Maromandia

Given Ranomafana’s winter reputation for miserable weather, I collected a few of my vacation days and decided to ditch town and head up to Maromandia to visit my friend Katie. Much like Alison, Katie is a member of the Niger stage, an excellent travel companion and not my girlfriend. Her site is located in the far northwest corner of the island. The area near Katie’s site is hot and dry all year round, consisting mostly of arid shrub land leading out to the Mozambique Channel. She lives nearby Sahamalaza National Park, a newly protected area established in 2007. The park was created for a remote patch of forest that is home to the Blue-eyed Lemur (the only other primate besides humans with blue eyes) and continues to include massive swathes of thick mangrove forest, and a collection of coastal islands wallowing in some of the colorful coral reefs in Madagascar. The issue is there that all of this wonderful biodiversity and wildlife is about as accessible to tourists as Mars or other celestial bodies. Hiking out to desiccated reforestation site on top of a hill, Katie pointed out a mangrove island in the distance where rare Fish Eagles amass like dirty dishes after thanksgiving to nest. On the opposing side of the hill lay a deep swerving valley. The valley floor was blanketed in a concealing layer of trees and screwpalms trailing off into the distance where an escarpment jutted out of the hills and sealed the ravine’s tip. Katie reported that there was a waterfall at the edge of the cliff, but the valley’s steep sides prevented anyone from venturing into it.
Upon hearing this I immediately set about finding a way down, and lo, a skinny path appeared and ten minutes later both of us were picking off burs from our shorts and soothing our scratched legs in the bubbling stream that ran across the valley floor. Setting out East we sloshed through the muddy undergrowth until we emerged on a clearing. The spiny pandanus forest ended abruptly on a large pool of water surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs. Over the east side of the cliffs a heavy stream of water split three ways and plunged about forty feet, crashing loudly on a pile of boulders and spilling into the pond. The damp shaded backside of the cliff was studded with mosses and small purple orchids pushing their delicate flowers out earnestly towards the sunlight. A more beautiful and swimming hole could not have been imagined. For twenty minutes we sat silently on a rock in the dappled sunlight with our feet in the water munching on melted trail mix wondering how on earth we get paid to live like this.
With my penchant for hiking and exploring satisfied, we spent the remaining few days in and around Maromandia, meeting with local counterparts and stuffing ourselves on the North’s delicious foods. On market day Katie bought crabs and her jolly counterpart came over and prepared them with tomatoes, onions and something else that made them taste magical. Another spectacular plate was Akoho voinyo or chicken cooked in coconut sauce and served with a spicy lemon salsa sauce. Although vegetables are almost non-existent and almost all food disappears from the markets during the hot hunger season, I would still take the northern diet over what passes for food in the hotely’s of my region.
Another thing about Maromandia, everyone likes to be naked. Whether you are down at the river for a bath, in the stream doing laundry or just out for a swim, why not disrobe entirely with all your neighbors and do it naked? Maromandia’s nudity complex is compounded by its one and only bridge and primary thoroughfare which provides an excellent vista over the town’s riverside bathing facilities. No one sees fit to make any attempt to cover themselves, and some even shout and greet their friends on the bridge. This behavior may be a result of the northwest’s sweltering temperatures; more relaxed unencumbered culture, or highly developed sense of community. But flaunting our over zealous modesty, Katie and I still did our utmost to avoid catching any bare buttocks in our pictures of the flaming orange sunsets over the river.
