Working on A Life

Experience is what its all about. And the stories. Post college most people go on to find a job, or apply to grad school. I decided just to live. This is my story as related to my family and friends. (This journal represents ONLY my views and none of Peace Corps or the US government.)

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Location: New England

We are working parents looking to make the most of whatever adventures we can find close to home.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

It all begins with the letter A

Greetings All,

It is my sincere hope that this letter finds you all happy and healthy and in excellent spirits wherever you are and whatever you might be doing. If all of my travels and travails, adventures and mishaps have combined to teach me anything it is that the everyday is extraordinary in many ways that we all too often take for granted. I would love to hear what you’re all up to!

I’ve been moderately busy since I last wrote, continuing to get settled in and explore the surroundings, both close to home here and on some longer weekend excursions. I continue to be impressed with this country and its people the more I get to know them. There is always a smile on every face and a greeting on every tongue… The Malagasy people are culturally and physically diverse. There are 18 major tribes on the island, each with its own belief set, cultural practices and language dialect. The highland plateau where we reside, almost universally at an altitude of 3500 feet or more and dotted here and there with volcanic monoliths lording over the plain, is relatively well off and its inhabitants bustle about daily business with vigor in the moderate climate. (Temperatures so far have been between 75 and 80ish each day with varying humidity and occasional apocalyptic rainstorms) Agriculture is the main activity and rice is far and away the main crop, with cassava, corn/millet, and vegetable gardening for sustenance. They are good farmers and getting better all the time through initiatives available through USAID and Peace Corps and local NGOs that are helping them to diversify crops and increase yields. They would happily produce even more if they weren’t restrained by the abysmally bad roads that render them unable to get any surplus to export markets. In the lowlands, the vegetation is thicker and the weather warmer and the people are more laid back, slower speaking, with long siestas thrown into the daily routine during the hottest hours when work is a near impossibility. Fishing along the coast is important economically, as is, unfortunately, slash and burn farming. Coconuts are a common daily food. In the far south, where I have not yet been, the climate is semi-arid with cactus and baobab trees. I’ll get there eventually.

Physically speaking the people who live here are as diverse as the landscape. Every conceivable skin color is represented except for pure Caucasian (yes I still stand out) and facial features are most often a mixture of African and Polynesian. (But with significant representation from Asian, Indian and Arab populations) It’s usually a very flattering combination and they are, generally speaking, a beautiful people with short frames and slight builds.

The family belongings, having arrived well before we did, were finally located and delivered to the house for the most part intact, and for the last few weeks we’ve been navigating a maze of cardboard boxes, bubble wrap and kilometers of tape trying to get things sorted and stored away and assigned a proper place. The task is a bit daunting, especially with mom, the master organizer, away at the embassy much of the time. Not many of my own personal belongings remain with the family after my being away for 7 years and 3 major moves. There is something humbling and I suppose rather liberating in the realization that most of what you own can fit into a couple of moderate sized suitcases. I have other things in storage of course but it’s been so long since I’ve seen or had access to any of it that I honestly don’t remember what’s there anymore and am clearly doing fine without. In the meantime I’ve been amusing myself unwrapping boxes full of things at random just to be surprised. I’m proud to report that with few exceptions the job is mostly done and we are officially Home.

To celebrate/take a break from all of those good times we took a family trip to the east over the long Easter weekend holiday. There are only 7 major paved roads in the entire country so once you get on one of them going in the right direction navigation is not terribly difficult. Getting on the right road in the city IS troublesome, as nothing is obviously sign posted and there are many places to go wrong. Still, with satellite images courtesy of Google, a fairly useless map, directions and two tries we managed to get on the road to Andasibe, about 100 kilometers and 4 hours from Antananarivo.

Andasibe is about halfway to the Indian Ocean coast at the junction where the lowland forests meet the highland plateau. Its home to a grouping of Madagascar’s best National and Private parks highlighting both secondary and primary rainforest growth and all the accompanying flora and fauna, both avian and terrestrial. Lots of lemurs and birds! How can you go wrong? We stayed at the Eulophilla lodge, named after a rare white orchid that grows only in the base of certain trees in this one part of this one country (we didn’t see any). The Lodge was set up in the safari style and accessed by a rough 5.5 kilometers of dirt track and well worth every meter, especially the last kilometer that overlooks the hotel. It’s located in a clearing in a valley surrounded by wooded hills, including a large swath of private rainforest reserve, and consists of a cluster of thatched bungalows (and a few newer tin roofed ones) surrounding a huge central lodge and restaurant. The whole complex is bordered by several small rivers that crisscross the property and is quite beautiful. We stayed for three nights and were well looked after by the English speaking majordomo Donny.

One of many types of Orchid we saw in and around the rainforest. This one happens to be in the garden at our Lodge.

