Family Vacation Part 2

The setting chosen for another week of gallivanting with just the parents, and some non-GFAs (Grandma Friendly Activities), was the northern costal city of Diego Suarez. In the Year of Our Lord 1543, Portuguese explorer Diogo Soares sailed into the harbor and murdered a number of the local inhabitants, earning the city and harbor their names, continuing the ever-fashionable trend of naming cities after historical figures with dubious human rights records. Area history would only grow more sanguinary as European merchant fleets took over the Indian Ocean. What attracted to Europeans to Diego was the massive, visually pleasing and incredibly defensible deep water harbor that juts into the island. Any naval planner worth his salt would be able to recognize the military advantages of controlling this impregnable marine-fortress. Thus, the French pried the harbor out of the hands of the Malagasy monarchy in the First Franco-Hova War in 1883. The Russians of all people used the harbor to re-supply the Imperial Navy in 1905 before getting themselves seriously spanked by the Japanese at Tsushima. Winston Churchill, worried that the Japanese would entrench themselves in Diego during WWII, authorized a major operation in 1942 to wrestle the harbor from the Vichy French. We hoped our visit would be slightly less bellicose, though it did turn out to be interesting.
The parent’s hotel was set on a vacant side street, the entrance looked like the backside of a bad Chinese buffet, and behind the heavy brown steel doors was a long dank hallway. Mother was concerned. I flashed her a pleasant smile and reminded her that ‘Peace Corps recommended’ hotels tend not to have bell boys or complimentary mints on the counter. I left them on the curb and went with the taxi to find my own accommodations at the PC transit house. When I returned an hour later I met the hotel proprietor in the reception area. Wearing nothing but a sarong, he was earnestly berating a fiendish haggler who was trying to extort money from my parents who were sitting nervously on a sofa. Once the other characters had cleared out, I was pleased to discover that the hotel was actually quite homely, pleasantly decorated, and featured the only functioning air conditioner I have ever seen in a room for less than $20.
Without any real direction as to where to go for lunch we found ourselves dining at an establishment that local Peace Corps volunteers have given the moniker “The Prostitute Bar.” Prostitution, as we soon discovered, is a booming industry in Diego. The whole of Northern Diego seemed heavily populated with elderly European gentlemen in optimistically youthful clothing chasing around brazen young Malagasy in tight outfits and painted faces. Curiously absent from the streets, however, were the throngs of Malagasy poor. There were no skinny men hauling sugarcane, no street vendors pushing sequined scrunchies and cheap flashlights. Only broad, shaded sidewalks, overpriced multi-ethnic restaurants pleasant vistas over Diego harbor.
On our first morning in Diego, I had arranged a trip out to the fabled Emerald Sea. We booked through the highly reputable “I have a friend who knows a guy who has a phone number for another dude” method so Friday morning found us wading through a slimy polluted harbor in drizzly weather to a wooden skiff with a musty sail and a little outboard motor accompanied by three Malagasy men we had only just met. Our fortunes improved significantly as the weather cleared crossing the harbor and we slowed to a stop above a vibrant coral reef. We paused for a bit to allow one of our guides to harpoon some of the local wildlife. Having collected four brightly colored, possibly endangered, reef fish, we skirted out of the harbor to the North, spread our sail and entered the Emerald Sea.
The Emerald Sea is what happens when white coral-sand accumulates on the ocean floor for some umpteen million years until the sandy bottom is just a few meters from the surface. The sea water sits gently on the sand, reflecting the sun’s rays turning the whole area a bright shade of unreal green. Our boat pulled up to a pristine beach on an island where the only structures are picnic shelters. Whilst we bobbed in the shallow sea, our crew was busy fixing us lunch. By noon there was a monstrous salad, four grilled fish, five crabs, three beers, and a heaping mound of coconut rice sitting on the table that our guides indicated was exclusively for us to ingest. We set to work and made a wonderful mess of things over the next hour before took to the sea to wash the bits of crab shell out of our hair.
Though stuffing ourselves with fresh seafood on the beach was a hard act to follow, we hoped that an overnight excursion to Ankarana, prepared for the next morning, would be to our taste. We set out by land rather than sea with a portly mustachioed driver in a Mitsubishi pick-up. The road (there is only one) out of Diego was rife with heavy artillery craters left over from the Malagasy Civil War. Although the historical record lacks any mention of this internecine conflict, there is no other way to explain the state of the RN 6 so I’m sticking to that story.
Our driver stopped us in some nameless rural hamlet and purchased for himself a leafy bush of lime colored leaves and placed them prominently in over the parking brake. Presently he began picking the branches and eyeing the plant, selecting the best leaves and popping them into his mouth. Chewing on the leaf for a moment, he stuffed the rind in his cheek before consuming another eventually causing him to take on the appearance of a fat faced hamster. “It keeps me awake!” he reported. Sure it does. Khat, as it is commonly called, is amphetamine-like stimulant classified as a ‘drug of abuse’ by the World Health Organization. Illegal in most countries, it prevents drowsiness, induces euphoria, suppresses appetite, and is addictive. Continued use has been shown to decrease self control and cause a whole host of maladies, but withdrawal symptoms can include manic behavior and hallucinations so I was glad to see the driver happily munching on his little leaves for the remainder of our time with him.
After an hour or so our mildly impaired driver turned off the road for a scheduled detour to the “Red Tsingy.” More significantly, my parents got a real experience of what an unpaved road in Madagascar really means. The car spent a good deal of time in four-wheel drive tearing up slippery muddy hills and sliding around unmarked cliffs. The driver welcomed a family of Malagasy featuring young infant to sit in the bed of the truck only to get himself stuck with two wheels off the ground a few kilometers later. We had to push. Mother about died. We arrived safely.
As it turns out, Red ‘Tsingy’ isn’t tsingy at all, rather it is a monument to the problems of environmental degradation besetting Madagascar that happens to look pretty when viewed out of context. The area surrounding ‘Red Tsingy’ was deforested and burned ages ago; inaugurating intense erosion that quickly washed any usable top soil out into the Indian Ocean. However, the erosion didn’t stop there, it eventually cut massive canyons into the red earth that grow larger and more menacing with each rainfall. In some of the canyons, the erosion cut all the way down to a layer of laterite that erodes in a strange way causing odd formations that appear similar to proper Tsingy. The Malagasy, turning lemons into lemonade, trumpet the formations as “a completely unique work of nature” to draw in tourists. Right. When we were there it was raining and we got to see erosion in action as sediments flowed though the canyon, burying the guardrails in mud and turning the formations into a sandy mush that fell apart in our hands.
Moving onto the more pleasing destination of Ankarana National Park, we passed the night in an hut made of local materials that earns mention as the most rustic of our accommodations thus to date, though it was roomier and better constructed than some volunteer’s houses I have visited. Although mildly scandalized by the lack of running water, squat toilet and flimsy exterior, Mother was highly amused, and I am not being facetious, by the bellowing of zebu that woke her up at 3AM, apparently causing her to forgive the establishment’s aforementioned shortfall in creature comforts.
The park itself was packed with lemurs, snakes, birds, and flora unique to the area and I finally figured out the proper camera setting for taking quality photos of wildlife on Mother’s newfangled Nikon. The park’s highlight is formations or REAL limestone Tsingy that stretch out endlessly across the landscape. Larger in area, but less dramatic as the Tsingy formations I had visited near Morondava in November, they are a fascinating example of Madagascar’s unique geography. Our final non-GFA was an afternoon decent into a colossal bat cave that opened into the earth near one of the Tsingys. Armed with little more that the flashlight on my cellphone, we ventured deep into the cavern surrounded by chirping bats that flew so close to our faces we could feel the wind off their wings as they passed and the slipperiness of their poo as we walked.
Emerging from the cave, I came to the conclusion that I had sufficiently exhausted my parent’s appetite for adventure, so we returned to Diego and spent that evening, and the following day (my birthday) lounging about town, eating and drinking at fine dining institutions and watching a strangely fascinating cargo ship unload containers into the port. We flew Air Madagascar back to Tana the next day. The airline, which had earlier met with my approval by serving a small breakfast on our way to Diego, served a disappointing lunch composed exclusively of hard candy. The next day the European Aviation Commission banned Air Mada’s planes from the skies over Europe sighting safety concerns. Thankfully, the parents had booked their flight out on Air France.

