The Garden of Earthly Delights

I always fret that I won't have enough pictures to create a decent post each month. Then I sit down when it comes time to make my post for the next month and realize I have an abundance of pictures to sift through so that I don't overwhelm you with the vast expanse of my photographic exploits. This month though, there were simply too many good pictures to post, so sit back and enjoy the visual outputs from my little northern Malagasy township...

Let's begin where we left off last month.

The rabbit hutch! Here it is in assembly at its final home. After this we wired the cages in, attached the doors and nailed on the roof. All told it took about four hours once it was in place to get everything together.

And here's the finished product. The rabbits seem to like it well enough. There're two girls and one boy. They are being bred for replacements and then eating! In this shot the cage on the left is empty because she was sick and so they removed her to a different cage to avoid infecting the others.

Here's the male in the middle cage. The cage is elevated with a wire mesh floor so the clean up is easier, and the rabbit waste can be harvested for fertilizer too.

Since I finished with the rabbits, lets move to the rest of the animal report for the month.

 This is a tenrec. I named him or her Billy Tenrec because that is a solid name for a tenrec in my opinion. I was unsure at first exactly what it was and so had a neighbor clarify for me. He also filled me in on the general characteristics of tenrecs, namely that they are quiet, not mean, and fight rats. I instantly made him my friend and invited him to stay living behind my trunk for as long as he desired. Unfortunately he vacated that evening, but in the mean time I've at least got this picture to remember my time with Billy...

On a trip out to a neighboring town to look at a possible future site for a new volunteer we stumbled across this very interesting spider. It blends in extremely well with the log that it was on, but the really cool thing that drew us to check it out more closely are the markings on its back that look distinctly like a lion's head.

The spider wasn't the only cold blooded creature I came across this month as I finally was able to catch my first fish in country! This Orange Spotted Grouper was a great early morning surprise in the waters off Diego Suarez. He fought like a stereotypical grouper and almost made me lose him in the rocks twice, but I finally got him in.

Here's the best selfie I could manage with a fish flopping in my hands. He was a little on the small side, so I put him back to fatten up for another day, but now I head out for my next expedition with a little more confidence that it is actually possible to catch fish in these waters!

Of course Snow is still around too. Here she is waking from a lazy afternoon nap in the sun by my fence. She's getting bigger by the day and is now able to put her paws on my kitchen table. A fact I discovered in a moderately disappointing fashion as I watched her abscond with a cube of beef that was destined for my dinner! Now I have to keep my eye on the little thief to make sure I get to eat too, although she's going to have some pretty stiff competition in a little while because...

PUPPIES! 8 in total. In this shot they are 2 days old and already looking super cute. I can't wait until they are walking and I can play with them all.

Here are some of the local boys butchering a teddy bear that had been on the ground for some time. When I asked what they were doing they pulled out the stuffing and shoved it around the puppies to make a nice soft bed for them and melted my heart a little in the process too. Although in a month they'll probably be kicking the puppies, at least for now they're trying to be nice!

 Speaking of the local kids, here are some of my students on a carnival. They marched from the school all the way to the far side of town and back while singing and clapping and dancing! It was a great event and they completely blocked the road as they went. In the background you can see a taxi brousse that stopped to load and got encircled.

Not everyone in town is young, and this month as a testament to that I attended another funeral. This time it was an elderly neighbor so I went to the full event which lasted four days! As it went into the night they needed to keep the lights going and with no electricity they improvised lanterns out of papaya, bamboo, and kerosene. Here is one of the lantern makers putting the finishing touches on a papaya!

With the funeral lasting for so long, people got to eat. Here you can see the tin roof they constructed to make a dry area for cooking for everyone. I took this picture before people started showing up so the festival wasn't really in full swing, but by the high point they had two huge pots of rice and a separate huge pot of beef going at all times to make enough food for everyone.

Everyone eats in shifts according to rank starting with the old men, then the old ladies, then the young men, young ladies, kids, and so on until everyone has eaten. Here's me along with a few of the stragglers one day downing some rice and beef.

I felt a little awkward taking all of the pictures that I did of the event, but everyone kept asking why I wasn't taking more pictures! They definitely don't have the same aversion to photographing the deceased that many in the US do! Here they are constructing the bier for the trip to the cemetery. It was a three kilometer walk out with about 60 or so people singing and dancing all the way.

Once we arrived at the cemetery the burial began and a group of young guys pictured here sat down near the grave and just started jamming for about 30 minutes! They would look around and pick an item out of their surroundings and shout out its name as the lyrics to the song. At one point they saw me watching and, to my embarrassment, I became the lyrical highlight of the verse.

