Hainteny

Since I'm in the highlands right now, where they have a bit more of this "literature stuff"...

I've mentioned how much Malagasies love speeches (kabaries). They also like everything related to speeches, including proverbs and hainteny, which is a type of poetry with a lot of metaphor thrown in. So for your enjoyment (note: ambolo=chameleon):

Tanalahy ambonin-kazo ny vintana
miova volo matoa misy zaza misioka
sy satrim-parihy hitera-potaka
ao ihany raha manakobana
maro ny hazo fa ny fary no mamy
maro ny valala fa ny ambolo no tsara soratra
maro ny olona fa hianao no andrian’ny saiko

Destiny is a chameleon at the top of a tree:
a child simply whistles and it changes color-
The lake did not want to create mud,
but if the water is stirred, it appears.
There are many trees, but it is the sugar cane that is sweet.
There are many grasshoppers, but it is the ambolo that has beautiful colors.
There are many people, but it is in you that my spirit reposes.

Izaho vary ary hianao rano
an-tsaha tsy mifandao
an-tanána tsy misaraka
fa isak’izay mihaona
fitia vaovao ihany

I am the rice and you are the water:
they do not forsake each other in the country,
they do not part in the town;
but each time they meet,
there is truly new love.

If you want to read more, there's a website that has a list of hainteny here (just ignore the Czech translations), or there's a book by Leonard Fox called Hainteny.

Vacation: River, Tsingy, Baobabs

So as you may have guessed from the pictures in the last post, I've been exploring the island a bit more! After the Peace Corps training, I used up my accumulated vacation days by going on an awesome little excursion with some of the other volunteers.

Lava

The first stop was Ansirabe, the pousse-pousse capital of the country (the Malagasy version of rickshaws). A group of up chipped in for a taxi to take us out to Lake Tritriva, a pretty little turquoise volcanic lake situated above the barley fields. Yes, barley, not rice for once! Ansirabe is the HQ from Three Horses Beer, the national (basically only) beer in Madagascar. We hiked around the lake crater and watched a local man and his sons gather wild honey.

Water

A small group of us then took a too-early-morning trip to the town of Miandrivazo, where we joined up with some French and Dutch people for a 3-day ride down the Tsiribihina river in dugout canoes. The river was broad and shallow from the dry season and we had to get out to push it over sandbars a number of times. Out guide kept telling us that the Batman would guide us during the day. What? The Batman will take you! It took us a while to realize he meant the boatman. The sun was a bit harsh but the trip was peaceful, floating downriver and taking a turn with the oar now and then. We ate and camped on big sandbars and slept under the stars--though the first night I had to tuck my kisaly (wrap skirt) around my head to ward off mosquitoes.

Cows

After almost 150k of river, we hauled out at a small town where, as with everywhere else, the kids were too used to tourists. "Give me your watch." No. "Give me a pen." No. "Candy?" Sigh. There was also a constant demand for used water bottles, which I can support a bit more since it's legitimate recycling--I even saw a kid make a two-string guitar out of a discarded water bottle. After escaping the hoards of children, we loaded onto zebu (humped cow) carts for a 2 hour ride to our hotel, a hilarious little trip that involved running the cows and their rickety little wagons down dusty roads and fording the streams Oregon Trail-style.

4x4

After a very necessary shower and a good night's sleep, we squeezed into a 4x4 and drove to a campsite outside Tsingy National Park, a fairly long ride that involved nasty roads (4x4=absolutely necessary) and two river crossings by ferry. The ferries were interesting--bi- or tri-hull catamaran with a wooden plank platform. More river camping! As a side note, I continue to curse the French for introducing their concept of a breakfast to their colonies. 6 inches of dry bread with weak coffee or tea is NOT a meal, merci beaucoup.

