The Other White Meat...

So, I was sitting in my room on Sunday reading a book, watching movies, and doing just about anything to stave off my boredom of not being able the surf the net for the 5 bazillionth day in a row…and really, more importantly, not being able to spend time working on my research papers. Anyway, I hear a knock on my door and it’s Gil. She came downstairs to tell me the little road stand across the street was selling bats. Not baseball bats…BATS, like those nighttime flying animals. Of course I didn’t believe her and ran to the window to look for myself and sure enough, the stand had like, 5 huge bats hanging from one of the support beams, prime for the pickin’. No way!! After a quick pow-wow, we came to the obvious conclusion that we must document this so we grabbed our cameras and hustled downstairs to our parking lot to take pictures.

At first, Gil and I were trying to be discreet, hiding behind motorbikes, zooming our cameras in, then quickly snapping a shot. We didn’t want to offend the shop owner. However, after a few uninspiring shots, I decided it was necessary we change our plan of action and just outright walk up to the bats and take the stinkin pictures. This is not something you see everyday and there was no way my curiosity would be satisfied by some silly long distance pictures. So, I led the way out the gate and toward the shop.


Once we got there, I decided I had made a huge mistake because as we walked up to the stand I saw the owner munching on bat entrails like they were a delicacy sent from God Himself. HOLY CRAPPOLY, I was about ready to upchuck when I saw that! All of the sudden, eating partially cooked fish with their eyeballs staring up at me didn’t seem like such a bad meal.

Fortunately, the owner didn’t take offense to our curiosity (or my periodic dry heaves) and was rather pleased visitors were showing interest in her products. She even came out from behind the counter to spread the wings of a bat so we could get a good picture of the wingspan. Ahhhh! I know these things were dead, but they were definitely the BIGGEST BATS I HAVE EVER SEEN and I was freaking out.




In talking to the shop owner, we found out that these bats were captured a few kilometers south of us past some village I forget the name of. She told us the bat tasted “very good” (well, in French she told us that) and it tasted like chicken, lolol. Yeah right. I didn’t feel like paying trois mil Ariary (approximately $1.50) to buy one and find out what they actually tasted like.

Anyway, that’s the bat “incident” for you. It was the highlight of our otherwise very mundane weekend.

Here are some other culinary delights I’ve seen while here in Ambositra. They were so appetite-inducing to me, I just have to share…


Zebu legs…



All sorts of different meats…with flies all over them. How sanitary.

Alrighty, now that I've surely wet your appetite for a yummy chunk o'stake...bon appetit!!

Ambositra: The Artisan Capital of Madagascar

One of the neat things about being stationed at the project headquarters in Ambositra is that this is the artisan capital of Madagascar. Translation: there is much shopping to be done! Fortunately for my husband’s sanity, I’m pretty much broke over here…so these outside forces are containing my shopping compulsivity quite effectively.

However, regardless of whether or not you have money in your pocket, it is always fun to walk through the “Malagasy Arts” stores near the town center and watch the artisans at work. Their woodworking and basket weaving skills are incredible, and the pace at which they are able to work is a treat to watch. One day Gil and I were walking through some of the shops and Gil started talking to the shop owner. Apparently, if you give their workers an idea of what you are looking for, they will make something specifically at your request. Tres cool!

Below are a few pictures of artisans working on their wood pictures...





While the prices here are cheaper than places like Tana (and of course WAY cheaper than the U.S.) and the fact that several of the local shop owners have seen me around town everyday and know I’m not a tourist, Katie Paleface Holt is still given “vazaha” prices right off the bat. After talking to some of the ADRA employees who live here, they told me the “vazaha” prices are 2-3 times (sometimes upwards of 5-7 times!) the normal prices they would sell these crafts for. Lol! I know we are talking about a matter of $2-3 here, or at most, for an intricately-carved rosewood bowl or other craft, about $10-15, and I know that these things would be sold for 10-20x the price in the U.S., but it’s the principle of the matter to me: I hate being HAD!



*Here Gil and I were trying on hats (these are traditional hats you see people wear in this region, and yes, mine's too small and I look stupid, I know) and at this shop, the lady tried to sell them to us for 1500 Ariary (approx. 75 cents). Sure, doesn't sound like much, but when we visited another stand at the local market we always shop at for our food, a market where the shop owners know we are not just tourists, the owner gave us a price of 400 Ariary for one of those hats. Haha! The first lady was definitely trying to make the sale of the century to us.

