Ok, so I'm attempting photos. These are not my own photos... They're ones that have been posted onto the internet by other people on my program. And I have no idea if this is going to work.
The first one is a picture of most of the girls on the program on the beach at a fishing village we visited a while ago.
The second is the beach in Ft. Dauphin right along the main road.
The next one is of a verreaux's sifaka lemur in the spiny forest.
Then there's one of a village that's not exactly the village in which I did my village stay, but mine looked pretty much exactly the same.
Ok, those are four pretty representative photos of my Madagadcar experience for now. Photos courtesy of Erin Jenny.

Back in Ft. Dau

Salama e,
So it's been a while yet again. At the moment, I'm back in Ft. Dauphin. We flew back from Tulear this morning. We were supposed to leave for our national parks tour a week ago yesterday, but then we had another evacuation scare (because the US government upped the travel warning even more). Luckily, SIT listened to our program directors and we got to stay... again. So we left to drive on our enormous TATA bus west into the heart of the island. We stopped one night in Isalo, which has really cool rock formations. Saw some lemurs and hiked in a canyon. Then we drove some more, spent a night in a town. And then we drove into the mountains into some of the most gorgeous scenery I have ever seen. There's been a lot of rain, so everything is green. There were rice paddies everywhere. So we went on a hike, camped a night on the way, and then climbed the second highest peak in Madagascar - Pic Boby (pronounced booby, no lie). The only problem was that the first day on the hike it rained and all my stuff (that a porter was carrying) got soaked. It was freezing. Really freezing. It was hard to imagine all the times I've been SO HOT in this country.

Ok so then we got back to the bus at around 3 in the afternoon. And then it started raining again. We were driving on dirt, mountain roads. And when the rain started, it got muddy. Really really muddy. We got stuck. Really really stuck. And then even more stuck. The point is, we were all out there pushing with random Malagasy children for hours. Ok, that's a lie, because I myself did more sitting in the bus increasing friction than anything else, but hey. It should have taken us a couple of hours, but we got to our hotel well after 11 p.m. Everyone was wet and cold and so muddy and exhausted and starving. But we were mostly excited we had gotten out at all. Now everyone's clothes are molding in their backpacks. yum.

Ok then we drove to Ranomafana National Park. The first real Madagascar rainforest I've seen. We saw three new species of lemurs. At one point, a young and ridiculously curious lemur came down to within a couple of feet of me. We were sure he wanted to jump on us, but he didn't. We named him Gerald. Absurdly cute.

Normally we would have driven to Tana (the capital), but it is definitely not allowed for us to be there right now, so we drove back to Tulear and flew back to Ft. Dauphin. We'll be here for a week and then everyone will go off to do their Individual Study Projects for a month. Then we'll reconvene here. And then spend the last couple of weeks in Diego, in the very north of the island. That's the plan. But our plans have been changing a lot....

So also, I will mention the bane of my existence, which is my left ear. Indeed, my ear infection is still causing me trouble. When I went back to the ear doctor in Tulear, he told me I had mushrooms - champignons - growing in my ear, and that they must be sucked out periodically until they stop growing. The visual image and the continued pain were.... upsetting. I got more mushrooms sucked out once more, so I got to see the Tulear ear doctor a total of 4 times. But then we went on the road and the directors worked it out so I had to leave very early in a separate car with one of our Malagasy staff - pretty much my favorite guy ever - to go to Fianarasoa, which is a big city in between Isalo and Ranomafana. Eventually we got to see an ear doctor there. He was appalled at the state of my ear. Apparently my ear drum was bleeding. And apparently the Tulear doctor was incompetent. I got way more antiobiotics and drops and stuff. I haven't felt much pain since then which is awesome, but I have yet to get hearing back. I haven't had hearing for about a week, but I think it's coming back. I saw the doctor again after a few days and he says it's way better. I guess it's been an experience in non-western medicine.

Ok, I have more stories, but they will wait. Although I do want to say that they have these rickshaws, called pousse pousses, in Tulear and I wanted very badly to drive one. So finally before we left, we paid some guy, and I got to run around with the pousse pousse with my friend inside. Awesome. He thought it was hilarious.

Salut tout le monde! (and happy healing thoughts to my dadwe).

Evacuations and ear infections

Well, it's been a while.
The last time I wrote was before we left for our week-long village stay. And since then, there has been a political coup of sorts and my stay in Madagascar has reached a turning point.
For one thing, I'm in Tulear now. We've finished our home stays in Ft. Dauphin and moved to Tulear for a little while, which is a much bigger city in the southwest coast of the Mozambique Channel. The days in which we making the transition from Ft. Dauphin to Tulear were pretty rough because it was very likely we were going to be evacuated from the country to be either sent home or absorbed into another SIT study abroad program. So clearly those times I said I was sure all the political drama in the capital (Tana) would go away prove how little I know. Because they definitely did not go away. If you want to know more i suggest you look around the internet for info. The news we get is almost always secondary and contradictory. HOWEVER, I now have first hand experience with how the media can be unreliable. The BBC completely sensationalised the situation calling Madagascar "on the verge of civil war." Not true. Not true at all. So don't believe that. I have never been in any kind of danger or felt unsafe at all. The reason we would have to be evacuated would be because the US government cannot legally recognize a government that is not elected, or 'illegitimate.' The military has taken over, but in a completely peaceful way and because they thought that was the way to keep the peace. That's what the program people have to say. And I trust their insight and experience with Malagasy politics. The Peace Corps was pulled out last Wednesday and the Embassy has called for evacuation of governmental employees. Luckily for me, SIT decided to trust our program directors that we are going to avoid all potentially dangerous situations.

Unfortunately, the same day that we learned we were staying (for now), we also learned that two students in our group who go to big public universities (CU Boulder and UNC Chapel Hill) had to be evacuated because their institutions follow the government's lead by policy. I love both of them and they left today. It was really pretty devastating. Those two students are going to join the SIT program in Botswana, which will be an adventure. Another of my best friends decided to go home as well. She's been having a rough semester and this was kind of her chance to opt out. I'll miss her too. So we're down to 13 students. It's a bit quieter, but there's more room on the bus.

Meanwhile, my last week has been defined by an awesomely painful ear infection. I've now been to the doctor twice to get stuff sucked out of my ear with a contraption that looks like it was made in the 1940s and must be operated with a large generator. As a result, i couldn't go snorkeling today with everyone on the coral reef which was a HUGE bummer. I'm on antibiotics and going back for a check up in a few days.

So the first few days here we spent camping by the mangroves, which are really cool. It is ABSURDLY hot in this city. We had American style pizza and ice cream in the city and we also had a mouton (or sheep) roast to celebrate the full moon on Saturday and yesterday we went to the reef. We're going to spend a few days in the city now, arranging our Independent Study Projects and doing laundry and then we're going on a road trip. We'll be seeing a bunch of rain forest as we drive across the middle of the island towards (but not to) the capital. I'm told I will actually be cold at times. Hard for me to imagine at this point. We will not be going to Tana like we normally would be and we're going to drive south along the coast to Ft. Dauphin to start our ISPs. That's the plan. But recently, everything has been up in the air. Nous verrons.

I'll write about my village stay soon. It was awesome. I did a lot of dancing and singing. And lots of people stared at me.

Happy March mes amis.
- Julia