So we left for Ambohimahamasina Sunday afternoon, more or less around 2pm (as planned). Packed everything into the back of the rugged Land Rover-esque vehicle. Francesca and I commented that you really don’t realize what a car, or even a taxi-brousse-like van, is capable of until you put it on atrocious uneven, unpaved roads and steep inclines. At first when we got here I had to close my eyes when we drove in certain areas – surely we wouldn’t be able to drive there without tipping over! But now I’m used to it: you have to figure your driven knows what he’s doing, as he’s been getting around just fine his whole life here!
Our driver took us first to his place to pick up his bag, then to Raïssa’s (who is in charge of sanitation projects with Ny Tanintsika) to pick up her and her 9-month-old baby Ephraim, who has a fantastic laugh. Raïssa said she normally wouldn’t bring him to the field, but she’s still in the process of looking for a new nourrice (wet nurse) to look after him.
After picking up Raïssa and Ephraim we stopped for gas at a Jovenna station; I stared straight ahead stoically as the station attendants peered curiously through the windows at my whiter-than-ever face (it’s always so cloudy here! I’m convinced I’ll come back to the US whiter than when I left!). I was riding shotgun, but Raïssa had warned me that this was only temporary; “on sera quatre” (“we will be four”) in the back. I hoped this meant Francesca, me, her, and the baby.
Next we stopped by the Fianar taxi-brousse station to pick up Pierre Louis, a French intern, who got to sit shotgun for the drive because he was “wide,” according to Raïssa – by Malagasy standards, not American, that is! I moved back to the back.
But then we stopped at another gas station to pick up Paul (another NT team member, and Raïssa’s baby’s father, I think), who joined us in the back. Four adults and one baby (who alternated between Raïssa’s and Paul’s laps) – needless to say, a bit of a squeeze! And all without seatbelts (let alone a carseat for the baby), I might add!
The drive was beautiful: hills, mountains, valleys, streams, rice paddies, green with red earth. A flash of a waterfall. Over bridges (the only time the driver ever slowed down! I’m pretty sure there are no road rules here…). As we got father and farther away from Fianar, I felt a sense of elation, the thrill of the road and adventure in the air. The past few weeks of back-and-forth between the house and the office right next to each other had given both Francesca and I a bit of cabin fever; now, it felt so good to be out and seeing new things!
We stopped at a panoramic spot so the men could relieve themselves – alas, again, the limits of female anatomy!
After about an hour’s drive we stopped in Ambalavao, the last major town before our destination (another 1½+ hour’s drive away), for dinner at Chez Mamidà Hotely, a tiny little hole in the wall with three tables and benches. A group of singers was practicing in a back room. Everything on the menu consisted of rice with some sort of meat. Hilarious. Francesca and I were still wary of food we didn’t cook ourselves, so I abstained (remembering my Nutella and peanut butter sandwich waiting for me in the car), while Francesca attempted to order just a bowl of rice.
Just rice? Nothing else? Nothing with it? No, you can’t just order rice. “Just rice” is not on the menu… They actually found Francesca’s request for “just rice” to be stranger than my abstention!
Finally they negotiated something and Francesca got her bowl of plain white rice. The others were served rice with an accompanying bowl of chicken or pork in broth. Raïssa fed baby Ephraim little spoonfuls of brothy rice with little torn up bits of chicken. Bowls of dark brown liquid arrived soon thereafter. Coffee? I wondered. Of course not: it was ranon'ampango, Malagasy rice water, freshly made from boiling water in the rice pot filled with stuck-on burnt rice (in this case, very burnt!).
We were soon back on the road again, and began our climb into the hills as night fell. We passed fewer and fewer small villages, and it became harder to see the scenery. The road was very rough, with deep crevasses in the dirt from where water flowed. The driver tended to try and straddle them with the car, but sometimes we dipped down into them a bit, causing us all to get bumped a bit in the back. Ephraim, once so giggly and well-behaved, began to scream, and kept it up for much of the rest of the drive. Sometimes as we drove I could see people walking along the side of the road, illuminated like ghosts in our headlights. I got lost in my own thoughts, watching the seemingly endless road.