So, I’ve decided to take the smartest advice there is when shopping in the developing world: have a local go in and bargain for you. I am fine bargaining for baskets as I can bargain those down, but there are a few cool rosewood bowls and figurines I want to get before I head home and I have no clue what a good price for these things would be, so I’m not even going to try. I’m just going to take a few pics, show one of the local ADRA employees, and send him or her in to do my dirty work, haha.

In the meantime, since we are pretty much dead in the water without our internet as far as my part of the project and my school research goes, I’m having fun conducting my little reconnaissance work and watching the locals create their amazing wood crafts, baskets, and just about anything else you can imagine. The Malagasy artisans truly are talented!


One of Ambositra's artisans...carving something I'll most likely buy before heading back home to the States, haha.

T.I.A.

Well, after spending the week in Tana attending meetings, going out to dinners, and enjoying a bit more of life like I’m used to back in the States...as well as being quite insulated from the cyclone that slammed into the southeast coast of Madagascar, I was ready to come back to the relative peace and quiet of Ambositra to spend the week and weekend finishing up my research papers and program planning for my online Disaster Management and Tobacco Interventions courses that are due this week. I had a solid plan in place to crank these masterpieces out, then I arrived in Ambositra only to find out from Ben and Gil that during the cyclone, our internet server, modem (I don’t really know, I’m not a techie person) was knocked out. Oh yippy skippy! No internet until the who knows when...apparently it will be whenever our tech guy is able to drive 5 hours up to Tana, find replacement parts, and drive 5 hours back and rebuild whatever blew up or over or something like that during the storm. And even then, the internet will still probably not work for the most part.

Fortunately, I have very understanding professors who have both spent a lot of time in the field and know how it is: half the time your tri-band cell phones don’t work, Skype cuts out constantly if it even works, and internet is slow, when it too decides to work. Needless to say, my profs have been very understanding about the fact that most of my assignments this quarter have been submitted late…

The more time I spend here in Madagascar, the more I’m able understand what Leonardo DiCaprio would always say in the movie “Blood Diamond”… "T.I.A” or “This Is Africa.” Life is extremely different over here. Rules you are used to in the United States or other developed nations most DEFINITELY do NOT apply here in Madagascar. The faster you figure this out and modify your behavior and expectations, the better off you’ll be. For instance, your internet gets knocked out...you're gonna have to wait many moons for it to be fixed. Roads blocked by landslides? Well, you're gonna have to hike. Any day you can get some weird bout of food poisoning even if you bleach the heck out of your fruits and veggies and avoid the mystery meat. You’re lucky if packages sent from the United States ever reach you without getting stolen by the postal service workers. Travel anywhere is unbelievably slow due to time spent dodging pot holes, mudslides, herds of cattle, zebu-drawn wagons, chickens and dealing with unnecessary stoppages by the police to pay them bribes to remove the spikes they put across the road so you can pass through (even if you are traveling on a national road in an official NGO vehicle). You wanna bring your chickens with you in a taxi, go right on ahead! BUT, make sure you don't travel at night...unless you're suicidal...as bandits increasingly roam the roads looking to hijack cars and steal anything they can, especially as the political climate following the coup here in Madagascar last year continues to devolve and more and more people are thrust into abject poverty and turn to desperate, more violent measures to find money or anything to help them survive. Basically, the way things normally operate...well, they don't operate that way over here...because This Is Africa.

I don’t know, it’s just been a bit of a boring weekend not having internet or being able to work on any research (I have however been able to write a lot of blogs...who knows when I'll be able to post them though!). I’ve had time to watch movies (watched “Ghandi” last night), read books, and reflect on the enormous differences in life between here and the United States. And I’m not just talking about life as in daily routines or the fact that I’m not able to enjoy most of the comforts of home, but the entire outlook on life and how different it is. It’s hard to explain, but I really wish more people from the States could experience the T.I.A. moments…I think in general, we’d appreciate a lot more how good we truly have it in the States and other developed nations.

Cyclone

Well, Madagascar ALMOST made it through the cyclone season without getting hit. Almost. A few days ago we were hit by a cyclone and the limited reports we are able to get from the coastal regions our project is working in is that the coast has been hit pretty hard.
I was in Antananarivo, or “Tana,” during the storm as I went up with our disaster management director to attend meetings with CARE and CRS about equipment, budgets, and program implementation. We got wind and rain, but we never lost power, so that was a blessing.