I have already published a scathing review of Madagascar’s public transportation system in a previous post, and our drive into Ambanja that morning did not depart from those norms, except that I really enjoyed it. Maromandia has a dumpy brown van that ferries Maromandia’s masses to the regional capital in the morning and faithfully returns before dinner. Affectionately referred to as the “chocolate brousse” by area PCVs, it is driven by an unkempt portly man in a striped shirt. Arriving late, the three PCVs were smashed into the front seat, an arrangement preferable to the muddled mountain of humanity which piled chaotically five and six to a bench in the rear compartment. Katie’s position sitting nearly on top of the driver obliged her to hold down the break pedal with her left foot when the driver stopped and concerned himself with forcing in additional passengers. The Chocolate Brousse has gained an unparralled reputation among the townspeople living along that stretch of the RN6 for his unorthodox way of of the announcing his presence. The van’s abused horn has been beaten so thoroughly that only a feeble electronic fart serves to alert to country folk to his impending arrival. Spotting any pedestrian he would pound the horn, take his hands off the wheel, lean out the window, and do an animated version of jazz-hands into the air bellowing “ARABEEE!” [this is a tribal greeting meaning congratulations] to his adoring public. Children run to the road to greet him, men and women put down their chores and return the quirky jazz-hands wave. Stopping to take on more bodies, our driver greets everyone more completely. “Arabe on your rice harvest!” “Arabe on your new t-shirt!” “Arabe on your house with a small door!” Self-confident women with their distinctive Sakalava quarter-bun hair styles and painted faces mill about and the arrival of the chocolate brousse becomes a community event. Everyone smiles, Everyone laughs, the drivers fat hands thump the horn a few more times and the overloaded chocolate brousse coughs and putters up the hill to the next hamlet.
As we approached Ambanja, we stopped briefly in Andampy. Andampy is the North’s newest sapphire boom town and is a remarkable testament to the destructive power of disorganized humanity. The discovery is only three months old, so recent in fact that the rice stalks surrounding the pits still contain streaks of living green. An entire slum has sprawled out from the main road towards the pits. Nearby towns have been emptied of people and produce as more energy and resources go to the mines and away from the rice fields. In typical form, a boom of any precious resource in the 3rd world has proved to be an environmental bust. For days valley floors are ripped apart by hand and the cut earth bleeds into the nearby streams and rivers. The chocolate brousse had stopped near a temporary used clothing stand to drop off another hopeful settler who unloaded a bunch of building materials and set off to make his fortune in the dirt.
Ambanja is an unremarkable Malagasy regional city save its towering triangular bridge and streets lined with towering shade trees. Unlike my regional capital of Fianarantsoa, Ambanja is not blessed with a Peace Corps transit house so PCVs are on their own to find accommodations. In Ambanja, however, a fat old woman with a saintly amount of patience and a spare foam mattress shaped like a comma allows transiting PCVs to overnight in her house. Local PCVs revere “Mama Peace Corps” with a peculiar blend of gratitude and trepidation as quick stops at her place to drop off luggage or catch a nap are liable to digress into long superfluous conversations about local news, family gossip, and the weather. Given that I can only understand pieces of her flowy Sakalava dialect, I snuck in late and left bright and early in a taxi to the port for Nosy Be.

