Thoughts From A Lemur Park

As I write this blog I am starting a new chapter in my Madagascan journey and the last one has come to a magnificent close. I am currently writing from a children’s residential centre called Akany Avoko in Antananarivo, I will write the next blog all about them and what they do so for now just know that this is where I will be volunteering for the next two months while we wait for our paperwork to come through. The organisation has a mandate which includes the extension of help and support to other children’s charities and for them that means doing everything they can to help me acclimatise to Madagascar, pick up my French, get experience with the legal system and shadow the social workers- they couldn’t have been more helpful.

But this also means that I am flying solo again in Tana. Antoine left tonight and I am so sad about it, he has been a huge support to me at this transition period of my life and has not only made the work progress and boosted my confidence but he has made these three weeks some of the most fun I can remember. We flew back from Diego Suarez on Friday (no, I don’t regret the taxi brousse but I am also not in a hurry to repeat the process) and got to Tana in the early evening, once again taking refuge in Sakamanga (who, by the way, are putting in a pool). We went for dinner at a tres tres posh restaurant called ‘Le Bee’ (probably not spelled correctly) which was very good but like the price of some monthly salaries here. Then we made an expensive decision that turned out to be so so worth it- we hired a taxi for the whole of the next day. The cost of this was 100,000 Ariary (35 Euros) plus gas. We would never have done this had it not been for the fact that we were visiting out friend Lalasoa at her home (roughly 45mins outside Tana)  for a meeting and for Antoine to say goodbye, I was moving to Akany Avoko (about an hour out) and Antoine was going to the airport (another hour or so out) so all this together would have cost more and been a bigger hassle than hiring it out for the day… but this meant they were at our disposal for the afternoon and that meant… LEMUR PARK!

The lemur park is about an hour outside Tana (with traffic) and just past Lalasoa’s house so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to visit and for Antoine and I to have a nice goodbye. Those of you who know me will know my love of animals but zoos and I have always had a rocky relationship, depending on their set up and species they can make me sad, so I was a little trepidatious about this visit, but I needn’t have been.

All of the lemurs in the park are rehabilitated, mostly from being pets or side-shows, and they are kept in a large enclosure called the ‘rehabilitation area’ for a few weeks before being released into the park and allowed to socialise or find territory. The park is simple bordered by water on one side and a low wall on the other so sometimes the lemurs leave the park but the always come back of their own accord to be fed and find their group. The only exception to this are the two nocturnal species, who are kept in indoor enclosures for their own comfort. The park is also home to chameleons and iguanas as well as acting as a botanical garden and boasting hundreds of species of indigenous and endemic plant species. The entry to the park was Ar20,000 (7 euros) and we got an English speaking guide to show us around on a tour which took just over an hour.

Our guide at the park!

The decent into the park was magical as we baby baobabs lined the pathways and the mini-baobab sprung like choral from the black rock. The sound of running water echoed in the distance and the cicadas serenaded our arrival. The plants were certainly not what I came for but it is impossible not to be impressed by the outstretched fronds of the Madagascar Palm, the perfect water receptacles that are the ‘Napoleon’s hats’ or the flawless formation of ‘angel wings’. So engrossed was I in the flora that I had to be called back twice to look at our first encounter with the local fauna- a bright green chameleon, female and about the size of my palm her white flanks blinked out at me from the branches. She considered us carefully, raising each hand out cautiously, testing the air and then suddenly her mind was made up and she demonstrated her speed but climbing high out of the reach of our cameras and into the canopy above. Our decent then continued on toward the rumbling of water until its source was revealed.

The Chameleon

A deep red river traversed the land, severing the brilliant green with its rusty progression. The banks are swollen with amber clay and the rains have heightened the vibrancy of the hue. On the banks of this mighty river grow bamboo border where the next protagonist in our journey was to be found. The Coquerel Lemur is a large rusty-black and white Sifaka that, when navigating the land, has to negotiate its disproportionately long limbs by doing a kind of sideways gallop, resulting in a kind of balletic progression which gives them their nickname ‘the dancing lemur’. These, like many other lemurs, mate for life and give birth to single live young once a year who stay with them for the first two years of life. The family group we came across were kind enough not only to pose for pictures but also to give us a display of this remarkable phenomenon by bounding up and down the paths between the bamboo.

