Madagascar!

note: This is not going to be a day-by-day rundown of our trip. That would take forever and probably be really boring. For more detailed stories than this you should check out the photos which i'm currently posting and talk to me when i get home (which will be soon!). That being said...

There is a phrase in Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country that i have always liked and that has stuck deeply in my memory; in describing his native South Africa, he writes that the land "was beautiful beyond all singing of it." Madagascar, too, is "beautiful beyond all singing of it." When people talk about Madagascar here, the topic of conversation is always poverty. But as we drove through the red brick houses set against rolling green hills under the bright blue sky, all i could think was, "surely to live surrounded by this beauty is also a kind of wealth." I found myself the entire trip rethinking my ideas on "poor" countries' "need" for "rich" countries help. Though people there live in material poverty, we saw very few examples of misery, and i think the distinction is important. While i like washing machines and in-home dsl and urban public transportation systems, i'm not sure that if i had grown up without all those things but with the stunning vistas and clearly rich communal life in Madagascar i would be willing to sacrifice the one to attain the other. Of course we were in one of the richer parts of the country, and i would never dream of suggesting that Mada doesn't have it's problems - AIDS, malaria, infant mortality, illiteracy are all serious issues that need to be addressed. But the idea that the Western model is the goal towards which all other countries should be "developing" is seeming less and less valid to me.

Ok, enough philosophizing...what did we DO in Madagascar?

Well...

We walked a lot, in cities and in the countryside.
We sat a lot in taxi-brousses (bush taxis) waiting for them to fill up so we could leave, and then driving from city to city.
We got sick.
We introduced people in roadside restaurants to the concept of vegetarianism.
We went on an 8-hour hike with two ascents and two descents requiring ropes.
We shopped.
We were periphally involved in the aftermath of a murder.
We saw lemurs and chameleons in the wild.
We saw lemurs and chamelons and crocodiles and frogs and turtles in captivity.
We took an 8-hour train ride to the coast, sitting in second class with the region's produce being transported all around us.
We ran out of money a couple of times.
We took our malaria pills every day.
We were pestered often by people wanting us to purchase goods or services.
BUT
We were very rarely sexually harrassed (a change from Reunion).
We made friends with a lot of small children.
We gave out stickers, some money, and once put a 14-ounce can of mixed-vegetables in a beggar's cap.
I took too many photos, and not as many as i would have liked.
We went to one museum and one photography exhibit.
We pretended to speak spanish.
We ate banana fritters from roadside stands, and pizza a little too often, and drank lots of passion fruit juice.
We didn't drink the water (though i did brush my teeth with it a couple of times).
We wrote postcards.
We learned a few words of Malagasy.
We cursed the Lonely Planet.
We were at times tired and bewildered.
We had an absolutely amazing trip.

love y'all