boo and poo’s land

We often get black outs at nights, the amount of time the electricity would come back on varies, from 10 minutes to an hour. We would use candles until the lights come back on. Often the lights went out while we were cooking. We would get the blackouts once or twice a week in our area. The problem is due to the gov’t or company not providing enough gas for the electricity for the whole area. We are fortunate that our host even uses electricity. We have visited a deaf person’s home (in this capital, no less) and she did not use electricity, she probably could not afford it. We communicated in the half dark via candlelight. She and her husband had six kids to support, and she works long hours in a clothing factory for very little money. She wishes she had more time with her kids. I felt bad for her. I am thankful for our host for having hot water in his house. I don’t know if I would really be able to survive with cold water when taking a shower or a bath. We found out that our host installed the hot water system in anticipation of our arrival because he knew that we Americans and Europeans are accustomed to having hot water for showers. Dimby, our host, said that his house didn’t have hot water before because his mother was afraid the hot water system would burst, and our being in Madagascar gives the family an excuse to finally set up such a system. I just hope their hot water system works smoothly without any problems to make it worth it all for them. Lastly, we noticed that there are no toilet paper rolls in the bathroom in the house. We think the Malagasy are accustomed to not using any. At first, we bought some rolls after our arrival, thinking that the family ran out of them. When we ran out of the rolls, they have not been replaced. We started to notice most public places have none, so thats when we realized that a lot of people here do not use toilet paper rolls at all. Therefore, we just leave some toilet papers in our room and bring it to the bathroom with us if we need to take a dump. I can’t imagine not being able to wipe my butt when I am done with dumping! We Americans sure take a lot of things for granted such as electricity, hot water, and even toilet papers. The Malagasy, they live such a hard life and I really admire them for making do with what they have.

metal sheet house in madagascar, originally uploaded by gamma888.

id love to sleep inside one of those days!

IMG_3844, originally uploaded by gamma888.

this is how the locals enter and exit the small bus…

madagascar, originally uploaded by gamma888.

it was taken from our home’s entrance gate…

more pictures to follow later this week as it takes forever to upload and process this stuff from here!!!

“…Oh, I can’t believe that I almost forgot to type here that we got to take a glimpse of “Famadihana” ceremony on the way to Tessete’s home.  Once Dimby saw many people gathering to do the Famadihana ceremony up high in the hill, he asked Tessete to stop and immediately, we got out of his car and hiked up a small hill where a small cemetery was.  The cemetery was filled with many close and distant family members.  A stone tomb’s door was being opened to retrieve the corpses of their ancestors.  One by one, they are brought out wrapped in straw mats and danced above the heads in a playful tune.  Then, the bodies are being re-wrapped in pristine white burial lambas (scarves) where Susie and I tried to see but there were so many members around the dead corpse during re-wrapping.  I got to see the re-wrapping, but Susie didn’t dare to see it further at all.  I asked Dimby on how would a family member recognize each corpse.  He said that each corpse is labeled with felt-tip marker on the scarve.  After a period of quiet moment where the family members hold their dead ancestors on their laps in silent communication, the corpses, again, have the last dance in the air before being re-buried in the tomb.  Dimby elaborated the ritual of Famadihana and we were glad to have witnessed this old Malagasy tradition especially a 3-foot wrapped corpse ‘dancing’ in the air. Dimby’s family doesn’t do this ceremony at all as the family has moved on to modern times and wants to leave their ancestors have their own moments with the mother nature…”

susie’s sony camera has been pickpocketed away from my unzipped outer pocket in my jacket during a smashing crowd while trying to get into a puny bus at late evening… while i knew that pickpocketing around tana was pretty high, i was pretty igornant to susie’s repetitous to watch out for the camera as well as put it inside my jacket… but nevertheless, i put her camera in my outer pocket and forgot to zip it up as i was little tipsy from madagascar’s finest beer called “three horses” hanging out with susie and 2 deaf guys.  we were getting our first taste of tana’s nightlife which usually starts at 5pm and end by 8pm because all the public buses close between 8pm and 9pm.  after we got home, i just started to realize that the camera was gone!  even susie got pickpocketed on the first week of our stay but she didn’t have anything in her pockets.

soooo, nevertheless, i still have my canon SLR and i cant wander around poor slums with this camera because ill be definitely a prey in those areas.  i can only take the pictures when im with a small group.  if anyone wants to donate an old compact digital camera for me to carry through dangerous slum areas where i could try to snap away in such a randomly manner, please do feel free to email me!

yesterday was quite an adventurous day for us, but this will have to wait as ive already typed up my journal in my powerbook last night but i forgot to bring my card reader with me to upload this entry into this blog.

also for those of you who have been wanting to visit us in madagascar, we will be free on october 30th until november 5th as well as dec. 21st until jan. 8th.

we still haven’t settled down here in tana as there are so many things that we need to take care of.  we are not accustomed to malagay’s slow way of life here.