Coquerel Lemur

My heaven continued as we passed the Black and White Ruffed lemur; these are also large lemurs with a black and white pattern and distinctive tufts of fur around the face. This older pair had multiple young, a quirk typical of this species that leads them to nest for safety and comfort in twig-based structures in the trees. They paid little attention to us and went about their business amongst the leaves, only pausing for the occasional glance in our direction.

 The Black and White Ruffed Lemur: a glance in our direction

Next came a glimpse of a Mongoose Lemur who was dozing when we arrived at his patch of bamboo but was gracious enough to stretch and rouse himself for a snack soon after we set up camp. This smaller grey lemur has a remarkably long tail that it uses for balance, like all species, but also to store fat for lean times or hibernation periods. Unlike monkeys lemurs do not use their tails as a fifth limb and never use is to hold on to branches and the like.

Mongoose Lemur and his fat storing tail

Moving on we spotted another Sifaka pair and were busy oohing and ahhing over them when the star of the show emerged from the undergrowth. Yes, that’s right the one and only Ring-Tailed Lemur, the image of King Julian who brings smiles to the faces of people around the globe plonked itself right in front of us and prompted squeals of delight from me and made Antoine start sprouting limes about professional whistling and gecko crowns (although he will deny this later). This older male moved smoothly through the trees, however when it moved along the ground it seemed to drag its right side, reminding us that the lemurs here have been rescued from a variety of situations and some of them still bare the scars of they previous lives in this idyllic new one.

The King

By this point I was so excited I was babbling incessantly, calling to mind facts and anecdotes from documentaries and books about Madagascar and it endemic primates. So intensely was I staring into the trees that I almost stepped on this beautiful, petit iguana, which was sunning itself on the path. Aptly named after its who most definitive features this creature goes by either ‘Horny Tailed Iguana’ or ‘Collared Iguana’, this one being a male as it possessed only one stripe on its collar.

Horny Tailed/ Collared Iguana

 The next lemur we were lucky enough to spot is quite rare, even for the park. It was a Lesser Bamboo Lemur with a rusty coat and grey facial markings that give it a permanent look of surprise. Small and cute this character jumps straight off the pages of a book and is shy and retiring,

Lesser Bamboo Lemur

Next came the tortoise pen where rescued tortoises come from near and far. The pen houses three species; the large and indigenous Radiated Tortoise, the smaller Spider Tortoise and the introduced Hinge-Backed species. This was followed by the ‘rehabilitation area’, where another pair of Sifakas were waiting to be allowed to join the parklands. They were being kept company on the other side of the fence by a pair of Common Brown Lemurs in a tree and another Mongoose Lemur who was wandering around on the ground below.

Tortoises

Common Brown Lemur

Our final stop was the nocturnal house where the tiny Grey Mouse Lemur is kept. One individual here was awake and feeding from a bowl of fruit, he looked unsatisfied however and kept glancing up at the roof of the enclosure. That is when I notices a coke bottle with holes in full of crickets sitting on top of the netting; “treats for feeding time” explained the guide, so I promptly turned away tot he next enclosure. This one housed the Fat-Tailed Dwarf Lemurs who were cuddled up into a hollow section of bamboo like cannel cream in a shell, all peering out at me with their curious, searching eyes, designed for spotting prey in the dark.

Grey Mouse Lemur

Fat-Tailed Dwarf Lemurs (there are 3 of them in there)

On our way back to the café and gift shop the last of the 9 species who live here made his appearance. A lone female Black Lemur, maltreated by her owners and aggressive towards humans this stunning loner was being followed by her own keeper who is trying to acclimatise her to the footfall around her territory as well as keeping all visitors at a safe and appropriate distance.

