Mada Again! More bags than ever!

Suitcases ready to go - in our garage

Thank you to Charlie Ash for driving us to O'Hare airport and shifting all those bags on to luggage carts for us. 

Simon and bags at O'Hare airport.  

 Air France turned out not to have many staff working, so we just made it to the gate in time!  Thankfully we had uneventful flights to Antananarivo, arriving with all our baggage at Manga Guesthouse in record time – just before midnight rather than around 01:30 – and we even got a new SIM card for our Malagasy cell phone and local currency from the ATM.  We then re-packed the rolling duffels for their onward journey to Toliara, and went to bed for the first time in too many hours!  Hurrah!  It was cold in the room as it was only 11 C (about 52F) outside and no heating in the room (and one of the windows doesn’t close fully!)

The plan was to get up at 8am for a warm shower and breakfast.  We have to enjoy the warm showers here before moving to Todd and Patsy’s home where there are only cold showers (but at least the room is warmer!).  However, I struggled to get water to do more than trickle out of the shower (either hot or cold) before pulling on a fleece over my nightie and going to ask the reception staff what trick I was missing  to get this shower arrangement to work.  The answer in French and Malagasy was “shower cut” which completely confused me - until I was shown that the electric switch didn’t turn on the light! Jirama (local energy company) had cut the power, so there was also no water being pumped.  No showers, no wash, no flushing the toilet.  Thanks be to God for “Wet Wipes”!

Of course, no power also meant no internet access.

Jocelin, our driver for the day, turned up early and we were able to get the 6 rolling duffels across Tana to the offices of the taxi-brousse services.  From where they will set off to Toliara on Saturday morning, arriving in Toliara on Sunday.  This is much more economical than taking the bags on Air Madagascar with us on Sunday.

At Alain's office ready to leave Toliara

On the way we had travelled through the seemingly permanent traffic-jam seeing the usual zebu grazing at the road side, laundry being done,  brick making and tossing and this year, a lot of tyres being rolled along the side of the road to be repaired / replaced.

Brick tossing!

Tyre rolling!

Next we tried calling the woman who sometimes sells PUL (polyurethane laminate fabric), which is the waterproofing layer in the Days for Girls kits.  Sadly she is still not stocking it, but thinks she might get some next month.  Jocelin was not knowledgeable enough about fabric shops, so we decided to give up on that part of the plan for today.

Instead we went to our next meeting at Blue Ventures, who are a not-for-profit based on the west coast.  As well as their work trying to protect the world’s third largest coral reef which is off the coast near Toliara, they do a lot of community health programmes.   They contacted the Toliara Days for Girls’ enterprise around this time last year, so it was very good to meet Nick and Njaka face-to-face and have a conversation instead of lengthy emails.  We had a very good talk, and now understand each other’s positions much better.  Nick was also able to tell me more about the health work of SEED Madagascar in Fort Dauphin so this might make our upcoming meeting with them later in the month more fruitful.  We were planning to visit SEED because of their work teaching local women to embroider and sell their products.  Now we know we also need to talk with them about their sexual and reproductive health programme for middle-schools.

Blue Ventures Team

We stopped for a very good lunch in a shopping mall 

Look at that plate decoration! The restaurant name is written on the side

– and drove back the scenic route through the rice fields to avoid the permanent traffic jam on the RN4.

Then we sat in the outdoor garden room while it rained outside, enjoyed a beautiful sunset, and begged a room heater to take the chill off our bedroom!  Thanks be to God!!

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