The North

This is a post about the trip I just returned from, to the Donia Festival on Nosy Be and then the north of Madagascar, not about the coup d'etat and evacuation. I still really want to write about that sometime, because it's a real story, but it's a lot to cover and I can never seem to finish it in one session at the internet cafe. Today I'm just going to post a bunch of recent pictures and talk about various beach paradises. Fluff, in other words, and the serious stuff can wait for later.

I got back to Tana at 3am tuesday morning (the 16th) from two-plus weeks of being on tour in the north of Madagascar with Mika&Davis, my boyfriend Mika's band. We left May 27th in a special chartered caravan (read: taxi brousse, but one where they're not allowed to pick up any other passengers, so the 24-hour ride is a lot more pleasant), just for Mika&Davis, which contained me as an official passenger (read: all-expenses paid) even though I am not technically a member of the band, but it should be noted that the M&D entourage was the smallest of all the bands traveling to Donia, probably because it does not contain any backup dancers, makeup artists, or personal assistants. Who it did contain: Mika (accoustic guitar and vocals), Davis (vocals), Herve (bass), Danza (accoustic guitar), Tovo (lead guitar), Jimmy (batterie (that means drums in french!)), me (vazaha), and Andry, who was along to film a clippee (music video) for them.

Here's Mika waiting for everybody to be ready. We absolutely had to leave by 9am in order to catch the boat to Nosy Be the next day, so of course we left at 11.

The Donia brousse. The pole holding up one of the flags broke before we even left Tana, and the flag on the other side blew off somewhere in the middle of nowhere a few hours later.

The first flag that fell off we reattached to the back of the brousse.

Me and Mika in the first place we stopped to pee en route. I'm loyal to the east coast rainforest style, but the red clay dirt here with the clouds hanging so low was pretty stunning. I tip my hat to you, high plateau of Madagascar... just get a little warmer please because there's no hot water in our "shower" (read: high power spigot). This is the sky I'll be requesting my grandfather to photoshop into all future photos I take, by the way.

Donia is now on its 16th year; it's the biggest music festival in Madagascar "if I'm not wrong" (that's a translation of something people say a lot in Malagasy that always makes me want to say "Madagascar is a small fungus found on the underside of certain sea turtles in the south pacific, if I'm not wrong."). It takes place on Nosy Be, a small island off the northwest coast of Madagascar (but still part of the country). You get there by boat from the mainland. The Donia organizers alotted us 5000 ariary a piece to take the slow boat (2-3 hours), but I'm pretty sure that everyone in the caravan opted to pay an additional 5000 ariary out of pocket to take the speed boat, which takes half an hour.

Here's me and Mika on the boat. Us loading up the boat. The lifejacketed fellows in the boat on the left are Ambondrona, a hard-rock band that are remarkably popular here in Madagascar, despite the fact that you can't really shake your butt to their music. I was wearing a lifejacket too, a conscious choice and not something that I was required to do, as I am no longer a US Peace Corps volunteer.
So we arrived at...DONIA!!! (Say that really low, and really loud, so you can hear the exclamation points.)They put us up in a suite in what was without a doubt the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in in my life. I think it was owned by one of the french organizers.Here's the view from our balcony.The only problem was that it was really far out of Hellville, the main town on Nosy Be where the festival is, and taxis on Nosy Be are outrageously expensive, so we were kindof limited in our movements, and dependent on whether there was a Donia van to pick us up. I would not have traded with the artists who were staying in town for anything though, because after 2 months in Tana all I wanted to do was stare at the ocean.

From left, Herve, Tovo, me, and Mika, in the car from the hotel to Hellville.

Mika during soundcheck.Shooting clippee at Andilana -- Nosy Be beach paradise. I kept my distance, this being one of those times, like concerts, that remind me that I am not a member of the band. Mika, me, and Davis on the festival grounds after enjoying a lunch of potatoes and meat mush. With rice.All my pictures from the actual concert are rubbish, so let's jump to the next stop on the tour: Diego, way north and much-hyped by Peace Corps volunteers.

Ramena Beach, gorgeous indeed, but chock full of tiny little midgee/mosquitoes that seem like a minor annoyance until you wake up the next morning and you are covered in 200 bites, minimum, that itch like no mosquito bite I have ever experienced. I spend the next week scratching myself to a pulp. I will be wearing a beekeepers uniform if I ever make it back to Ramena.Herve and Danza modeling some advertising for the Mika&Davis concerts.

Mika and Danza at the soireeAfter Diego we went back to Nosy Be to stay at Chez Loulou, a really fancy resort in Andilana, for 5 days until they played a cabaret at Chez Loulou.

Chez Loulou was also a much nicer hotel than I'm accustomed to, but this time our sleeping arrangements were a bit different. It was no problem after we got a mosquito net, but there was an hour after we first went to bed the first night when I almost had a complete mental breakdown because I got 6 gnarly mosquito bites ON MY FACE, to add to the bajillion from Ramena. I had to go outside and take very slow deep breaths while Mika searched for a net.

The cabaret finished around 3am at Chez Loulou, we caught the boat back to the mainland around 9 the next morning and went straight to Ambanja where we ran around preparing for a concert that night, then to Antsohihy the next day (where you might recall I was last year for a health festival) for another concert. Then, sigh, back to Tana.