Back to the Present

Greetings once again from Madagascar. I've been back in Tana for about a month and a half now, halfway through my three month tourist visa. I'm living with Mika again, but we're out in the boonies of Itaosy now. Mika moved in with his brother's family a couple months ago because they were absolutely for sure going to tear down his building within days, but apparently the guy who was causing all the problems with the house died or something, and the building is still going about its business, bothering no one. We slept there after a show Saturday night actually, because it was too late to get a taxi back to Itaosy. Anyway, our new house is in fact a villa, and we have a toilet with a toilet seat, and a real shower (still no hot water) and a SINK with a faucet and a mirror, so I'm totally content. And the windows have glass so the house can actually be sealed against the elements when winter comes. Soon.

Things were pretty quiet for the first month I was here. Mika and I went on a bunch of really early morning hikes, because you only have to go a short way from our house to be in the middle of rice paddies and farmland here, and there are some great views because it's really hilly. Then we would go to town to run errands, or walk out to the main road to buy fruit or home-made yogurt or use the internet. Mika was working pretty intensely on finishing their next album so I got some books from the Peace Corps house and spent a lot of time sitting in the garden (enclosed, grassy, peace and quiet in Tana, wow!) reading and clandestinely eating way too much of the candy that I brought from the US to give to people.

The view of Tana ville from one of our hikes.

IMika on a country path

About two weeks ago we finally got out of Tana and went to Tamatave and Foul Pointe for a week. Going to the east coast of Madagascar makes you think that everyone who lives in Tana is a total sucker. It is so green and lush, and there's mountains and the ocean and fresh fish and tropical fruits and clean air and it's just amazing. It would have been a total recharge for me if I hadn't gotten super carsick on the way there and thrown up in the brousse to Tamatave (which is super hilly and windy and I hadn't been in a taxibrousse for 4 months so ok) AND in the 4x4 going to Foul Pointe (which is a completely straight road parallel to the coast so there's no explaining it) and then felt dizzy for the whole time we were there. But I got to eat my favorite foods: ravitoto with coconut and ananambo (moringa). Unfortunately lychee season was already over when I got to Mada. There were still lychee chinois, which are way more interesting to look at but unfortunately they just taste like grapes.

Mika multitasking

Me with our voan-dalana: oranges and lychees from Brikaville

The day after we got back from Tamatave Mika played a cabaret at this super ritzy vazaha bar near the Peace Corps house and I summoned all of my mental faculties in order to speak French to our friend Steve's girlfriend during the whole concert, ending up highly concerned about how I'm going to communicate with anyone when I'm in France in June and my French comes out Malagasy. Steve made a killing that night doing fake tattoos on people with glue and glitter. He did mine free as an advertisement, because my insanely pale skin really made it stand out so all the vazaha kids and vazaha girlfriends were asking about it.
We spent the night at the house in Antanimena and left the next morning for a concert in Antsirabe, 4 hours south of Tana. Below see the banderole with hand-painted pictures of Mika and Davis.

The concert organizer's kids, styling with a juice-mustache.

Ninah and Davis

The concert ended at about 2 in the morning when the power went out, and didn't come back for about 45 minutes, during which time everybody left because despite being a really big hotel it didn't have a generator or even candles so we all just had to move around in the dark until the power finally came back on. We got to sleep from 3am to 5am, when we had to get back in the van to drive 24 hours straight to Nosy Be.

I did a lot of sleeping on the way there, because I hadn't gotten any real sleep in two nights, and also because our driver was trying to break the sound barrier and the road was of the curvy and mountainous persuasion (but Mom, it was Loulou's own personal van and there were seatbelts!). But, as usual in Madagascar, it was devastatingly gorgeous terrain so I spent a lot of time with my head out the window like a golden retriever, feeling like I might have the best life ever.
We got to Ankify at 5am and caught the slow ferry to Nosy Be because we were with Loulou's car.

Mika: "Jayne, you're missing the sunrise over the mangrove swamps..."

Got to Chez Loulou (Andilana Beach Nosy Be) around 8, ocean swimming, unable to sleep because the Salegy music had already started at full blast, rice and fish, sunbathing, giant puppets, Mika & Davis, (already 2 hours in the internet cafe, no time for complete sentences anymore), pictures:



Ninah had to catch a flight back to Germany the next night, so after a few hours of sleep that night we got up at 6 to take the boat back to the mainland and then another bajillion hours of taxibrousse back to Tana. I don't think I've ever gone 5 nights without sleep before. My eyes stopped working in sync; it was totally bizarre. I was like those toads whose eyes can go in whatever direction, independent of each other.


Finally I leave you with this picture, of me with one of the avocados that grows in Mika's brother's family's garden. I already knew that Malagasy avocados get huge, but all the ones I'd tried before were super watery. Well, this one was just like a California avocado. But the size of my head.



Veloma, amin'ny manaraka indray.