Apparently in Ambositra, it was a bit worse. Ben and Gil told me they had a hard time sleeping at night from the noise of the wind and the shaking of the building. There were many leaks in our headquarters building; our hallway was inundated with water, water came through the roof in our kitchen, and apparently our project director’s quarters on the 4th floor were nearly flooded as well. However, our building withstood the storm quite well considering the fact that there are no building codes in Madagascar. Our neighbors in Ambositra were left relatively unscathed as well. Some thatch roofs were damaged and fences blown away, but other than that, things were fine (at least that we knew of). Oh yeah, and our internet modem or cable or something was destroyed so we were without internet FOREVER except for the email and facebook applications I could get on my phone. (This is why I’m posting a flurry of blogs now as our internet just started up and is running, but I’m sure it’ll malfunction over the weekend like it usually does, so I’m throwing these blogs I’ve written over the past couple weeks up on the site really quickly!)

Anyway, back to the cyclone. Apparently on the coast in Mananjary we hear there is quite extensive damage. Many of the homes have been flooded and/ or otherwise destroyed, cell coverage is completely knocked out, and homes and buildings that actually did have electricity are all in the dark now. Roads into the region are all washed out or blocked by massive mudslides.

Many of the project workers who are stationed at the project HQ site in Mananjary were actually up at Ambositra’s headquarters for training when the cyclone hit. Because there really is no functioning early warning system along the coast, or most places for that matter, people were unaware that a cyclone was coming and were hit “without warning” (although I had heard a couple people talk about the cyclone’s impending arrival when I was up in the capital, even there details were very limited). Anyway, because electricity and cell service was knocked out in Mananjary, the project workers who live there were unable to contact their families to see if they were okay or if their homes were still standing. As soon as the storm passed, they tried to drive down to Mananjary, but 37 km before the town, the only road in was blocked by several landslides. After they camped out a night, we received word that they had decided to hike the remainder of the 37 km into Mananjary with their packs to check on their families and homes.

We are all hoping and praying that their families are okay. While many of the buildings in Mananjary should have been able to withstand the cyclone’s winds (we think), we have no idea how high the storm surge went into the town. At this point, the condition of the outlying villages Charly and I spent the last few weeks visiting and discussing disaster management with the commune maires and fokontany chiefs is unknown, although we are pretty sure they sustained heavy damage. It is unlikely that our teams will be able to go into the bush and check the villages out any time soon because the roads are either washed away or otherwise impassable for the time being.

While I feel terrible for everyone on the coast who have been affected by the cyclone, I think it will be good for me to be able to survey the damage to homes, roads, etc. when I next head back down to Mananjary. I think it will give me a better understanding of the challenges these people have to face year after year with these cyclones and will help me to more effectively help design a disaster preparation and mitigation program to be implemented over the course of this project.

Anyway, prayers for the people most affected by this cyclone would be greatly appreciated.

*** We just found out today 3/19 that ADRA is taking the lead in the relief efforts in Mananjary and Nosy Varika districts where thousands of people are without food, water, and shelter. Please also pray that our organization, as well as everyone else involved in the relief effort will be able to effectively and efficiently develop and implement a plan to distribute food, water, and shelter to those most affected by the storm.

Women's Day!

Hopefully this loads right. Internet access has been terrible here for the past couple weeks (thanks in part to a lovely cyclone that hit Madagascar last week, but more about that in another blog...) and the fact that I've been in and out of the field constantly...so sorry I haven't posted in awhile. Hopefully internet will start to improve in the upcoming week :D

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Monday, March 8, we celebrated “Women’s Day” here in Ambositra. Apparently, this is an international holiday…good thing I’m in Global Health and completely unaware of this day, you know, since we only deal a LITTLE BIT with WOMEN’S RIGHTS ISSUES in GLOBAL HEALTH. Duhhh. I really do impress myself with my ignorance sometimes. Actually, quite frequently. Anyhow, on Monday, all women got the day off to celebrate our awesomeness. Maybe this is the reason I don’t know much about this day, because we sure as heck don’t get it off in the States. Okay, I’m making excuses now and completely digressing.

The day started out on a fabulous note when I woke up with a massive headache. What a fitting ailment to start “Women’s Day,” haha! After downing an excessive amount of Advil, I was ready to join Gil and Elaine (Elaine is the wife of the Logistics Coordinator for the SALOHI program and they are from South Africa) for a morning in the town center watching the Women’s Day festivities. Gil and I started out our excellent adventure by jumping into the wrong car, being driven about a half a mile into town, stopping, sitting and waiting for something (we had no idea what and I question whether the driver even knew), having a few guys yap on their cell phones, then turn around and come right back to the project HQ, lol. When we realized we were in the wrong car, we got out and the driver we were supposed to go with the whole time got out of the car too, he was one of the passengers as well. Lol, what the heck? We then hopped in his car and were off. So bizarre.