After the interment I walked around the cemetery to see what else was around and stumbled on this amazing vista. Not a bad place to be parked for eternity in terms of the view!

One of my neighbors saw me taking the picture and jumped in for a quick photo shoot. Alban obviously wasn't too interested in the funeral proceedings at that point after four days!

I've also been doing some more projects around the house too, here are the results of this months labor.

House Hat! My roof has been leaking since I've moved in so I finally got some tin to make it a little more rain proof. Unfortunately, my neighbor who has been helping me fix my house was not the greatest roof technician so this has caused the leaks to get worse. Now it's on to silicon caulk to see if I can patch up the tin, and if that fails, it might be time to pull out some big guns!

 On the smaller side I made some corn holders. My neighbors gave me a lot of corn a few days ago and I had no way to handle it when I went to eat it, so these were born out of my hungry frustration!

I made them out of a scrap of wood that I had laying around. I whittled points into the end and shaved down the sharp edges to create a unique and functional set of natural corn holders.

 I also made a garden for myself with some help from my neighboring volunteer. Here is the bed as I marked it out and scoured for rocks.

After that we added some raffia walls and bamboo support poles to hold it all in place and filled it in with some good soil. I haven't got anything planted yet, but I bought some carrot and pepper seeds the other day, so soon I'll be rolling in the veggies!

I added an ax and a small shovel to my tool collection pictured here. Both will be of great use in projects to come, but as of yet still just scraps of iron waiting for a purpose!

From my last fishing trip, a nice sunrise over the bay in Diego. A beautiful sight indeed and reason enough to keep returning even if the fish aren't biting that day!

This month marks six months at site and thats a quarter of my total time here. It seems like it has gone by so fast, and yet I've got so much still to come. Stay tuned for future adventures and hopefully this blog will continue to be as easy to find pictures for as I constantly worry it won't be!

I Don't Bless the Rains in Africa

The rainy season has begun! Technically speaking it had already begun in November but lately it's actually living up to its name and giving us some water to deal with. This also means dealing with holes in my roof, because, in a sign of true integration with my community, I have mostly just moved things out of the way of the water until now. However, there comes a time in every man's life when he must make a stand and say "No! It is no longer acceptable for me to get wet when I'm trying to sleep!"

The rains also mean "rain days" at school. In the South East US they have "Hurricane Days", in the North there's "Snow Days", the West gets mudslides and El Nino, but here in Madagascar some nice heavy rain is enough to keep all the teachers and students out of the classroom! This is mostly due to the fact that all of the rooms leak to such an extent that anything more than a moderate rainfall causes most of the rooms to flood and become unusable for class. Cue the Alice Cooper and let's see what the photo replay shows...

Here is the view from under the eave of the school. I really wanted to get out there and get shots of the kids running through the puddles which were as much as knee deep in places, but I didn't think my camera would've liked me very much if I did so excuse the long shots!

Around this field is an olympic sized track made of dirt which is great when it isn't raining, but becomes a mud pit in a deluge. I took a page of inspiration from a teacher of mine in high school and since I couldn't teach decided to join the kids in playing in the mud pit. I tucked my valuables into my raincoat and put them in one of the classrooms and took off for the alluring vision you see here!

The kids were cheering me on because it's not an everyday occurrence for them to see a crazy white guy start running laps in the mud in a downpour, especially when that guy is your teacher. As I ran, I found a nice section of really squishy mud with no rocks along the track and made my move. I lined up, ran a little and dove for all I was worth. I arose, about 10-15 feet from my starting position, with mud in places that had not believed in its existence mere moments before. The kids all gathered around and had a go at the mudslide as well and all together it was a great experience!

The rains have also been affecting some other members of the community as well. Namely my intrepid puppy friend Snow! She has taken keen to naps on my porch, and when the rains start, if I am around she likes to hide out there to keep dry.

One day it was falling so hard that even the porch wasn't safe so she tucked herself into a little ball underneath my table. She didn't particularly appreciate the thunder that came with this storm though and showed her displeasure by peeing on my floor. I felt bad for her and kept her company so she wouldn't be as scared.

Here's a little video I took of her as she was curling up. After this I cut the video to give her some back scratching because she was not having any fun with all that booming going on outside!

Of course it doesn't rain all the time, and sometimes she just stops by to say hi, grab a drink of water and maybe even beg for that delicious looking food that I happen to be eating! What a beggar...

Here's a lazy afternoon nap time when Papa came along to sample the delights of my porch to see if they lived up to the hype. I think he approved!

