Manao ahoana (hello in the highlands)! Sarah has asked me to be a guest blogger and
tell you about our family trip to Madagascar.
It was a great trip! I will try
to be concise, but it will be hard. We
flew from Detroit to Antananarivo (Tana) via Paris. There were some last minute flight changes on
our way out of Detroit, but in all, the travel went smoothly, it just takes
forever!!! 24 hours from the time we left Detroit until we landed in Tana. So we ate, slept, read and watched movies.
We left the Tana airport around 11 pm, so we went straight
to the hotel and to bed. Sarah has a
friend whose father is a taxi brousse driver, so she arranged for him to be our
private driver while we were in the highlands.
I am so grateful for Clark, he was awesome! Driving in late at night, everything looked
dark and deserted. I asked Sarah if the
buildings we were seeing were deserted or just closed. It is winter in Madagascar, and Sarah had
told us that it gets cold in the highlands, but we called her a wimp and told
her she had been gone from Michigan for too long. It was sunny and nice during the day,
probably in the high 60’s, but it was in the 40’s at night and the hotel did
not have heat. We made sure we booked
places with electricity, private bathrooms, and hot water, but we did not ask
about heat! Oh well, after the 1st
night we were in places with thicker blankets, so it was ok.
The next morning Sarah took us to a buffet so we could
sample some Malagasy dishes. Everything
was very good and nothing was particularly odd.
There is a lot of French influence, so there is bread, great jam, eggs,
and a stew with Zebu meat. When we
headed out, things in the city looked very different than the night
before. Lots of people and
activity. Tana is large, busy, and
crowded, but it was neat to see.
As we drove out of Tana for Miarinarivo (Sarah’s town -
about 2 hours west), we quickly came upon rice fields, brick making fields, and
zebu. There are zebu everywhere! Zebu carts are very common in the highlands,
the zebu also graze beside the road, and small groups of 4-5 are often in the
road being moved to a new area by their owners (or maybe to market). We were
driving through the mountains, which are beautiful and even though it was the
dry season, things were still pretty green.
I was surprised that a lot of the highlands are primarily clay, even the
mountains, so lots of things are red, but they also use the clay to make bricks. Between cooking fires, baking bricks, and
burning the grass on the mountains to prepare the pastures for the rainy
season, the highlands smell like a campfire all the time! Most of the houses in the highlands are made
of bricks without mortar, and have thatched or tin roofs. Also, most people in rural areas do not have
electricity, and even in towns and cities most people don’t have washing
machines, so every river and lake has people washing clothes in it. Then the clothes are laid out on the bushes
or the ground to dry so the country side is very colorful.
We spent the next few days in the highlands. We met Sarah’s rock sculptors, the people at
Prosperer and CCI, her minister and his family, her friend Toky and his family,
the people at the youth center, other friends, some of the other Peace Corps
volunteers, and some of her silk weavers.
Everyone was so welcoming and friendly.
They also all wanted to feed us, so Sarah warned them ahead of time that
we would not be able to eat everywhere we went, it would just be too much
food! We got to see her place, which has
electricity, running water (cold only) and a propane stove, so she doesn’t have
to cook on an open fire. We also saw her church, the youth center, the market
in her town and lots of other interesting things. It’s a very pretty area in the mountains.
One day we drove to Ampefy to meet Emma, another volunteer,
and visit Chute de la Lily. It was
market day in one of the towns we drove through, and it is a sight to see!
Local people walk or taxi brousse to town for market day to buy, sell, or just
be there. You almost can’t drive because
of all the people and stuff. There is
furniture, chickens, zebu, fruits and vegetables, clothes. It’s amazing.
Thankfully we had Clark to drive us, and we were just passing through.
Ampefy is pretty, and Chute de la Lily, the waterfall there,
is beautiful. We hiked down to the
bottom followed by an entourage of young girls trying to sell us
souvenirs. Everywhere we went, at the
airport, outside the hotel, on the beach, we were surrounded by people,
primarily children, trying to sell us stuff.
Sarah would talk to all of them, and often they would hang around
chatting with her. A group of 5 Vazaha
or “white people” was a quite a sight, so we drew attention wherever we
went. Sometimes when we were driving
through a town, people would wave at the van full of white people! At one restaurant, a little boy at the table
behind us was turned around backwards in his chair watching Brian eat.
We traveled east of Tana to the rain forest and visited
Mitsinjo and Andasibe National Park where we saw our first lemurs!!! We did a night hike in Mitsinjo. We didn’t see any lemurs, but we saw
chameleons, a gecko, and frogs so Nicole was very happy. The next day in Andasibe we saw 4 different
types of lemurs including the indri, which is the largest species. We heard the indri calling when we started
our hike, it is a very eerie sound that can travel several kilometers. Maybe because it was chilly, the indri were
slow to come to the areas where the guides expected them, so it took a long
time to find them, but it was worth it.
They are very cool looking. Later
we heard them calling while we were having lunch at the hotel. After lunch, we headed back to Tana to
prepare for our trip to the coast.
Veloma,
Donna (Sarah’s mom)
