Days 9 - 14

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Day 9, Wed, May 7, 2008
We were supposed to go to ANGAP today, but were given a rest day instead. ANGAP is the organization in Madagascar with the task of protecting the national parks - I hope we get there eventually. I went to an internet café in the morning while Josh and Stu went for a run which required an elevated level of situation awareness. Later, Josh, Stu and I ran some errands and got multivitamins at the pharmacy. It rained for the first time today and it was spectacular. There were intermittent torrential downpours then drizzling on and off all day.
We had been told that we could get a cheap cell phone that would call the states for much less than our US phones. The big carrier here is Orange so we went to a store front to get a phone. It was Josh, Stu and I and three employees behind the desk. They spoke no English and we spoke no Malagasy and they couldn’t understand our attempts at French. We eventually bought a prepaid phone for 15,000 Airary (about $10US) and put 15,000 Airary on the phone. This sounds like a simple transaction but it took us about 45minutes, lots of gesturing and drawing of pictures to finally make the transaction. The employees seemed completely amused throughout the whole process.
Josh threw together dinner with pasta, tomato paste and canned tuna fish that was actually very good. We went home and tried the phone and it worked like a charm. We couldn’t figure out exactly what the per minute cost was but it seemed to run between $.20 and $.50. For $10US I called Amy, Josh called Ingra and Stu called his grandparents.

Day 10, Thursday, May 8, 2008
We had another day off today. We woke up early and went back to the Orange store to get more minutes on the phone. When we went back to the store we were greeted by more smiles and what appeared to be shared amusing comments.
We headed out for a walk and ended up visiting a high end cabinet maker. They used three woods primarily: palissandre, a dark colored hardwood with nice contrasting grain lines; katrafay, a light colored hardwood that looks a lot like birch; and sohihy, a neutral colored hardwood with a milky grain that Josh really liked. The sohihy is the Madagascar version of teak and is used in outdoor decks and furniture. A 2 meter long piece of 1x6 sohihy cost 115,000 Airary (just over $70US). They had a spectacular handmade two person couch made out of palissandre but their major products seem to be doors and parquet floors.
We found an Indian restaurant and had a really nice lunch with some great Nan bread.
There was some confusion at the house over laundry. The girl who lives here was about to go ballistic on Josh when he asked about our laundry. We ended up calling Liliane on our new cell phone so she could act as an interpreter. The confusion seemed to stem from the fact that there was no detergent to do the laundry and she couldn’t communicate that to us and was pissed that we were asking her to do laundry but didn’t give her money to get detergent. What was agreed was that she would buy the detergent and Bakoly would reimburse her. We offered to give her money but were told not to. We are all uncomfortable having a domestic servant wait on us, but it’s the custom here so we’re going along.
Stu, Josh and I went out that night with Rolph, a US-AID worker from the Ag School we went to Monday. We called the Rotarians to ask for a ride, but no one was available so we took a cab. That was an interesting experience since there are no real street addresses so we had to try to explain to the driver where we wanted to go. Eventually he figured out where we wanted to go and took us right there. Rolph brought his friend Philip, a South African native. It was nice to speak with native English speakers for a while. We spent the early evening shooting pool and talking. We learned that Madagascar is the poorest country in the word that’s not currently experiencing military conflict.

Day 11, Friday, May 9, 2008
We left early for the 8 hour drive to Tomatave on the eastern coast. Tomatave is only 300kM from Tana, but the combination of bad roads, occasional small villages popping up directly on the road way, and getting stuck behind slow moving trucks makes the trip much longer. The drive out of Tana climbed the rim of mountains surrounding Tana then descended through differing forests until we reached the coast. The first type of forest seemed to be a new forest with very few types f trees that we assumed was regrowth after deforestation. We then came to what was planted eucalyptus trees for lumber or charcoal production. After that was the Antisabe national park which was still original rain forest, but there was a massive area of fresh clear-cut on the opposite side of the road. We’ll stop and visit the park on the way back from Tomatave. We stopped for lunch at a nice little rest area overlooking a waterfall. We saw two Madagascar Day Geckos and some wild vanilla beans. As soon as we got to the coast it became very hot and humid and the remainder of the trip was very uncomfortable with 10 of us in a passenger van.
Once we arrived in Tomatave we changed and then went to the District Rotary Conference where we were introduced to the local Rotary members. We went to a local restaurant with many of the other local Rotarians and had dinner. Food in Madagascar is often French and this was no exception, with lots of meats and sauces.
Our hotel is a series of single person bungalows right on the Indian Ocean. They were quaint but like so much else in Madagascar, in disrepair - the salt air doesn’t help either. The upside was that I shared my bungalow with several geckos who are not only very cute, but are also helping me by eating the mosquitoes. Once night fell I noticed that Madagascar has it’s own version of fire-flies! We don’t have them in California, but they are all over the east coast, and is was surprising to see them here.

