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

lemuriens, epines, et akondros.

It's been a few weeks, and we've been doing a lot.

For one thing, I saw some lemurs. Yeah, baby. A lot of lemurs. And five different species, no less.
Last weekend, from Saturday to Tuesday, we took a trip to the commune (a collection of villages) of Ifotaka, which is about 5 hours away from Fort Dauphin. It was a bumpy ride. The roads are truly horrible. We took four different SUV-like vehicles, and about half way the truck in which I was riding started making weird sounds and we kept driving and then it became suddenly clear that something was very wrong with the wheel and we stopped. The wheel had lost all of its knuts (or whatever) and was this close to being completely separated from the car. It was awesome. It was fixed rather quickly though. That truck is also the one that will stall randomly and we have to push it to get it started again. Like Little Miss Sunshine. Kind of.

Anyways, it was so hot I thought I was going to spontaneously combust. We swam/bathed in the nearby Mondrare river, which in other circumstances I would never dream of touching, but it was totally necessary/awesome and I kind of felt clean for a few seconds before I was immediately sweaty and dusty again. We were there to study lemurs, so we went into the forest at around 6 am for a few hours, and laid around in the shade doing nothing during the worst of the heat until 4 pm when we went back into the forest. We were in the spiny forest, unique to southern Madagascar. Believe me, it is aptly named. That is one angry forest. Every SINGLE plant that grows there has huge spines on it. I have little scratches all over my arms and legs. But we got to see lots of Verreaux's Sifaka. (Look up a picture on google, if you care. Because they're awesome looking.) We also went on a night walk to see mouse lemurs and a lepilemur.

On the last day we got to go to Berenty Private Reserve, which is essentially a lemur theme park. The lemurs there are habituated to humans and aren't afraid of people at all. There we saw ring-tailed lemurs, more sifaka, brown lemurs (which aren't native to this area but have been introduced to Berenty), and enormous bats (uh oh, I don't know the name, but they are like flying foxes kind of). Then we had a fancy lunch with cold drinks.

Before that, we took a one-night trip to Andohahela National Park, which is less interesting. We did an exercise in counting species in a plot of transitional forest, which was taxing. The highlight was when we hiked to a waterfall and swam in a lake.

Now, we're all getting ready for the big one-week village stay. We're leaving this Sunday and coming back on Saturday. There are two American students per village and I found out today I got put with a good friend of mine so that's positive. Our village has about 20 homes and we'll spend the week helping them and learning about their lives. They speak no French, so we'll be doing a lot of miming and attempting to use the little Malagasy that we know. It's going to be intense, but I'm excited. We get to ride in an ox cart to the village from the commune center. And at the end - on Friday - we have a huge dance party with all the villages and sacrifice a zebu (a cow). Less excited about that part.

Ack, this is long and boring. We only have a few days left of our home stays. After we get back from the village stay we have four days and then leave for Tulear (and from Ft. Dauphin for good) to do some marine studies stuff (snokeling!). My home stay is still enjoyable overall, awkward though it may be. The 12 year old boy completely ignores me, and the 3 year old plays games with me sometimes. My best friends in the house are the multiple maids, but I rarely see them now because I leave before they get there and get home after they've left.

Last week, my life was defined by the Mexican soap opera Marina. It was on ALL THE TIME, because my mom had it on dvd. Story lines included evil twins, questions of paternity, terminal illness, murder, general backstabbing and plotting, etc. I will remember the theme song for the rest of my life.

Still no meat yet. Just a LOT of fish. This week, there was a tortoise dish, which I politely refused. Tortoise, by the way, is illegal to eat here because it is endangered, but most of my classmates have encountered it in one way or another.

Many of us have gotten sick so far, but it has not yet been my turn. Just a matter of time, I suppose. I've been feeling more well rested than I have in years. Both in my home stay and when camping I go to bed at around 9 pm. I get up around 6 am. When we're in Libanona, class starts at 8 am, and it takes me about 45 minutes to walk there. I eat breakfast of bread (baguette) and butter and tea (which means plain hot water with sugar and sweetened condensed milk) alone, because I leave earlier than everyone else. When on field trips, we have sandwiches (peanut butter and jelly or cheese/ground zebu/eggs/tomatoes/cucumber/ mayonaise/mustard. Although our guides put all of those things on one sandwich. Meaning, the peanut butter and and the jelly with the meat and the tomatoes and the mayonaise. Ew.) For lunch on our campus in Fort Dauphin or wherever someone's cooking for us there's always a TON of white rice, some kind of meat thing, and one or two vegetable or bean dishes. The food is really tasty. And fruit for dessert. Mostly bananas. Aka akondros. And here ends the food section.