Finally, we arrived in Ambohimahamasina in total darkness. We got out of the car with our backpacks and waited for further instruction. We had no idea where we were staying – none whatsoever. Our boss had kind of left out those details…So we had come prepared for anything – including our own pot to cook in and our own spoons to eat with! I had packed a jar of peanut butter, and was fully mentally prepared to survive on just that if it came down to it!
As seems to be the case with all our adventures here in Madagascar, everything always turns out better than you expect. Romain, a French intern with Ny Tanintsika who’s been here for over a year, came out of one of the buildings – although he had not been expecting us, we, along with Pierre Louis, would be staying chez lui. We climbed up a ladder to the second-floor balcony of a building, walked around to the other side, and entered a small candlelit room (there is only electricity for one hour a day, 6-7pm, in Ambohimahamasina, and no outlets). Inside there was a girl who greeted us in perfect English – I recognized her as Gaia, one of the British med students Ambinina had spoken of. She is Sri Lankan, but grew up in Dubai and was educated in Canada and the UK; she just finished med school and is back in Madagascar for a few more weeks, until mid-July. She and Romain are living here in Ambohimahamasina: Romain working for NT on Projet Pailles, Gaia teaching English to high-schoolers and tour guides, as well as teaching some family planning. Although we were unexpected guests, we were welcomed without hesitation.
Romain began to cook, and although I was still imbued with paranoia induced by too many Princeton Travel Health meetings, I gave in to my hunger. Red rice (particular to the Betsileo region, and a welcome change to boring old white rice; plus it has more nutrients!), des breds (a sort of Chinese leafy green vegetable, served in Madagascar boiled in lots of water to be poured over rice), and a tomato and green pepper sauce that Romain called fritanga, one of his pied-noir (French Algerian, before the Algerian Independence) grandmother’s recipes.
Afterwards, for dessert, dark chocolate and a fresh pineapple, cut in front of us on the table. This pineapple put all other pineapples I’ve eaten in my life to shame – literally, it was as if every other pineapple I’d ever eaten had just been some weak imitation of the fruit we tasted that night. It was succulently sweet, not acidic at all (usually in the States I can only eat a maximum of 3 pieces without killing off the feeling in my tongue), and you could even eat the center (usually too hard to enjoy in pineapples bought in the states). Romain and Gaia get these golden miracles directly from the growers, who live nearby.
Before and during dinner, the five of us (Romain, Gaia, Pierre Louis, Francesca, and I) had one of those wonderful conversations that only occurs when you get together a bunch of young traveler/expats from all over the world. We spoke in both French and English, switching back and forth based on our moods and abilities; everyone was understood. We discussed cultural differences, international politics, education systems, pop culture, everything – all by candlelight in good company over good food. It’s moments like these when you’re reminded that you don’t just travel to see new places: meeting other travelers and foreigners is one of the best parts of traveling, too.
After dinner we washed our faces and brushed our teeth outside on the balcony using buckets of water: two clean water buckets with a small cup to scoop, and a dirty water bucket for soapy water and spitting out toothpaste. I saw nearby where Romain had put dinner’s dirty dishes, which would be washed in the morning, once the sun came up. I came to a stunning realization: you really can manage just fine without running water!
BUT, before going to sleep that night I finally had to face my greatest fear: the squat toilet. Romain’s bathroom is outside and a little ways behind the building. It looks like a small shed with four doors. The two on the right are the toilets for the whole village, while the two on the left are for Romain, and can be opened only by key. One is a shower space (literally, just where you take your bucket when you want to bathe) and the other is the dreaded latrine. There’s a hole in the ground and a place to indicate where to put your feet. Some of you reading this are probably thinking I’m being overdramatic, others are probably sympathizing. In any case, please don’t judge – I had never done this before! There’s something very disconcertingly natural about a squat toilet – like you’re forced to face the fact that, much as we’d like to forget it, we humans are still animals. But alright, it wasn’t so bad. For me, anyways. Francesca, unfortunately, made us all aware of a potential peril of squat toilets, though: she lost one of her shoes down the hole!
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