Rice, the fried stuff and rhum (YUM!)

The majority of Malagasy eat rice 3 times a day. The price of rice to them is like the price of oil to us. Wet rice in the morning, dry rice for lunch, then any combination of the 2 for dinner. With veg and meat if you can afford it. I eat lunch at Akany every week day, so get my fair share of rice, and am findng myself craving it sometimes in the evenings as well. There have been a couple of occassions where I've had left over rice for breaky too! Sounds healthy BUT most of it is white rice, so pretty junky really. So I try to get my wholegrains from oats in the morning instead.

Most little shops in villages sell some form of fried stuff. sweet, savoury, in between, battered fried veg, potato cake things with or without curry, Moof balls (like a doughnut really), deep fried bananas, and my favourite wheat free options, little cakes made of rice or casava flour. Yet to find one in Ambohidratrimo to top the awesome ones in Ambatolampy though. For 1.6p you can buy one, but it's hard to carry that denomination of coin around with you, so I ususally buy 10 at a time and stuff myself silly. Coffee shops are a little walk in store where you stand to drink your coffee with condensed milk and stuff yourself with fried cakes. I am in my no coffee phase right now, so haven't had the pleasure (or opposite, I've heard mixed reviews!) of the Madagscar coffee experience. Choclate on the other hand, MY OH MY they make good chocolate here! Must be the vanilla.

The rhum (rum) is Mada is AMAZING. So good it's dangerous. Of course you mix with coca cola, so, once again, how healthy! 1 pound 50 will buy you 500ml rhum and a big bottle of coke - although I haven't yet drank 1 of these to myself luckily. I'm glad I have good toothpaste with me.

So, despite having good intentions of a good vegetable rich diet here (which, apart from all the afore mentioned calories, I do!), I will probably leave Madagascar with a few extra kgs. Oh well, gotta get into the local scene!

Akany Avoko - Ambohidratrimo

My new placement is with Akany Avoko, 45 minutes north of Tana. It's a children's centre for approx 140 kids and teenage girls awaiting decisons by the court on their various family situations. It's gorgeous here, such a nice atmosphere. Volunteers live on site in one of the buildings, it feels like it's own little village. This week is induction, so I've been hanging out with the babies and little kids, just getting a feel for the place.

Ambohidratrimo is more suburban than Ambatolampy. I haven't seen a zebu cart here, although in a village halfway between here and Tana, zebu seem to take themselves for walks down the main street. The market is very civilised and they are used to vahaza here as there are often volunteers at the centre.

I will be teaching English and music and my schedule for next week is looking pretty chockers, looking forward to being ultra busy! http://www.akanyavoko.com/

Teaching is fun!

My 20 minute lessons with the grade 4, 5 and 6 years olds are always good fun. There's really nothing like a classroom full of  40 beaming faces greeting you with a loud "Hello!" and waving madly, obviously ecstatic to see you again. I respond with "How are you today?" and the reply "I'm fine thank you!" in metered chorus. They are total parrots, teaching them words such as window or door, then pointing to a chair and asking "What's this?" inevitably begs the repsonse "What's this!" so back to basics, I need to play out their response and walk through the motions. We are now onto the difference between "This is" and "That is", with me sitting on a chair, patting it rhythmically to the words "This-is-a-chair" and then they copy, I walk away from the chair and throw my arm rhythmically at the chair saying "THAT-is-a chair" - total basics, I have been taking the English language for granted for so long, I never even noticed all these differences in how we say things. Learning French on the other hand, with all these masculine and feminine differences - what's that about?! Glad I don't have to teach that but it's hard to learn.

I took an English club last week of fifteen17-21 years olds, beginners, the teacher explained to them that I don't speak English or French, and then LEFT THE ROOM. I couldn't believe my eyes. But it was great, somehow I had them playing Simon Says using "Please", referring to my French dictionary intermitently, smiling faces of "he" and "she" on the board and hand signals, we got through a lot. I wasn't prepared, however the English club yesterday, 100 pupils. Somehow I fudged through the half hour but I really don't know how half an hour in a class as big as that can be of much benefit to them since they get no individual attention at all.

Teaching is kind of like being on stage, I think I like it!

Dodging zebu carts

 Zebu are a hump-backed cow which are sacred in Madagascar in many tribes. They are used as beasts of burden, as you can see here, again, out my back door. This is the RN7, the main road through the South of Mada. As well as the semi-trailers, crazy taxi-brousse drivers, the chickens and the pedestrians, I am constantly faced with these possibly ferocious bull creatures. I haven't looked too hard to be honest, but I assume the bulls are the strongest, so I haven't yet been up to pat one - apart from a calf - photo to come, but dodgy internet connection is impeding the upload!