Ok, this is becoming a novel. Wish me luck in the village stay. Happy March to everyone.

Salut,
It's friday, which means only a half day of class!!!! So we all went out to get weird Malagasy pizza. It's weird, but good. Very thin crust. The omnipresent beer here is THB and today I tried THB Freche, which has sugar in it and only 1% alcohol. I am such a big fan. It's like beeralicious sprite.
So in the past week, I have done a some things. They include:

- Eating raw coconut meat/juice, which is one of the only things that I have found completely disgusting, (I mean, besides the meat). My host family, however, is a huge fan.

- Going to the enormous new mining project just outside of Ft. Dauphin which caused (and continues to create) a great deal of debate. They're mining ilmenite, which is used to make things like paint, plastic, and toothpaste white. Ironically, it comes from black sand. Sadly, the cost is loss of 70% of the littoral forests in the area. Some endemic species will be lost (at least, in a natural context). We vistited the conservation areas that the mine has set up. I saw my first live chameleon (there have been multiple squashed ones on the rural roads) and a fossa (a giant mongoose relative that eats lemurs) that was in a cage.

- Watching a lot of weird tv at my home stay including : American movies dubbed in French ranging from Atonement and the Other Boelyn Girl to High School Musical 2 and Les Aristochats, Mr. Bean, Dora the Explorer (in French), a terrible movie about a magical healer in Malagasy, a Chaka Khan concert, many many Malagasy music videos, and a spainish soap opera (dubbed in french, of course) on dvd.

- Sitting through hours of boring lectures and ridiculously frustrating language classes. There was one exceptional lecture from the founder of the biggest NGO in the area that was enlightening (and was also in Australian English). Most of them, however, are in mumbled French (with the weird Malagasy accent) about uninteresting topics and go on forever. My Malagasy classes are downright terrible because the teachers are so poorly organized, and throw words and grammar at us constantly. We have Malagasy every day and I still feel like I know nothing. The French classes are similarly frustrating, but only because they expect us to understand them when they explain directions or have lectures in French, but as soon as we get in a class designated "French" our teachers speak to us as if we just started learning the language.

- Eating fish and shrimp for the first time in a long time. My fam still doesn't know expressly that I do not exactly eat meat, but they must know by now that I vastly prefer fish.

- Eating avocado with sugar. That's how they eat it here. Like sweet guacamole. Apparently, I'm going to be making dinner on Sunday and I thought I'm make some guac to show them how we do it.

- Visiting a fishing village (yesterday). We interviewed the fishermen in small groups with translators. I felt like I was in a documentary. The scenery was gorgeous. The roads here are truly horrendous and we drove on the sand for a bit and there was a moment where we were doing some sliding and I was downright terrified. But it was also awesome.

- Getting soaked on the way to class. The hot weather has been replaced by rain, and clouds, and more rain. I definitely prefer the rain.

- Making friends with my 3-year-old host sister. We're buds now.

- Having the maid(s) go through my things, taking my laundry, and then asking me about my things.

So this weekend, I've got some reading to do and some beaching to do. I'm gonna visit some of my friends' host families to get an idea of how other people live. From the way we all talk about our homes, they're all very different. But no family in the states in alike either. I truly know very little about what's actually going on with the political drama. There are news briefs all the time, but they're in Malagasy. I know that Ft. Dauphin will remain peaceful. I'm not sure if we'll still be visiting Tana at this point, but that's not for a while. Again, I hope I'm not too boring. I've taken quite a few photos, but I have yet to figure out how to get them onto a Malagasy computer. However, I anticipate that I will prevail. It's just a matter of time. Happy Valentine's Day (which I completely forgot about).

Mandrapihaona!

Il y a une semaine...

Je suis ici! I've been in Madagascar for a week now, and it seems like a lot longer than that, though I have a feeling time is going to start going by much faster soon. My flights were long, and we had an extended layover in Paris (11 hours), but they were mostly empty so I had room to sleep. I met most of the people on my program and the bonding started right away.

We got the Tana airport and met the program director - soft spoken and super friendly guy named Jim - and then we flew to Fort Dauphin. The first thing we did was go to a marché and it was definitely the hottest I have ever been in my life. The first few days were SO HOT, and I was pretty unprepared. Once you get used to the constant sweating, it's not so bad. We spent the first few days in a little town outside of Ft. Dauphin where lots of little kids stared and laughed at us and played with our cameras. We did a lot of boring orientation stuff and started our Malagasy classes, which are ridiculous because it is a completely new language and our three (awesome) language classes move pretty fast. I guess it's starting to get easier. We visited an orchard and went on a hike to a waterfall and ate delicous food. And one night, we were taught traditional Malagasy dance by our language teachers in a room with about 50 unsmiling Malgache observing. It was also a bajillion degrees and went on for hours. So hilarious.

