majungaaa

Majung-ahhhhh

Finally, finally, finally. Finally in Madagascar. Finally settled. Finally access to internet, finally digging into classes, finally thinking in French, finally a member of a family, finally autonomy, finally the baobobs, finally the Mozambique Channel. Finally the experience has begun.

Bittersweet. The days in Majunga have been without exception lovely, new, full of sunshine and saltwater and studying. I am comfortable and really in love with this city, especially my host family and our little home outside of town in a palm grove near the beach. Yes, in a palm grove near the beach. But as my affection and aptitude grows, so too does the tension in country. The dispute between the president Ravolomanana and the mayor of Tana, referred to as Andry ‘TGV’, has now spilled over into general discontent with both parties in deadlock causing at least a little havoc in most major cities. It is still completely up in the air and day-to-day how our program will continue, but we are hopeful despite the odds.

I have had the opportunity to have many fascinating conversations about the current socio-political situation here in Mada with my host father Jean-Ives, a young journalist with impeccable French and a terrific sense of humor (who also looks remarkably like President Obama). His wife Esmeralda is a biologist and is gentle and beautiful; she laughs often, especially when her husband gets animated about politics. Their household is very young, with my brother Lenny at just about three years and my sister Keira at 13 months, plus the 3 month old puppy with two first names (Toby-Bambi, as they couldn’t decide) and the two kittens who are both called Mimi (shoutout to sis, she knows why).

Their house is modest but clean, with new-fangled appliances like an indoor toilet, shower and sink (no running water but that’s alright; it’s hard to quantify or qualify my newfound love of the bucket shower), a gas stove, a refrigerator, a record player, television and computer. These are (with the exception of shower and toilet) in the three rooms that compose the house: their bedroom, the kitchen, and the main large living room. At night, a mattress is brought into the main space of the living room for Lenny and my host dad’s younger brother who also lives here, though he comes home after 9pm and leaves by 6am every day.

My personal space is also in the main room, partitioned off by a strung curtain. I have a fantastic double bed with a mosquito net that makes me feel not unlike a princess when I let it down; from the window next to my bed I wake up to palm trees swaying in the salty breeze. I feel at home there, really taken care of but invited to come and go as I please, welcome to invite friends over, and always encouraged to engage in conversation.

The doors are constantly flung open, and though the house feels incredibly neat and put together there are always lizards and geckos running about and any number of beetles, grasshoppers, butterflies… hopping, flying, falling from the ceiling. Last night in my shower there was a slow-moving snail the size of my fist. Somehow, though, the natural element feels only right in this setting. It’s rather goofy sometimes, but generally Madagascar is like that with its flora and fauna; for instance, when I was making coffee this morning for Jean-Ives and myself and I looked out the window and there was a huge steer (called zebu in Madagascar) staring back at me, using his ruminant abilities to cut our grass. I have ceased to be shocked, but the amusement is still very much alive.

Every day my friend Marit’s host mother, who lives just down the road from me in the direction of the beach, picks me up on our way to school. Along the route, as we see classmates making their way (we stick out, we ‘vazah’—Malagasy for foreigner) we stop and they climb in the back of the pickup truck. It’s a spectacle. She drives us to our classes at the Alliance Français of Majunga, conveniently located in town across the street from the boardwalk that lines harbor of Majunga.

The sea breezes float into our classroom and give us welcome distraction from French or Malagasy or our thematic seminars, which are all (somewhat overwhelmingly) taught in French. I’ve never learned a foreign language in a foreign language, but I’m beginning to really love it if for nothing else than its reinforcing power of the basics of French that I’ve long since relegated to the back of my working French memory. It’s challenging at times, especially when it is hot (35 degrees Celsius on average) but I’d lie if I said all academic is minimal compared to the pleasures of Majunga. During breaks we wander down to the patio and have a fresh juice - take your pick: pineapple, mango, guava, orange, lemon, apple, or a combination of any- or walk on the boardwalk and watch the handmade, traditional fishing boats sail by. Men run by pulling their rainbow colored pousse-pousse (rickshaws), and the leaves sway on the baobobs that line the street.

I’m actually sitting on the Alliance’s patio now, using their internet café. I love living in this country, but for all these delights I am keeping in mind that the porch of the Alliance is not Madagascar. Madagascar is many things, colonialism included, but at the moment it is, as the French media reported, ‘total confusion.’ And as someone beginning to for attachments to this place, it’s heartbreaking to think of the general discontent of the Malagasy people, the futility of many of the actions both for the current government and the opposition that only fuel the personal feuds and greeds of the two major players. This country aches in lack of infrastructure of roads, education, representational democracy, freedom…but not in understanding of generosity and beauty. Donc—à la prochaine!

en route to Majunga

Written en route to Majunga, the first time in quite some time that I’ve had the occasion to actually write on a keyboard. My journal has been sorely abused as the receptacle of thoughts and notes, progressions of personal emotions and ideologies. But there is much to cover.