Black lemur, from a distance

This experience was one of my favourite so far and while Antoine bought souvenirs for his nephews and nieces I bought one for myself- a lovely little treat to remind myself of this wonderful experience with Antoine, our guide and the lemurs of the Antananarivo Lemur Park and rehabilitation centre.

NB. All facts given here are from things the guide said and I managed to scribble down into my book so if you happen to be a lemur expert and I am all wrong please leave a comment at the bottom of this post :D

Thoughts From Paradise

I have found it. I am in paradise. The sand is white as snow and the sea is an azure blue that stretches out toward the distant beaches of the rugged hills that encircle the lagoon. It’s shallow here, up to your calves for miles, and the shades of turquoise running into one another under the sun are indicators of the depth of the ocean, highlighting sandy pathways between the little islands nestled in the centre of the lagoon. The lazy lapping of the water and the sleepy heat of the day are complemented by the grace and ease of the multi-coloured kites joyously dancing in the wind, pulling along the boys at play.  Every now and again the wind rises and the best among the showmen direct their kites toward the shore, allowing the air to lift them and their boards high out of the water before they float back down to the surface and skim away.

The boys kiting on the lagoon

 My eyes here are only occasionally tempted toward the skies, to briefly take in the balletic movement of colour in air. This is because the riches that are to be found here lie in the sand. Green crabs scuttle from one hole to another, scattering before my footsteps and the sand unearths treasures from the deep. Giant shells, once inhabited by Indian Ocean residents peak out from beneath the golden dust, temping those who pass by to gently excavate around them to uncover the remarkable whole. I have walked this beach daily this weekend, never ceasing to be amazed by the number of shades of blue in the ocean, of green in the trees and of gold on the beach. But the most awe-inspiring thing about this landscape is that I am often alone. A solitary figure wandering for miles, occasionally stooping to recapture some forgotten treasure from the sea. However even this stunning, tranquil passage of mine cannot keep me from venturing back across the sand, turning my back on the beauty of the lagoon and heading up the steps toward the lodge itself, nestled into the hill, barely visible from the sea.

Green sand crab

Shells from the beach

Baboamby Lodge

This is Babaomby, an eco lodge in the Emerald Sea to the North East of Diego Suarez. We came here by boat for the weekend because this Eden specialises in water sports, and more specifically kite surfing, which Antoine has been looking forward to for the last couple of weeks. We arrived on Friday and are staying in a large tent on a wooden platform looking out onto the lagoon. I was well aware that this place was a haven for aquatic adventure types and so brought along my books and my laptop, fully intending to lie around on the beach and laze about the lodge for three days. Well, although the sportive pastimes might feature heavily on the lodge’s website there are several things which do it great credit which are not!

My tent

:D And me

The kind and welcoming owner Nicola, who came to pick us up from the nearest bay in the lodge's own colourful wooden boat is the first thing. He is a gracious host and an inclusive character who has invited me to all the activities and outings since I arrived and has never considered my not kite surfing as an obstacle to my joining in. He has happily provided me with further reading material, snorkelling equipment, shoes for rock-pool exploration and transportation to the best kite-surfing and beach exploring spots on the lagoon in the boat when the boys all kite/ windsurfed/ jet-skied there. The second is the wildlife. Never mind the chickens, cat (spudnick), dog and zebu wandering around the grounds, no-one told me about the several different types of chameleon, gecko and LEMUR which just happen to appear dotted around the sandy paths between the huts. Yes, in case you didn’t get that guys… I HAVE SEEN MY FIRST LEMURS! YEEAAAHHH! They were amazing, wild and not really that skittish AND one of the females in the group had a palm-sized baby on her back, hanging on for dear life.

LEEEEMUUURRRSSSSS. 'Nough said.

Gekko

Chameleon!

