Sylvia's Journal

I arrived late afternoon at the lovely boutique hotel ‘Tamboho’ in Antananarive, where I slept the first night of this trip. They gave me the same room and so there was a feeling of coming home. I purchased a new phone card, got myself some cash and purchased chocolate, vanilla and wild peppers for paying off some debts back home.

The restaurant’s menu had changed since I had tried all its offerings during my last trip. I had a delicious meal of curry&carrot soup, foie grass, toasted pineapple with ginger and a glass of red wine, my first in over a week. Back in my room I enjoyed the relatively stable internet connection and, while watching TV for the first time in a week, took care of some business related to assignments that are stacking up on the runway: a short workshop on advocacy this coming week, our week long senior leadership program in Lome the week after, and the Philippines a few weeks after that.

The internet connection allowed me to have a good Facetime chat with home where Faro, sitting on his turquoise toilet throne, announced proudly he had pooped in the right place. Everyone cheered.

This morning I slept in, had a nice breakfast while trying to listen in on a group of older American tourists who had just arrived last night. I am none the wiser but observed they are mostly women in the age category of ‘old but not that old.’ The hotel seems to cater to English speakers.

After breakfast I made an appointment for a late afternoon massage and had my toe nails done. Next to the massage and nail place is a small shop dedicated to ‘puericulture,’ which puts it, linguistically, at the same level as agriculture and viniculture. They sell baby and children’s clothes and paraphernalia, all dedicated to the ‘culture of kids.’ With a granddaughter slated to arrive in less than a month I couldn’t help myself. There is something about French baby clothes that is irresistible, they have a high cuteness factor. Against better judgment I bought some girlie things in pink and red.

As we drove to and from l’Île de la Vièrge on Thursday afternoon, on rutted tracks, I got a little taste of what my colleagues who work in this project are up against. Along the road smiling Malgaches waved at us as we covered them in dust. Toothless old men, pregnant young women, toddlers and school kids. Those are the sturdy ones, the ones who survived, sometimes against all odds. I wondered about the ones that did not, and who of the babes on their mothers’ backs would not make it to their fifth birthday.

The people came out of the tiny one- or two-storied, houses, the latter simply one small room on top of another. Here and there I saw an outhouse, a ‘latrine améliorée,’ recognizable by its vent pipe. I presume the kitchens are outside, running on charcoal. The charcoal sells by the handful, small bags nicely stacked on rickety tables, next to 1 inch pieces of sugar cane.

My colleagues were all dressed in their red project shirts and their red baseball caps.  On the back was written their the slogan “we deliver on our promises, on time and with quality” (in French of course). It felt like a school or camping trip; everyone was singing at the top of their lungs, old school songs, songs about togetherness, and songs with health messages. Most songs were in Malagasy but some were French songs I recognized. There was never a moment of silence on the 30 minute trip. I was told it was no different on the 3 hour trip from Tana. I was grateful for the privilege of riding on Monday morning with the project director in an air-conditioned SUV, without singing. The constant chatter and singing, including the recitation of several of La Fontaines fables in fast cadences had exhausted me already after 30 minutes.

I observed the games from a fair distance. My various orthopedic adventures made participation inadvisable; the shoulder doctor would not have approved and it seemed prudent to be standing on the sidelines.

After the afternoon program concluded we all had to practice a particular dance with our numbered groups. I was with group six which performed a dance that was a little challenging but I had a patient teacher. When we were called up I tried my best and we received generous applause for our efforts.

Our MC is a new staff member of the project who was also in our project some 20 years ago. An « animateur par excellence » if ever I saw one, a creative genius in getting people to have a fabulous time together and recognizing how lucky we were.

The evening program was funny, participative, creative and moving, ending with a song about being a family even when not by blood. Although I generally don’t like the family comparison for work groups, this one felt OK and some people were moved to tears. After that it was dance time.

The Malgaches I encounter in international settings are usually reserved and timid, but here there was none of that. The dance talent was amazing, with people switching easily from hip hop to line dancing (the French version), twist (and shout) and jive. When they called on us, folks from ‘outre-mer’ (overseas), we were the quiet bunch, with two of us (Americans) entirely on the sidelines, and two occasionally throwing themselves into the dancing crowd, but mostly watching.

With some 60 people we have been working towards the creation of next year’s workplan; an annual ritual in my world of work. It’s a complex undertaking as not everyone is on the same level when it comes to the art of planning. This year ministry and NGO counterparts have been invited to participate, a good first step to ownership. I can’t think of any other way to move in that direction. They returned to Tana at the end of Wednesday. We hope they are doing the ‘restitution’ that is always required for people attending meetings or workshops, and that they transfer some of their excitement and enthusiasm to their bosses.

