I briefly meet four of the other members of my group before we leave (we'll pick up the other two at the end of the boat trip) and am somewhat discomfited to find that they're not my age, as I'd been told, but the youngest is about 20 and the oldest maybe 30. Three girls and one guy, they're all French and initially seem as uneasy about the fact that I don't speak their language as I am. The girls are all on holiday together and the guy is doing an internship in Antsirabe, where they have a mutual friend. I feel like a gooseberry both on account of the fact that they know each other and the fact that they're French speakers. Bizarrely, two of them live on Mayotte, a tiny island off the northwest
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