Liam and I decided that a holiday was in order. Aren’t you already basically on holiday? you’re asking, and I’m not even going to dignify that question with an answer. The point is that for quite some time now our weekends have been cursed. It’s either because we blasphemed against the church service in Vatomandry or because Charcoal Witch hexed us both when she poisoned me in Tana. We’ll never know which it is, but either way, it means that something absolutely disastrous happens every Sunday.
Sunday 1: Tana. I am in excruciating pain and being force-fed hot bananas with a spoon, leaving Liam alone with the witch. (It occurred to us recently that this was also Halloween, which is exactly appropriate).
Sunday 2: I nearly die of heat exhaustion on a bike that says ‘Nicebike – GOODLUCK’ on it.
Sunday 3: Tana. Liam is ill. The taxi-brousse journey back is long and hot and uncomfortable and we are both exhausted. When we get to our house, we discover that a man called Francis has locked all of our doors and taken the only keys back to Tana with him, and so we sit in a classroom, on the floor, in the dark, waiting for someone to bring the keys back. For four long hours.
Sunday 4: A four-hour walk in the blazing heat. We commit a Virgin Mary-related fady and anger a local.
And that brings me all the way to this weekend, when we were in desperate need of a change of scene. Anyway, way, way back when we used to live in your so-called “England”, we received an email from Christina telling us that when we got to this so-called “Madagascar” we were going to be sent to Vatomandry and then Ambositra. It was only when we arrived here that Madame Noroso descended upon us with all this ‘you are needed in Ampefy!’ business, which was fine by us. Ambositra, Ampefy… same thing. But at the same time, we were slightly disappointed only because Ambositra had been described by Christina as the ‘arts and crafts capital’ of Madagascar, and the place to find wooden carvings and woven baskets and other Interesting Things – and since Liam and I are both planning to leave all of our clothes and toiletries here, we basically have three empty suitcases to fill with crap like that – so what we decided to do was to spend a long weekend there shopping and generally being tourists.
It kind of had to be a long weekend, because it would involve going to Tana (a 3 hour journey), staying overnight there, and then getting from Tana to Ambositra (a 6 hour journey) on Friday, spending Saturday actually exploring the place, and then doing the whoooooole journey back across Sunday and Monday. So… four days of travelling for one day of holiday. Hmm. It doesn’t make as much sense now as it did at the time. Or maybe it does, because when we finally got there we absolutely loved it. Shopping! Being tourists! Hooray!
Actually, the first wonderful thing about Ambositra was that we were staying in the Dodwell accommodation there, and the contact people were so welcoming: Madame Georgette, a huge big lady, the sort who likes to feed people – and her husband Francais, the sort whose sole objective in life seems to be to approve of everything you say and do and generally look at you kindly. When we first arrived on Friday night, cold and wet and disorientated, they ushered us into their house, cooked dinner for us, gave us mangoes, and made sure that we had all the right keys for our rooms and that we settled in comfortably. We even ate with them again the following evening, and they made us promise to send them postcards showing where we lived, because they have a collection of postcards from past volunteers. They showed it to us – three postcards, all from Keswick. Bit weird.
Anyway, the next morning we were up at 6am, ariary at the ready and raring to go. After wandering about for a while in the never-ending labyrinth of fresh-fruit-and-vegetable-lined streets and coming to terms with the fact that there was no art there at all and it had all been a hideous lie, we were finally directed towards the only road we hadn’t been down yet and there they were: lovely little craft shops full of handmade Interesting Things (or as Liam called it, the Motherload) which we could pick up and admire, and compare with each other, and then put down, and then pick up again, and then put down. I think we did that for the entire morning and most of the afternoon, and then we made friends with a guide who took us on a lovely tour of the workshops in the surrounding villages. So that was Saturday – a fantastic day, and a definite win for Team Vatomandry.
But then it was Sunday. We were aiming to find a taxi-brousse at about 6am, so at 5am I struggled out of bed – I hadn’t actually slept at all because the bed was so shoddy (so much so that I think the shape of my spine has permanently altered) so I was already stiff and achy and we hadn’t even got into the taxi-brousse yet. But when Liam emerged from his room, ashen-faced and haunted, it quickly became obvious that whatever had happened to him last night, it had been far, far worse than my trivial backache issues. He drifted absently alongside me as we shuffled down the road and flagged down a taxi-brousse, and then, about ten minutes after we’d got into one, he got back out again and threw up. It didn’t bode well for the rest of the journey. Nearly eight hours of sitting in a cramped over-heated taxi-brouse, contorted into impossible positions and struggling to breathe, while Liam threw up exactly the amount of times for the number of plastic bags we happened to have (outstanding effort), until we eventually arrived back in Tana. Bleak.
It took a few hours of lying down and recovering before we were able to communicate ideas to each other with words again. Luckily, those ideas were: go to internet cafe, find restaurant, see funny side, all of which we swiftly did and felt loads better.
I feel all Christmassy now. I didn’t think I would because of the tropical climate and total lack of any hype here, but:
• It was quite cold in Ambositra at night and in the early morning, and when we were walking through the village at 5:30am there was a heavy white mist hanging over everything, spiders’ webs draped and glittering all across everything, and it looked so ethereal and beautiful. All it needed was a little boy to emerge out of the fog with a candle and start singing ‘Once in Royal David City’ – but none appeared, so I just hummed it to myself contentedly while Liam vomited all over a bush.
• We’ve done a lot of our Christmas shopping now, which is always very exciting.
• The Shoprite in Tana has its decorations up AND a Christmas tree! It turns out that Malagasy Christmases are basically exactly the same as ours, except without all the tacky crap (and people get strangely excited about wearing new shoes to church). It’s ideal. I can’t say I’m sorry to have missed the three months of irritating Christmas songs and festive M&S adverts back in the UK… but sometimes you just really appreciate seeing some tinsel in a shop. So I came out of the Shoprite yesterday clutching my freshly-baked baguette and brimming over with Christmas spirit.
• Ever since Philip mentioned them in an email, all I can think about is mince pies. Especially because he said ‘I’m eating a mince pie – but you probably don’t want to know about that because you can’t have one. Sorry.’ So yeah. No presents for Philip.
Now it’s Monday, and we’re about to head back to Ampefy. Not massively excited about the prospect of sitting on yet another sodding taxi-brousse for the best part of the day, again, but what can you do. Only two weeks before we come back to Tana for the last time! Aaarrgh!