Which actually brings me to the last thing about this trip that deserves a mention- the staff. The staff here, from the chef to the couple who man the restaurant/bar, to the guards and even the water sport boys have all totally accepted my disinterest in the activities on offer, my appalling French and my childlike reaction to anything animal related and have proceeded to rally round for the benefit of entertaining the weird English girl. The cook has been producing an ever stranger collection of shells and driftwood (for which I will give him the giant shell I found on the beach as a thank-you), the couple keep their eyes peeled for various wildlife as they go about their work and then guide me to hidden geckos, chameleons, weird bugs and so on and the boys on the beach sing along with my humming, invite me to play ‘petanque’ and chat to me as best they can as I watch Antoine ‘kiting’ across the lagoon. Everyone has been friendly and kind and has gone out of their way to include me and take pleasure in finding things which will make me smile and for that I am so grateful.

Snake stick

Petanque

These few days have been just perfect and I am ready to head back into Diego for the second week of chasing down contacts, paperwork and information. I have been so happy here that even when this morning my flip flop (which I bought in Cambodia for $1 six years ago) broke, I looked at it a little nostalgically and then got distracted by a cool gecko and kicked them off and continued on with my day barefoot, nary a tear shed. There is so much more to say about everything I have seen and done here but to be honest sitting here writing this blog feels like a waste of time when I could be wandering the shoreline looking for shells or scouring the canopy hoping to glimpse a lemur. So, that being said, you can all fill in the rest for yourselves with the help of the Babaomby website (http://www.babaomby.com/) and some pictures from me. 

Goodbye

Thoughts From National Route 6

Ok, so perhaps it isn’t actually thoughts from the route, I didn’t have the space or inclination to actually write the ‘en route’ as it were and I further refrained from putting pen to paper (or finger to key) when we arrived last night because, needless to say, 32 hours on a hot and sweaty bus can really suck the enthusiasm out or a person. Soooo on that note I will start this at the beginning and try to recapture the excitement and buoyancy with which I started the journey.

We were scheduled to leave Tana on a taxi-brousse at 14:30 on Sunday afternoon and having booked our seats in advance were advised to be at the bus terminus for 13:00 to get our luggage strapped to the van etc to ensure a prompt departure. This left us plenty time to do the last few administrative tasks in the hotel before we checked out of Hotel Sole and head to Café De La Gare for brunch before the trip. It was one week, almost to the hour, since my phone was stolen on the Avenue D’independence on my way to this very establishment for my first attempt at their infamous brunch so the irony was not lost on me when it nearly happened again! A group of young boys, between 8 and 12 years old, started following us down the street. I recognised them from a couple of nights before when then had followed us out of the hotel and were messing around trying to feed us from a bowl of rice they were carrying. That night it seemed harmless enough, although it had made me uncomfortable when the oldest boy had pushed his spoon to my lips, trying to force in into my mouth as we walked, and I had to physically brush it away. That might be why this time I was already on my guard when the boys approached us and was instantly aware when their begging hands began brushing mine, pulling at my bag and crowding us as they jostled for position. Between all their light touches and pleading tugs they had succeeded in unfastening the front zip of my bag while my hands were actually covering it, but I managed to break away from the group as the oldest boy had his hand in my bag round my new phone. As we hurried toward the Café Antoine and I found that both our side pockets and front pocket had been expertly opened but, having learnt from last time and now carrying valuables only in a padlocked main pouch, nothing had been taken and all was well. I was left with a feeling of overwhelming sadness and frustration that I was allowing my patience to be tested by occurrences like these and I vowed that morning to view such instances for what they really are, the reactions of a select few who, fuelled by poverty, desperation and a lack of social welfare structure, are forced to such things by necessity and a will to survive. Nonetheless, the padlock will be staying on my backpack no matter how many strange looks I get from people when I am out.

Having enjoyed a lovely brunch in the gardens of Café De La Gare, we headed to a small supermarket to buy some snacks for the trip and piled ourselves, and all my luggage, into a taxi and headed off toward the terminus. Arriving with Swiss punctuality we watched as our belongings were loaded and secured on the roof of the 14 seat Mercedes sprinter in which we would be making our journey and took our places in the front seat of the van beside the driver, a seat Antoine had requested when we booked which gave us a little more room and the best view of the passing countryside. We settled ourselves in and watched as our fellow passengers began to pile on board. Amongst them was a family with three young boys under ten who fought and teased each-other as they mother fussed with the bags, a mother and her three teenage children who arrived visibly upset and cried until the journey began, a young couple with a 4 month old baby who stared at the world with a large inquisitive stare, two French kite surfers headed North for a holiday and an array of lone passengers of all ages. On board too were the driver, his girlfriend and his assistant who seemed to be in charge of baggage, basic mechanics and rounding up passengers.