The program was scheduled to start at 9 am and after our little side trip, we were late and were worried we might be missing the festivities. Luckily, this is Africa and nothing ever starts on time around here. So, when we got to the center we were able to just find a seat and patiently wait with the growing crowd for the party to start.




We had a fun time watching women and children from different communities in different traditional outfits, some with their faces painted, walk around with their signs and banners.

As we sat watching and waiting, a group of kids began to play near us and one of the little girls kept looking at me in absolute terror. It was as if I’d just stepped out of some Alfred Hitchcock horror movie and come to terrorize this kid: apparently I am what nightmares are made of…at least to this little girl. Well, and probably my husband too, let’s not kid ourselves here. Anyway, Gil and I couldn’t stop laughing at this little girl’s reaction (she even started crying when I smiled and waved at her when I noticed her staring at me, haha) and we were able to get a few telling snapshots of her expressions. Too funny!


Overall, the festival was quite interesting. After the various groups of women with their different banners did their homecoming-like parade/protest-like march around town...

...they returned to the town center where several village women performed some traditional Malagasy dances. The dances were not quite what I expected. I guess I expected a lot of jumping around and screaming with a few torch jugglers and fire breathers for added effect. I don’t know! When we watched traditional dances in Zambia a few years back they were very lively and exciting. The Malagasy dances were very slow and subdued…I guess they actually are a pretty good characterization of the Malagasy lifestyle which is very laid back. Still, I wanted acrobatics! The closest we came was when the dancers raised their hands over their heads and did cheerleader “spirit fingers” and the crowd erupted into cheers and applause. Below is a picture of one of the dances...


After the dances, approximately 500,000,000,000 political officials prepared for their speeches and we took that as our cue to skedattle because it wasn’t like we were going to understand the speeches (which would all be in Malagasy) anyway.

With the rest of the day off, we decided that to truly honor the traditions of Women’s Day it was necessary that we go shopping. Yeah, don’t worry Matt, I didn’t buy anything…primarily because I had no money on me, but the reason doesn’t really matter now does it… We walked through the town on our way back to the headquarters and saw some great stuff. Gil took me by a stand that sold calcium rocks. Apparently pregnant women in Madagascar eat them for nutrition but they smell absolutely horrific. I’ve never been pregnant, but I can’t imagine an extended and severe bout of morning sickness could be any worse than having to eat those putrid rocks, sweet Moses!


After I overcame my own nausea from the “rock” scent, I started walking back down the main street only to be stopped by a lady carrying a young boy. She pointed at me and said “vazaha,” a term I now answer to more frequently than my own name, and brought the boy over to me. I kind of just stood there in confusion as she took the little boy’s hand to touch my arm, I suppose to see if I was real or something. Fortunately, this boy was tough and didn’t cry when faced with such a horrific demand, lol. Below, Gil was able to snap a picture of the aftermath of our encounter where I had just burst out laughing and shaking my head, like “WTH just happened?!?”

I mean, I expected to stick out in Madagascar with my pale skin, freckles, and blonde hair…but I figured they’d at least be kind of used to seeing white Frenchies, but this has been much worse than I imagined, lol. I don’t really care, it’s pretty amusing, for me as well as the people, especially the kids, well at least the ones who aren’t terrified of me.

Anyway, after that crazy encounter, we walked the rest of the way home whereupon we made fun of the men who were hard at work in the office (okay, just kidding) and spent the remainder of the day working on homework and writing blogs for our family and friends to read :D

Time for some pics

Here are pics that I uploaded to my facebook...but obviously if you're reading this blog and aren't an FB friend, well, you can't see the pics now can you? So here are some of my favorites of the trip so far. Some of them I took prior to allowing my camera to get rained on. Some of them were taken by my colleague, Gil.


A sunset view of the town I spend the bulk of my time in, Ambositra.


Rainbow over Ambositra, as seen from the deck outside our HQ's kitchen.


Outside view of SALOHI Project HQ in Ambositra


Hillside view during a hike.


Some kids swinging from the rafters, I mean trees, on one of our hikes.


Another beautiful hillside seen during a hike.



