Nice weather for ducks

The first half of our trip to Beandry is ticked off! The school is almost done and is looking really smart compared to the before picture. It’s such a satisfying feeling to see something tangible rise out of many days of sweaty hard work. The work itself has been fairly uneventful (lots of chiselling, sawing, hammering and hand mixing cement) but there’s always other random things going on in Madagascar.

Before

After. Ta da!

On one of our days off we headed to the market in the nearby village of Tsanoriha. A lot of fruit and veg, bling bling imitation American gear and woven goods. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more white in my life. You get stared at in town (Fort Dauphin) and are greeted by a constant stream of “Bonjour Vazaha” (hello white person) from passers by which can make you feel a little but like an exhibit in a zoo. However, with the QMM mining project bringing in a large number of vazahas from South Africa and
Canada, Fort Dauphin is less vazaha wary than it used to be (although the delightful “bogeyman” story that vazahas steal and eat vital organs, particularly the liver and the heart, is still believed by a scarily large number of people). The developments brought in through QMM haven’t reached into the bush and I think it’s fair to say that for the vast majority of people, the vazaha is a strange and relatively unknown beast. Especially when they drink from tubes which come out from a pouch on their back.

Pictures: On the way to market.

View of the eastern coastal plains and the mountains near Beandry.

Tsanoriha market. Do you think we stuck out much?!

Anybody for a custard apple? Sweet and appley and very cheap.

Wild pineapple (not good to eat) and lychees (very good to eat)

It was stupidly hot and humid when we visited Tsanoriha, we had warm cokes in a shack next to a policeman nursing some form of heavy firearm (very surreal), I fell into a rice paddy on the walk back, we found a black widow spider in one of the long drops (I think it’s now dead) and then it started to pour with rain.

Sheltering from the rain at the newly watertight school.

It’s been a fairly soggy episode in Beandry (more unseasonal weather I’m told, aren’t we the lucky ones?!). So soggy in fact that the tarp ceiling to our “dining room” (i.e., the tarp on the floor) split with the volume of water which collected in it over night. Construction work in the rain just isn’t fun. Trying to stay motivated and smiley when you want to whinge and gripe as much as everybody else is hard but it’s what I’m paid to do. So I thought back to the end of Day 1 of the OMM last year, realised that at least I didn’t have to run for 8 hours in this foulsome weather and ploughed on through. But enough of the weather. Brits are capable of talking about more than just weather.

In sad news, my tent is dead. A sound like ripping Velcro coming from your tent is always going to be a disconcerting noise. Especially when in the midst of a heavy tropical storm! One of my poles had snapped and ripped a huge hole in my fly sheet in the process. A bit of begging from somebody’s tent repair kit and inventive use of gaffa tape and my tent has happily been bodged back together to fight another day but I’m hoping I can purloin another tent from somewhere because I don’t fancy my tent’s chances in round two with the weather!

A really fun part of this trip to Beandry was interviewing some local kids about how they feel about the school being built. We found the cheekiest chappies in all of Beandry and asked them age, names etc and what they do in the day. One very shy and snotty seven year old said that he works in the paddy fields with his family all day. I felt my stomach drop when he said that. It’s back breaking work and the poor rice growing conditions around the village means that you don’t get much food for the energy you put in. The fact that everybody is incredibly physically fit is one thing that you really notice here. I swear the Malagasy must have bred with ants at some point because they can carry about 5 times their body weight as soon as they can walk! All you can do is watch on with a mixed feeling of inadequacy and amazement as a 10 year old child digs a 1m deep hole in the time it took you to dig 20 cm. It really does make you feel like a big fat lazy vazaha, these people are hard as nails.

The day before we were due to leave guess what?! It rained again! I think these photos say far more about the trip back than I can. Suffice to say that 4 hours when you’re wet through to your skin in an open sided camion is not really much fun. But going through the villages on the way back to town and seeing the kiddies running to the side of the road to wave and cheer at the vazahas in the plastic coats definitely helps to keep morale up.

Left: On the way back from the bush. Erika (one of the Azafady guides) and Nadira sporting bush chic. Right: Welcome party in a village we passed through on the way back to town. Inventive use of woven goods by the lad!

So here I am in town for a few days before we ship off to the bush again on Tuesday (4th November). It’s really good to be back in town but I know that after 5 days in town I’ll be itching to get back out into the bush. I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into the fuel efficient stove building, seed collecting for rare palms, teaching kids about hand washing and more grubbing about in the bush.

There’s something really calming about bush life. The routine isn’t very rock n roll (up at 5, work, eat, work some more, bed at 8 and repeat x 20) but the simplicity of it is really relaxing (when everything goes to plan). The long drops are foul beyond description (we can now smell them from 50m away), you wash out of a bucket, there’s no shade, everybody looks like a tramp and no matter how hard you try you are NEVER clean.

The team queuing for the "showers" (sheltered areas made of traveller's palm)

However, even though everybody lists their food cravings of the moment at hourly intervals (mine is currently mashed potatoes with peas sausages and gravy if you’re reading Ovy!), when you get back to town and the first sugar hit has been had, you’re wanting to head straight back out to your soggy tent in the arse end of nowhere. It’s such a great atmosphere. There’s the camaraderie of living in really basic conditions and working with awesome people who have to live like that every day and are probably more content with their lot in life than most Brits.

It’s also incredibly liberating to be somewhere completely out of the clutches of western ideals. No adverts trying to sell you crap you don’t need, no horrific magazines screaming at you to be prettier, or thinner, or richer and everybody’s always looking out for each other with a huge smile on their face. It’s a great opportunity to really think about what’s important but I have to confess, when you think about what’s important, it does make you miss it a whole lot more!

Talking of getting stuck into the wilderness, last weekend deserves a mention (my Mum’s favourite weekend of the year, the OMM weekend!). Gaz and Duncan were in 3rd position in A class of the OMM (Original Mountain Marathon, what was once known as the Karrimor) before the event was cancelled. Go team! Dad was told the event was cancelled an hour from the finish and went back to base to spend the night in the car. I think everybody was frustrated that they couldn’t finish (only 4 hours in apocalyptic rain and winds just isn’t enough for some people, strange folk). The event made the national headlines and was made to sound quite scary but I’m assured by all concerned that yes it was bad, but not so bad that they won’t be back. Hopefully I’ll be joining them in 2009, come on Chris, you know you want to!

And continuing with the good news from home both Gaz and Chris got jobs! Gaz is now the Senior Research Assistant at Abernethy Reserve where he will now officially hug trees, deer grass, blaeberry, pine martins (and if he’s lucky, maybe a stray reindeer) for a living. Good to know that one of us is getting some money in, nice one Marshall! One step closer to living the dream! And my not-so-little brother has bagged a job with the county council as a waste and recycling officer, he’s a real life Captain Planet taking pollution down to zero (I’ve got photos to prove it), go Chris!

Lastly – Gremlin, the legendary stray who has adopted the Azafady centre at Lanrirano as her home is a Mum! I’ve got dibs on the brown little guy, he’s a fighter!