Antoine in our chariot of fire

This motley crew finally pulled out of the station at around 16:00, and hour and a half behind schedule and with my bottom already numb from 3 hours of waiting around we began our 1093km journey to the Northern region of Antsiranana. The first two hours of the journey were a pleasure as I watched the urban landscape of Tana melt into the green expanse of the highland countryside. It was around this time that Antoine and I realised that the foot-well under the dashboard was being warmed by the engine below it and was unbearably hot, so much so that it became impossible for me to put my bare feet anywhere near it and dictated that I spend the next 25 hours with my feet propped up on the dashboard and my knees pressed into my chest. And yet still this quirk seemed an amusing facet to the journey and my spirits were high.

Trying to avoid foot burn. The socks is Antoine. WTF. Not weather appropriate.

Driving out of Tana

Excited by this new adventure and distracted by the new sights, sounds and smells I was surprised with the horizon began to darken and the sun gradually fell below the horizon (Antoine says it was beautiful but I missed the actual sun-set because the dull light and movement of the van lulled me to sleep for that crucial 5 minutes). Even then my adrenalin was up and my enthusiasm was not dampened by the dark. I extracted my head torch and book from my bag and proceeded to immerse myself in a not-all-too-well-written murder mystery story set in San Francisco.

Me and my night-time setup

Annnnddd... Antoine's reaction to it

We stopped on the roadside for a toilet break at about this time and as all the men peed off the roadside I was tempted to wait for something more private, but in the spirit of the journey and starting as I meant to go on me and me head-torched trudged out into the bush where I tripped over the undergrowth and got bitten by a bug but managed to relieve myself and get back to the van in one piece, congratulating myself on biting the proverbial bullet and not being a priss. This turned out to be a jolly good thing as the facilities in the restaurant and road-side cafés we stopped in from here on out got worse and worse and really had to be seen to be believed until I resolved that a patch of dirt at the side of the road was by far the most hygienic, safe and practical solution to this feminine dilemma and thanked the stars for the cover of dark under which to commune with nature.

At 20:30 it had been dark for two hours and we stopped for dinner at a small roadside restaurant. Antoine and I wished each other a silent ‘good luck’ as we tucked into a dinner of reheated rice and chicken bits (offal included) in a tart tomato sauce. It was tasty and nourishing and my stomach held out and when we got back into the van I must have fallen asleep because I was woken at around 23:30 by a whining sound coming from the back right side wheel and the van ground to a halt. I want to complain about how we were stranded on a main road as trucks and lorries thundered past, about how long it took the men to fix the wheel, how hot it was out there in the dark and so on, but this would all be a lie. As soon as I stepped out of the cabin onto the asphalt I was utterly mesmerised and don’t know whether we were out there for 2 minutes or 2 hours. I have never been to the Southern hemisphere before, I have never been anywhere as dark and desolate as the Madagascan landscape and I have never in all my travels seen the Milky Way. The stars really twinkled, the Milky Way shone like a highway through the heavens and shooting stars criss-crossed the night until I had no more wishes left to wish. I lay on the ground with the other passengers and stared at the sky as though it was something I had never seen before. This unfortunate breakdown also served to ingratiate Antoine and I with the driver and his handy friend as we were the over prepared foreigners who produced no less than 4 torches to aide in the wheel-changing saga, which I consequently ignored in favour of my engrossed stargazing and I felt peaceful and light as I thought of my father and I staring at the stars from our respective continents when I was a girl and sending messages to one another through the constellations; well we’ve swapped continents daddy, but if I have even felt connected to you from afar it was on this night, lying in the dust and talking to you through this alien sky.

