Diego Vacay

Last week I returned from a short vacation with 2 other volunteers from my region—four fun and relaxing days following some decidedly unproductive NGO business meetings. We were up in Diego, a larger city in the far north that we reached after 10 hours on the only road out of my region, a rough 90 mile dirt track that is only passable during the dry season.

Diego attracts many more visitors than SAVA (my region, an acronym that stands for its four major cities, Sambava-Antalaha-Vohemar-Andapa). It was nice to play the tourist for a few days, and discard the ‘Community VIP and Entertainment’ status that volunteers are automatically assigned in village life.

We spent a day at Ramena Beach and another at the Grand Hotel, enjoying the nicest pool in Madagascar. We also spent a day in Amber Mountain National Park (cold and rainy but filled with wildlife) and a day at the shallow and aptly named Emerald Bay, where we went snorkeling (over some sadly and severely degraded reef), got coconut and ylang-ylang oil massages on the beach, and ate grilled barracuda and crab. Then karma came back to bite me in the form of bad sunburn and 40,000 Ariary ($20) stolen out of my wallet, but the day ended nicely, with a brief sighting of a diving humpback whale.

Now I hope you don’t get the idea that I live like this every day! Days of lounging at the beach are about as rare for me here as they are when I’m in the States. (Well, OK, almost as rare.) But amazingly, I was able to do it all within my usual stipend, since I had a bit saved up and as volunteers we were able to stay at a volunteer transit house and get resident prices for entrance to parks and such.

The Amber Mountain trek was cold and rainy, but we were able to see the smallest chameleon in the world which only lives in this one park (the pygmy chameleon, see picture—that’s my hand!), as well as some lemurs and the leaf-tailed gecko, which has the best camouflage I’ve ever seen—the guide pointed at a slender branch and said there was and animal on it, and we just stared at her blankly until she clarified what we were looking for.

As Peace Corps volunteers, I hardly need to add that we spent a lot of time EATING! We especially enjoyed our meals at a Spanish Tapas restaurant, where we chatted with the French owner in Malagasy since it was the language that we communally understood the best.

And now I’m back at site. We’ve bought materials for the 3 wells and the building of the first well in Anamboafo should get started on Tuesday, though of course weather is always an issue. We also found a librarian for the community library (the school director’s daughter—nepotism of course, which doesn’t surprise me and I suppose they have a fairly limited pool of middle school graduates to choose from anyway). In any case, the library will definitely open in about three weeks, but I’m still holding the books hostage in my house until they finish building a table and I can talk to the librarian about what hours she’ll be open.

This coming week I’m also hosting a 3-day English teacher training for rural English teachers in my area. The training will be led by one of the Education volunteers in the regions, with me acting as assistant and translator (since just because they’re English teachers doesn’t mean they speak English!) The following pictures are courtesy of PCV Felicia: