My first few weeks in Diego have been a rollercoaster as far
as work is concerned. We are fast approaching our official opening and even
have some children earmarked by the courts to be placed with us over the next
couple of weeks. I know this blog was supposed to be about my life here and not
really about work, but in some instances it is important to separate one from
the other, especially with the arrival of my mum and stepdad here in
Antsiranana, who also happen to be the co-founders of our NGO. We have had many ups and downs as we have
worked on preparing the rented house for the arrival of children, began looking
for staff, found land on which we hope to build and continues to work on all
the paperwork necessary for our approval and launch. I am feeling more day by
day the reality of the situation that in a couple of short weeks our doors will
open to our first children who will become my ultimate and absolute priority
and mum and Pierre will have to leave. All I can say is that I hope we build a
strong team to facilitate this process and that I manage to hold it together
and not freak out.
In the meantime I have been sort of camping out at our
rented building. I have situated myself in a sort of little annex of the house
where can be found the kitchen, office, a bathroom and my bedroom (which will also
be used as the infirmary in case anyone gets ill). I started out on a mattress
on the floor and I really got to be a part of every decision we have made so
far relating to the furnishing an preparation of the house. Now I am sleeping
in a made-to-order Palissandre bed with more of
our essentials arriving every day.
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| Camping out at the new facility |
Having mum and Pierre here
however, does not just mean a rapid progression on the work front. It has also
meant the opportunity to enjoy some of the sights and activities available
around Antsiranana, which has been really lovely and a great way to break up
the working weeks.
The first little outing we
took as a group was to the first of the ‘three bays’, which is called Sakalava.
About an hour away from the city by car we were pleased to come across a driver
from town, called Romeo of all things, who was willing to drive us to the
beach, wait for us there and return us to town for 55,000 ariary (around €18)
which seemed like a good price to us. We waited a mere 10 minutes for him in
the lobby of the hotel, which is Madagascar is the equivalent of him turning up
half an hour early, before we saw him approaching in the signature yellow taxi
cab of Madagascar.
Soon we were off rattling
down the Ramena road, admiring the sacred island La Pain Sucre in Diego Bay as
we flew over pot holes and swerved to avoid numerous goats in the road. Our
driver was friendly and laughed at everything we said, even though his French was
poor and his English non-existent. It does seem to be the default setting here
to laugh and smile incessantly when other forms of communication are closed to
you and it gives you the feeling of becoming immediate friends with almost
everyone you come across during the day, from the women in the market to the
representatives of the ministry offices.
About half way to Ramena mum
and Pierre got their first glimpse of a Malagasy Baobab whose dry branches and
bulbous trunks make them easily identifiable in the brush. The story is that
when God made these trees they were the most beautiful that had ever existed,
however their beauty made them vain and ungrateful, which angered their creator
so much that he wrenched them from the ground and plunged them back deep into
the soil upside-down so that all that was visible from above was their
distended trunks and bare roots, giving them their nickname- the ‘upside-down
trees’.
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| ME ON A BEACH |
Once we reached the turn-off
for Sakalava we had already been driving for around 40 minutes so mum and I
were getting exciting thinking we must be nearly there. Unfortunately none of
our three guidebooks had warned us that beyond the Ramena road the path toward
Sakalava descends into what can only be described as a river of red sand
trickling toward the bay below. We were astonished that Romeo pushed ahead in
his clap-trap taxi as the four wheel drives followed one another in convoy,
occasionally having to help a weak link who had allowed himself to get stuck in
the sand. The further we descended toward the beach the worse the road became
and Romeo was forced to drive far too fast while rapidly jerking the steering
wheel from side to side to stop us from sinking into the sand and blocking the
only road to this coast for miles.
By the time we arrived at
the beach we all had a new respect for our ‘Dakar taxi driver’ and his humble
yellow sidekick and we went off to recover in the shade of a tree set back from
the beach while Romeo, having given his car a once over, slid into the sand
with a group of other chauffeurs, taxi drivers and friends in a corner of the
beach, which is where he would happily stay until we called for him 5 hours
later.
The beach was rugged, a ring of white sand framed the lagoon
followed by a band of green vine-like plants with beautiful purple flowers,
behind which the sand reclaimed the scenery until it was devoured by the tree
line, where we had been told the local lemurs would be hiding.