Family Vacation Part 1

There is a point in every man’s life when he becomes the caretaker for his parents. As the inexorable tides of age begin to set in, the relationship begins to change. It may begin with an occasional drive to the grocery store to ease aging eyes, or a helping hand with household chores. Events generally climax with some medical misadventure and denouement occurs with a move to an assisted care facility. For me this journey began quite suddenly at the tender age of 22 when my parents passed through Malagasy customs and ostensibly lost their ability to function in society. Instead of coddling them into a comfortable facility to live out their days, I decided to take them 1,800 kilometers across a 3rd world country under the guise of looking for fuzzy primates and squatty trees.
I must admit our itinerary raised some eye brows, even amongst fellow Peace Corps volunteers.
“Oh that’s nice your parents are coming, how long are they staying?... Wow three weeks is a long time… and your sister is coming too?... and your aunt?... AND your grandma?!... both of them? And your taking them WHERE?”
Yes we certainly did not choose the most un-ambitious of plans, but no one was planning on returning to Madagascar and Lauren had an orchestra concert on Sunday, so there was no room for lollygagging.
I shied away from the prospect of stuffing my grandmothers in the back seat of the taxi brousses with the chickens, sick babies and non-existent posterior padding and instead opted for the ‘rent a van’ option. Our driver was Rahery. He had one front tooth, very few English skills, but proved himself to be very good at navigating the temperamental RN7 whilst his passengers gazed out at the endless valleys of green rice and rust hued houses. He also came in handy when the less than reputable Ilakaka Police Department attempted to shake us down for 40,000 Ariary.
I had not anticipated the extent to which my services as a translator/tour guide/banker/navigator/price-negotiator would be required until we reached the first lunch stop in Ambositra and no one could read the menu or ask where to find the toilet. At first I found the task of doing everything a bit overwhelming, but I quickly came to relish my position as master and commander of our little grey van. After 16 months alone I finally was getting to show nearly my whole family this life I had built for myself here.
The job also came with some nice perks, namely getting to spend a few weeks in the alternate universe known to Peace Corps volunteers as ‘Vahaza World.’ In this world silly things like air conditioning, complementary soaps, courses to meals, fudge dip granola bars, drivers on call, and flush toilets are commonplace. We could select hotels not in the ‘penny pincher’ section of the guide book. Chickens were on the table to eat and not running around under it. Once, we even had a friendly waitress at a restaurant.
We made four major stops on our road trip extravaganza. First and foremost was of course my humble little burg of Ranomafana. I made the family ‘rough it’ for a few days, putting them up in a spacious house with running hot water, toilets, solid walls, no rodents, and NO ELECTRICTY. Lauren, however, got the Peace Corps experience and got to sleep in my house which included none of the above amenities in addition to lacking power. She fortified herself inside my mosquito net with a flashlight and had the courtesy to wake me up in the other room whenever she spotted something crawling on the floor. (This from the girl who would later wake her entire hotel room at 2:30 AM because of a menacing looking towel) During daylight hours, we visited the waterfall and had a splendid day in the forest combining the forces of five digital cameras in mostly fruitless attempts to get good pictures of lemurs perched up in the forest canopy. Though the trails were muddy, steep, and coated with treacherous leeches, the grandmas endured valiantly, although we did end up with one very muddy sneaker.
Stop #2 was Isalo National Park. Already the subject of much praise in earlier an earlier blog, Isalo retains its status as my favorite place to visit in Madagascar. We stayed at “The Isalo Rock Lodge,” an expansive modern resort set back in some very attractive looking rocks. We thought it interesting that dinner at the resort was ‘obligatory’ until we discovered that we were the only guests at the whole place and the requirement was probably an attempt to give the bored staff something to do. Thus each night at precisely 7:15 we were paraded through the eerily quiet dining area where a sumptuous three course dinner awaited us. It was one of those deals where the food was sculpted into fancy little structures resembling fashionable ladies hats. Certainly a departure from the greasy pork fat and plain rice I had forced the family to ingest for lunch at a bustling Hotely near the bus station in Ambalavao.
Continuing on to Tulear, we disembarked for a short visit to the city’s artisan market where I acted as frantic intermediary for all purchases large and small.

“Grandma, How much would you pay for that?”
“Oh, I don’t know, $20?”
(In Malagasy)
“Excuse me miss, how much is this?”
“$10”
“Are you kidding? That’s too expensive”
“Fine you can have this shell necklace and a wooden pot as a gift”
“No, we don’t like shells”
“Alright how about this carved mask instead for your gift?”
“It’s still to expensive, I’ll give you $6 for all of it”
“Make it $8 and I’ll thrown in this candle stick”

This sort of banter continued until the smiling sellers relieved us of a mountain of worthless bills and we walked away wondering how we would ever fit everything into suitcases.
Our hotel that night lie some undetermined distance up the RN 9, a road which amounted to little more than a ribbon of cleared mud/sand punctuated by bits of asphalt. Mother’s unquestioning reliance on Google translate burned us when we came to realize that our hotel was not 12k north of Tulear but 12k north of Mangily, which itself was 26k north of Tulear. However, in typical Malagasy fashion, the destination was spectacular, the road was just atrocious. Our hotel was a splendid beach resort with bungalows opening up right on the Mozambique Channel. The hotel was run by an extremely amicable French couple who tried their very best to talk to make us feel welcome, without speaking a word of English. We found some fun activities to keep us occupied during our three days on the beach. Aunt Mary developed a hankering for chasing Radiated Tortoises through the bush whilst the rest of us hugged baobabs and snorkeled after brightly colored aquatic life.
Our last obstacle of the trip was driving 930k back up the RN7 to the capital, a two day drive in good conditions barring police interference. Thus I took the bus over to the Sahambavy Tea Estate, because grandmas love tea right? The tea plantation was a hit, I learned never to order head cheese, and our hotel gave the parents one of their luxury lake bungalows due to a minor booking snafu.
Returning to Tana the following morning, I couldn’t help but notice that each member of our trip had made a marked recovery in their ability to function in society. Grandma W had learned not to keep pens on the outside of her purse, Lauren went an entire week without waking her roommates up, and Dad had nearly learned how to correctly pronounce thank-you in Malagasy. Moral of the story: When your family members get old and dysfunctional, send them to Madagascar.