I posted briefly in the hours before my Tana homestay; my family came and picked me up from a little reception we had at the SIT classroom. My family was obviously excited to meet me and incredibly encouraging from the first interactions I had with them. My adrenaline kicked in and mysteriously my French ability leaped forward in bounds; we drove about together to their home and disembarked in a very crowded neighborhood, wandering through a very muddy side street lined with market stalls of fresh meat hanging from hooks, vegetables, clothes, dozens of varieties of rice, and endless signs for the Malagasy beer THB. These types of markets are the main way people sustain themselves here in Mada, whether in the capital city of Tana (3 million) or the rural villages like Andasbe (3,000). I followed my host mother, who, holding my hand, made a sharp left turn down an otherwise imperceptible alleyway through the narrow spaces between homes, announcing happily “Nous sommes ici! Chez nous!”

My Tana home was something to behold in its plethora of contradictions. Three stories plus a roof with a sweeping view of the city, it is unfinished with a rather parking-garage like feel of bare concrete. Part of the unfinished half of the house includes the indoor washroom and toilet, as I was to discover later that night when I was led outside to the very rudimentary latrine by the light of a candle. There are a lot of things like that: obvious indicators of poverty thrown for a loop compared to signs of wealth, like a beautiful Nikon digital SLR owned by my semi-professional photographer host brother, or their two computers, or their hired help. Yet they have little electricity, no running water and cook their meals over a charcoal fire to the side of the house. Behold Madagascar, land of contradictions.

My Tana family is amazing, an intelligent, loud and affectionate bunch who love to sing and joke around. As they led me in procession into my little room shared with my littlest sister Kanto, they shouted for photos of my life in America, then for a song (upon hearing that I like to sing; I chose “Do you want to know a secret” by the Beatles), then Tojo, my oldest brother who is a chef-in-training as well as a photographer, brought in a an absurdly large pineapple coconut cake he had baked me for the occasion. My mother then handed me an absurdly long knife with which to parcel out the cake to all members of the family. Heeding my lessons I had learned prior to coming, I followed the family hierarchy and served myself last.

I saw their photo albums with family excursions and first communions. They are Catholic with a Buddhist bent (apparently religious syncretism is huge in Madagascar), and my host mom strongly believes in the power of prayer and positivity. I could hardly sleep that night for excitement and lack of alone time.

Then all that gave way to Saturday, when I began to feel tired and a little sick—my French dropped off suddenly and severely. I stayed indoors other than a trip to the market for the better half of the morning, going to a little prayer session to counter the violence expected at the demonstration in Central Tana that afternoon with my host mother, brother and sister.

It was there I learned that violence had begun in Tana, in the neighborhood I had wandered about in the day before, the neighborhood of my classroom. We received instructions via text from our director to stay indoors so we headed home immediately. My homestay was very close to the centers of demonstration, and as I went to the roof to receive a call from my director I could hear the gunfire.

We went indoors and turned on the news; here in Madagascar there are issues with freedom of speech against the government but no mode of censorship of images that make it to the news; I saw the most horrific images in my life come across the screen, made all the more real because their backdrop was one of my only familiar views of the city itself.

Other people in my program experienced it differently. I was one of four who heard the violence, but we all witnessed the aftermath on TV and my friend Marit’s host father was at the demonstration as a journalist, a colleague of the Malagasy journalist who was killed. The gravity of the situation and its volatility, for all the talk of democratic processes and peaceful demonstrations, became shockingly clear. It was decided to cut our homestay short in favor of returning to the Relais du Rova out in the country in anticipation of future demonstrations that week. Sunday then was a somber morning for me: my mother decided it was best for all of our spirits that we leave Tana and head “à la campagne”—to the country—until I needed to meet up with the rest of the group.

So off we went in the family van to the countryside, to visit the family parcels of land and picnic by a river. Another seemingly inherent contradiction: they live in a dirty, claustrophobic area of Tana but own acres upon acres of lovely hilly farmland 35 kilometers outside the city where they grow all sorts of things, from rice to manioc to green beans to corn to coffee to peaches to guava. There were wild watermelons growing among the green beans. We climbed their ancestral hill farm to see old ruins that are at the top, wandering through the forests in search of this particular plant or that particular rock. At the end of the tour we drove to a river nestled in with the rice paddies to picnic, wade in the water, and wash the family car. Full of sunshine and finally at peace with the scenes I had witnessed the day before, we headed back into Tana to regroup.

