Article about Marojejy

If you're interested...

Article about lemurs and Marojejy (near my site!)

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/film-underlines-plight-of-the-lemur/

Gross insect or fun toy? You decide.

Check out the kid on the right, priceless.

Children!

I have a lot of little kid friends. Friends in that most days I find them amusing, I am on a very similar level at speaking Malagasy as them (though I finally feel like I am getting slightly better than a five year old!!), and on their end I am fascinating. They love to come over and look at my picture books (thank god I acquired them during PST) or to look at my photo album or to talk to me or stare at me or occasionally play frisbee. I'm not going to lie it can be annoying, but here are some of the more priceless interactions...

Everything is a toy. Seriously. Candy wrappers, bottles, papaya peels. The best was the other day when the little girl whose photo I posted earlier (and who has really taken a liking to me lately) came over with a roach. Luckily after living in a pretty well infested apartment in SC and in the south in general for about 6 years I am okay with roaches. Don't love them or anything but I can handle them. Well this roach was her toy for the day. I got a really funny photo that I'll post later.

Sometimes being watched is just too much, so I'll go to get water at the pump and hope the kids lose interest. It's pretty much never successful but I still try. Yesterday I got water with about 5 kids running alongside. They arrived at my door and stood there in the way. When I walked around them I of course spilled. "Hey, Leslie, your house is wet." Thanks, kid. I didn't notice that water sloshing out because you were in the way.

We also have "salama" wars. Salama is the general greeting in the dialect of Malagasy spoken at my site. I have one kid that really likes to come up, pause for a moment, then yell "salama!" at me. They find it really fun when I respond and each kid has to try. But sometimes one kid just keeps repeating it, so it's basically us going back and forth: "Salama!" "Salama!" "Salama!" "Salama!" "Salama!" until I get tired of it.

It's been pretty darn rainy and therefore muddy. I was walking behind a little boy. In his little kid way he wasn't really looking, stepped in a puddle and slipped, almost falling down. He made a surprised noise (wah-lah!) and looked down at the puddle like it snuck up on him.

Accident Prone Annie

I thought I was a fairly well-coordinated person. I've played lots of different sports involving hand-eye coordination and I even took several years of ballet. Then I came to Madagascar.

In my defense, I feel like my clumsiness here is probably magnified by the abundance of dirt roads which quickly turn to slick mud when it rains and very narrow walking paths that often abut places you probably shouldn't be walking, like in a rice field. Also being stared at 24/7 adds to it. But, in addition to losing my coordination I have also lost a lot of self-conciousness and my sense of shame so I am going to invite you to be entertained by my foolishness and let this be my verbal blooper reel. Here are some of the more ridiculous embarrassments I have suffered so far:

First day of homestay, we go to do laundry. In the middle of some rice fields. I slip and fall in carrying my full bucket of laundry home. Welcome to Madagascar, Leslie.

Riding my bike home, it's a rainy day. It seems like an okay idea to bike on the muddy road (why, Leslie?) Go over the wooden-plank "bridge" but have to turn right immediately afterwards. I slow-motion topple, with my bike, into the muddy ditch that the bridge spans. Covered in mud and all I can do is laugh as I pick myself up and go home to clean up.

Market day in Maroambihy, went with my counterpart to introduce myself and learn about the community (it is a village about 5 km from mine, still in my commune-think county) Another rainy day. The market route has turned to mud, but I am sick of sitting and waiting for the market to end so we can ride home with the market ladies from Ambohimanarina. I decide to go check out the market and buy some food. I end up having to take off my sandals because they just get stuck and make it harder to walk in the soft mud and come back with some incredibly muddy feet. And all the food was at the market entrance on the paved road.

Went to help transplant rice, about a 45 minute walk on little paths around the flooded rice fields. Rainy day (a bit of a theme here, I think I might be in trouble when it's actually the rainy season.) On the walk home they have someone hold my hand for all the difficult stretches because I slip and slide in my shoes a lot more than they do in bare feet!

So I'll be over here doing balancing exercises until next time.

Love from Mada, Leslie.