Exodus

It’s a sad truth that whilst the Azafady family is very close knit, it is also very transient with a constant flux of people in and out of the organisation. On arriving back from the bush this time around, the office was a very different place. An exodus had taken place whilst I was away.

Sophie (Project Development Assistant), Kate (Nutrition and Health Project Assistant), Diana (English teacher and Arts and Cultural Project power house. Also my housemate) and Katie (Lemur Venture Coordinator and also my housemate) have all flown the Azafady nest in the past month. In addition, Gaby (Head of project Development) has been offered a new job in the UK so she too has flown the nest after over 3 years of incredibly hard work in Fort Dauphin.

They’re all going on to do amazing things in their respective fields but I am going to miss them all a hell of a lot. So now it’s just me, Brett, Lemur Lisa and Boss Lisa as the Vazaha contingent – a much slimmed down Azafady family! But come October there will be a fresh invasion of pasty faces to welcome in to the fold.

Random puppy who trespassed in my house and left me little brown presents all over my floor.

As for the pioneers, despite only having 7 volunteers this time round in Volobe Sud we still got the latrine done. 4 days of torrential rain stopped work for a while. The heavy rainfall also meant that the river was too high to get cement bags across from the village where supplies were stored. But, in the end, we still got it done with time to spare for some avant-garde landscaping.

Finished latrine

Nery modelling the futuristic latrine landscaping.

On the bench that Caitlin and I built.

Playing with a chameleon

One of the highlights for me on this trip to the bush was the discovery of a waterfall about 40 minutes from camp. It was truly gorgeous. The river ran down in a series of steps which meant that you could spend hours scrambling up and down the rocks exploring different nooks and crannies of the cascade. There was even a natural shower which was incredibly refreshing. Pictures really don’t do it justice.

The waterfall.

Flowers on the coffee trees in Volobe

My tent at sunrise

During our stay at Volobe there has been a lot of talk about the spiritual aspect of Malagasy culture. People becoming possessed by spirits, spirits visiting people in the night and attacking their bodies, ghosts, telling people’s destiny and the dead coming back to life and walking amongst the living (apparently the way to tell if someone is dead and has come back to life is to pour sand on their body as they sleep. If they wake up suddenly and try to kill you then they are somebody who has come back to life.). This time round our visit to Volobe coincided with somebody in the village being possessed by a spirit.

We went to see the man who was possessed. He was sat cross legged in one of the houses in the village with his brother, a friend and several other local people. His brother had a mandolina (traditional Malagasy guitar) and the friend had a marraca. Surrounding them all were the items needed to call the spirit. A bowl of water, a little cotton sack of coins and bunches of local herbs and plants. The friend and the brother started up a kilalaky rhythm (crazy fast) with the instruments and a really distant expression came over the possessed man’s face. As he sat cross legged on the floor his whole body started to jerk in time with the rhythm of the instruments. We were then told that we could ask the man questions. A lot of the girls asked him how many children they would have, if they would marry their current boyfriend etc. He rubbed water on the coins he took from the cotton sack and rubbed the coins between his hands as he muttered a series of words under his breath. He then put the coins in the bowl of water and made his predictions. His voice was stuttering and had a very odd tone to it. As if he’d just been crying and was finding it hard to speak or if the words were being pushed out of him. It was so interesting to watch. Time will tell if his predictions are correct or not!

I’m not quite sure where I stand on this kind of thing. I know that if you believe in something badly enough then it can seem very real and you can convince yourself to believe anything. But then again I am aware that there are some things that cannot be explained by science and reason alone. All I know is that this possessed man who had never met me before and had never heard anything about me was able to tell me things about my life which he had no way of knowing anything about. It was exciting in some ways but quite unnerving at the same time.

At the end of our stay in Volobe we had a huge blow out party to celebrate finishing the school and the latrine and to thank the community for the huge effort they had put in to getting all the materials there for us to work with.

I was quite sad to leave Volobe. It’s the last extended bush placement that I’ll coordinate and it dawned on me that the times are a changing and I only have a few months left in Madagascar. But I guess that just means I have to get stuck in and make the most of those few months!

Coffee beans drying in the sun

Vanilla pods drying in the sun

Finished school