So the demonstrations have continued in Tana and across the island to other cities where news of the violence has traveled fast, though the subsequent demonstrations have been generally peaceful. Still, it’s difficult to determine how the next weeks and even days will play out. We had stayed close on the outskirts of Tana, but chose to remove ourselves completely from the situation by heading to nature reserves on both coasts, trips that had been planned for the semester but were moved up and placed back-to-back in light of need for benign activities.

We went to Moramanga, a small town and home of the national school of the gendamerie, to learn about another political movement against colonialism in 1947 that ended in a massacre not unlike we saw that Saturday. We went to the school of the gendarmes and were told hilarious anecdotes by the gendarme in charge who single handedly humanized the Malagasy military and police forces, giving us a good context for what we saw on the televisions that weekend.

We continued on to Andasibe, a national park known for the largest and smallest lemurs in the world, and to Andasibe town on the edge of the park to understand more of the relationship between the villagers and the environment, tourism and basic needs. Each of these experiences was fantastic, good to see and relaxing to experience.

Indeed it’s true that when one wanders about the rainforest with lemurs swinging and calling overhead it becomes difficult to keep tabs on a developing situation in the far-off city. We had particularly good fortune with lemurs and other animal species that seemed to offset our particularly bad fortune in the political arena. In one day we managed to see seven different species of lemurs. Not just see, mind you, bur chase after them with our guides through the forest as they called for and reunited with family members, gathering together in bunches of as many as three species around a cluster of fruit trees. In all the time my director has lived in Madagascar and run this program, he said he has never seen anything like it.

Andasibe is the rainforest reserve on the east coast of Madagascar, and it is by far one of the best kept national treasures. We had no other tourist competition (finally a plus to the political crisis) and were able to go on a long hike in and around the forest and then a night walk to see the nocturnal species. I discovered I have a special talent I never knew I had, namely lemur-spotting. I was walking in the back of the group, behind both guides just looking about and talking with Roland when hark! My headlamp revealed two faint reflective corneas. I grabbed Roland’s flashlight and lo, it was the eastern woolly lemur in the tree right next to the road. Later I helped the guide locate a mouse lemur which she had lost in the thicket. It was thrilling.

And on we went, back for a night at the Relais before our mammoth 11-hour drive in the Tata to Ankarafansika, a dry deciduous forest on the western side of the island. This national park also contains more than its fair share of fantastic wildlife, allowing us to see three more species of lemur, plenty of iguanas, chameleons, and brightly colored birds. We camped outside the forest and awoke this morning to wild pigs snorting around our tent. The stars and moonlight here are a thing to behold—the sunrise brings curious sifaka lemurs into the campground to swing around from tree to tree.

These days driving basically across the width of the island I’ve had the good fortune to sit next to a window the majority of the time, most often sticking my entire body out the window to breathe in deeply, calling “Manhaona” or “Salama” to those I pass on the road. I watched the countryside changing from rainforest on one side, climbing up to rolling hills and rice paddies in the highland region, coming down to vast expanses of diseased land, supporting only brush after decades upon decades of deforestation that killed the soil. The deciduous, drier forests emerge and give way periodically to desert-like conditions, vast flowing rivers full of crocodiles, and spiky aloe plants everywhere you look on the side of the road.

Even from the superficial outsider perspective I feel as if these days, frustrating as they are in the more high-school trip like setting than a college study abroad due to the security measures keeping us moving en masse because of the crisis, have given me a glimpse into the incredible variety of Malagasy life. The contradictions that seem to run rampant in this county begin to make sense not in their logic but in their relation to one another, a relationship I am sure will take more solid form as I am able to form deeper connections to the eager, loving Malagasy people I will begin to know once able to develop roots in a single place for some time.

For that I am excited to go to Majunga, knowing tonight I will have another family and the beginning of more stories, insights, burning questions that stick like thorns in my side.

en route to Majunga

Written en route to Majunga, the first time in quite some time that I’ve had the occasion to actually write on a keyboard. My journal has been sorely abused as the receptacle of thoughts and notes, progressions of personal emotions and ideologies. But there is much to cover.