My Life Part 3

As my run continues up Route Nationale 25 past the center of Ranomafana I pass a few staples of Malagasy life. There is the ‘Banana Dump,’ a heaping mound of green bananas awaiting a semi to come haul Ranomafana’s surfeit supply to the plateau. Rickety tables proffer fruits, coffee and fried things unknown to passing villagers. Up the hill to the right is the health clinic. Approaching the entrance to the Centrest Hotel, the most expensive in the village with diligently maintained native landscaping and commanding views of the village, the grade of the road begins to increase. Quite unassumingly I have begun to climb a hill that continues up for the next 15 kilometers and from here on out my run becomes much more strenuous and less leisurely. The next few meters feature a few monuments to failed ideas. There is an abandon museum, a defunct hotel, a permanently closed t-shirt shop, and a cell phone store I have never seen a customer visit. It is mildly reminiscent of any American shopping mall open for more than fifteen years. Just a matter of time before Halloween USA rears its ugly head.
Next on our perspicacious little run is the Fiongonana Jesosy Mamonjy (The Church of Jesus Saves). At least one church from this wildly popular but loosely affiliated ‘denomination’ can be found in every Malagasy town. The Mamonjy will suffer no rivals in their well intended praise for Jesus. Seemingly endless Sunday services highlighted by laying on hands, speaking in tongues, alter calls, Southern Baptists don’t hold a candle on these guys. In Tana there is a Jesosy Manonjy by the white-people supermarket that could easily rank itself among the top ten super churches were it located stateside. Ranomafana is a primarily Catholic community so its modest Mamonjy congregation remains and unobtrusively located of the far side of town.
Normally, the Jesosy Manonjy is the landmark at which I turn around begin my decent back into town. The next seven kilometers consists of some serious inclines, exclusive hotels, and precariously positioned mud houses. At the crest of the mountains, surrounded by thick forest on all sides, rests the entrance to Ranomafana National Park next to the expansive Centre Valbio Research center. These areas are well beyond the reach of my running routine but they are the dual suns of the Ranomafana solar system around which the hotels, the forest, the town, the restaurants revolve. Past here, Fianarantsoa is 50k further on the Plateau.
Once back at my house, enveloped in a more then pleasant coating of my own sweat. A shower is in order. Being that no structure of the sort exists anywhere in my little corner of town, I collect my toiletries, put on a bathing suit, and make my way to the communal water source. Add public bathing to the list of things I have become used to in Peace Corps. There is a little stream that tumbles out of the rain forest and pools in a small area under the shade of some ancient litchi trees. Here the villagers of Masomanga come to bathe and wash laundry. This spring also becomes my source of water whenever the pump is broken, which is often enough that I no longer even stop by the pump house anymore. Occasionally, as I approach, I am greeted by a disrobed woman either bathing or squatting directly into the stream to relive herself. She giggles, I wait at a safe distance for her become appropriate again and take my place up stream.
I can say quite honestly that standing next to this cool stream pouring cold water over myself after a long run is one of my favorite parts of the day. The experience is even more pleasant when there are not four Malagasy women who have paused their washing to stare at you there in your orange swim trunks. But hey, nothing is ever perfect.

The My life series will be on vacation for the next few posts as I am taking a break from my life to be awesome

