Sainte Luce, The Island Adventure: Part Two

Salama everyone! Well I have completed my fieldwork at Sainte Luce so now I am back in Fort Dauphin staying with my host family and trying to write a crazy paper on the data that I found.  Definitely feeling a bit stressed right now but I’m trying to just take it one step at a time and accomplish things in baby steps…Anyways I’ll rewind and fill you all in on the second half of Sainte Luce.

Soooo hmmm lets see where to begin.  I’m typing this while I don’t have internet so I can’t read my last entry so forgive me if I repeat things that I have already told you.  Ok so I was in Fort Dauphin for 3 days due to the rain-induced evacuation.  For those days I staid at a nice house on the beach that belongs to the man who owns the Sainte Luce Island Reserve (he’s currently home in Australia so we got to kick it at his place).  The house was really nice, overlooked the beach AND had a kitchen with a freezer with ice! First ice water in Madagascar man was that glorious.  But the downside was that they haven’t paid their electric bill so power was cut which was kind of torture because they have a tv and movies IN ENGLISH but I couldn’t watch them since there was no power.  Oh well life goes on.  So ya I just hung out around there, chilled with some Peace Corps volunteers, tried to make cheesy pasta one night for dinner that was an epic fail but I had low expectations so its alright (Grandpa, nothing compares to your mac & cheese).  We didn’t take the lobster car this time we bummed a ride with some South African vazahas who own a hotel in the next village.  Their vehicle ended up being an open Jeep with back side benches.  Actually pretty comfy until they crammed in 4 small children and a ton of other miscellaneous objects.  Its was a pretty rough ride, sitting sideways on a bumpy road while kids next to you barf kind of sums it up.  But it got us there and that’s what matters.  

Then theres the pirogue madness.  So I told you how our holy pirogue was stolen.  Don’t really know why someone would want to steal it because this pirogue has got some serious holes I don’t understand how a single person could steal it without ending up sinking in the middle of the lake.  So we got a ride across the river from the guy who we basically know stole our pirogue but he claims to have found it after it drifted upstream.  Plus somehow the hole had gotten worse.  So he said that he would fix it for us.  He did but then the next day the pirogue had once again disappeared and eventually someone told us that the front of the pirogue had been broken off.  It would take a lot of work to break a pirogue.  So we were a bit stranded on the island. 

Life at camp was pretty much normal.  It was still raining quite a bit so I spent a lot of timing sitting at the table under a tarp.  Found some creative ways to pass time…started making Sudoku puzzles (it’s a lot harder than you would think it would be I challenge you to try) sketched future ceramics projects, wrote, daydreamed.  Pretty long days.  If the weather was good we would go out to birdwatch usually early in the morning. 

Normal people have to deal with traffic in their daily commute.  I have to deal with spiders and snakes.  Man the number of spiders in that forest is insane! Some of them are huge, maybe 3-4inches, but I actually prefer those guys cuz you always see them coming.  It’s the tiny spiders that got me.  Their webs are like booby traps and they’re so fast!  You can walk on a path and then walk back on the same path half an hour later and they’ve already rebuilt their web!  So whenever I went through the forest I yielded a spider fighting stick that I would wave in front of my while I walk to catch the webs.  Going to admit that sometimes I felt like I was in Harry Potter with my little twiggy wand.  Then one day Joe and I were walking to the beach and all the sudden he was like ummmm Jess do you know what you just stepped over? And I was like huhhh and turned around to find a massive boa! Like seriously huge, prob 3-4 feet long and pretty thick.  You might ask how in the world I didn’t see it but that was because I had to keep my head up because if you don’t watch what you walk through then the spider webs will getcha in the face.  So ya I stepped right over this guy! So glad I didn’t step on it that would have been terrifying.  But it was harmless and Joe actually picked it up.  Ive got a cool video of it I can show you all once I’m home.  Also that same evening I found a black widow chillin right outside the door to my tent.    So ya those were the most vicious things I’ve seen here and both in one day too!  Also saw some collared brown lemurs (dad posted a picture of a pretty ugly one on facebook I think the ones I saw were a tad more attractive). 

