Post #5

Wednesday:
We've just taken a walk into the village to buy some supplies. It's easy to forget when you're on site (Coco Beach) where you are in the world - you just know you're in a wooden hut, by the beach. About half the people you see are your fellow staff or volunteers (mostly white europeans or north americans). The rest are the coco beach staff (all malagasy). It's mainly when you take a walk across the village beach right into the village that you're reminded about exactly where you are - in a very remote part of Madagascar.
The village has no electricity, no sanitation, and underfoot is sand, shells, and dead coral. Walking is therefore quite hard work. Especially during the heat of the day. People smile, wave and say salama (hello) whenever you pass. There are loads of kids of varying ages, with even fairly young looking children - around 8 or 9, carrying smaller children or babies. This time, there was a tiny child of about 2, waddling along ahead of us with just one flip flop on. On either side of the road (remember, no actual road. Just a sandy corridor) wooden fences separate the road from the people's yards. The main road stretches no longer than 100 metres. Perhaps a little longer.
As well as the main 'supermarket', there are a few other 'epi-bars' - small shops selling a few food items. They're pretty scarcly stocked - mostly just coca cola, bottled drinks, beer and packet noodles - but I haven't looked too closely. Everything looks very dusty and very sandy. There are also a few small wooden tables on the side of the road with people selling 'fresh' items. At the moment, this means a number of different kinds of dried beans, rice, monkey nuts (looking quite shrivled and tired now as it's the end of the season), onions and maybe some home made doughnuts, bhajis or fish samosas. And peanut sugary biscuit things. Oh, and of course some fish too. Today, I bought tomatoes. It might not seem much, but this is very exciting as we don't have a lot of fresh fruit or vegetables in the main meals at Coco Beach. There were maybe around 30 tomatoes on sale altogether, and I managed to get four which looked pretty reasonable. It's quite a stark contrast to the abundance of UK grocery stores or huge supermarkets. If I'd have bought the same number of tomatoes that I might buy from the Unicorn grocery at home all in one go, I
would be in possession of over half of all the tomatoes in the whole village. However, as there is no refrigeration in our huts, there's no point buying any more than you're going to eat the next day anyway.
There are pretty much no vegetables on sale at all. The only fruit around at the moment (other than the tomatoes) are zebu heart (like a custard apple) and mangoes - which aren't quite in season yet. And that's it. That's the sum total of the 'fresh' food available to buy in the village. As far as clothes are concerned, there are a few 'stalls' (well, sarongs spread on the sand) with an assortment of clothes in a pile. They look like the clothes that Oxfam and the like ship overseas for people. Most people's clothes come from such sources. The supermarket stocks more luxury goods - mainly aimed at us tourists. That means boxed juices (no added sugar), Pringles, imported chocolates (mars bars etc.), Madagascan chocolate (mmm), a few sweets in jars, and a few bottles or jars of condiments, jams, marmalade, mayonnaise etc. They're very dusty. And very expensive. Just to give you a bit of a price comparison. A twix costs 2,000 ariaries (about 70p). A box of pringles costs 8,000 ariary (about two pounds fifty). A mango costs 100 ariary (approximately 4p?). The 4 (tiny and very warm) tomatoes we bought cost us 200 ariary in total. About 7p. Meanwhile, the average day's wage for a local fisherman is around 10,000 ariary. Perhaps less on a bad day, and slightly more on a good day. If that was your sole day's earnings with which to feed yourself and your (ever expanding) family, you're not going to blow it all on a box of Pringles are you? Anyway, back to the supermarket shelves. There's also some hardware, washing powder and the like. Oh, and of course, alcohol. Mainly Madagascan beer (THB) or dodgy local rum in plastic bottles.
Should we run out of anything substantial, there's pretty much no way of buying it here. I knew all this before I came, but somehow it doesn't really sink in until you've been into the village a few times just how little there is available. Everything that you see here has to get here by road or by boat - unlesss it's fished out of the sea. The nearest bigger town (Morombe) is about 40km away. It takes about four hours by 4X4 to get there on the sandy road. More if it is the rainy season. By boat, it takes between 6 and 12 hours depending on the wind. There isn't any public transport from this village as such. Other than the 4X4s which cost a lot to hire, there are the 4X4 trucks which are the things that actually transport the major items - such as fuel and beer - or zebu carts - carts pulled by the Madagascan cows.
Obviously this isn't a viable form of transport for any great distance - unless you're definitely not in any hurry and have a few days to spare.
By sea, the main transport is a pirogue (small wooden outrigger canoe with sail). They're fun for a short journey, but I'm not sure I would want to do a 12 hour journey on one. Thursday: It's windy again. Which means that there's no diving.
Sometimes the wind gusts are so ferocious that I half expect to see a hut flying past our window, or one of the skinny cats being carried up and away. And we're not even in cyclone season yet. There's no diving when the wind is like this. The boat journey is too rough, and the wind stirs up the sand and sediment, giving poor visibility, which makes doing 'science' too difficult.
As most of the volunteers are here for the diving aspect of the trip, they can go pretty stir crazy when there's no diving on. We're trying to keep them occupied with a few other non-diving related projects though and most have been really helpful with them.
I took myself off on a little walk yesterday afternoon. This job is great for the social aspect, but it's easy to get peopled out, especially as Justin and I are sharing a hut. We're careful to make sure each other has some space, but there's pretty much someone always around. So yesterday afternoon I took my water bottle, camera and ipod and headed off into the spiny forest. The spiny forest's main distinguishing feature is its spinyness. The arid climate here means that all the trees are spiky and spiny to conserve water. I got mugged for my ipod by one tree, as the headphone wires got caught around some spines. No damage done though.
There's mostly sand underfoot as you walk through the forest and the trees themselves are sort of muted greens and browns. It's quite mediterranean in colour and tone. There are lots of birds in the forest (we went on a birdwalk the other day which was pretty inspiring), and I saw a kingfisher and a sunbird. There are also heaps of crickets/locusts/ and a few large spiders too. It's easy to get lost - everything looks the same and the path isn't always easily defined. Nevertheless I used some natural navigation (the sun) and a far-off water tower and managed to find my way to one of the beaches just south of our village. It was completely deserted. I climbed up on the rocks alongside the cove and sat in the shade. Peace at last. :)
Saturday: We got up and had an early breakfast today to go down to see the opening of the new (only) basketball court in the village. It's quite impressive actually as it's the largest surface area of concrete in the entire village. They were going to slaughter a zebu (Malagasy cow. It has a hump and two big horns), to bless the court and then have a catholic priest do his blessing afterwards (thus covering all spiritual bases). The whole village clubbed together to pay for the zebu. Only somehow it didn't get organised and apparently the zebu in question has now escaped (you would, wouldn't you?) into the spiny forest and so there'll be no zebu killing now until Tuesday. This means that there'll be no basketball playing til then either. Still, we did get to watch a troop of children dancing around on the court for a while. :) It says something when the local insects (cicada like) are louder than the amplification system. They were watched by many of the village children - all cheering when the group did some tricky moves. All the important people in the village were also out for the slaughter. They included the nun who was part of the organisation committee (there is a catholic mission here), the Italian guys who own the village's other hotel and who 'donated' the basketball court to the village and Mr Naseem and his family. Mr Naseem, by the way, is the businessman who owns the supermarket. He also owns the only decent 4X4 pickup truck in the village (apart from Mr Ilias, who owns Coco Beach). The village president was not there. He was busy trying to find the zebu.