I posted briefly in the hours before my Tana homestay; my family came and picked me up from a little reception we had at the SIT classroom. My family was obviously excited to meet me and incredibly encouraging from the first interactions I had with them. My adrenaline kicked in and mysteriously my French ability leaped forward in bounds; we drove about together to their home and disembarked in a very crowded neighborhood, wandering through a very muddy side street lined with market stalls of fresh meat hanging from hooks, vegetables, clothes, dozens of varieties of rice, and endless signs for the Malagasy beer THB. These types of markets are the main way people sustain themselves here in Mada, whether in the capital city of Tana (3 million) or the rural villages like Andasbe (3,000). I followed my host mother, who, holding my hand, made a sharp left turn down an otherwise imperceptible alleyway through the narrow spaces between homes, announcing happily “Nous sommes ici! Chez nous!”

My Tana home was something to behold in its plethora of contradictions. Three stories plus a roof with a sweeping view of the city, it is unfinished with a rather parking-garage like feel of bare concrete. Part of the unfinished half of the house includes the indoor washroom and toilet, as I was to discover later that night when I was led outside to the very rudimentary latrine by the light of a candle. There are a lot of things like that: obvious indicators of poverty thrown for a loop compared to signs of wealth, like a beautiful Nikon digital SLR owned by my semi-professional photographer host brother, or their two computers, or their hired help. Yet they have little electricity, no running water and cook their meals over a charcoal fire to the side of the house. Behold Madagascar, land of contradictions.

My Tana family is amazing, an intelligent, loud and affectionate bunch who love to sing and joke around. As they led me in procession into my little room shared with my littlest sister Kanto, they shouted for photos of my life in America, then for a song (upon hearing that I like to sing; I chose “Do you want to know a secret” by the Beatles), then Tojo, my oldest brother who is a chef-in-training as well as a photographer, brought in a an absurdly large pineapple coconut cake he had baked me for the occasion. My mother then handed me an absurdly long knife with which to parcel out the cake to all members of the family. Heeding my lessons I had learned prior to coming, I followed the family hierarchy and served myself last.

I saw their photo albums with family excursions and first communions. They are Catholic with a Buddhist bent (apparently religious syncretism is huge in Madagascar), and my host mom strongly believes in the power of prayer and positivity. I could hardly sleep that night for excitement and lack of alone time.

Then all that gave way to Saturday, when I began to feel tired and a little sick—my French dropped off suddenly and severely. I stayed indoors other than a trip to the market for the better half of the morning, going to a little prayer session to counter the violence expected at the demonstration in Central Tana that afternoon with my host mother, brother and sister.

It was there I learned that violence had begun in Tana, in the neighborhood I had wandered about in the day before, the neighborhood of my classroom. We received instructions via text from our director to stay indoors so we headed home immediately. My homestay was very close to the centers of demonstration, and as I went to the roof to receive a call from my director I could hear the gunfire.

We went indoors and turned on the news; here in Madagascar there are issues with freedom of speech against the government but no mode of censorship of images that make it to the news; I saw the most horrific images in my life come across the screen, made all the more real because their backdrop was one of my only familiar views of the city itself.

Other people in my program experienced it differently. I was one of four who heard the violence, but we all witnessed the aftermath on TV and my friend Marit’s host father was at the demonstration as a journalist, a colleague of the Malagasy journalist who was killed. The gravity of the situation and its volatility, for all the talk of democratic processes and peaceful demonstrations, became shockingly clear. It was decided to cut our homestay short in favor of returning to the Relais du Rova out in the country in anticipation of future demonstrations that week. Sunday then was a somber morning for me: my mother decided it was best for all of our spirits that we leave Tana and head “à la campagne”—to the country—until I needed to meet up with the rest of the group.

So off we went in the family van to the countryside, to visit the family parcels of land and picnic by a river. Another seemingly inherent contradiction: they live in a dirty, claustrophobic area of Tana but own acres upon acres of lovely hilly farmland 35 kilometers outside the city where they grow all sorts of things, from rice to manioc to green beans to corn to coffee to peaches to guava. There were wild watermelons growing among the green beans. We climbed their ancestral hill farm to see old ruins that are at the top, wandering through the forests in search of this particular plant or that particular rock. At the end of the tour we drove to a river nestled in with the rice paddies to picnic, wade in the water, and wash the family car. Full of sunshine and finally at peace with the scenes I had witnessed the day before, we headed back into Tana to regroup.

So the demonstrations have continued in Tana and across the island to other cities where news of the violence has traveled fast, though the subsequent demonstrations have been generally peaceful. Still, it’s difficult to determine how the next weeks and even days will play out. We had stayed close on the outskirts of Tana, but chose to remove ourselves completely from the situation by heading to nature reserves on both coasts, trips that had been planned for the semester but were moved up and placed back-to-back in light of need for benign activities.

