First off, Tana and Tamatave.
Not much to say about Tana; it’s still crowded, cold, and unexciting.
We went to Tamatave for 3 days (though 2 were mostly spent in the taxi brousse) at the end of my week in Tana which was wonderful. I played Scrabble in Malagasy and French with Mika’s family. It was warm and sunny. I ate ananambo and lychee chinois (those are the spiky ones that look really cool but just taste like grapes). Everything was green green green and tropical even though it’s winter. Everyone speaks the dialect I understand best. I love Tamatave.
On the June 25th I met up with the newly arrived group of Blue Ventures volunteers to take a 4 day overland tour to Toliara. We drove down to Fianar the first day, which is a beautiful drive through hills and forest and terraced rice paddies, and sentimental for me because it’s the first leg of the trip from Tana to my old Peace Corps site. The 26th is Malagasy Independence Day and the official entertainment in Fianar for the occasion was … Mika & Davis. Unfortunately we left the morning of the 26th to continue south so I missed the concert.
The 26th was momentous because we were finally heading into a part of Madagascar that I hadn’t seen before, and everything was new from there on out. We stopped at a ring-tailed lemur park and hiked around over giant boulders with incredible views of the cliffs and a valley of rice paddies. After lunch we drove on to Isalo National Park, re which I think I’ll just wait to describe till I can put in some pictures. Big rocks. Lemurs. Natural swimming pools. Cliffs. Desert; spiny and otherwise.
We spent all of the 27th in Isalo and drove the rest of the way to Toliara on the 28th, where we stayed in a hotel that had a swimming pool and wireless internet! Holy smokes. (Not that I had a computer with me, but still…)The rest of the volunteers took a camion to Andavadoaka on the 30th, but I stayed in Toliara with Matt (a former environment PCV who runs the Population, Health, Environment (PHE) program for Blue Ventures in Andavadoaka) to go to some meetings with various NGOs and the regional health authority, and to wait for the arrival of Issy, a doctor from England who is going to work with the PHE program for six months. Toliara’s a pretty cool town and it has a gelato shop, but I was definitely ready to get to Andava after a few days there. I didn’t have much to do and I wanted to get started on my project. Also, I moved into a cheaper hotel, so no more swimming pool.
The volunteers' camion
The volunteers' camion
After almost a full week in Toliara we drove up to Andava in the BV truck (which only takes 8 hours compared to 12 to 18 in a camion (depending on how often it breaks down)), stopping in 5 villages along the way to meet with the village presidents to recruit new Community-Based Distributors (of contraceptives) who all came to Andava last week to get CBD training with a PSI (Population Services International) trainer. All of the villages were right on the beach and to get to some of them we just drove the truck right up over the dunes. I sliced a big gash into my ankle by catching it on a sharp vine walking/sliding down a sand dune. Then I kicked a stick into my big toe and bled all over the place walking back up the same dune. All of the volunteers here in Andava have band-aids and duct tape all over their feet from various foot lacerations. This is a dangerous town for toes.
Visiting a village
Meeting with a village president
1 comments:
You know Mike & Davis personnaly? Lucky you. :))
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