Flat tyre in the night

After this I have the say that the trip started to get long. We piled back into the truck at around 00:30 and by 03:00 we had stopped again in an abandoned street and the driver, girlfriend and helper all disappeared for around 30-40 minutes. Then the sun rose at around 05:15 and we stopped again for breakfast and to swap some merchandise we were carrying with another car. I felt as though I had been awake all night and by back was beginning to hurt from trying to keep my feet out of the furnace beneath them. Upon leaving this terminus as around 05:45 I fell asleep again and was woken at around 07:00 by the bright sun glaring at me through the windscreen. The only way I can describe this awakening is as though I had fallen through the wardrobe door into Narnia and having fallen asleep in a decidedly urban Asiatic land I had now awoken in rural Africa. I can not describe it except to say that the landscape was different, the air was different and the people bore almost no relation to those we had left behind in Tana, including in features, language and dress. This was the Africa I had so longed to see and women in bright coloured sarongs emerged from the haze balancing impossible loads on their piled high braids while men strode across the dusty plains carrying machetes, pick-axes and hoes as they headed into the brush to begin their day of work. I was marvelling at this amazing transition, basking in the glory of the experience as we rattled down the highway at 90km/h when we hit a bird. A big one.; a hawk, an eagle or something slammed straight into the windshield in front of me and I gasped involuntarily waking anyone who had succeeded in sleeping till that point up quite violently, including Antoine and the 4 month old baby who had until then been remarkably quiet. Whoops.

At this point the heat really began to descend. At this point words fail me. I was like being wrapped in a woollen blanket on the hottest day of a Maltese summer and then forced to sit in a sauna. Despite having the windows open and travelling at such a speed there was no air in the van and I felt like I was choking on my own breath. Not to be horrible but it was at this point, after half a day and a whole night in the bus that its occupants (myself included) and their various food choices (one of which was cream cheese) really began to pong.  But it was ok, I assured myself, as there were only a few hours left to go. Ohhhh how wrong I was.

The rest of the trip doesn’t bare talking about. The stops became more frequent as the driver became tired and began to look for excuses to stop, some of which included searching for a new tyre to replace the one that went bump in the night, chatting to friends he passed in other taxi brousses and the COUNTLESS checkpoints manned by armed guards who all needed to be bribed and smiled at sweetly or told a dirty joke in order to let us through. Morning turned into lunch (for which we stopped in a transit town for an inordinate amount of time during which I am absolutely sure the girlfriend offered her services to the driver to perk him up a bit) and lunch turned into late afternoon. At around 17:30 on the second day with around 250km to go and already hours behind schedule, stinking, sweating and having been listening to the same music CD for hours the road got bad. Really bad. Like driving on the surface of the moon bad. Also the baby was vocalising what we all were feeling by screaming intermittently at the top of its poor, tired, hot lungs. By this time all my good humour had been inverted, along with most of my back muscles, and each time we stopped for some banal reason, one of which saw a bucket of diesel stored in the drivers foot well which made me want to vomit, I wanted to cry. To make up for all the lost time the driver began to drive faster on the parts of road where this was possible and we barrelled along in the dark, sliding past oncoming traffic so closely that I had to close my eyes to keep from my incessant gasping. As darkness fell on the second night Antoine and I mused on the possibility that Diego Suarez did not in fact exist and that we were in some kind of purgatory reserved for those who revelled in their self-professed ‘spirit of adventure’.

My reaction to tierdness on the second night

Antoine just wanted to be in a rave

Needless to say we did arrive in Diego. It was around 21:00 on the second day and we had been in the van for around 32 hours and I was caked in a layer of black scum, tired and sore and not in the mood for blogging. We made our way back to the hotel, had a shower and something quick to eat at a nearby cantina and fell into our beds just as a huge thunderstorm hit the sprawling coastal town. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow and stayed that way till 08:30 this morning when the sounds and smells of Diego Suarez woke me from my slumber. I do not regret our decision to make the journey by road as I really feel it was an experience that will stay with me, it was beautiful and exciting and, as I will remind him when his back hurts over the next few days, a real bonding experience for me and my not-quite-step-brother; BUT just because I don’t regret it doesn’t mean I am in a hurry to repeat it either.