Some local villagers in Ambositra


A kiddie milking his cuteness to hitch a ride in the basket :)

Taking a Step Back...

Well, tonight was downer of a night. It started off well enough. We had just returned from a day spent in the bush and I was relaxing, eating dinner out by the pool of our hotel while some of the guys swam. Near the end of my meal, I noticed a bunch of people congregating on the beach in front of our hotel and looking at something in the water. And when I say people, I mean a lot of people….probably over 700-800 along about a quarter-mile of the beach.

Curious, I walked down to the beach and found Charly who was talking to one of the locals. When Charly was finished talking to him, he translated for me that a young boy had drowned in the water and his body was floating in to shore. He then pointed to where the body was and in between the waves, I could see a body floating lifelessly, being carried wherever the current would take it. I guess the kid, a local, had been wading in the water, got caught by a wave, and dragged out by the strong current where he drowned.

Of course, this isn’t something I see every day and I was pretty horrified. It was hard to see a body floating like that…and it was harder for me to find out that it was a kid, probably around my nephew’s age. Just the thought of that made me tear up. Somewhere, maybe in the crowd, this kid probably had parents and siblings who loved him and are going to be sad when they find out what happened.

I know life and death are viewed differently here and in other developing countries than how things are viewed, say in the U.S. Life in the developing world is hard and people are not expected to live long. Those who do live a long life are the lucky few. Even knowing that, this was still something you can’t totally prepare yourself for. No matter how much you gear yourself up to observe the harsh realities of the world when you travel to developing countries, nothing truly prepares you to see a child’s lifeless body floating in the sea about to be swept to shore in front of you. It sucks.

It stinks even more that people live in a world where they have to live with a different outlook on life in general. People in the developing world definitely have more of a callused attitude when it comes to death. They have to; they see it all the time. Me, well, I feel like crying every time I hear about a tragic death…particularly a death of a child or young person.
I can handle the flea bites here. I can handle the freaking mosquitoes, the ants in my Min Sao dinner, going without showers for days, the constant car sickness I get in the field. That’s all whatever. What I have a hard time with is seeing firsthand that life’s not fair. I hate seeing that people aren’t dealt the same, fair hand in life. It makes me sad, but at the same time it makes me determined to do something, anything, with the overly fair hand I’ve been dealt in life…I suppose that’s what led me to the field of work I’m in. I’m not trying to make myself out to be some saint, obviously I’m not, just ask my parents, lol, but I do sleep a bit better at night knowing I’m doing something, no matter how minimal, to make someone else’s life just a bit more fair. Or maybe I have a case of African Sleeping Sickness…who knows.

Bottom line, whether at home or abroad, I truly think each one of us can do something, no matter how big or how small, each day to bring some goodness and fairness into others’ lives.

Yes, more of a contemplative blog, this one. But seeing what I did today definitely made me think about life for a bit...so I thought I’d share...

Field Trip

Being in the field is a total trip. Beats the heck out of the office in Ambositra, hands down. First off, we get to stay at a “swanky” hotel at the beach…translation: there’s a fan in my room, electricity, and running water…most of the time (but it’s still better than what Ettien – our logistics coordinator- and two of the other employees had to do last night, which was to sleep in the cab of their truck out in the bush, hahaha, suckas!) Now that I’ve said that and laughed at Ettien tonight, our group is going to get stuck out in the bush our next trip.

Anyway, even if I can’t go swimming at the beach because of the strong current, the contamination of the water by sewage, and SHARKS, I still get to go to sleep to the sound of waves crashing :D

The second factor that makes fieldwork exciting is the unpredictability. Basically, since I don’t speak Malagasy and my French is still crappy-dappy (although getting less crappy-dappy by the day!) I never fully understand what we are doing or where we are going each day (they do, however, manage to correctly translate the buttcrack of dawn time for me to roll out of bed and meet the team in the morning).

Usually, the days consist of back-road four-wheeling 3-5 hours one way to get to a village. Then we meet with the Maire to ascertain the disaster preparedness protocol his commune has in place (to date, no one has anything…I’m pretty sure when the Maires are talking to Charly in Malagasy the first question out of their mouths are “what is this thing you call disaster management???” lol). After about a 45 min. to 1 hour meeting, we then start our 3-5 hour trek back to our HQ in Mananjary.
The roads are terrible, particularly when it rains (which it does often this time of year). So these days that we spend 8-10 hours driving, well, we are only going about 70 km one way and 70 km back. That should give you an idea how bad road conditions are.