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| A hermit crab I found swapping to a bigger home |
Although the beach was beautiful it was not a quiet as we
were expecting and seemed to be attracting all the locals trying to avoid the
rush of tourists on the more accessible beaches like Ramena. Families and what
appeared to be whole villages shared the shade of the trees while the children
splashed around in the surf. Behind the beach scene was the domain of the kite
surfers, who were out in force on account of the ferocious wind, which was
picking up from the South East. Although we never did get to see the lemurs we
had a fun day snorkelling and bathing in the lagoon and even enjoyed a
delicious, if sandy, picnic lunch.
Before piling into the taxi for the return trip (for which I
kept my eyes firmly shut) we had the pleasure of seeing the family/ community
who had been happily chatting away under our neighbouring tree wade out into
the water en-masse, mostly still wearing their lambas, until they reached a
sandy spot in the middle of the lagoon where they all stopped and began to sing
Malagasy songs together as they stood, all 30-40 of them, waist high in the
water.
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| Pierre, setting up camp |
The following week we wanted again to venture out toward the beaches but were looking for something with a more pleasant commute and less people (less wind was also a priority). To this end we landed on a day trip to the Emerald Sea which some of you might remember is the place I stayed in with my step-brother in November when he went kite-surfing and I collected a lot of giant shells and saw my first lemurs. This time I would not be staying over night and we would be favouring the small islets that frame the protected azure waters on the east side rather than the mainland to the west which I was more familiar with.
The day did not start out well. The tour group through whom we had arranged the excursion had already failed to turn up once the week before (apparently despite having made all the arrangements and established the pickup time and place they were still expecting a ‘confirmatory’ phone call the evening before the trip and so failed to turn up which left us waiting on the pavement for almost an hour). The trip included transport from the hotel where mum and Pierre are staying to the small port of Jasmine on the Abattoir Road where we would meet the wooden sailing boat, which would be taking us the rest of the way to the Emerald Sea. Forty-five minutes after our designated pick-up time we gave up and took a tuk tuk to the port ourselves where we found our captain sitting in his vessel mending the sail. He said not a word about our tardy arrival but flashed us the trademark Diego grin as we climbed into “Capitaine Joel”, the only passengers to alight here for the crossing.
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| Captain Joel fixing our sail |
Joel was a wonderful captain, laughing at my mother jokes,
even though I am 90% sure he had no idea what we were saying, patiently
responding to my awful Malagasy and impressing Pierre with his calm and
efficient sailing. We pulled in briefly at Ramena to bring aboard supplies and
what I presume were his family/friends who would accompany us to the Emerald
Sea and would later prepare the lunch.
The crossing was perfect and relatively uneventful except
when I spotted a sea turtle surface to breath. I noticed too late to really see
it, I more just noticed something breaking the surface and the splash as it
descended but when I excitedly pointed over the locals calmly glanced up and
muttered “ahhhh oui tortue… tortue de mer”.
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| Mum and Pierre on Capitaine Joel |
As we beached on the small island that was to be our base we
all took the time to marvel at the perfect azure of the sea and the remarkable
lack of people on the surrounding islands and beaches. Mum was of course off
snorkelling within the first minute while I trailed lackadaisically behind,
visions of my Mauritian snorkelling experience filling my head. Having heard
mum say the words ‘snorkelling’ and ‘coral’ around a hundred times Joel was
kind enough to corral mum and I back into the boat when it was time for him to
go hunting. He took the boat out into the middle of the lagoon, which was
deeper than the clear blue made it look, and explained that he would go hunting
for our lunch while we explored the nearby coral. It was wonderful, little
islands of coral teeming with life down below us at around 5m. We took turns
diving down toward the coral and watching the fish scatter ahead of us before
immediately returning to their territories.
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| Diving down to scare the fishes |
Joel was extremely successful with his fishing expedition,
nabbing us several Capitaine, Parrot Fish and one weird looking Unicorn Tang.
We were eating within 20 minutes of returning; a feast of coconut rice, a pot
of crab in sauce and 2 of the huge Parrot fish (one of which we immediately
gave back to the crew seeing as how they appeared to have cooked for 30 rather
than 3). We ate our fill looking out over the ocean and rounded off our
delicious lunch with bananas split down the middle and stuffed with chocolate
and then barbequed on the grill till all gooey and delicious. After this it was back into the ocean for a
third, and more successful, bout of snorkelling round the island.
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| LUNCH |
We returned to Port Jasmine completely by sail and were
deposited at the hotel by the same tuk tuk who had dropped us off (evidently he
must have had a chat with Joel before we left). The day had been such a success
it was difficult to see how anything we did after that could be more
successful. Little did I know however that the following weekend mum and I
would be trekking in the Amber Mountain making several of my dreams come true…
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| Lunch before it was lunch..... ooops |
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