We went to Moramanga, a small town and home of the national school of the gendamerie, to learn about another political movement against colonialism in 1947 that ended in a massacre not unlike we saw that Saturday. We went to the school of the gendarmes and were told hilarious anecdotes by the gendarme in charge who single handedly humanized the Malagasy military and police forces, giving us a good context for what we saw on the televisions that weekend.

We continued on to Andasibe, a national park known for the largest and smallest lemurs in the world, and to Andasibe town on the edge of the park to understand more of the relationship between the villagers and the environment, tourism and basic needs. Each of these experiences was fantastic, good to see and relaxing to experience.

Indeed it’s true that when one wanders about the rainforest with lemurs swinging and calling overhead it becomes difficult to keep tabs on a developing situation in the far-off city. We had particularly good fortune with lemurs and other animal species that seemed to offset our particularly bad fortune in the political arena. In one day we managed to see seven different species of lemurs. Not just see, mind you, bur chase after them with our guides through the forest as they called for and reunited with family members, gathering together in bunches of as many as three species around a cluster of fruit trees. In all the time my director has lived in Madagascar and run this program, he said he has never seen anything like it.

Andasibe is the rainforest reserve on the east coast of Madagascar, and it is by far one of the best kept national treasures. We had no other tourist competition (finally a plus to the political crisis) and were able to go on a long hike in and around the forest and then a night walk to see the nocturnal species. I discovered I have a special talent I never knew I had, namely lemur-spotting. I was walking in the back of the group, behind both guides just looking about and talking with Roland when hark! My headlamp revealed two faint reflective corneas. I grabbed Roland’s flashlight and lo, it was the eastern woolly lemur in the tree right next to the road. Later I helped the guide locate a mouse lemur which she had lost in the thicket. It was thrilling.

And on we went, back for a night at the Relais before our mammoth 11-hour drive in the Tata to Ankarafansika, a dry deciduous forest on the western side of the island. This national park also contains more than its fair share of fantastic wildlife, allowing us to see three more species of lemur, plenty of iguanas, chameleons, and brightly colored birds. We camped outside the forest and awoke this morning to wild pigs snorting around our tent. The stars and moonlight here are a thing to behold—the sunrise brings curious sifaka lemurs into the campground to swing around from tree to tree.

These days driving basically across the width of the island I’ve had the good fortune to sit next to a window the majority of the time, most often sticking my entire body out the window to breathe in deeply, calling “Manhaona” or “Salama” to those I pass on the road. I watched the countryside changing from rainforest on one side, climbing up to rolling hills and rice paddies in the highland region, coming down to vast expanses of diseased land, supporting only brush after decades upon decades of deforestation that killed the soil. The deciduous, drier forests emerge and give way periodically to desert-like conditions, vast flowing rivers full of crocodiles, and spiky aloe plants everywhere you look on the side of the road.

Even from the superficial outsider perspective I feel as if these days, frustrating as they are in the more high-school trip like setting than a college study abroad due to the security measures keeping us moving en masse because of the crisis, have given me a glimpse into the incredible variety of Malagasy life. The contradictions that seem to run rampant in this county begin to make sense not in their logic but in their relation to one another, a relationship I am sure will take more solid form as I am able to form deeper connections to the eager, loving Malagasy people I will begin to know once able to develop roots in a single place for some time.

For that I am excited to go to Majunga, knowing tonight I will have another family and the beginning of more stories, insights, burning questions that stick like thorns in my side.

safe and sound and splendid

Here! Safe! Enchanted, one may say!

Sorry for the last long post; it's funny if you're willing to charge through it.

In the meantime, I'm here in Mada and loving it; I meet my host family based in Tana today. Based off of my interests (ie family) i was placed with a family with, you guessed it, four children, tzo boys and two girls. We will spend the weekend in Tana with our families avoiding the protests before departing early next week for Mahajanga, on the northeast coast, where I'll have another host family. The trip is eleven hours by Tata (our loving name for our van-bus), so we're stopping to camp in a nature reserve along the way known for its baobobs and chameleons and..... lemurs. I have only seen absurd spiders up until this point, and cockroaches, so the idea of more appealing fauna is a good one.

My french has improved leaps and bounds, as has my malagast which went from none to some. This may sound funny, but it's enough to make the locals love me, and I'm thowing myself into it to continue to improve.

Times up on my internet card- it takes longer to type english on a french keyboard- so more later.

Veloma!