Then we went to Fort Dauphin and I got to see the fish and meat market which were both quite traumatizing. We stayed in a nice hotel/hostel for three nights, while we got acquainted with our campus which is high above the ocean and very very shady and beautiful. The scenery is completely ridiculous. The beaches are so beautiful and empty. The water is very warm.

And last night, I had my first night at my home stay. It was the first time when I was completely on my own, and it was pretty hard. I only pretended to eat the meat they gave me. There's a mom, a 12-year-old boy, a 3-year-old girl who only stares at me with suspicion and a babysitter/housekeeper, with whom I share a bed. My family is comparatively pretty wealthy and the house is nice. We spent most of the time watching Bollywood. The mom is the only one who speaks French really, and the language barrier is more of a problem than I had anticipated. But the first night went well overall, even though I don't know how to work the toilet. There's very little running water here. And only electricity at night, if any at all. So, the alternative is bucket showers. Which are slow, but not so bad. Anyway, they're very nice but we're all pretty shy at this point.

So, I'm having a pretty great time. I'm loving the people on my program, my teachers, and the food. I'm getting better at doing my own laundry in a bucket and at speaking Malagasy. We haven't had too many classes so far, but they've been okay. If I'm as busy for the rest of the semester as I've been this past week, it will be ridiculous. But I think things will calm down, at least for a while. And by the way, the political conflicts going on right now have not affected me directly in any way and I don't anticipate any problems. All of the action is in Tana, which is days away by car (because of the bad roads). We actually saw president Ravolamanana who was trying to raise support around the country, which was ... cool.

I hope this wasn't too boring. I've only managed to convey a tiny bit of what it's been like, but I tried. I hope everyone's enjoying February in the states. (I miss snow).
- Julia

Salama!

It seems like a long time coming, but I'm finally heading to Madagascar on Wednesday afternoon. I'll meet my group (of 16 students from around the country) at the Washington D.C. (Dulles) airport. We're flying to Paris, then to Antananarivo (the capital of Madagascar) and then to Fort Dauphin, where I'll be spending most of my time. We'll have a week of orientation and then I'll be living with a family for about a month and a half in Fort Dauphin (on the very southeastern tip of the country). Every couple of weeks we'll take trips as a group, one to the spiny forest and one to a rural fishing village where I'll stay with another family for a week. Then we'll spend three weeks traveling farther north, including Antananarivo and the coral reef of the northern coast. For the last month or so, I'll be working on my Independent Research Project on my own in a location as yet undetermined...

I'm going to be studying the Malagasy language, French, and I'll have an Ecology and Conservation seminar and an Environmental Field Study course. Specifically, I'll be learning about lemur ecology, conservation and environmental management, forest types and land use over time, ethno-botany, sustainable energy, renewable resources, and marine studies.

In case you want to know more about Madagascar, here are some facts to get a better idea of what it will be like. There are about 20 million people living in Madagascar, about 1.5 million in Antananarivo, and about 50,000 in Fort Dauphin. It's the fourth largest island in the world (about the size of Texas), and only 300 miles off the coast of Mozambique (in East Africa). Madagascar is one of the ten poorest countries in the world; the average Malagasy makes $250 (US) per year. Madagascar was a French colony until 1960, and the two official languages are Malagasy and French, though I get the idea that not all that many people speak French (including the families I will be living with). However, some of my coursework (outside of French itself) will be taught in French. Malagasy the language and the people are heavily influenced by Polynesia. It was the Polynesians, not the Africans, who first settled in Madagascar only about 2,000 years ago. The Malagasy apparently eat A LOT of rice. They eat more rice per capita than any other nation in the world: 2 pounds per person PER DAY.

Madagascar is most well known for its natural wonders. 80% of the flora and fauna is endemic, though there has been massive deforestation and the vast majority of the forests are gone. Almost 5% of the world's species are found in Madagascar. Some of the most well known creatures and plants are lemurs, hissing cockroaches, baobab trees, tenrecs, and lots of reptiles, fish, and frogs.

I really only have a vague idea of what the whole experience is going to be like, but I think that's one of the best parts. I'm pretty positive that it's going to be awesome, and that's enough. I'm all packed and I have no idea if I have the right stuff, but oh well. It's all in a huge backpack that's absurdly heavy. Anyways, I hope that I'll be able to post some cool pictures and stories soon. Feel free to email me (julia.behr@pomona.edu) throughout semester (though I really don't have a great grasp of the computer access throughout the trip. It will be uneven, at best.) Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope I'll be posting again soon.

Veloma!!

- julia