Dogs aren't the only animals we have here in Sadjoavato. We also play host to a menagerie of reptilia like this here chameleon. I saw him crossing the road and went to inspect closer and all of the people near me ran screaming as I approached. As I found out, chameleons are fady (fady = taboo) animals here in Madagascar just like snakes. I don't particularly understand why since neither animal is particularly dangerous - none of the snakes on the island are venomous - and plus these guys look awesome!

 I've also been helping to house some other local animal life. The volunteer living nearest me is doing a project with rabbits and needed a place to store them, so we are constructing a rabbit hutch. It's still in assembly stage, but here are a few pictures before I post the finished thing next month... hopefully!

Here's the back side with the proud owner holding it up!

 Naturally construction of this sort has made me desire to expand my tool collection and as I found some spare Ariary I've finally been able to acquire the last few major pieces of equipment needed to tackle some of my planned projects. Above we see my hanging tools: rope, tape measure, wire, handsaw, protractor and squares, plane, drill bits, combo pliers, hacksaw, and hammer. Not pictured on my nearby shelf is my drill, wood glue, RS-20 (WD-40 competitor), jars of nails and screws, machete, and screw drivers. As soon as I locate a nearby source of wood I'll post pictures of projects that I complete!

 I don't just construct with wood though, I also happen to take a turn creating in the kitchen every now and again too. Here is a red bean and vegetable soup that was absolutely delicious! Red beans, hot peppers, tomatoes, green beans, carrots, onions, green onions, garlic, and a healthy helping of salt, cumin, coriander and ginger. As the Malagasy say "Matsiro be!" ("Very delicious!")

All that food fuel helped power me up to the top of the big hill right near town. I took two panoramic shots and pasted them together to make a 360 degree picture. Sorry about my lack of photo editing, I was feeling lazy when it came time to do the photoshopping and you can still get a good idea of whats going on in the picture!

That's all for this month. I love it more everyday here even with all the little challenges and bumps in the road, but it's hard to resist a place with the beauty and charm of Madagascar.

Bonne Année!

December was a great month. I wrapped up teaching and headed out for a few days of R&R at the beach. I returned home for a wonderful New Years dinner and party. Of course, there was work to be done too, but I had a little help in that department this time around too. Enough talk, now lets see the photographic evidence!

I spent my first Christmas away from home and family on Nosy Be with a group of friends. While my hotel itself was not on the beach, it still had a spectacular view!

Thats not to say that I didn't get to the beach, because what would Christmas in Madagascar be without coconuts to drink while lounging in the sand...

Or a nice cold Blue Moon cocktail while watching a relaxing sunset...

Or a Punch Coco right before nap time...

But Christmas and R&R can't last forever, sometimes you have to return to reality, even if you take a detour along the way.

To the lovely port city of Ankify, gateway to Nosy Be. We spent a fun afternoon at the beach here as the storm clouds rolled through keeping it cool and breezy.

 It also made for some great sailing as these Malagasy fishermen found out on their return to port.

Here's another pair coming in. It was a great day at the beach and I really enjoyed watching them sail these boats into the harbor.

After that it was back to site for New Year's festivities!

Here is the spread that my neighbors made for dinner on New Year's Day. Rice, Goose, and Cucumber salad. The food was very delicious and we enjoyed it in the traditional Malagasy style, outdoors on a woven straw mat called a tsihy.

As for the work portion of my month, with the start of the rainy season my yard has gone from dirt patch to overgrown weed field in about two weeks! I bought a lawnmower, my first ever to help take care of the problem!

Here she is! Handmade by my local blacksmith and ready for use, my very own lawnmower! I sharpened it up and mounted it on a stick and got to work.

 Here's where it started...

And here is the aftermath. The remnants were about an inch or so high, and after a day all of the cut stuff was so shriveled it looked like a freshly mown yard!

Here's my lawnmower fresh off of its maiden run!

Of course the weeds all came back stronger than ever in about a week, so this time my neighbor suggested that the local kids take care of it for me! I'm not about to turn down labor that works for sugar, so in they came, and out went the weeds for a second time. They even had assistance from the local puppy squad too!

A brief pause in the weeding to try and get a good picture of Papa and Snow...

 But Snow doesn't like to sit still too long!

 Unless of course I'm trying to leave my house! She has now taken to pulling this stunt every time I try to close my gate, and it takes physically lifting the dog out of my yard to be able to close up my fence! If only she wasn't so cute...

But she knows that she is, and she manipulates me with it! Not that I'm complaining mind you, but look at that face!

School starts back up in a few days and I'm excited to get back to my kids and see what they remember, and how I can help them grow even more. Also, now that the holiday season is finished I'll get to spend a nice long time at my site really moving projects along that I've been trying to get started for a while. Hopefully there will be big things to report in the coming months, stay tuned and find out!