Rocks

We spent a full day wandering around the Tsingy, which is a bit like Bryce Canyon in the States--erosion has caused slot canyons, stone pillars, and wavy fins of rock. We hiked around for 6 hours or so, squeezing between and climbing over the rocks to explore some of the caves and grottos that apparently used to be occupied by the mysterious Vazimba people, who according to Malagasy oral tradition were the first inhabitants of Madagascar. Many of the ascents and descents over the rocks were so steep that we wore harness and clipped onto cables anchored in the rock while we climbed over on ladders. There was also a great suspension bridge over one of the drops--think Indiana Jones with safety cables. The park was amazingly well kept up, despite (because of?) the fact that due to its remote location and the drop in tourism because of the political issues here, they only got 5000 visitors last year.

Lemurs

One thing Bryce definitely does not have! We saw a bunch of sifakas--lanky white little dudes who jump through the trees--a nocturnal hapalemur, and a family of brown lemurs.

Long Road South

We got back in the 4x4s to head south to Morondava--rough roads, two ferries, and LOTS of baobabs! There are a bunch of myths about the baobab, the most common being that the gods were angry at the trees' arrogance, so they yanked them up and stuck them back in the ground upside down, their roots in the air, which accounts for the baobabs' weird appearance. At sunset we were at the Avenue de Baobab, a line of massive trees, some of them 1000 years old. We left the rest of the group at Morondava, a dusty little city on the ocean, and after a brief swim in the Mozambique Channel, we headed back to Tana (Antananarivo, the capital) on 2 days of taxi brousses.

I'm flying back to site tomorrow and have some hopeful leads on working with fair trade vanilla. Peace (Corps) Out!

Pics: The Wild Wild West

Writeup in next post!

Random Area Pictures

Millipede in the forest

Not as cool as a chameleon.

If you were ever wondering what vanilla looks like on the plant.

Middle school students singing at the Independence Day celebration.

One of the towns down the road, Farafan- ganhely

Going by Marojejy Park

My banking town, Sambava, complete with cow

Sambava

Tree nursery at another volunteer's site

Finally, Uploading Cooperates!

Waiting for people to finish counting trees in the forest--L to R, gendarme, counterpart, guide.

Our parade on the way out of the forest (over the rice fields and through the woods, back to our town we go...)

Part of the path on the way up.

I hate this bridge.

First Three Months at Site

First off, sorry for the low number of pictures on the blog--I know people like them, but most of the time the internet doesn't cooperate enough to let me upload! At the moment, I’m in the capital for IST--in-service training, a volunteer conference after the first three months at site. This might be a good opportunity to answer the question I've gotten from a few people--"Uh, so what do you DO, anyway?!?" The first three months at Peace Corps site are supposed to be mainly for learning about your town and improving your language, but I haven’t been totally slacking! I:

Did a community survey and wrote a general report for future volunteers and organizations interested in putting resources in the community.

Hosted a live fencing demonstration for 60 or so middle school students (Live fencing is basically just planting trees or bushes really close together instead of cutting down trees to make a fence).

Helped a start-up vanilla exporting firm translate and edit customs documents in English--and got vanilla beans in return, yum.

Started a 30-student English club with one of the teachers and have had 4 meetings so far. About 5 or 6 of the students are really into it, the others just want me to magically get them to speak English, I suppose through osmosis. It’s amazing the gaps left by the system of rote memorization--the students usually don’t understand even basic words out of the context of memorized phrases. One of the smartest students, who has been taking English for 4 years, asked me what the word “what” meant.

Attended natural resource management conference and an environmental festival.

Did a World Map project--I mentioned this awhile ago. It’s a good project, but a bit of a pain and still not done. It’s a pain because another volunteer and I had to pay for the materials out of pocket, and also because 2/3 of the scheduled work days have been rained out, so the “map” right now consists of a large ocean-blue rectangle with pencil grid lines across it, just waiting for countries to be drawn and painted. Sigh--hate leaving projects unfinished, even if it’s just a few weeks. The kids seem excited, though.

Have been slowly promoting beneficial plants--moringa trees (nutrition and firewood), tomatoes (nutrition and anti-mosquito) and citronelle (anti-mosquito and soil stabilization). Since I only just got my closest neighbors to plant some, this might take awhile!