Vacance in Tulear

One of the main roads in Tulear

Salama! I just got back from a few days in Mangily, a tourist village about 20 kilometers north of Tulear for a bit of change in pace and to profit from the beaches there. It’s funny how Tulear is on the coast but there really aren’t any beaches, and also that most of the fish consumed here comes from fishing villages surrounding the area. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for two weeks already. So what have I been doing? Still enjoying the chance to relax and pick up some more Malagasy phrases, I’ve also managed to have a few adventures both at Tulear and Mangily.

Salt-making in Tulear

I’ve gotten the chance to explore some parts of Tulear, including finding the coastline, visiting Tulear’s cultural museum with artifacts and information on some of the ethnicities in Southern Madagascar, and visiting salt flats in Tulear where salt is made/harvested for export to other parts of Madagascar. Additionally I had something of an adventure in an attempt to make a carrot cake, which included tracking down ingredients at various vendors and shops, and then figure out the means for putting it together in the Malagasy kitchen. The most challenging part of the experiment was figuring out how to make cream cheese frosting, as cream cheese is not something one really finds here. We ended up with a passable substitute for frosting in the end after much discussion and searching for suitable replacements for cream cheese (we used something similar to laughing cow cheese wedges), and a three person job in beating the frosting into suitable frosting form. Not exactly the same as a U.S. carrot cake, but delicious nonetheless.

Carrot cake= success!

Getting to Mangily, the tourist village was an experience in of itself, while the village itself is not terribly far from Tulear, the roads make an otherwise short trip into an hour and a half journey, for which I was wedged in the back of a covered pickup truck with perhaps 12 others for one of the less comfortable forms of taxi-brousse transportation. Luckily the return trip was more comfortable, in a larger bus with actual seats and windows. (It seems like the method to taxi brousse is catch whichever vehicle passes by with seats available, but it could be in a many number of forms.

Street in Mangily

In Mangily we got to enjoy the beach, swimming in the bright blue water of the Mozambique channel at high tide. It was funny for me the change from being a vazaha at Tulear, to being a vazaha in Mangily. In Mangily, to be a foreigner isn’t such a novelty, but the problem is being immediately labeled a tourist and having everything from necklaces and lamba hoanys to massages, snorkeling trips constantly pushed on me. In addition to the beach at Mangily, we also visited Mangily’s dry spiny forest full of baobabs, cactus, aloe, and numerous other plants adapted to the dry climate. The other highlight of Mangily was meals: daily seafood, fish or shellfish with rice for lunch and dinner, hotely coffee and fried bread for breakfast, and the occasional toka gasy in between meals. Also: I can now add zebu tail and zebu foot to the list of strange things I have eaten, thanks to Mangily. (I’m not so sure how I feel about them yet, definitely a different sort of taste).

La plage!

I’m not entirely sure what’s in store for the next week, my last week in Tulear, but I need to start thinking about what’s next, starting to work with Hope for Madagascar, getting to the site where we’ll be staying, and for me, accelerating the pace of my Malagasy practice. I've added the Malagasy phrases for "I don't know", "I don't understand" and "maybe" to my vocabulary, tsy haiko (I don't know) has quickly become one of my most commonly used phrases. Until next time, veloma from Tulear!

Mangily Forest

Tonga soa à Madagasikara!

I’m happy to say I’m arrived and more or less settled, and mostly recovered after the day and a half of plane travel, followed by a 17 hour taxi-brousse (“or bush taxi”) ride. It’s been interesting adjusting, since I first arrived there has been both the feeling that I’d never been to Madagascar before and at the same time, the feeling as though I had never left.

 Exiting the airplane at Antananarivo (or Tana), I was hit by the smell in the air, which seems so distinctly of Madagascar for me. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, something of smoke, cooking meat, spices, sweat, and something else I don’t quite know. I quickly got back into the swing of things with a bucket shower at 2 am, and Malagasy mofo (baguettes) for breakfast the next morning.

The taxi-brousse, took us across half the country, from Tana in the central highlands, town to Tulear (or Toliary) in the southwest. Despite being long, wedged between two people on either side, and still tired from my plane voyage, the taxi-brousse ride wasn’t all-together too unbearable, with a chance to see some of the countryside, and stops for meals and to stretch our legs.

Right now, I’m enjoying a bit of vacation for a few weeks in Tulear, attempting to brush up on my Malagasy bit by bit, before we go out to the region in the Southeast where we’ll be working in villages with Hope for Madagascar. So far, after recovering from travel this has meant meeting family and friends, mitsangatsangana (walking around and exploring), as well as plenty of occasions to sleep and eat.

I’ve already had the occasion to experience multiple forms of Malagasy transportation, including a taxi-be in Tana (basically a van, in which as many people who could wedged into seats, to get to different parts of the town), the taxi-brousse ride from Tana to Tulear, as well as two versions of pousse-pousse, man powered carts (either by foot or bicycle) found all over Tulear. I’ve also explored a number of Malagasy foods, from fried fish, to goat, to fruits that are growing in the courtyard here, to cassava, to homemade yogurt, to avocado eaten with sugar as a dessert (so far all of it good). Not to mention the rice, which I’m re-habituating to: a heaping plateful accompanying most meals.

So not much to report in terms of work I’ve been doing yet, but it is definitely been a nice chance to relax. I haven’t had too much opportunity to take photos of Tulear, I’ve been too busy taking it all in, but hopefully there will be more photos to share next time! Ok, à la prochain!