boo and poo’s land

deaf kids in Tana, originally uploaded by gamma888.

They are from either 11e or 10e class which I cant remember. They are in my P.E. class and sometimes they do drive me crazy yet they are very obedient whenever they see my camera. Perhaps I should bring my camera to the PE class…

Adorable girls!!!, originally uploaded by gamma888.

They are from 12e class (first grade) and they would always smile whenever they see our presence!!! They are always a delight to see…

Brick Farm near La Digue, originally uploaded by gamma888.

I assume that this is a brick farm as those men were collecting some kind of heavy soil/cement from the river. There are many brick ovens along the river. You can see the red brick oven in the background. I am not sure what is the name of the village that is way in the background. After 3 months here in Antananarivo, I just never knew that there was actually a river there because it is always obstructed by a huge mound by the roadside. But I was able to climb up to the top of the mound and catch its striking landscaping beauty there.

November 24, 2007

It has been two weeks since my last journal. A lot of things have gone through my eyes like a racing car as everything was in blur. Also, due to the fact that we have actually forgotten that last Thursday was actually Thanksgiving Day. I didn’t realize it until I read someone else’s blog recently today about her Thanksgiving Day. Even the American embassy has sent us a courtesy email to remind me that its office will be closed on Thanksgiving Day a few days ago.

Last Sunday, we went to Tana’s Rova (King’s Palace) which unfortunately burned down back in 1995 and is still in rebuilding mode. It won’t be done until 2009. The reason for this slow construction was due to a  lack of fund. We walked around the Rova’s area which is on the top of city’s high hill. We stopped at a small Catholic church where a few martyrs were pushed out of the cliff by the order of one of the previous Malagasy queens due to her disdain for the religion, Roman Catholic.

Afterwards, we took a taxi to Ambohimanga which is classified as Uniseco’s World Heritage area. It does include another Rova, but it is more of like a summer palace for Gasy’s first ever king named Andrianampoinimerina (now you know why I haven’t been studying Malagasy aka Gasy much lately as there are awfully too many long vocabularies in Gasy language) back in the 1700s or so. While the palace that we visited didn’t impress us that much, we did enjoy the scenery of landscape the palace has to offer as it is sitting on one of the 12 Sacred hills. If I can recall correctly from reading the history of 12 Sacred Hills at Ambohimanga village, many pilgrims came to those hills as they found those natural hills to be very precious due to the fact that many royal ancestors were buried in those hills. The pilgrims come to these sacred spots to ask for blessings from the royal ancestors’ spirits. The hills were actually off-limits to foreigners for many years during the royal years. Also, at the village, there’s a nice ancient traditional gateway where on one side rests a huge, round flat stone which is about 20 feet high (I’d assume about 7-8 meter high). I heard that it’d take about 40 slaves to roll the stone to shut the gateway. We didn’t get to wander around the village as we were much drained out from walking around at Tana’s Rova area that morning.

As for teaching at (I just got interrupted by Dimby’s presence in our room now… now after 3 hours have passed, Dimby has finally left the room at 11:30pm… that’s why I don’t get to type my journals as often as I’d like to because it seems like as if Dimby is always entering our room every night like Kramer from _Seinfeld_ does like opening the door unannounced at such a random time to chat with us. I guess he just enjoys having companions in his home as not many deaf people hang out during evenings at all.) Akama, I think we are starting to settle down there. I have managed to get a few cans of paint for the small murals. What I am going to do is try to get every student involved in the octagon-like icons for the murals. I hope that the murals will give the school a colorful atmosphere for the staff, students, and visitors.

Now, it is morning as I was too tired to continue my journal. Anyway, Susie and I have to come up with a plan on going to Southern Madagascar for our 2-week December holiday. We have found that hiring a car with a driver is pretty expensive, 40 EURO a day (a driver, insurance, and accommodation included and petrol is not even INCLUDED!) but it is always negotiable. I hope to bargain for about 25 Euro a day. We hope to see as many places as possible because we haven’t even been out of Antananarivo area at all! Also due to the fact that we’re going through Southern Madagascar during wet season doesn’t even help us at all as many 4×4 tracks are impassable. We only have to stick with the blacktop road. We would like to go through many small villages as possible. I guess we can only go to a few small villages by hiking or so. We’ll see if we can try to come up with a final itinerary soon!

Yesterday, I went to a cybercafe in the morning only to find that there’s no electricity running that time. We have been getting blackout occasionally which is pretty much inconvenience for us whenever we go to a cybercafe or teach computer class at Akama! Finally after about an hour have passed, the internet was back on and it was time for me to catch up the emails and errands. Afterwards, I went grocery shopping to stock up. Then, I went back home and had lunch with Susie. Next, we left home to go to Akama to give an English class for the deaf people. Since Madagascar Federation of the Deaf had assisted us in securing our visas, they had asked us to return their favor. Of course, we happily wanted to give English classes for its members. About 10 people came to the class which was our expectation. We will continue to give out two more English classes in the next 2 months. Right now, I realize that I will be very busy for the next two months with work and traveling ALL just out of our pockets! I think we are now starting to watch our money trail as we didn’t realize that we actually splurged for the last few weeks. That’s where Susie is good at as she always reminds me why do I have to bring a big wad of $$$ in my bag almost everyday. I agree that it is better to carry a small change of $$$ on what you plan to spend each day instead of having a large wad of cash in case we have an urge to splurge on something. A Magnum ice cream bar which is a luxury commodity in Madagascar cost us about 4-5 USD which is even more expensive than in Europe and USA. I ate the bar twice already for the last few weeks. I just wish that our freezer is running well enough to store a couple of ice cream bins, but it isn’t so we occasionally have to buy a small container of ice cream in case we have the urge to slurp them out during hot days.

(Now today is December 1st and I have noticed that we havent been using internet much lately due to the fact that we have been getting many power cuts often daily. But once the rain comes during this month, the electricity will finally resume normally due to the functional aquatic dam. Also, I will post a couple of pictures here today after I upload some pictures into flickr.)