And since this post has already surpassed normal length, I’ll save Nosy Be for another post.

Alison

Earlier this month, Alison moved to town. Alison and I are both members of the now infamous “Niger Stage” of volunteers and is arguably my best friend on this oversized island. Her original site of Lopary could be euphemistically described as ‘poverty stricken’ and offered her no electricity, no latrines, few edible food products and even fewer work opportunities in the Environment sector. Together we made some fortuitous work contacts and well placed e-mails and earlier this month she moved up to replace Mark at the Friends of Madagascar house when he left in late May. Alison has already featured prominently in past bloggings, accompanying me for numerous vacations and commiserating with me on American holidays.
Our friendship over the past two years has been nurtured by thrifty text messaging deals on Malagasy cell phone carriers and a mutual penchant for sarcastic humor, practices only encouraged by our newfound proximity. Having a site partner in the Peace Corps can completely change the experience of being at site, and having Alison around has certainly done that for me. Suddenly I have someone to come with me on daily project activities, as well as assisting her on her initiatives. On a less professional level, I’m suddenly cooking a lot more meals for two and rediscovering my addiction to card games.
Having someone else around also results in rash and exciting group think. For instance, while I am not dumb enough to wander off into the rainforest by myself, I am certainly dumb enough to do it with someone else. In this spirit, Alison and I recently struck out from Ranomafana towards the forest with no particular objective, direction, or exit strategy in mind. We eventually discovered a mildly discernable path through the weeds and cassava fields which after and exhausting 45-minute climb led us up the mountains to the forest edge. We had entered the ring of semi-degraded forest that surrounds Ranomafana National Park. Completely open, unregulated, and unprotected, this area is open to anyone with enough stamina to drag themselves up the treacherous and unforgiving footpath Alison and I had just endured. It is also an excellent way to see the various methods of deforestation the Malagasy have developed to plunder the forest’s resources.
As far as I can tell, there are three main methods to this madness. The first is tavy, exhaustively described in a previous post, it consists of merrily chopping every living thing to pieces, baking it all in the tropical sun for a few weeks and setting the resulting pile of brush on fire. What remains is a good amount of ash, a clear place to plant and nothing resembling a forest. Deforestation type-2, or as I like to call it “banana tavy” is designed specifically for the cultivation of this yellow phallic fruit. All of the forest under story, including but not limited too tree ferns, screwpalms, hardwood saplings, orchids, palms, and other such plants of little interest, are laid waste and left to rot on the ground and hold in moisture for the precious banana plants that are scattered sporadically about. The largest trees are often left orphaned in a sea of pale-leafed bananas. Finally there is selective logging, where specific trees are removed for lumber rather than burned on site. The forest giants are felled by hand and slowly dismembered and carried people’s backs down the mountain trails to town. Evidence of this activity is revealed when the forest trail opens up on a gradually decaying pile coffee saucer-sized woodchips and a conspicuous hole in the forest canopy.
Alison and I witnessed all these fascinating variations as our trail wound deeper into the forest. However, after a few hundred meters, our trail began to dissipate and the phrase “I think it’s this way” became an acceptable term of navigation. The ground foliage oscillated between dense and oppressive. We scaled a sharp incline caked decaying leaf litter in order to escape a marshy valley only to literally fall into a patch sticky briars which attached themselves in the thousands to our hair, clothes, and skin by the thousands. Seeking relief we came upon a clearing of the ubiquitous selective-logging chips and took ten minutes to clean the curiously oily briars from our persons as well as evict the small colonies of leeches that had collected around our socks.
Tired, scratched, and discouraged we decided to cut our losses and head back having failed to see much more than a lot of green leaves. We quickly realized, however, that we were quite securely lost and even if we could retrace our steps, we weren’t sure we wanted to. I eventually acquiesced to Alison’s suggestion that we just keep moving downhill, a strategy which on more than one occasion had us both gracefully falling on our butts and scooting down the mountain. After nearly inflicting upon myself a serious life-changing injury by placing my weight on a thick log which turned out to have the approximate consistency of papier-mâché, we emerged on a rushing stream cascading down the mountain.
The scene that greeted us was, perhaps, the most beautiful forest scene I have even seen on this island. The stream came clamoring over the moss carpeted boulders into in an endless chain of small waterfalls broken up by deep cold pools of pristine water. The branches of surrounding trees leaned in over the river’s banks creating an emerald tunnel pierced everywhere by bright streaks of light. We panted standing on a deep green boulder with a commanding view while I fumbled with my camera. The picture was intensely underwhelming. Never before has my camera so resolutely failed to capture a desired scene. Undismayed we clamored down the slippery rocks and were confronted over and over again with scenes of stunning beauty. There were more subtle shades of green in a single scene than I heretofore thought existed and the limits of digital photography with a hand held camera were unceasingly evident. We followed the stream down exceedingly dangerous rocks, crisscrossing its path in search of the route least likely to kill us until we at last reached a deep deluge that forced us to seek other means or decent.
Striking off the river we soon emerged on a massive patch of fresh ‘banana tavy.’ My camera had no trouble with the abundant shades of brown, tan, black, and sickly yellow. We also got a chance to see a bunch of shade loving orchids left high in the remaining trees to bake in the unforgiving sun. One happy consequence of clear cutting natural underbrush is that the plants that emerge in the aftermath are usually covered in thorns and spines which enthusiastically tore at my exposed legs until they bled. We eventually discovered a descending trail and emerged in the rice paddies surrounding Ranomafana, both agreeing that our hike was both one of the most exciting, but also one of the least intelligent things we had ever done.