We took several rainforest excursions over the weekend, both in parks that consisted of secondary growth so the under story was still extremely dense jungle. I love the rainforest. There is nothing that quite puts you in your place like a fern that’s taller than you are, or a plant that looks like something you might enjoy having in a pot at home except for the real possibility that you might one day fall into it and drown in the rainwater it catches and/or decapitate yourself on its saw blade leaf edges… Actually though, aside from the plant life being a little vicious I learned that there isn’t any animal in Madagascar more dangerous than a scorpion and I’ve long since lost my fear of them! The first morning was a bit rainy so we didn’t go too far for our first trek, accepting a tour of the hotels private reserve. After several hours of steep trails and more than a little bushwhacking (for which I had much enthusiasm and my parents slightly less so) we were rewarded by up close and personal contact with a family of red-bellied lemurs and a pair of Diademed Sifakas. The lemurs are all amazingly curious and kept coming closer to investigate my camera flash. Mom and I were delighted and dad used the opportunity to recuperate.


A look at how thick the under story is. Keep in mind this is the CLEARED trail. Half the time we were out we were beating our own way through.
Cool thorn spider. I've seen many awesome looking spiders that I wouldn't want to mess with.
A tree bark gecko we scared up on our rainforest trek
Awww.. so cute. A male red-bellied Lemur
Curious male red-bellied Lemur. (Males have the whte eye patches)

The second day we traveled by car to the next door National Park and did another “short” trek which was less strenuous (slightly) but equally rewarding. We saw paradise flycatchers, Blue Coua, Indri-Indri, common brown lemurs and more Diademed Sifakas along with some of the biggest and scariest looking spiders I’ve ever seen… which are apparently completely harmless (I think I’m ok with not testing that) and some really cool lizards. Our guide couldn’t have been older than I am but spoke passable English. He would set a nice languid pace for us until he got on the scent of something and then we would dash off on a mad scramble through the underbrush to try to be the first and the closest of the many tourists in the park to reach and photograph it. Then we would lazily continue to the next point of interest. The park itself was well organized if a bit expensive and had way more infrastructure than anything I saw in Morocco. The park area was only 810ha as opposed to my park in Morocco which was 58,000ha.

Madagascar Kingfisher. I appologize for the bad photo, this is as close as he would let me get.
Male Paradise Flycatcher in his red morph (he can also be black and white). I'm a bird geek... so sue me.
Curious Common Brown Lemur
Diademed Sifaka. These guys eat higher up the trees so they were a bit harder to get a photo of.
An Indri Indri. The biggest Lemur remaining in Madagascar. Looks more like a messed up panda.


On the way home from Andasibe we stopped at Madagascar Exotic, a wild animal “zoo” of sorts, which specialized mostly in the reptilian, but also a few amphibians and butterflies and the tamest lemurs yet. The guide book was a bit suspicious of the conditions that the animals were kept in but I didn’t see anything to grievous. All the animals were certainly well fed and seemed cared for and it was nice to have the opportunity to see some of the harder to find and more bizarre looking lizards up close. I think that it was a good example of a private eco-tourism initiative and while it could benefit from a little training and support from outside I was pleased that the locals were able to make their environment work for them in a more or less symbiotic fashion. To help support them (and because I liked it) I also purchased some Batik; a type of art that uses layers of wax and dye to leave designs or images on cloth. I had encountered the technique before in West Africa but the designs here are much sharper and better defined. Both are good for their own reasons. The style (in general) is rapidly becoming one of my favorite art forms.

A big male chameleon. Note the two horns.
I love chameleons. They're so colorful. This one wins an award.
A tomato frog. Its toxic but not dangerous unless you lick it. After you!
My favorite Gecko. Good luck finding it in the wild. In addition to the camo its nocturnal.
This lichen colored lizard was much harder to spot until I scared him over to the green side of the log and snapped a photo before he switched his pattern. I was amazed at how fast they change
Worlds smallest Chameleon. This bad boy is full grown and eats fruit flies like nobodys buisness
A super closeup of a Dancing Sifaka
A cute Dancing Sifaka

The following weekend we took a day trip just outside the city to the royal compound at Ambohimanga, or blue hill. Though Madagascar no longer has any royalty (in name at least. The current president has the same last name as the last queen) they still have a rich royal heritage and various palaces and structures built for the royal families occur with some frequency in the city and surrounding countryside. The original “palace” built on this particular hilltop is nothing more than a one room wooden hut with a steep peaked roof, representing only slightly better accommodation than might have been enjoyed by the king’s loyal subjects. It’s certainly not something that you would have expected to find associated with a king of anything… never mind a country… and he shared the space with 12 wives and I’m sure an amazing number of children! After the king passed (in the early 1800’s) there was a long line of powerful queens who moved the capital to its current location in Antananarivo, but kept Ambohimanga as a home and place of relaxation and built a much improved but still not palatial Victorian house with a turret that takes full advantage of the hills most amazing asset… the amazing view. Today, after being closed to foreigners for most of its history, the hilltop is now a tourist attraction for the view and its beautiful gardens and a UNESCO world heritage site as well as remaining a popular place for the local people to make scarifies to the ancestors for, among other things, improved fertility.