My Life Part 2

The limiting factor on the quality of my breakfast is personal laziness. I could have coffee and tea with fresh fried bread accompanied by a smorgasbord of fruits every morning if I liked, but that would require me to bike all the way into Ranomafana town centre, way to much to ask just after I get up. Cat is also hungry having rejected the previous night’s meal and made a kitten deposit in someplace besides the litter tray. I check my food chest to see how many precious instant oatmeal packs I have left. There are 25. I take two minutes to calculate how much oatmeal I could eat everyday between now and December 30th to make it last the whole time. I can eat 7% of a packet. I need 3 packets to be full, that’s 43 days worth. Fail. I scrounge about the house for some change, its bolomboi again today.
Bolomboi is what happens when you take cassava root, peel it, send it through a cheese grater, mash it into pasty balls then fry it in oil. It tastes like an elastic French fry if you get them hot, like tire tread if cold. There is one lady who lives visual distance from my front door that makes them in the morning. It’s cheap. It’s easy. It’s fried. It’s like Malagasy McDonalds. I’m all over it. Striking out from the house I stroll over to the muddy hovel where my food is hopefully sizzling in a rusty can. Ignoring the cat calls from the scrawny two year old across the street, I collect an ample helping and hand over my fare. The cook asks if there is anything else I would like to buy. My options include heavily coagulated chicken blood, fried leaves, ‘fish biscuits,’ cow-foot soup, or three miserable bananas pregnant with fruit flies. I politely decline and return to culinary safety of my house.
There Sharbaraz is waiting for me demanding her portion of my breakfast before she ditches me for Rodrigue’s house. I toss a few in her direction and scarf the rest. I usually try to start things out with a run so once I allow things to digest I throw on a moldy t-shirt and my shoes and after some less-than-prodigious stretching I set out in the direction of town. My house sits exactly one kilometer east of Ranomafana and my run will take me directly past all of the village highlights.
As I enter town on the left I come upon the extensive Hotel Manja complex. It’s owned by a friendly Malagasy family that occasionally lets me use one of their hot showers so I do my best to direct the occasional lost tourist in their direction. The restaurant attached to the hotel is frequented heavily by passing tourists as well as the mayor, local guides, and the Queen of Ranomafana herself, Patricia Wright. Occasionally, when I bike by, I get invited to sit and have a drink with whosoever may be lounging out on the porch. Mostly though, I just get stared down by the painted French tour groups daintily eating their crayfish.
Just before I enter town I need to pass the police check-point. This consists of a small shack, wooden bench, and a spike strip stretched across half the road. The police are only interested in taxi-brousses and semi-trucks so they leave the sweaty white person on foot alone. There are always two policemen sitting on the bench looking bored and consuming serious number of cigarettes. The curious thing about police checkpoints in Madagascar is that the attending ‘national’ police wear faded uniforms that impeccably match each other, but do not match any other police anywhere else in Madagascar. The ones in Ranomafana are particularly fond of berets, sunglasses and trying to look intimidating.
Entering Ranomafana, I swing pass a series of mid-range riverside hotels diligently patrolled by some bad-tempered geese wandering about the middle of the road doing their utmost to be a public nuisance, honking at passing cars and intimidating schoolchildren. If tennis racquets existed in this country I would be sorely tempted to conduct an unsightly feathery massacre the likes of which would give the tourists something to write home about. Ranomafana’s central market consists of splotches of decaying asphalt surrounded by muddy ditches and potholes all seasoned with bits of garbage. The buildings surrounding this community space are almost entirely constructed out of molding uncured wood, perpetually filled with the smoke of interior cooking fires, and strung up so haphazardly with tangled electric lines that if the entire complex wasn’t doused in tropical rains every few hours it would probably burn down within a week.
Recently there has been a movement amongst those with connections to foreign money to construct buildings out of cement. The recently renovated covered market, mayor’s sprawling new general store and the ghastly post office (which recently received a new coat of Twinkie-colored paint) are included in this category. Cement is a huge sign of status in Madagascar, in particular in the regions off the plateau. Most villages and towns east of Ranomafana consist almost entirely of buildings constructed from the local indigenous palm tree, for example the entire coastal shack-city of Mananjary. Thus the little village of Ranomafana can adduce these buildings as signs of its recent ascendancy into the ‘modern.’