Written upon arrival in Madagascar:

When last I wrote, I spoke of the stars of the southern hemisphere, sitting with insomnia in Greenfield the night before I left.

As I write, I am watching my first sunrise over Madagascar dissipate the velvety strips of fog over the rolling hills. The golden light is bouncing back pink and purple over the low clouds, and already an impromptu (but evidently regular) chorus of animal noises has crescendoed to provide an ample soundtrack. Of the instruments, I can recognize only the rooster, the crickets and some songbirds. The rest are completely foreign.

Back to the stars. Last night, I lay on the roof of my hotel to make good on my grandfather’s permission to formulate my own constellations at will. The sky was pitch black and the Milky Way cut a brilliant divide directly overhead. I have never seen stars like this before. Venus and Mars shone brightly. Orion was there, upside down, but there were more individual stars and potential constellations than I have ever witnessed in my life. Cliché, yes, but the shooting stars were frequent and sigh invoking.

And of course, this being Madagascar and thus in compliance with all of my other experiences thus far along my journey, my expectations—even for the night sky—were shattered in the best way possible. There were not just the stars, the planets and an enormous illuminated crescent moon, but to the south and stretching up the west was a dry lightning storm, just periphery enough to not block my view of the milky way—again like nothing I have ever experienced in my life. Huge clouds filled and contained the light in an incessant strobe-light effect. There was no thunder. It was so beautiful I wanted to cry.

So here I sit, morning in Madagascar, on that same roof now. I am safely with my group in a hotel estate on the outskirts of a village on the far outskirts of Antananarivo (Tana), the capital city. Due to political and social unrest in Tana, the schedule of our program remains up in the air; we will remain out here for our orientation and as long as need be until we have determined the safe and proper course of action for our program.

Getting here, however, was a series of stories ridiculous in and of themselves that make this morning all the more sweet.

It took five takeoffs to for me to get here: one from Milwaukee, one Atlanta, one Washington, one Paris, one Marseille before touching down in Tana. There are two groups through SIT in Madagascar this semester, one focusing on ecology and conservation, the other (mine) on culture and society. There are sixteen in each group, each with a 13:3 girl to guy ratio. Each group had one person go early to Madagascar, so there were 28 of us from all over the country that met up at Washington Dulles to embark together.

Some of you in country may have received a frantic text message (“um al gore is on my plane”) from me in the moments before my plane took off from Dulles on its way to Paris. Indeed, it was true: Al Gore was in first class on my plane, security clientele and all. The responses to my text were hilarious and emboldening. Some favorites included “Well that’s an inconvenient truth”, “He’s contributing to global warming” and “Give him a hug for me”, but overwhelmingly the theme seemed to be a call to action: “I expect a story out of this”, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” “make something happen” and, Gracie’s piece de la resistance of “Go talk to him to tell him how smart our generation is and he’ll be like, oo that girl’s great.”

Generally, I knew I had to be bold and make something happen. After all, I was en route to Madagascar (one of the earth’s last ecological Disneylands) and sharing a leg of that route with Al Gore, a Nobel laureate in environment-loving, was bound to be a good omen.

I happened to sit next to a girl named Rita on the plane (good sign #1) who, as conversation would prove, happened to be from Madison (good sign #2). She is funny, sarcastic and game for anything (good sign #3), willing to humor me in my endeavors. We made fast friends with each other and shortly thereafter a stewardess on the plane who confirmed that yes, our suspicions were right (Al Gore was on the plane) and no, it was out of the question to go up and visit him. But, upon another pass-through and when asked if it would make a difference that we were 28 students en route to Madagascar to love and save the environment, she perked up and ran to confer with the first-class stewardess, coming back and excitedly instructing us to write a note explaining ourselves and our purpose which she would deliver to Mr. Gore.

Whaaaat, we thought—we get to write a note to Al Gore! Rita and I, as others slept, scribbled three drafts of a note that basically proceeded with: an apology for interrupting his flight, an explanation of who we are and what we’re doing, a complement to him for his work on behalf of the environment, and a humble request to come and say hey if he had an opportunity. This culminated with the fact that Rita (of course) is an artist and drew a chameleon not unlike those we will see here at the bottom of the page next to our names and the underwrite of “the SIT Madagascar group”.

A sincere and succinct letter, complete with kind words and original artwork and signed with our names, was hand delivered to an intrigued Al Gore by an excited stewardess.

Two hours later, in black jeans and a black tee-shirt not unlike the outfit worn by John Travolta in Grease, Mr. Gore came back to say hello. He was led straight to Rita and myself to shake our hands, waving to the rest of the group. Startled people around us began to take pictures. We talked for a minute about what we were doing and he was happy to hear about it, wishing us luck before heading back up from whence he came.

