Environmental Day!

This past Friday all of the volunteer programs worked together to develop an Environmental Day  event for the village school. The theme was litter so we went to school and taught a lesson about trash. I had read that littering is a fairly big issue in Madagascar because there isn’t high awareness of protecting the environment, despite what one would expect in a place as renowned for it’s environment as Madagascar. It’s one of those topics that seems so simple and straightforward in the U.S. - where we have the infrastructure with bins and trash pick-up and recycling and want to protect what’s left in a world where so much has already been destroyed by industrialization. Especially here in Madagascar with the incredible biodiversity, certainly we have to work to protect it… but it’s understandable that it’s not a priority for people who are struggling to make a living and provide for their family and don’t have the means to spend time and energy on something that in their context, is not a necessity. In the village they do collect trash which gets burned on the beach; the same process we follow at camp. Trash days are always a little horrifying as the stench of burning plastic floats through air and I try to find a location where I’m less likely to breathe in toxic fumes.

It was my first time going to the children’s class in the village since I’ve been concentrating primarily on teaching the adult village class and the staff class, which has only two children. I had so much fun meeting all of the kids and it definitely got me excited for teaching in Tanzania next month. After the lesson we went outside to do a trash clean-up and the timing was impeccable since there was a big festival with the biggest pop-star in Madagascar the previous evening. They were so stinking adorable!!!  The kids were so excited to get cheers from picking up trash and showing us where to dump it out; I had one little girl who was literally like my shadow for the morning. I was amazed at how trusting and sweet and helpful they were.

The forest and marine volunteers put together a really cute play showing a healthy ocean with fish and turtles and snorkelers happily swimming and a fisherman catching fish to bring to the village. Then the villagers threw trash on the ground which ended up in the ocean and the turtle and dolphin swam away, fish died and the fisherman couldn’t catch any fish to bring home.  After the beach and the ocean was cleaned up the fish returned and the villagers caught fish and everyone was happy! The teachers weren’t involved in the play since we were teaching a lesson that morning so it was fun to watch everyone perform. Afterwards the kids broke up into groups and were led around to play various games related to trash like trash relay races and “musical trash”. I posted a bunch of photos from Environmental Day in the gallery so be sure to check them out!

For the weekend a group of us made a plan to go to Andilana, a beach area on the northwest of Nosy Be and supposedly one of the most beautiful beach areas on the island. First things first, we took the 6:30am boat to Hellville and got online since everyone was internet starved after a week of being disconnected. I had grand ambitions of shipping two packages, one home to Russ and the other to John in NYC. I’ve been gathering some souvenirs throughout the week and they take up a good amount of space so rather than carrying them around for the rest of my travels throughout Africa I thought it would be simpler to ship them. Ah, but I forgot the reality that nothing is very simple here. DHL is closed on Saturdays so there was that. Madagascar post is dicey so I’m waiting for Tuesday when I’ll be back in Hellville to teach. I spent a good amount of the morning running around Hellville to figure this out and get shipping supplies; mailing tape at the Librarie, which is apparently a stationery store, and then off to find boxes which I had the pleasure of carrying around all weekend.  Shout out to Andrew for helping to share the burden! I still owe you a THB!

We had plans to rent ATVs to drive around the island and check out some of the highlights like a waterfall and sacred tree but the morning took longer than expected so we opted to head straight to Andilana since Lonely Planet indicated we’d have options to rent ATVs from there. We chose to take a tuk tuk to Andilana, which is hindsight may have been a little shortsighted. For those of you not familiar with a tuk tuk, I’ll post some pics next week when I have them downloaded and wifi again, but in the meantime imagine a scooter tricycle with a funny little cab over the back wheels. Charlotte and Andrew and my boxes and I squeezed in and except for the slower speed, it was a nice ride. It was interesting to see some other parts of Nosy Be since we spend most of our time in a beach environment; we passed farms and lots of zebus and villages and saw a glimpse of life outside Ampangorina.

We seemed to have avoided most of the potholes but clearly hit something at some point because when we got to the end of the road in Andilana our tuk tuk pulled over with a blown tire. This became our first encounter with a failed negotiation; we felt bad that he had to deal with a blown tire in such a remote location so we figured we’d offer him an extra 6000 Ariary since our fare was 3000 Ariary per person, rounding it up to 15000 total. Then he insisted it was 10,000 Ariary each! I was conflicted because while I was confident that we had negotiated 3000 per person up front (it’s normally 1000 per person around Hellville for perspective) but I also knew that the taxi fare from Hellville to Andilana could range from 30,000 to 50,000 in total. Of course that is a taxi, not a tuk tuk. And we still weren’t at our final destination - the hotel we had been heading to was actually a few miles back on the road. I also feel badly negotiating over what is a nominal amount of money to me (10,000 Ariary is the equivalent of about $4US) but more significant amount of money to the other.

So long story short, after a lengthy back and forth we paid the 30,000 Ariary and caught a local taxi to the hotel. By the time we arrived at Le Grande Bleu we desperately needed a break from the sun so we were thrilled that the hotel was in a fantastic location on top of a hill with a constant breeze and views of the ocean in both directions. The restaurant and lounge was an open area under a large roof that led to an infinity pool which overlooked a pristine cove. A pool has never looked so good. We passed a number of solar water heaters on the way to our bungalow and were ecstatic at the prospect of a warm shower. In the end we decided to skip the ATVing and ended up relaxing at the hotel, enjoying the pool, wifi and magnificent views. Our night consisted of Skype dates homes and dinner at a local spot where we feasted on zebu burgers, fries and beers and it was all pretty damn fantastic.

Sunday involved some more R&R, a frighteningly fast taxi ride back to Hellville that was more rally race than any of us would have preferred and a 3pm boat ride back to camp. New volunteers await and it will be interesting to meet the newbies now that we, ourselves, are just over the newbie hump.