Day 12, Saturday, May 10, 2008
We got up early and had breakfast at the hotel then headed out to the conference. The conference was in French, so mostly I just talked to individuals outside. We gave a very brief presentation to the group while we were there. For lunch we went to a resort on the beach. The roads in Madagascar are so bad that a couple mile drive took us almost 30 minutes. After lunch we went back to the hotel, Josh and Stu played basketball with some of the locals then Josh, Kristen and I took a walk up the beach. A few months ago there were a series of cyclones that hit the area so as we were walking we were noticing the remnants of beachfront yards and roads that had been washed out. At one point we found a huge section of concrete bridge that was two lanes wide with a pedestrian lane on either side that was the only thing left after the rest of the roadway was washed out. Later that night we went to diner at the conference and then back to the hotel.

Day 13, Sunday, May 11, 2008
Happy Mother's Day!
We got up early for the ride back to Tana. On the way we stopped at the Parc National d’Andasibe-Mantadia to see the Indri, the only fully diurnal lemur. We had lunch and then headed to the park. Unfortunately, as soon as we reached the Park, Liliane told us that it was already too late and we couldn’t go to the park even though it was only 2:30 in the afternoon. We later found out that the real problem was cost. We continued our drive back to Tana in a very quite van. We had take out pizza for dinner and spent the rest of the night in Ivato watching Malagasy TV.

Day 14, Monday, May 12, 2008
We had another day off today so Josh, Kris and I headed out on our own. We had seen a sign for an animal shelter and vet hospital written in English earlier in the trip. It turns out that Phillip from the pool hall knew the vet who runs it so he gave me her number. She wasn’t available to give us a tour herself, but she called her staff and let them know to expect us so we headed out. We caught a cab, but the driver didn’t know where the shelter was, and since street address and not really used, we couldn‘t tell him exactly where it was. We drove to the neighborhood and then drove around looking for it. With some help from a local police officer, we finally found it. The vet hospital was outdated, but still very nice - they had an old x-ray machine but new CBC and chemistry machines. They didn’t have nearly the amount of drugs and supplies that we do, but they had frontline, LRS and all the rest of the basics. The hospital definitely is set up for ex-pats. Kris pointed out that the vet hospital was cleaner than the human hospital we visited last week. We also visited the shelter portion of the facility and I got my puppy fix by playing with the pound dogs. They were in remarkably good condition for rescued dogs.
After the shelter, we took a cab to the city center and spent some time in a cyber café. Afterwards we went to Shelly’s restaurant for lunch then headed out to walk to the queen’s palace. After walking up what seemed like an endless sidewalk staircase we realizes that we were still very far for the palace and it was getting dark so we headed back. It was still a great walk and it was nice to be moving after a day in a van.
Bakoly’s daughter Hanta and her brother Tatso met us in town and we tried to get food at the local supermarket to cook them a real American dinner, but it was closed. We tried to go to the market but it was dark and I was very quickly mobbed by a group of 6 or so 4-6 year olds that were trying to pickpocket me. I was able to shoo them off pretty quickly but we decided to abort the shopping expedition and just head back to our place. We made them omelets and showed them pictures of our families. We promised to make them fried chicken, mashed potatoes and peas and corn once we come back from Tulear.
OBS: Dogs and chickens roam the sidewalks with people and they don't appear to interact with them or each other at all. It's like they're all in their own separate worlds.

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