I also see them a lot out riding. I ride twice a week at Rodeo Grill with my guide, Eddie, taking me through the most beautiful landscapes of rice paddies, eucalypt plantations, rural villages of mud brick houses and thatched roofs, children staring at the odd sight of a horse, people asking Eddie how much I pay him for this luxury...it's about 6 pounds fifty for an hour's ride, the equivalent of about 2 months private school education in Ambatolampy. Yesterday we passed a particularly large, muscular bull tethered by it's horns to graze and I noticed with the length of the rope available to him, he could have reached us. He seemed interested in my horse and proceeded to move quickly to greet us, luckily my horse (Lady Fountain, a 20 year old ex-racehorse) is quite responsive and I kicked her into a fast trot to dodge the beast. We could have been mince meat man. The zebu carts cause constant diversion of our trail, especially on Thursday, which is market day, when the farmers travel for hours to sell their wares in the bustling market in Ambatolampy. Eddie and I attempt conversations in my crappy French and few Malagasy words, and his stunted (but ever improving with my assistance!) English. Our catch cry after a long gallop is "Tsara be!" "Very good!". We have many discussions about mud and rain, which affects where and how fast we ride.

 

The view out my back door and over the back wall.

The rat in Ambatolampy

I'd already seen a Malagasy rat in the lodgings in Tana, but it didn't surprise me any less when I opened the bathroom door to see one scampering between the shower and toilet room. I am the sort of person who screams in that specific high-pitch so often seen in cartoons, and, like the elephant also in cartoons, I leap up onto the nearest chair for fear of the rodent climbing up my leg. It had come through the drain from the shower, a small hole just the right size for a Malagasy rat, which are much smaller than I've seen in Aus and the UK and they actually look friendly and kind - it must be a Malagasy thing. So Hary checked again and said the rat had gone, so I stuck a stick in the hole to prevent it coming back.

3 days later I opened the toilet door, to see the rat again but this time, quite dead! I had squashed him somehow in the door and I wont go into detail but I think it must have been painful...so there was the poor rat, probably half starved as I must have locked him in the bathroom with no way out for 3 days, I know this as his droppings were everywhere - why I hadn't noticed this before...

So, half disgusted that I had to pick a dead body up and half guilty for taking the friendly-looking rat's life, I did the minimum burial service possible and chucked him in the garden with the rubbish. He was gone the next day.

Ambatolampy, teaching and the friendly Malagasy people

I've now moved to Ambatolampy, my placement for 2 months. I taught my first lessons this morning at the primary school across the road from the little house I am staying in. There is no guard, no need for any worry, I feel safer here than in London, although I wouldn't walk in the village by myself at night. I'm by myself for the first 2 weeks and then will be joined by 2 other volunteers.

Tina and Hary of The Dodwell Trust settled me in for the first 3 days and introduced me to the primary school and high school. I will teach 5 primary classes 2-3 times a week, 20 minutes per class. It doesn't sound like much, but they children take in a lot in that time and at that age, they can only do short lessons. At the Cathlolic high school I will take a 2 hour English club once a week and may also be asked to help out in advanced English classes as well.

Getting used to the slow pace, especially the internet! Constant power failures and dial up speed I remember from 12 years ago. The internet is in the Catholic school across the road, so there is constant "Sssssss" from the librarian.

A busy main road runs through the village, cars and taxi-brousses don't slow down for pedestrians, there was  child hit by a car recently, that's how ruthlessly they drive through here. I have struggled my way through buying food at the market, a combination of hand signals, very bad French and Malagasy combinations on my part and my new Malagasy friends helping me when I run into them at the market. Mango yesterday was 30p - very expensive because 1. I am VAZAHA (European) and 2. they are almost out of season. I don't mind being ripped off really, but I am inclined to go back to the stall holders who seem the most honest.

Yesterday (Sunday) I had said goodbye to the lovely teenagers of my host family after they had stopped by for lunch, and there was a knock at the door. 3 girls, 11 and 12, started asking me questions in good English. They wanted something but I couldn't work out what. When they asked to come inside and I siad no, there seemed nothing left to say, so I said goodbye and thought that would be that. But no - I was haunted by these children for the next hour, knocking on the doors, front and back, peering through the windows and generally making a bit of a nuisance of themselves. I really just wanted to read, but as soon as it started to get annoying, I noticed they had left me bright flowers on my front door. I opened the window, said thanks and left them a banana each. That still wasn't enough attention for them, so they covered my door in flowers of all colours, it was beautiful! I couldn't resist, I had excess rice left over from lunch anyway, so gave them a little bag of rice each. They were finally satisfied and went home in the pouring rain.

 Tina and Hary, my faithful Dodwell Trust agents, they did an amazing job of settling me in here.