Opposite the market, just past the soccer field (also incidentally where the livestock is done in), sits the hulking ruin of the Station Thermale Hotel. Abandon since the mid 90’s, the Thermale dominates the town skyline with high pitched tile roofs sporting holes that look like they could have been made by a falling Ford Fiesta. The Thermale had its hay-day back in the French colonial period when it opened as a resort spa for ex-pat super wealthy looking to spend a weekend being pampered in the hot springs. Unfortunately, the departure of the French in 1960 also signaled a precipitous decline in demand for such epicurean activities such as soaking one’s bottom for hours in hot sulfur water. The Thermale limped along until the recent rainforest tourism boom when it received a thorough tongue lashing from the guide books for having a leaky roof, awful beds, foul service, and most ironically, no hot showers. Faced with competition from new hotels opening almost yearly and a plumbing system placed permanently on the mend, the Thermale folded. The abandon edifice was quickly re-occupied by a slew of Malagasy squatters, but not before the main entrance was transformed into the working space for a women’s weaving cooperative. The district government also acquired one of the powder rooms and began using it as the Clerk’s Office.

My Life Part 1

It is amazing how much one’s conception of normal can change in a year. I like to think that as I become adapted to the Malagasy lifestyle, the less material I have to blog about since what would once be considered shocking and worthy of excessive gawking is now literally ‘nothing to write home about.’ A text message from a friend that she had just boarded a taxi-bus with an 8-foot hammerhead shark strapped to the top elicits little more than a smirk and a roll of eyes from me. What I find more fascinating these days is the westerners who are fresh of the plane and are frightened of taxi-stations, have never squatted to use the toilet, and wear white t-shirts. Thus in an effort to better acquaint you all with my normal I thought I would walk you though some typical scenes in my life.
It’s usually some activity over at Rodrigue’s that gets me up in the morning. His chicken flock has been steadily multiplying over the past months up to some 30 obnoxious birds peeping, squawking, fighting, and cock-a-doodle-doing all about my yard. The flock is culled only be the occasional taxi brousse that comes barreling by and graciously kills one or two a month. Then we have chicken for dinner. Rodrigue’s industrious wife is also awake. She has to start a fire and have rice ready for breakfast before she walks Riza and Oni 1.5k into town for school at seven. She is also eight months pregnant. Although all my windows and doors are securely shut, there is light streaming into my house from cracks in the wood and holes under the roof. Soon the sun will commence baking my tin roof making my bed intolerably hot and forcing me to start the day.
One of my first and favorite morning rituals is stumbling about the nursery trying to find the toilet. The story of my outhouse and its exceedingly inconvenient location dates back to my original installation in Ranomafana last January. It is a Peace Corps requirement that each volunteer have their own private shack-with-hole to use. Mine was located less than 10 feet from Rodrigue’s kitchen whilst Rodrigue and company had no outhouse at all and made creative use of the bushes across the road. Eventually Rodrigue began to construct his own facilities back behind the nursery. This, however, resulted in the ridiculous and counterintuitive scenario where Rodrigue’s family would have to pass by my house to use the toilet while I was making daily visits to their house to conduct similar business. I quickly rectified the situation by insisting upon trading, accepting a longer toilet commute so that Oni, two at the time, could potty train at a more convenient location. This actually worked to my benefit last April when the path to the new outhouse passed though the avocado grove and my daily morning ritual resulted in enough fruit to make lunch.
The trouble started when SAF/FJKM decided to mow down the avocado trees and turn my pleasant jungle path into an expansion on the tree nursery. The nursery and resulting bamboo fence forced me to take a prohibitively difficult route over a muddy cliff, though the thick coffee and banana stands, knee high grass, spider webs, mosquitoes, flesh eating moths… etc. A slightly better alternative was discovered when Alison was visiting. This path ironically passed right past my old outhouse and required (don’t ask me how this works) climbing over the same waist-high wall three times. Alison proved not very apt at this and actually has physical scars from her Ranomafana outhouse experience.
Clearly this was not a sustainable scenario and after a serious discussion with Rodrigue, some choice holes were made in the bamboo fence around the nursery. Now, when I emerge from my slumber I squeeze though a vine entangled hole in my fence, climb down though the nursery to the litchi in the back where the bamboo fence has been thinned out, I part the bamboo like a curtain and make my way down the embankment to my outhouse. As I sit inside I take comfort in the fact that although there is no way to measure how much progress I am making in the lives of the Malagasy people in Ranomafana, I am making measurable progress in filling this hole with poo.

