into a serious food crisis, returning to my staples of pasta & hot sauce or fried-egg-on-bread-slice. Thankfully, Haley came to the rescue. Having studied for months at her site under the careful tutelage of another volunteer who modeled herself as the Martha Stewart of Madagascar, she had quite the repertoire or recipes up her sleeve. My personal favorite being Szechwan green beans served over rice. After three weeks of cooking at home, the mother-in-law packed up and left so we invited Rodrigue and the family over for a dinner party.
Serving complex foreign foods to Malagasy is a risky business for Peace Corps volunteers. Horror stories abound of unsuccessful attempts to accommodate the extremely picky Malagasy palate. One volunteer who laboriously prepared pasta and marinara sauce had a child literally spit it out at her feet as the mother excused herself to cook some rice. I personally witnessed two Malagasy scoop out the insides of a single rice-stuffed tomato and not finding the rice to their satisfaction left most of the contents on their plate. Determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past, Haley and I prepared the rice separately from our Szechwan green bean & carrot topping and took precautions not to make the food to spicy.
When the big day came and everyone had gathered around the table in my living room Haley lifted the lids from the food and Rodrigue’s wife informed us flatly that she was not eating that. She then explained that she only eats traditional Malagasy foods and asked for some cold water to pour over her plain rice. The other more adventurous members of the family seemed to enjoy the food and everyone was pleased when I asked them if they would like to watch an American film on my computer once the meal was concluded.
Sharbaraz the cat is slowly coming of age and has been doing excellent work being lazy around the house. When my accommodations are no longer to her liking, she ditches me for the neighbor’s house and passes the afternoon shooting me contemptuous glances from their bedroom window. Yet, she makes a quick return whenever Haley or I return with food of any sort, bananas in particular. Given the opportunity, my cat would sell her soul for a banana. So much as touch one of these delectable yellow fruits and the cat will tear around the room, climbing on furniture, and creating a general ruckus. She will even go so far as to climb onto one’s shoulder and attempt to take a bite out it as I try to put it my mouth. I wouldn’t be very inclined to fuel her addiction, but this week she finally started pulling her weight around the house by catching her first mouse. Haley and I were both thrilled with this development and toasted her success by treating ourselves to pasta whilst Sharbaraz consumed the entirety of her prize under the table.
Though one mouse has firmly bitten the dust, there is another, much larger rodent still lurking in my house. This very large rat emerges from the wall each night, crawls up next to Haley’s bed in the living room and leaves fecal evidence of its presence for us to find each new morning. The cat is much more interested in trying to force her way into my bed in the middle of the night to waste time prowling in the dark for this serious offender. Haley has gone so far as to put up an entire bunch of bananas as a reward for its capture dead or alive, but Sharbaraz remains uninterested.
The cat has also proved worthless in defending the house against invading chickens. Rodrigue’s flock of poultry has multiplied to nearly 18 birds and they have discovered a way to wriggle under my gate and invade my deteriorating garden. There is one particular brown hen that cannot comprehend that she is not welcome around my house. One sunny afternoon when Haley and I were focused on an intense hand of Gin Rummy, the chicken in question came fluttering and squawking through the window landing in the center of our neatly arranged runs and sets of three. Having evicted her back through the window she snuck in through the back door and commenced in a serious attack on Haley’s mosquito net. On a third attempt she managed to trap herself in the living room for a solid minute as Haley tried vainly to forcibly direct her out with a broom. We later discovered this particular bird has a thing for laying her eggs on beds and being that the neighbor’s house was closed up at the time; the confused hen was attempting to deposit her goods on one of our foam mattresses. Next time this happens we decided to let her in and pocket the egg.

Tourist Season

I should have anticipated this one a little better. Ranomafana and its environs occupy 3-4 pages of any decent guide book on Madagascar and a few kind words in Lonely Planet will send busloads of people with pasty skin in your direction. Late January, when I arrived in Ranomafana, is low tide as far as visitors are concerned. The months of September and October are the reported peak.
It isn’t hard to see why they come. Ranomafana is a place unlike any other in Madagascar. Set in a green valley surrounded by dense cloud forests, it is one of the biodiversity hotspots of the island. It is one of the last strongholds of the Greater Bamboo Lemur, perhaps one of the most endangered primates in the world. In total, Ranomafana National Park encompasses nearly 40,000 hectares of picturesque forest, concealing numerous springs, waterfalls, and granite cliffs. Since the Park’s creation in 1991, the village of Ranomafana has adapted to accommodate the tastes and preferences of the “adventurers” who visit. The town of less than 5,000 people has 8 major hotel complexes with a 9th under construction. Cell phone coverage is ubiquitous. Internet is always available. One can even buy boxes of cereal in the market place. Fancy restaurants serve steaks and flaming deserts. The old adage “you build it they will come” is certainly true here. Before the 2009 political crisis, all the hotels in town were booked solid between the months of June and November. After that boom-year, this little jungle town raked in some 3.4 billion in local currency ($1.7million).
All of these dainty luxuries are well out of reach of the underpaid Peace Corps volunteer living on the outskirts of town with his tree nursery. My trips into town to buy vegetables and plug in my cell phone have become stark reminders of the world of wealth that I am no longer a part of. There is no denying that compared to the Malagasy who live around me, I am very wealthy. But when you compare me to the French ladies with painted faces dining on prawns on the deck of the Manja Hotel I’m a pauper indeed. I have found it fascinating to watch their seemingly odd behavior. They take pictures with long-lensed cameras of inconsequential elements of village life; like Bananas on a stand or kids loitering in a gutter. They are desperate to appear comfortable in the muddy marketplace as they finger through woven mats and baskets, careful not to appear too interested and attract the attention of the seller. My presence is generally not appreciated. Most appear to be disappointed to have traveled so far to a place as remote as Ranomafana and still run into other white people, especially one who hasn’t shaved in a week and has a ripped t-shirt. At least I’m not walking around in a matching designer hiking outfit, sun hat, and fanny pack. Who looks silly now?
Despite my mixed feeling about tourists, I have been complicit in attracting them to the area. A second bed as became a new addition to my living room and I have been hosting other volunteers and friends of volunteers since I returned from the bike tour. The volunteers teaching English are on their well deserved vacation from school and are taking their first vacations since January and I opened my house to anyone interested in stopping by. Haley, a volunteer from an isolated town called Breville took me up on the offer and has been living with me for three weeks now. Meanwhile, Peace Corps continues to stuff this country full of new volunteers and I had the opportunity to meet my new site-mate when she was down for a visit this past week. Rebekah is an education volunteer who is living in Ifanandiana, only 20k from me. She is incredibly intelligent, witty, and really likes books. I took her and Haley out to some of Ranomafana’s more notable attractions and we cooked up different sir-fries on my modest stove for dinner each night.
In the coming weeks I will be, of course, busy. SAF/FJKM wants to do a major training on fruit trees in mid September and I am hoping to do a trip down South with Mark to meet some of his contacts and scout out some Mango production possibilities.

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.