It was ridiculous, especially because we hadn’t told the rest of the group we invited Al Gore to come back and say hello on their behalf, so they were pretty caught off-guard and utterly confused as to why he walked up to Rita and me without hesitation. So yes, the first very ridiculous moment.

But not the last. We landed at Charles de Gaulle in Paris at 6-something in the morning for what we thought would be a 6-ish hour layover. I had resigned myself that nothing exciting would come at this point of the trip, because let’s face it: Paris is a hike from the airport and with international flights one can never be too sure. I would not see Paris except in name.

With the help of an extra four hours provided by our flight being delayed from 1pm to 5:20pm and the daring drive of friends Sarah and Marit, we knew we could make a dash for it. Marit is a fellow Columbian (also a fellow Urban Studies major) whose good friend Miriam is studying in Paris. At 6am we procured a euro coin which provided us 45 seconds worth of instructions on how to find Miriam via the Metro. These instructions ended with exiting the station, walking three blocks and looking for a red door. A long shot, yes, but we were willing.

At this moment, let me say: Merci bien, le peuple français, pour tous tes grèves! The French habitually love to strike, and when that strike happens to be a rail strike and happens to fall while we have exactly 7 hours (and I only 25 euro) to do Paris, that translates to free rail into Paris proper and subsequent free Metro rides throughout. Obviously, someone was looking out for us and found us very funny.

The entire (free) ride there we were in awe that we were actually going to Paris. As we exited the Metro station and saw the glorious edifices and window boxes that ooze ‘o la la’, we were in shock that we were actually in Paris. When we walked three blocks and found four red doors, we thought it hilarious that we were in Paris. And sort of lost.

With a posse of two behind me, I walked into a hotel and convinced the concierge to let us use his phone to find our friend. Two minutes later, Miriam emerged from the first of the red doors and led us up to her adorable efficiency on the fifth floor in an equally adorable banlieu de Paris.

Not to waste a moment, we collected ourselves and descended onto the streets of Paris for what would prove to be a “Greatest Hits” tour of the city. Each of us had been there before, so we had no hesitation setting a course for the nearest boulangerie en route to the Centre Pompidou. I am convinced that the best food on earth is a French baguette with gruyere and jambon, real beautifully cured ham. I could eat that forever, so I ate two demi- baguettes over those six hours. That, and a pain au chocolat, a fantastic latte in a petit café on one of the side streets, a croissant, a crèpe….. basically our tour was punctuated with French food and cliché Parisian sites. We justified this by bringing up the piles of rice we could expect in Tana.

BEFORE NOON that day (bearing in mind at 6am we were still at the airport), we managed to see: Miriam’s neighborhood, the Centre Pompidou, Hôtel DeVille, Notre Dame, Pont Neuf, the Louvre, the jardin de Tulieres, the Place de la Concorde, the Musée d’Orsay, also waving hello to the Tour d’Eiffel, the Champs-Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe. This is with the time to eat the aforementioned delicacies included.

Ahhh Paris, je t’aime! The spirit was willing but the body was weak, having gone over twenty-five hours without sleeping, but it was worth it completely to see the city in a new light and begin to understand both the grand sites and the more accessible, more human petit rues filled with people and smells and brightly colored cloth. I love Paris, and for a minute Marit and I looked at each other and both thought, “do we have to leave?” After all, we hadn’t planned on coming so each thing we saw and ate was like a treat, a bonus, a gift undeserved. It was lovely.

Tired from our walking adventure, we slept most of the train ride back to the airport. When we woke up it was as if it didn’t happen. But I took pictures, so I know it did. Also, I retained a pain au chocolat, so I tasted that it did.

Air Madagascar is certainly not United Airlines. There weren’t any screens with movies or fun maps to follow of our location over continents, much less famous political celebrities. But the crew was enthusiastic and I was dog tired, so I didn’t much care. A quick stop in Marseille to pick up more passengers and we were off over Africa, which in the middle of the night really was the dark continent.

Fast forward to later. The sun rises and the Indian Ocean is blue and then… the Malagasy coast. Beautiful. Soon this gives way to the fabric of the Malagasy land; deep velvety hills with rippling shadows, coarse wooly forests, patchwork quilts of rice paddies in various stage of ripeness. We descended the plane and the warm air smelt like flowers and like…freshness. It’s hard to describe the scent of fresh, but that’s what Madagascar smells like. Warm freshness.