Today was great fun though. After 2 days of Charly and I (mainly Charly, my 1 presentation on US disaster management protocol had to be translated as I spoke which I’m sure bored the heck out of everyone, so it’s best if Charly just does the bulk of the presentations!) teaching the disaster management curriculum to the Mananjary field supervisors, we got to hit the road today and head back to one of the communes we were unable to get to our last trip to Mananjary a few weeks ago because the road was so bad. The road was good today. We only got stuck twice, haha.

Let’s see, the first time we got stuck we were about 2 hours into our journey. It was quite the experience. As soon as we got stuck, about 50-60 school children came tearing down the hill out of their school, screaming like banshees, excited to watch this scene unfold: the scene being Romuald trying to drive the car with Charly yelling which way to turn the wheel, occasionally jumping on the hood of the car to redistribute the weight, and me…the weird looking white girl “vazaha” sitting on the embankment laughing and taking pictures (I’m sure the guys really appreciated that).


Romuald surveying the predicament...


Yep, definitely stuck.


The initial villagers who came to help out...


School kids hauling butt down the hill to watch us try to get unstuck.


Some of the kids who were watching us.


More observers


More school children watching us

While the children were curious about the car, they were also very curious about me. It was quite funny…and VERY endearing. Their MO was to inch closer and closer to me on the embankment while pretending to get a better view of the car. Then, even though I didn’t understand what they were saying, I knew their little minds were hatching a devious plan of some sort. And I knew by the whispers and glances my way that that plan involved me. Sure enough, one of the little boys broke free from the group, ran to me, touched my arm and yelled “vazaha” then ran screaming and laughing back to his group (basically, they had dared him to touch the foreigner and he took them up on that dare…good thing I don’t bite!). All the little kids erupted into laughter when he did this and I couldn’t stop laughing myself. Children are a crackup, no matter what the culture!

Anywho, we were stuck for an entire hour in this slop. During that time, more and more villagers came out to help and watch. Villagers were using their shovels, hoes, and other miscellaneous tools to help dig us out. They also sat on the hood, gave their advice about how to get out, got plastered with mud, and finally they were able to push the car out. We paid them for their help and were on our way.

More help arrived and we finally were able to get unstuck...after a good hour.

About 5 km later, our driver got stuck. Again. Haha! And again, I jumped out of the car (with my water bottle this time…I figured we’d be awhile), went to the embankment, sat in the shade and took pictures. This time, 3 teenage boys emerged from the bushes, literally, they came out of the bushes, I have no idea where they came from, and helped dig the car out again. Luckily we were only stuck for about 20minutes this time.

This would be the 2nd time we got stuck...


About 2 hours later, we arrived in the Vohitrandriana Commune. There was some sort of event or something going on in the commune because there were probably 600-700 people milling around the main building. We could hardly even get through the crowd to get to the Maire’s building. Once we were inside his office, which was basically a little wooden shack where we sat on wooden crate boxes for our meeting, the building was enveloped by the villagers sticking their heads in the doorway and windows to look at these strangers who came to visit the Maire. It was so odd to have several dozen pairs of eyeballs staring intently at us from outside during the meeting, but the maire acted like that was the norm, so we just continued with our meeting. It was pretty funny (and a bit disrupting) because throughout the entire meeting, the kids were pushing each other out of the way to get a good look, lol.



As we’ve grown accustomed to, we found out that the Maire had no system set up for any type of disaster preparedness or response. No early warning system. No radio. No nothing. Ahhhhhhh!!! That makes me want to pull my hair out!!! The good thing is the mayor wants to work with the program and I think there is a lot our program can do to help out his commune, not just in disaster management, but in all the other areas we cover as well: infrastructure, agriculture, health, nutrition, etc.



More pics of the kiddies in Vohitrandriana Commune

After that meeting, we turned right around and started our 4.5 hour journey back to Mananjary. We stopped halfway on our journey to eat lunch in a small village, where some of the villagers set up a mat right by our car to just sit and watch us eat and fix the car…that was odd. But I guess they don’t get a lot of visitors coming through their area often…

By the time we finally arrived back in Mananjary, I was pretty much a complete ball of dirt from mud getting flung through our windows (which we had to keep open to get SOME sort of breeze) and sitting in the dirt to eat lunch…but hey, at least we didn’t get stuck on the way back!

P.S. Sorry these pics are so grainy. I only have my camera phone to use until my new camera arrives next week, hooray!