The Holidays

Christmas is not a tropical holiday. There are no silent snow blanketed nights. No sleigh bells, boughs of holly, or Fraiser Firs. Madagascar even lacks any form of large ruminid mammal that might resemble reindeer. Even looping my limited selection of festive Holiday tunes failed to inspire any Christmas spirit. One of the big aspects of Christmas in my childhood home was hauling the large box out of the basement and tastefully decorating our family living space with holiday heirlooms and color-coordinated Christmas tree ornamentation. Malagasy Christmas décor is comprised almost exclusively of oddly colored tinsel and other shiny plastic filth that could only be considered beautiful if viewed through a very fine kaleidoscope, by a raccoon. The taciturn store owner near my house had installed enough gaudy plastic cheer in her place of business obscure any potential customer’s view of her products, a frustrating state of affairs when pointing and gesturing are your preferred methods of buying daily essentials.
Closer to home, at Rodrigue’s, preparations were being made to be at church for as many as 12 hours over a period of three days. Something meaty, oily, and rice-y, was being proposed for Christmas dinner. With the walls closing in around me, I plundered as much as I considered modest of the finally-ripened litchis behind the nursery and made for the safety of the Fianarantsoa PC house with my trusty travel buddy Alison on the morning of Christmas Eve. After waiting 3 hours, cramming into a clown car, running out of gas, hitchhiking a ride in a semi-truck, and acting very grinch-like to the driver of a third vehicle, we arrived in Fianarantsoa. Soon we had forgotten all of that morning’s transportation miseries because we had electricity, internet, and an oven capable of baking pizza and Christmas cookies.
With Christmas proper behind us, we embarked on a two-day 950k journey across Madagascar to the Northwest of the island, near Mahajanga. Those with a history of heart problems, high blood pressure, or women who are pregnant or nursing should not attempt Mahajanga. Talk to your doctor or physician before taking Mahajanga. Side effects are likely to include poor circulation, peculiar rashes, headaches, temporary insanity, and foul disposition. My first destination was to be the site of a fellow Nigerian volunteer named Jenny. During training her site was talked up significantly as the mecca of dinosaur bone excavation and paleontology. This is true, for only two months every other year. Jenny’s house rests in a minuscule village comprising five huts 15k from anywhere. We spent two days there wandering about the dry, eroded, and treeless wasteland wondering why on earth people were still trying to grow rice here.
With an extra day to spare, Alison and I made haste to Ankarafantsika National Park where I had a South African friend doing research on Tenrecs, a nocturnal endemic hedgehog-like critter with penchant for injecting spines into human skin. Thankfully my friend’s specimens were safely caged and mildly sedated. The park itself was interesting not spectacular. The forest was featureless, dry, flat, and rife with wildlife. I fattened my list of birds, played with a chameleon, and got close enough to touch a lemur and took some spectacular photos (see photos). As far as landmarks, however, the only significant landmarks are a wide eroded canyon and a murky lake choked with water hyacinths.
Our New Years celebration was booked for the city of Mahajanga. We made our entrance at mid-day got a healthy dose of costal heat. Mahajunga is a truly special Malagasy city. Not only does the food and culture exhibit a mix of Indian, Arab, French, and Malagasy culture, but there are sidewalks and basic city services seem to function on a regular basis. Too many of us crammed into a single hotel near the ocean and hit the coastal boardwalk for beer and brochettes (fish and beef) purveyed by welcoming ladies at outdoor grills stalls. Joining Alison and I were 10 other volunteers from the Mahajanga region making New Years a happy convivial occasion for all involved.
Post-holiday plans included stops at the homes of my Thanksgiving-era friends in Tana and a 5 day “Advanced Service Conference” at the now nostalgic Lake Montasoa Training Center. The most significant development out of this event as far as the average blog reader is concerned is that I gained 5 pounds.

