Fitampoha

Heading back to site today after 2 weeks of travel, half vacation, half business. I met up with 2 Peace Corps friends in Antsirabe, where, in an astonishing feat of bargaining, we negotiated for a guided 3.5 day canoeing trip down the Tsiribina River from Miandrivazo to Tsy Mafana. By carefully explaining (in Gasy) to our potential guide and a peanut gallery of onlookers/unsolicited advice-givers that despite appearances, we are not wealthy European tourists but penniless volunteers from the ambanivolo, we managed to get what can be a 200 euro trip for about an 1/8 of that. We provide all our own laoka (side dishes), pots, pans, eating utensils, and do all our cooking, cleaning, tent set-up, etc, the guides bring the rice and the fish. The next day we show up at the taxi brousse station and the brousse cooperative has bumped the fare up 3000 ariary per person due to rising fuel prices. We threw a small fit because we thought they were just raising the price for us vazaha PLUS we had made a reservation at the lower price the day before, but when we found out that everyone was paying the higher price we gave in. Only to discover that the best seats in the brousse (first row behind the driver, lots of legroom) which I had specifically reserved for us, were being occupied by a pair of old-ish French vazaha wearing Home Depot-style back braces. We began fit #2. It probably would have been as short and sweet as the first, except that one of my friends happens to be a master of getting really angry in Malagasy. (As she puts it: "As soon as I start speaking English again, I'm cool.") So soon we're in the middle of a crowd of everyone at the stationment, all mesmerized by Haddy's fiery wrath. The problem is, she's giving them her most ferocious material -- I'm in awe and can only muster the occasional "Yeah!...uh huh...seats...mine!" -- but all the Gasy people are noticing and saying in response is "ooo tena mahay BE izy!!" (wow, she's really good at Malagasy!), without absorbing anything she's actually saying (probably a good thing for their sense of self-worth, but not good for me getting the seat that I want). So after being complete and total brats and not managing to offend or affect anyone in spite of ourselves, we accept our lot and climb into our new, inferior seats. The especially frustrating part is that through it all, the French couple is playing dumb as if they don't understand what the problem is. Fair enough, the whole argument was in Gasy, but it was clear enough what we were yelling and gesturing about. They probably just climbed into the front seats and assumed no one would try to move 2 vazaha with back braces. Which now that I think about it might have been just props for this very seat-commandeering business! People with serious back problems do not ride taxi brousses. People who ride taxi brousses become people with serious back problems.

Anyway, the ride to Miandrivazo was about as uneventful as a brousse ride with 3 vazaha who speak the Gasy can be, except for me leaving my Nalgene and a really nice carabiner at a roadside restaurant and the denial/anger/grief/acceptance that followed. (No sympathy from my travel companions, who have already been in country a year longer than me and have lost many personal nalgenes themselves). In Miandrivazo we asked where we could pitch our tent and our guide took us to his front yard, which would have been nice except we realized we didn't have a place to lock our stuff and it was right next to a pen full of pigs practicing for the nasal congestion olympics. So we said hmm maybe a hotel tonight, but the cheapest hotel was full so our guide said why don't you stay at the nice tourist hotel and I'll pay for half of it. "Excuse me?"
"You stay at the "(Fancy french hotel name)" and I'll cover half of it."
"We don't understand."
"You pay half, I'll pay half."
"...why would you do that...?"
We tried to figure out where the catch was where we accidently agree to bring all his children back to America with us but his offer seemed genuine. I guess these guides do make a ton of money. Probably more than Peace Corps volunteers.

The next morning after paying courtesy visits with our guide to the gendarmerie and the police (both wanted to know my parents' first names and what country they live in... serious background information) we hit the water. 3 guides/paddlers, me, Haddy, Maggie, and...our fourth passenger: a highly stressed-out 37 year old chain-smoking lesbian substitute teacher from France. She had paid the full tourist price, and I don't think she had expected to be traveling with the three of us who, in the words of our guide, "tsy tia mandoa vola" (don't like to spend money). So every time we stopped for lunch or dinner, the 3 of us would jump out of the boats and rush to gather firewood and three big rocks to set our pot on, chop vegetables, and wash dishes, while she sat on the sand and waited for the guides to prepare her meal. It was a little awkward. By day 2 however, she had remembered most of the English she had learned at lycee, so we got her full story. You can read it when she publishes her autobiography, but she won't be doing that until she quits smoking.

So basking in the sun floating down the river and camping were all fabulous. Unfortunately, the last stretch of the river is too close to the ocean to go by canoe so we had to switch to a river taxi. This was bad news, contrary to the name of the boat, which meant "good news" in malagasy. Lies, all lies! First off, the boat sounded like heavy artillery fire, and smelled like smoke and gasoline. Our french companions stuck her fingers in her ears and repeated "zees eez not good, zees eez not good" over and over, then retrieved her cigarettes with shaky hands. I expressed some concern over the combination of fire and gasoline to my friend Maggie, but she wisely asked me if I wanted to be the one to tell the woman she shouldn't smoke. I decided to take my chances with sudden boat explosion rather than try to cut off an addict in the middle of a high stress situation -- death by gasoline bomb is probably faster and less taxing on one's nerves. Plus I had a new worry when we stopped to cram about a hundred more people and chickens into the boat, plus a small school's worth of furniture on top. We were sitting very low in the water, and patching up holes with soap, and I was sure the roof was going to collapse. I was very tense for about 20 minutes and then I relaxed, removed all body parts from within pecking reach of the velociraptor-size chickens squeezed between the suitcases I was sitting on, and spaced out. Six hours later we made it to Tsy Mafana, where we crammed into the back of a pickup with a bunch of other french people and their 2 malagasy guides, who were drinking gasy liquor from the bottle and very happy to join us in a singalong of all the Gasy songs we knew, and to examine our reasons for not having Gasy boyfriends. They dropped us off at the Avenue de Baobabs, where we got permission to pitch our tent in front of some people's hut and then fell asleep.

The next morning we got up to watch the sunrise over the baobabs, which, along with lemurs, are one of the least over-rated things I have ever seen. Baobabs are incredible, guys. Someone has got to come visit me. We made it to Morondava, where we watched Maggie's sister win the Bronze medal in the 10k at the Olympics. I will not even try to describe how exciting this was.

Finally, the reason for the whole trip: the Fitampoha festival. Fitampoha is a fertility festival for the Sakalava Menabe people. This means a lot of sex, so we descended on Belo sur Tsiribina with...a whole bunch of expired condoms. Oops. Fortunately other NGOs checked theirs before carrying them all the way to Belo so we did have good ones to hand out. We made costumes out of the bad ones. Basically, in the mornings we wandered around and ate tons and tons of fried food and hung out in our grass hut on the beach, and in the afternoons and evenings we talked to people about getting tested for HIV at the festival and did sensitizations about STDs and condom use. We also talked a lot about clean water and hygiene, since everyone had to poop in this one spot in the woods (probably the grossest pooping situation I have ever encountered) and people were washing their butts in the same river they all fetch water from. Surprise surprise, about 3 days into the festival people start showing up at our hut looking for diarrhea medicine. My faith in Sur-Eau (our water chlorine treatment) was dramatically strengthened, as our water was a pretty gross color even after filtering, but none of us got sick, even though we were almost certainly ingesting (sterilized) human excrement.

So much fun was had by all. Now I'm going back to site to see if everything I tried to set up before I left has fallen apart.

Love to you all.