The brown building on teh left is the kings "palace" at Abohimanga
A look at the top of the glassed in tower Madagascar's Royal family built to take in the view provided by thier hilltop palace at Abohimanga
A look at the Victorian 19the century residence of the Queens of Madagascar at Abohimanga

During the week I’ve been doing work for Peace Corps and a couple of other groups and its finally starting to pay off in travel dividends and contacts. I recently got to take a jaunt out to see the current group of Environment volunteer trainees and help out with a few sessions at their community based training site. They seem like a fun group and I must admit, despite all my problems with PC that I’m a bit jealous of them just starting out. To be fair, I think they were equally impressed that I had finished and I had fun telling stories and swapping cultural anecdotes with them. As amazing a time as I’m having here it’s nice to be able to communicate with people of roughly my own age, interests and experience from time to time. After a day of sessions I went with the training staff to their overnight quarters at the Peace Corps training center at Montasu (sp?). It was simply amazing. Perhaps it was only because I got to see it just at sunset and sunrise but the place was breathtakingly beautiful. Situated on a lake it consists of a cluster of buildings which all seem to have equally amazing views. The wood paneled resturaunt/dining hall has a wall of glass which provides a panoramic vision of the lake and islands as you eat. PC had to stop using it to train new volunteers because too many would get comfortable there and the shock to their systems when they left and got to their villages would be too much to handle. I’m glad that I got to see it.

It seems almost as soon as I got back I was off again. This time it was to the south and the city of Antsirabe (beginning to detect any themes with the crazy ‘A’ names yet?) for another weekend exploration. We had no specific agenda except to see the sights on the way there and check out what, if anything, the city had to offer in terms of tourist attractions. The drive took the better part of 5 hours (including lunch) to cover about 100 miles. We ended up at the hotel Trianon, a very nice place with an awesome and accommodating staff set up in an old colonial era house. The rooms were airy and the décor was quite interesting. The food was excellent, though I’ve still yet to have much in the way of actual Malagasy cuisine. I hear from the PC volunteers that its extraordinarily bland but I still want to figure it all out.

Hotel Trianon. Our home in Antsirabe

I really liked Antsirabe. It was a quiet seeming place where the most common means of transportation was by rickshaw. (Those guys must have the toughest feet ever, running up and down the streets all day with no shoes). It used to be famous for its thermal springs and baths but they have fallen into some disrepair since the colonial days. The Hotel des Therms is still the most impressive building in town despite the fact that its clearly beginning to deteriorate. Actually bathing would be taking your life into your hands though I think. The other famous draw to this city is its gems and minerals. All the street vendors sell fossils, petrified wood and gems of almost every conceivable type (except diamonds). One sidewalk stall was offering up a few emeralds the size of my thumbnail and small sapphires of every conceivable shade of blue. In a sidewalk stall! Another had a basket of rough cut rubies too small to make into anything but a basket full! Some of these people were “wealthy” by western jewelry store standards but still can’t always manage to put food on the table until they find a buyer to convert the stones to ready cash. Just goes to show that wealth is all about perspective.

A rickshaw takes a passenger up the steepest hill in Antsirabe... barefoot
Looking down at the colonial era bathouse from the Hotel Des Therms
The unused but picturesque Antsirabe train station with a rickshaw in the forground
A cathedral in Antsirabe. Chistians are divided between the majority protestants and the minority Catholics
Looking up at the huge front facade of the Hotel des Therms
One of the lakes produced by the thermal hotsprings. There was no evidence it was hot and it wasn't really clean enough for me to put my hand in and find out. Looks nice though


Our final stop in Antsirabe was just outside the city limits. The whole region used to be volcanic; hence the gems and such, but perhaps the precious stones were not the earth’s most beautiful gift to the region. High up one of the volcanic hillsides in a half formed crater is a wonderful captive lake called Tritriva. Ridiculously deep and with a great deal of local history the lake is a gem in its own right.

A view of the Lake in a crater, Tritriva
Another view of the Lake in a crater, Tritriva

Anyway… It’s been a great adventure so far. Thank you all for traveling with me! Sharing the stories is almost my favorite part and possibly the most important. Understanding is the key to everything. That being said if anyone wants to be removed from the list (or know someone that wants to be added) this is always possible. Just drop me a line. I’m sure that I’ll have more to share soon.

Until then,
Stay well
Love and Luck with Everything
-Andy