Taxi Broussing

Believe it or not, the entire transportation system for the 20 million people living on this island consists of six paved roads and perhaps a thousand elderly Mazda and Toyota passenger vans. Given these conditions, there is no earthly way transportation can be a pleasant experience. These vans called “brousses” by the locals tear about Madagascar chock-a-block with cargo and people. Best evidence is that these cars were sold at a discount to taxi companies and imported from Europe when they became obsolete. Once in Madagascar they are stripped down and refurbished to accommodate the maximum number of legal midgets physically possible. There is no safety equipment to speak of. The vans are more or less metal cubes with engines and big gas tanks. Plastic containers on the roof can also be filled with gasoline to ensure that all passengers can enjoy an exciting fiery death should the driver misjudge the wrong corner.
Overstuffing a brousse is technically illegal in Madagascar and police check-points outside the major cities are there to ensure passenger’s safety and security. However, a few thousand ariary can make any potential traffic citations disappear so capacity rules are no longer heeded. Some brousses come equipped with mini-video screens so passengers can view some horrendous and often shockingly explicit music videos while they are being carted around like packed sardines. Heavy sub-woofers also come standard on every brousse, when turned up to full volume, the advancing sound serves to clear docile Malagasy villagers off the road as the brousse approaches.
To top it all of, many brousses are customized. Rather than install decent interior upholstery, seat belts, or repair the inevitably broken side mirrors, taxi vans spend their money buying custom car horns, glue-on imitation chrome side ventilators, flashy stickers of all kinds. I always know the brousse that operates out of Ranomafana because it has two massive Hannah Montana decals in the rear windows. Other vans opt for a more religious tone, sporting a crucified Christ, Madonna with infant Christ, or bible verses written out in cursive glitter type. By in large, however, most cosmetic additions attempt to intimidate or flaut the car’s illustrious but also fictitious racing prowess. Pink and orange flames cover the running board and meaningless logos such as “MAZDA SPEED RACING” are plastered on their dented bodies and broken windscreens. Who these stickers are meant to appeal to is up for debate.
Worst then puttering about this island in one of these tin cages of death is trying to get one of them to leave at the Taxi Gare. Always located in the most unbecoming sections of town, come within 400 meters of any Taxi Gare and you will immediately be set-upon by 10 or more persistent hagglers. These people make a career out of forcing innocent and unsuspecting travelers into their particular vans. They usually open by asking, in French, where I am going. When I ignore them they just start guessing. “Your going to Tulear? This car is going there right now! [lie] its already almost full! [lie]” I am not going to Tulear, as I continue to spurn their advances, more hagglers are attracted to the approaching white person heavy laden with bags. Soon everyone is screaming various destinations and pushing each other out of the way to get a better angle on me. The hagglers begin accusing each other of being drunk. Fights break out as I look on apathetically. One or two of the men will start grabbing at my bags pulling me one way or another. This is not ok. I yell at them in Malagasy though their garbled French bickering. On more than one occasion I was certain I was going to be shoved into a moving van professional-kidnapping style. The event ends anticlimactically when I fight my way into a particular taxi company office to buy a legitimate ticket.
Hapless white people are not the only targets of harassment. I once witnessed an elderly woman holding hands with a young girl enter the Gare. The pair was swarmed with 6 or 7 seven full grown men trying to herd them into their particular van. When the woman resisted, two men seized the screaming child and began to pry her away from her guardian. After a few seconds of valiant struggle the old woman lost her grip on the girl, tripped on a paving stone and fell hard onto the cement with a cry. The basket of personal effects she had been balancing on her head scattered across the lot. Collecting her things the woman ran off in tears after the girl, I never saw her again and a little bit of my faith in humanity died that day.
Having beaten off the unkempt, unfriendly, and unrelenting hagglers, the search for a van begins. Not so easy when everyone you speak with is lying to you and trying to scam you. Not only is every price quote you receive heavily inflated, but every departure time is completely misleading. Every bus is leaving “right now” or “in 5 minutes” or “as soon as you pay.” Once you have handed over your money, everyone, thankfully, losses interest in you and you are liable to wait as many as four hours for your car to leave. Unfortunately there is perhaps no worse place to be sitting for hours than a Malagasy Taxi Gare. Generally, these places are little more than a glorified parking lot encircled by tiny cement huts that serve as offices. While you bake on black tarmac under the tropical sun, you are constantly subjected to the most diverse assortment of Malagasy riffraff begging for money or selling rancid food and new shiny plastic garbage from China. I bring a book and try to hide, usually not very successfully, in the back of a car.
The only plus about the transportation terror that I have just described is that you are always thrilled to reach your destination and you always tell the best stories. On a brousse from Manakara, the entire bank of windows on the right side of the car fell off as we were doing 75 kph and shattered all over the highway, puncturing a tire. There are no restrictions on carry-on luggage. Mattresses, entire motorcycles, geese, goats, and even illegally poached herons are all kosher; the only universal no-no is dogs. I counted 30 people (myself included) in a van designed for 12, but refitted for 15. I have watched on in shock as 20 bags of cement were pulled out of the nooks and crannies of an already packed bus. We ran over a turkey. I have shared my personal space with drunk old men, vomiting teenagers, jolly nuns, xenophobic toddlers, and terrorized chickens to name a few. Thankfully when the rents come we are renting a private van.