So we were originally supposed to come home on Tuesday the 26^th but then on Saturday the 23^rd Eric our cook got a call that his son had malaria.  So he was going to leave and with him gone that left us with no cook, no pirogue, no generator (oh ya cuz that broke too) to charge our phones to call someone to get us across the lake, and very low food supplies.  Sounds like a setup for a bad survivor movie or something huh?  So even though I wasn’t really done collecting my data we decided to head back to Fort Dauphin with Eric to prevent being stranded on the island.  This turned out to be difficult because there were no cars going back that day and the next day was Easter so we ended up having to rent out a 4by4 to get us back (first car ride with seatbelts! Yay!)  Spent all day waiting for the car in the hut in the village.  Kind of similar to last time: Eric and his girlfriend fighting, random men smoking, kids buying Madagascar moonshine calld Tokagasy (really dangerous stuff), a drunk woman trying to tell me and Joe that she has a vazaha spirit inside of her, and a mysterious voice that sounded like a gnome coming from who knows where.  Ya, while this was all simultaneously occurring I leaned over to Joe and said “sometimes I feel like this world isn’t real.” But hey that’s Madagascar in a nutshell for ya.

So I got back with my family really late Saturday night and was excited to go to Easter church with them.  I don’t really know what I was expecting, maybe something similar to my church’s Easter service since theyre both Lutheran churches.  But basically it was exactly the same as the other times I’ve gone to church.  Which I guess is alright, it was only 2 hours not crazy long like I expected it to be.  The rest of the day was just like any other…in fact it was more uneventful than usual because my host mom and Linda went away somewhere to get lobster? Anyways it was kind of a lonely Easter. 

But it turns out that n Madagascar the day after Easter is a wayyyy bigger deal than Easter itself. The whole town, and probably the whole country, goes out on massive picnics.  I’ve concluded that its kind of like Mardi Gras but opposite.  Like instead of partying before Lent starts its like woooohooooo Easter is over lets party it up! Except I didn’t know that any of this was going to happen until my sisters were like ok lets go.  So I just followed them.  Went to Dianne’s boyfriend’s house where there were probably about 40 family members there and I was a big focus of all their attention.  Lots of awkward smiling and nodding and failing to communicate.  But they were all very friendly and hospitable.  Then later that afternoon I went to the beach with Jenny, Dianne, and her boyfriend.  We had a nice little picnic and ate coconuts and cookies and played cards.  It was a lot of fun I really enjoyed it.  The beach was insanely crowded and I’m pretty sure that I was the only vazaha there.  So anyways I think we should start this picnic tradition in America so you are all officially invited to picnic with me next year the day after Easter. 

Besides that I’ve just been trying to get this ISP write-up done.  Which is proving to be difficult.  The laptop I was told I could use in the field is broken (because our car ride home was so bumpy that it broke it) and my family’s computer got a virus while I was gone.  So imagine trying to write a 20-40 page scientific paper, with incomplete data, without a library to find sources, without internet or a computer or even reliable electricity, with people constantly looking over your shoulder, while all of your English-speaking friends are out of town so you have no one to vent to.   Ya thats kind of what its like.  Oh yea and this project is basically my grade for an entire 4 credit class.  But you know I’m just going to try to work with what I’ve got and hopefully that’s enough.  Elise has nicely let me use this laptop so I’ve just been sitting at the vazaha hotel everyday this week and going home for meals. 

So that’s where I’m at! This whole week I’ve been the only SIT kid in town so that’s been a bit lonely but the rest of the gang is coming back today so I’m pretty excited to see them.  And in just 2 more weeks I’ll be home and can see you all!!! It seems so far away but so close all at once!

If you’ve got some free time you can check out the website for where I was staying.  Its: sainte-luce-reserve.org  The website makes it look a lot more fancy there than it actually is but its got some good pics.  Also I think they are going to upload my pictures there too, not sure when but maybe you can check that out…

Just realized that this is one crazy long post so thanks for stickin with me if you’re still reading this all the way down here at the bottom.  Ill try to write at least once more before I leave.  Hope that you all had a wonderful Easter! 

Jess