We went through the modest airport with ease and good humor and were greeted by Roland, the program director. We collected our bags and threw them on top of a van, or taxi-brousse, which we boarded en route to our hotel. The drive went around the periphery of Tana, where the breeze flew in the open windows with sounds of people’s voices, laughter, music, chickens... it was amazing. The colors are so vibrant here, and driving along you see so many people along the streets, buying sausages and baguettes and old bicycle pats. People often called up to us in the car. I had a discussion in French with a young boy about his t-shirt through the window.

I felt like the drive could last forever and I would be content. At the same time I wanted to run out of the vehicle and interrogate most people about their daily life. What do you do? Why are you buying those used pipes? Is that palm oil in those bottles? Just as this was getting out of hand, the bustling streets gave way to a rolling landscape and we pulled into the hotel.

The hotel is a itty palace of sorts. Not really, but to lie horizontally, even on hard beds, is delightful. The people who work here are kind and friendly, and as we are the only tenants, they prepare meals family-style for us. Interesting foods, sometimes, but nevertheless it’s been fun to sit at a long table and get to know the other fifteen students on the program. As to the surroundings, the hotel itself is beautiful, surrounded by hills and paddies but nestled in its own garden, with mango, papaya and pomegranate trees. A dog recently gave birth to puppies who romp about and there are two huge tortoises who live in the garden. When I asked a man what their names were he laughed at me and told me that tortoises don’t have names. I disagreed, secretly naming them Pierre and Maria.

We have been in orientation since arriving. A dance/folk opera troupe came and performed for us at our compound. It sounds cliché to say it again, but it was magical. They sang from the top of their lungs and danced and changed costumes. I loved it; I felt really emotional listening and watching them.

Our conversations as a group have been interesting, half in French and half in English to start out. We have had many discussions about the developing situation in Tana, which at the moment is unstable but a fascinating experiment in a fledgling democracy with a populist bent. The progression of the program at this point is very much up in the air, though it’s hard at a hotel as isolated as this to be able to comprehend that events a mere thirty kilometers away are changing the course of our next three months. The frustrating paradox is that without having seen Tana, it’s hard to grasp the root arguments of the unrest; because of the unrest, it’s unsure that we’ll get to see Tana and contextualize it for ourselves.

Other than that, I’ve been going on many walks with some of my new friends around the area to little villages and through some fields. We’ve begun to learn Malagasy and do most of our academic speaking in French; my French comprehension has improved dramatically and I’ve gotten over the hurdle of fear when it comes to initiating a conversation or question in French. I find the familiarity that comes with having read and written a lot in my French classes has given me an added edge in conversational fluency.

The other students are a very interesting, incredibly kind and varied bunch. I’m enjoying getting to know them all, through conversation, cards, and shared experiences. For instance, I found myself reaching out and hugging the two nearest me last night during the lightning storm, catching Mike and Abby slightly off guard, but they understood the emotion that drove me to do so. Soon many more of us joined into a long chain group hug as we stood on the roof (it’s flat) and watched the show. Nicola told us the Greek myth about the Milky Way and we decided that, for all intensive purposes, Zeus wasn’t a bad explanation for the Greeks to have decided upon for the type of storm we saw.

I can't wait for the real adventure to begin!

cheers America!

It's the night before I leave and all I can think of is my grandpa officially giving me permission to formulate my own constellations of the stars in the southern hemisphere at will, seeing as I know none of them now. I can't wait to get creative.

In a couple hours I begin a 40-odd hour sojourn, through Atlanta, DC and Paris on my way to Antananarivo. Wish me godspeed!

Parting thoughts

So, I haven't left yet. But I have been collecting and attempting to digest wise tidbits of advice prior to departure, as to not be idle:

• Try not to die while you're over there.
  
• Rest assured, this will change everything. Just expect it to and you won't feel broken when it really does.
• Don't be sad when you find you are lonely. And don't be afraid to be lonely.
• What would you do if you were not afraid?

And I'm looking forward to:

• Trees and landscapes like nothing I've ever seen
• Clean dirt on my face
  
• Little electronic distraction
• French-induced headaches
• Sunshine and bright colors
• A new city (one without a westernized grid) waiting to be mastered
  
• Becoming a member of a Malagasy family
• Meeting other people ridiculous enough to study abroad in Madagascar
• Learning how to pronounce those out-of-control Malagasy place names

Also, I found out today that in Antananarivo (Tana) there is a steep 600 ft stairway named "Tsiafakantitra", which in Malagasy translates to "Old folks can't make it". I like a country with a sense of humor.