In an unrelated aside I would again like to take the opportunity to harangue Madagascar’s Postal (dis)Service for their extemporary failure to perform above a third-grade aptitude.
A few months ago, my dearest Aunt Mary carefully filled a padded manila envelope with food, letters, and lots of love. Having read my past blogs featuring unforgiving tirades against the post, she bravely decided to take the risk and entrust the package to these purveyors of incompetence and my some miracle it only took a matter of weeks for them to get it though customs where Peace Corps, like a white knight in shining armor rescued it from the dungeons of the Postal depot in Tana. However, it was only after I had triumphantly returned with my prize did I realize that my celebration was premature. While lingering in the dark purgatory of the customs office, a rat had chewed though the envelope and violated its contents. The double-packaged dehydrated milk had been breeched but not seriously plundered. However, the homemade cherry-smoked chicken jerky was opened and entire precious strips were completely absent. I was irate. My mail has about as much chance of reaching me as a mentally challenged tuna fish has in a shark tank. This is the second package to be assaulted in such a manner, both tragedies befalling Alphenaar packages. Maybe just send e-mails and think non-hungry thoughts?

Antananarivo (Tana)

I really don’t like Tana. Allow me to enumerate a few of my gripes with this city. First and foremost, Tana has perhaps the worst city planning I have ever had the privilege to witness in all my travels. The roads into the city disappear into a morass of crammed dirty backstreets. There are no highways in Tana, but enough traffic to make ten kilometer journey downtown a two hour project. The only mass transit is provided by antiquated Mercedes busses called ‘Taxi-be’ that charge 15 cents for the pleasure of being crammed into a child-sized seat next to an overweight Malagasy person as the engine chugs and sputters in gridlock traffic while you breath in enough exhaust fumes to induce a significant headache. Security is a big problem in Tana. Entire sections of town are no-fly zones for volunteers. Purses are slashed. Pockets picked. One volunteer a few years ago had his face beat in with a brick on his way back from a bar and had to be med-evaced for facial reconstructive surgery. Tana is also the city where the divide between rich and poor is most pronounced. Some residents live in shacks built in the swampy recesses of the rice paddies while the educated elite cruise through the garbage strewn streets in their European imports. Homes and businesses are secluded behind high walls decorated liberally with barbed wire. Rent-a-cop companies make a killing standing outside mansions housing the foreign and the wealthy. It is not for me to pass judgment on people for wanting to protect themselves and their possessions. It just makes for bad aesthetics.
Unfortunately this is the only city in Madagascar that you can’t avoid. As Madagascar’s capital, the terminus of four paved highways, and the home to the island’s only international airport, everything in Madagascar filters through this lackluster hub. Accordingly, finishing my wonderful vacation in Morandava found me staying at Peace Corps transit house in the wealthy suburb of Ivandy on the north side of Tana. The date was November 17, a normally inconspicuous date on the calendar but this year it happened to coincide with a controversial constitutional referendum being put to vote by the Malagasy government. As I was busy uploading my vacation photos onto Facebook, a group of ranking military officers decided to use the referendum as a pretext to over throw the current regime. From their base near the airport the officers announced to the world that a supreme military council was now in control of Madagascar, telling one French television station that the airport and presidential palace would be stormed the following morning preventing anyone from leaving the island and effectively paralyzing the current administration.
These men, however, failed to properly ensure the support of the rest of the island’s military apparatus and within 24 hours it became clear that the only thing the “Supreme Military Council” controlled was the building in which they sat and a pile of burning tires on the road out to the airport. Peace Corps and the Embassy, however, were not amused. A warden’s message was issued. Peace Corps extended a no-travel order to the entire country and I, as well as seven other unlucky volunteers, was more or less restricted to a one block radius containing one affordable restaurant and a gas station for a week. Even though the faux coup d’etat was quickly put down, my plans to go back home came to naught and a trip downtown was hastily called off when an improvised explosive device was detonated in a popular plaza.
As the walls of transit house closed in around me and the other volunteers, the embassy staff living in the area rescued us from excruciating boredom by inviting us to social events. Feeling a little awkward in a faded t-shirt and dirty sneakers we sipped expensive alcohols and got a little glimpse of the Foreign Service life. I became friends with one officer in particular, Jane and her nephew Aaron who had just arrived in Madagascar for a six month vacation. Jane invited myself and a slew of other volunteers to share Thanksgiving with their family and we feasted together on traditional American fare. For most of us it was a challenge to stop from eating the marvelous food even when our stomachs were well past capacity.
With the situation in the capital under control and our travel restrictions lifted, Jane’s nephew and I escaped on a weekend vacation to the sleepy costal town of Mahanoro for a real Peace Corps Thanksgiving. The volunteer living in Mahanoro had purchased herself a live turkey, which she had affectionately named Marvin, and had been stuffing it full of beans for the proceeding week. Mahanoro quickly gained the distinction of my new favorite coastal town. Quiet, friendly, unassuming, and with some 80 kilometers of sandy beach for running, the town would have been frequented by me on the weekends if it wasn’t some 800 kilometers from Ranomafana. Turkey-day-prep started early in the morning and after cooking furiously we managed to have a meal large enough to feed the 20 or so gathered holiday makers just before sunset. After ingesting Marvin, we hit the beach for beers and campfire under a spectacular canopy of stars, playing with the phosphorescent plankton glowing like glitter in the surf. I tried not to think about going back to Tana the next morning.