Madagascar (the country, not the movie)

Parlez-vous français?

From the moment we arrived I had to use my French. It was a little rusty and I started off by forgetting a few really basic words, but after a couple of days it began to flow a lot better.

Most of the TV is in French here, and if not, it seems to be in Chinese. CNN seems to be the only channel in English – not that we have had much of a chance to watch TV, apart from in Tana. There was also limited access to internet and I could only seem to find wifi in Tana too (hence the lack of updates for a while).

Tana (Antananarivo)

We stayed at ‘Au Bois Vert’ (The Green Forest), quite a few kms away from the centre of Tana. As you’d expect, it was surrounded by tall trees, but it was a nice surprise to find an enclosure out the front of the hotel with many tortoises of all sizes in it.

Photo courtesy of Keith

We looked out of the window during one meal, and saw one tortoise trying to mount another. I had to excuse myself from the table to have a look. The male tortoise chased the female all around the enclosure, and a later point (with a few mouthfuls of food in between), he was successful. It was a little awkward as there was another tortoise right next to them, looking on, and probably worse, I was there with my camera. They didn’t seem too phased by the attention, however.

At one point the onlooker seemed to get involved and pushed the two of them over onto their shells. As a result, the act had come to an end, and the male retracted his (very large) appendage.

Less awkward was photographing the chameleon just near our rooms who was simply camouflaging himself on a tree trunk.

There seem to be endless rice paddies in Tana (and actually throughout Madagascar), which makes sense given that the Malagasy eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

A common form of transport is the pousse-pousse (or push-push in French); a cart which locals push any matter of cargo in, from people to much heavier loads.

Soatanana

We experienced a slice of village life, living with the locals in Soatanana. Predominantly a silk-weaving village, the residents also keep zebu, ducks and pigs.

The locals took us for a walk around the surrounding area for a few hours. Farmers were using zebu to plough the rice fields.

We walked along the edges of the paddies, and had to cross a precarious wooden bridge that had seen better days. After many of our group (myself included) struggled crossing it, two local women carrying large bundles of straw on their heads crossed it incredibly easily – and I don’t think one of them could even really see properly with her load!

Passing through local villages, we received a warm welcome of waves and ‘Salama’s’ (Hello’s) though when you try to come closer to some of the kids they seem quite scared and tend to run away! I initially tried to shake some of their hands, and then thought I’d try to pick up one of the kids and carry them around. The kids were laughing and kept pushing each other forward. The unwilling volunteers would then quickly run to the back and push others forward. I eventually met one girl who was resisting less than the others and lifted her up and carried her on my hip. We walked around the village together and she was in fits of laughter the entire way! Still no other kids were really keen to repeat the experience… I must be very scary!