Tata for now. More on Diego another day. xxx

Thoughts From A Breakfast Table: WITH COMPANY

A very exciting thing happened this week - ANTOINE HAS ARRIVED. Antoine is my not quite official step-brother who is here on behalf of his father, my not-quite official step father, who is the force behind this project and the reason we are all here to do this wonderful work (fingers crossed). Antoine is technically here to sign official things and represent the Board of Directors.  Not so technically he is here as COMPANY, who speaks English and French (meaning I haven’t touched my dictionary in days) and eats meals and walks the streets with me and he is blatantly going to read this and we have only met a couple of times before so I don’t want to come off too desperate but IT’S SO EXCITING!

Antoine at the breakfast table 

So I am now trying to tactically avoid talking about work things, which is hard because we have been doing a lot of work things the last few days. However as a result of work I have met a really lovely Malagasy woman and her family who are helping us here in Tana. We arranged to go to their house on Wednesday for a meeting and I had been under the impression that they lived quite close by… I was wrong.

We took a taxi out to a gas station on the city centre limits and our friends picked us up from there and drove us a further 30 minutes out into the suburbs. It was my first taste of Madagascar outside Tana and I must admit I was really pleased to feel a little familiarity; this was much more like the Asia I knew and had grown to love. We passed dogs and cats, Zebu and goats, geese and hundreds of random chickens and by the time we reached their house I was beaming from ear to ear, and that was where the fun really began, behind the gates of their lovely home. Of course, the dedicated professional I am, my focus was on the meeting and the business to which we had to attend… BUT the family were in possession of no less than 2 dogs, 5 cats, 50 chickens and an assortment of chicks, one tiny kitten and a rather large Greek tortoise. Those of you who know me will be able to imagine the kind of high-pitched squeaking noises I was making. Very embarrassing and totally unavoidable.

Following the meeting and all our work that day we went to a really wonderful restaurant called Kudeta’ which was absolutely packed, with very good reason. Antoine and I shared a starter of Fois Gras on little crostini (cue outraged head shakes and sighs by animal lover around the globe- I know, I am sorry) and it was really very good. Then I had prawns with rice and veg followed by a super rich chocolate fondant and any hopes I had of loosing weight before being able to cook in my own kitchen again totally disappeared. The meal itself was delicious, but I have to say that the evening was made for me by having someone to talk to, to walk with and generally share this experience with.

The oyster sellers outside the hotel

Lady selling oysters outside the hotel

Amongst all the business meetings and work related activities we the next day, Thursday 8^th Nov, came possibly my favourite experience here to date. We came out of the Ministry of Population and Social Affairs and began to amble back to out hotel when the skies darkened, the heavens opened and we were caught in an almighty thunder storm. Antoine was in his suit and I in my smart outfit and though we tried to battle on we were forced to stop at The Hotel De France on Independence Avenue for shelter. The droplets of rain are huge and they come down in sheets, pushed into you by the wind. The lightening lights up the sky and makes Tana glow a kind of orange as it bounces off the red brick and the thunder… well it shakes your bones and I found myself giggling despite myself.  We treated ourselves to a glass of local beer each and recapped our achievements so far and listed our next tasks over the next few days but I just couldn’t stop smiling at the force of nature and when the rain eased we could see dusk had fallen under the cover of the storm and it was past sunset. The street kids were the first to emerge into the drizzle, kicking water at each other, laughing and chasing their friends, completely oblivious to their wet clothes sticking to them as they played.

I walked home happy that evening, feeling a sense of achievement, relaxing in the company of a friend and colleague and found that the tense knot that had developed over the last week in the pit of my stomach has largely disappeared. And then later, when we went to dinner at the famous Gafe De La Gare we walked all the way there and back after dark, chatting and laughing all the way.

Antoine in our hotel room