Cloud 9

Who ever developed the adage that ‘living on cloud 9’ to describe a place of blissful joy and happiness was either being facetious or was criminally ignorant of the nature of clouds. When viewed from a distance, clouds can take many forms, almost always some variation on fluffy. However, when one comes and parks itself where you are trying to live, clouds reveal their true malignant permutations.
Clouds are basically just floating sponges of cold miserable wetness that lumber around harmlessly in the sky. When, however, one sinks to the ground it spreads around like a cold damp plague spreading gloom and despair throughout its environs. The clouds that move on Ranomafana every winter are nothing like the morning fogs that hamper American school systems with 2-hour-delays every odd month. Clouds here mimic a heavy, slow motion drizzle whose water droplets suspend themselves in the air, taking on a quality more like snow than rain. This lingering, air-like quality allows these wretched clouds to permeate into buildings, cars, and warm-weather clothing. Roofs and other such devices designed to insulate humanity from the forces of weather are rendered useless by the cloud’s moist terror. Everything gets damp. This is the kind of weather is what causes black rashes of mold to infest my t-shirts, dank bed sheets, and perpetually wet hair.
Yesterday inaugurated cloud season in Ranomafana with a particularly thick cloud that festered for a full 24-hours, putting a sour ending on what had been a wonderful couple of weeks. I had somehow managed to lasso Peace Corps, Centre Valbio, Madagascar National Parks, and 8 other volunteers into a painting project decorating the new visitor’s center for Ranomafana National Park. Further commentary on this particular event will have to wait until a time when I am no longer required to be diplomatic towards certain members of local government. After work was completed, I was obligated to leave for the capital and take an exam that holds particular importance for my intended career path. Standing by the roadside waiting for yet another semi-functional taxi van to come chugging up the hill to bear me away, I was overcome by a strange and unfamiliar sensation. I didn’t want to leave.
Ditching site for the big cities is the dream of every volunteer. Cities have stores that sell such fabulous luxuries like mayonnaise, boxed cereals, and even pizza. Peace Corps transit houses in Fianarantsoa, Tana, or Diego, can always be counted on to be sheltering at least one other sympathetic soul looking to go out and gossip over a beer or two. When searching for some alone time, these heavenly houses are wired with internet, hot water, ovens, and thick mattresses. Volunteers will usually make any excuse to get approval from the PC to get in for just one extra night. Why then was I, approved for almost a week of business and medical leave, bemoaning my golden ticket?
There are a number of possible explanations. Perhaps the nauseating 8.5 hour taxi brousse ride that one volunteer’s mother recently described at “worse than childbirth” was dissuading me. It could be the thought of the plateau’s notoriously frigid weather this time of year. However, I tend towards a much more dramatic, much more alarming conclusion. Ranomafana finally has become home for me.
Since I closed up shop in Holland at the impressionable age of 18, I have not been ‘at home’ in any place I have settled. It was a spell the sprawling city of Cincinnati was never able to cast on me during my semesters there. My stays in Paris and the enchanting country of Turkey proved to brief for me to even unpack everything from my suitcase much less establish myself emotionally. However, now after 21 months of living well below the poverty line in the jungle, Ranomafana has earned a special place in my heart.
Perhaps, these homely feelings are only being brought on now as the prospect of leaving looms ever closer and the dull pains of nostalgia set in. Maybe it’s my natural fear of radically changing my circumstances. I have grown comfortable in my corner of the forest. I know its cantankerous politics, its overpriced souvenirs, and strong coffee near the market. I love the way 3 year old Oni smiles at me when I rustle her hair at dinner. I’d rather be eating fried liver and leaves over rice with Rodrigue’s cozy little family than sit through three courses of American fair anywhere else on this island. As Ranomafana’s cloud infested winter months settle in, the weather will be miserable, but I’ll be on cloud 9.

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.