Archive for the ‘Antoetra’ tag
Tana to Antoetra, starting point of the Village Trek
Taken from the Madagascar Team 1 Journal, originally by Pip
Today we left Tana and went South to do our village trek. When we arrived in Madagascar’s capital city I found it very difficult to cope with the poverty and hardship that seems to be daily life. But by the time I left I had come to accept that I could not compare the Western way of life with that of Madagascar. These are different countries with different cultures and Madagascar is at a different stage of its development as a country and its current situation is not to be patronised by us.
The bus arrived at 8.00 am, we left at 8.30 am and went to the bus owners house to sort out prices and dismantle part of the bus so that we could fit us and our rucksacks (which were growing both in weight and size - or seemingly so - by the day). Once we left Tana the road remained tarmaced and we went a lot faster than we had expected.
We stopped at a village called Antsirabe where the locals were having a market. As usual we were pounced upon and encouraged to buy their wares eg carrots, cakes, oranges, wooden ornaments etc. When we said that we wanted to buy some carrots, about 7 Madagascans appeared from nowhere all ofering huge bundles of the said vegetable for us to buy! Mike’s excellent haggling skills came in handy, as did our few Madagascan words “Hoatrimona”.
We stopped again at Ambositra. Here we bought more food, a cooking pot and hats - Graeme’s being the stupidest! I met a girl called Nicole who used us as an opportunity to practice here English - who in Engalnd (at 14) can speak Malagasy? Her mother wanted me to swap addresses with her daughter which I did and I intend to write to her. After showing the local children themselves in action on video (which they loved) we left.
After an eight hour trip we finally arrived in Antoetra. We were greeted by about thirty children who were incredibly happy to see us; they all had huge grins on their faces and asked us our names. They surrounded the bus which was very strange because in England we would feel intimidated - in Madagascar I felt uncomfortable that they were so elated but it was great to feel so welcome - it was also very funny!
We slept in the Village school.