The activity planning was done first on the computer and then copied on color-coded cards that were laid out on a series of sheets, per ‘grande ligne,’ as the domain of intervention level is called here, and then per quarter. This allowed the various work groups to align and coordinate activities that are focused on the same target group as the bottom of the health pyramid. There is much that they are supposed to be doing, the local NGO staff who are the hyphen between our project and the community health volunteers.

It was hard work and took twice as long as I was led to believe but somehow all this didn’t seem to matter; we were all together in one spot, there was really no place to go and the days were thus quite elastic.

In the afternoon we were bussed to the very center of Madagascar (people checked this with their smartphones and confirmed this). It is called the island of the virgin, l’île des la vièrge, and there is a large structure that looks like a high diving platform with Mary on top. Everyone had their project T-shirt except me so I avoided being in the pictures so as not to mess up the red and white harmony.

I really had no role today (nor tomorrow). I am at work but it is a very light load, with the emphasis having shifted from work to fun. All day I followed the crowd, most of the time not really knowing what was going to happen next. As it turned out, after the visit to the virgin’s island, a sort of obstacle course and a series of team challenges was set up on the grounds of the hotel, right next to the lake. Teams competed under loud pumping music and cheers from their colleagues.

It was a lot of fun and it occurred to me that we could use something like this at HQ in order to have some fun together. We used to have this sort of fun but that was a long time ago.

For the last few days we have been in Ampefy, a three-hour drive south of Antananarivo. The road went up and down and zigzag across a wide landscape with small villages here and there. The houses are made mostly of mud brick. We passed many of the places where these bricks are (hand)made, and lie drying in the sun.

The houses are small, narrow and tall. They remind me of Raffi’s house in one of the Rey’s children’s books. The hills are dotted with groves of eucalyptus or pine trees. Sometimes the silhouettes of single trees interrupt the line of hills. These look like the ones in the books of Dr. Seuss, as if Madagascar had been his inspiration.

During the day it is warm but as soon as the sun goes down it becomes outright cold. I was not prepared for that, having brought only summer clothes, flip-flops and sandals. The Malgaches are better prepared with scarves, warm socks and fleece coats. Some brave souls swim in the morning in the hotel’s pool, unimaginable to me as shiver in my summer clothes.

We are lodged in comfortable two story bungalows next to a eucalyptus tree grove. It smells nice and drinks nice, as the local tea is a combination of ginger and eucalyptus.

Breakfast consist of rice and meat (rice is the staple, served with every meal). The morning rice is soupy with greens and spices. All leafy greens are called « brèdes » though individual greens have their own names as well. The soup is very tasty and very filling. The meal is served with small pieces of salty beef, except for this morning when we got small meatballs, not quite as exciting. The soup and the eucalyptus tea warm me up as I wait for the sun to climb its arch and heat the place up.

I left Lobster Cove in the rain. Tessa was having her annual birthday party with her friends. She is 30 now and some of her friends have babies and everyone is a lot more responsible with alcohol and fireworks than when they were in their early 20s.

The tent had been set up and this made the rain irrelevant. I took the rain with me to the airport and then it was over.

Tessa warned all the neighbors about the fireworks she had bought. The combination of alcohol and fireworks used to unnerve us a lot. Axel had to carry the nervousness by himself. I learned that the party went as planned and everyone had fun.

Thanks to NyQuil I slept most of the way to Paris, waking up as rested as one could be after a 4 hour sleep. The flight was not very full considering that it is summer in Europe and the Euro is down. This was not the case for the flight to Antananarivo (Tana for short). Luck had it that next to me was a mercurial 3 year old. He fell asleep just before take-off and I considered myself lucky, not knowing that his sleep would last about 10 minutes out of the 11 hour flight.

From that moment on he babbled to himself, sang to himself and tried out new sounds as loud as he could; everything in his loud screechy beginner’s voice.

He also wriggled and kicked and occasionally had a temper tantrum. I felt sorry for the person in the seat in front of him who had to endure all that kicking. The only thing that temporarily quieted him down was a large cookie filled with frosting. He would moan something like ‘cadeau,’ and then his (very young) mom would give him a large kind of oreo (un gateau choco prince). The cookie would temporarily quiet him down but as soon as it was gone he would rev up again. Filled with more sugar, he resumed his screeching and singing and wiggling and kicking. No cartoon or music video could calm him down. My luck!

The processing of our health status and immigration status was confusing, chaotic and took forever as we inched our way through this line and then that. But people were in great spirits, except people like me who had been on the road for 24 hours and had been sitting half the time next to a little devil. A driver from the office was waiting for me but I never saw him – the arrival hall is one large teeming mass with people holding placards; a forest of names and hotels and companies. I never saw MSH and took a taxi; later I found out he was there. I tumbled into bed at 2:30 Madagascar time which was exactly 24 hours after I left Lobster Cove