Andy Oakley

Taken from the Madagascar Team 1 Journal, originally by Pip

First sight of Madagascar! We got off the plane into weather much the same as we left in England - maybe even a bit cooler.

The airport wasmore sophisticated than we expected but the beauracracy experienced at passport control gave us a taste of what - undoubtedly - is to come. We were told that we would meet our guide and the W.C. agent, Shaun. Martin thought that a dodgy Madagascan was “Hamba” but it appeared that this guy was trying to pull him! At customs the EPIRB was confiscated and we were told to return on Monday.

Eventually we got two mini-buses which were a bit dodgy and a little Madagascan boy held the door shut! Safety went out the window. Everyone was very quiet on the trip from the airport to the hotel. Very few of us have ever been to a developing country and so we were shocked by the sheer poverty of the people we saw. It sounds like a cliche but can’t really describe how it felt - I suppose it was a mixture of shock, pity and numbness and it felt wrong to be on holiday with money in my pocket in a country where life was so hard.

The hotel - Hotel Cappuccino - was on a street with no name about 15km away from the airport. We paid about .1.50 per head per night and filled all seven of the hotel rooms. Most rooms had a balcony, bed and bathroom and were of a far higher standard than any of us expected.

I was leader from Friday afternoon and after the nerve-wrecking experience at Heathrow, Charls De Gaulle and Madagascan airports I was truly looking forward to handing over to Andrew Stokes; the responsibility of looking after passports and tickets and checking us into the different terminals was extremely tiring.

We went for lunch in Tana, and later went to the zoo. Anyone who has watched the film “American Warewolf” will be able to understand how we feel. Instead of new people walking into a country pub and everything coming to a standstill, we are in a foreign country and feel all eyes on us all the time. People stop in their tracks, point and usually laugh at us.

It is the strangest feeling walking around in Madagascar. In England, colour is not an issue for whites - except for those who are racist - and so for us, being a minority here it is unnerving. For the whole of Sunday I felt as though I should not be here. Not because I wasn’t enjoying myself or because I didn’t appreciate a different country but because I felt as though we were patronising this underdeveloped country. What right had we to come to somone elses country? Why had we come here? I decided that our reasons were purely selfish - we had come to see a different culture. I wondered whether the subconscious reason for affluent westerners visiting poorer countries was to reassure themselves about how much we have. It made me realise how lucky I was, and I hope that I don’t forget the perspective that I have gained here.