Day 337 - Ben

by  missmeng 

One evening, Paul, Kathy, and Karen, the woman who shared the community liaison officer job with Kathy, and I went out for pizza. Kathy's husband was still in Liberia. Karen's husband was also out of the area. Paul was single.  So none of us had someone at home waiting for us to return.

Since I was a rover, not a permanently assigned staff member, I was not issued a cell phone when I arrived in Madagascar. As spouses of permanently assigned staff, neither Kathy nor Karen had cell phones. And Paul's phone needed to be charged, so he left it at home in the charger. We all had emergency radios, but none of us were in the habit of carrying them around. They all sat in the chargers in our bedrooms, our safe rooms. So we weren't bothered during the meal. The pizza was good, the conversation was great, and we thought nothing of staying out until late.

All the houses the embassy leased had safe rooms, a room in the house with solid doors that would withstand battering, with serious locks on the inside. The safe room also had to have access to a bathroom, so the safe room in my house was the master bedroom suite. The bathroom had two doors, one that led to the bedroom and a second that led to the hall between the dining room and the living room so that it could also serve as a guest bathroom. Both the door to the bedroom and the door from the hall to the bathroom were safe room doors, but the door between the bedroom and the bathroom was not. These upgrades had recently been accomplished because the Department was determined that all steps to keep staff safe overseas, both in the office and at home, be taken. Improving the security of homes was often easier than improving the security of the embassy since the locations of many embassies had been selected decades before for their convenience for people coming to the embassy. The embassy in Antananarivo, or Tana for short, for example, was on a one-way street without any setback between traffic and the building. The only significant improvements that could be made to the embassy required that a new one be built somewhere at the edge of town. As a result, a lot of money was spent to install safe rooms in the residences.

However, the solid door leading to the bathroom from the hall was so warped that the deadbolt wouldn't lock. In fact, the lock on the knob barely latched, risking the privacy as well as the security of anyone inside. All the locks for the bathroom were inside the bathroom, so I really didn't have a saferoom at all. But I never felt the need for one in Madagascar. The real risks in Tana were traffic accidents and fires, not robberies or terrorists.

It was late when I got home from the pizza dinner. I was already in bed when the phone rang. The phone was in an alcove at the end of the dining room, outside the safe room. It wasn't really all that far from the bedroom, but by the time I got to the phone, there was no one at the other end. I went back to bed.

And then I tried to figure out just who would have called me so late at night. My first guess was that it was from the embassy, but instead of calling the operator to find out if the call had been placed through him, I concluded that if it was really important, they would call me back. Any other scenario I could think of presented the same alternative: if it was really important, the caller would try again.

So I went to sleep. The phone didn't ring again. And in the morning, Kathy brought me to work, as usual.

Within a few minutes of sitting down at my desk, Stephanie, the first-tour consular officer and general services officer (posts in Africa have the highest proportion of first-tour officers as the only one filling a specific type of position or even two positions of all regions), burst into my office and asked where I had been the night before. She said they had been trying to reach me all evening because Ben, the regional security officer, lost his leg in an accident on his way home from work. The word lost seemed strange so I asked her if she meant that Ben broke his leg. She replied, still with a bit of a frantic tone in her voice, that his leg had been cut off completely, not just broken.

by  Sam T (samm4mrox) 

Ben had been a motorcycle policeman before he joined the Foreign Service. He rode a motorcycle to and from work each day. Having a motorcycle shipped as a personally owned vehicle or POV was allowable, but the Department advised against it since relying on a motorcycle as the only means of transportation was unwise. But Ben's wife was also in the Foreign Service, so she was also authorized a vehicle. Her vehicle was their family car. And Ben was a very accomplished motorcycle rider.

Tana is situated on many hills which makes the routes from one place to another much longer than as the crow flies with some routes serving as the sole path between multiple sets of destinations. Traffic is always heavy on the most frequently used routes, especially at the beginning and end of the work day. In addition, I never saw a working traffic light in the city. Drivers squeezed their vehicles into whatever gaps in the traffic they could find, regardless of how much traffic going other directions may be interrupted. Ben was able to squeeze his motorcycle into many tight spaces, but to the driver who cut him off as he made a right turn in front of him, Ben was invisible. The driver cut him off, and his car then literally cut off Ben's leg. 

Ben had the presence of mind at that point to do two things, one of which saved his life and the other nearly saved his leg. The first thing he did was stop a minibus and tell the driver to take him to the house of the U.S. deputy chief of mission. The second thing was to grab his leg as he got onto the bus.

Since I wasn't present during any of the events that followed, I don't know all the details, but I am convinced that someone's guardian angel was present for Ben that night. The coincidence of events that preceded the accident had a profound effect on what happened that night.

First, the regional medical officer (RMO) from South Africa had arrived for a visit two days before. On the day of Ben's accident, the RMO and Sandra, the foreign service nurse practitioner, had visited several clinics and hospitals in Tana and had agreed on which of them the embassy should rely on in an emergency.

Second, the RMO was still in town, staying in a hotel downtown.

Third, the duty officer that week, Gary, and Sandra were at home that evening. Their houses were in the same neighborhood as all the rest of the homes of embassy staff including thr DCM's residence. Only the ambassador's home was in another part of town.

Ben knew that if he was taken to a hospital, we would never find him. But if he could get to the DCM's house, he would be close to Sandra who could give him emergency care. In addition, Gary, the duty officer, had completed a CERT (Community Emergency Response Training) course and had an additional medical kit at his home, making him about the best first responder beyond Sandra that the embassy had. And Ben knew that even if the DCM wasn't at home, there would be staff at the house who could contact others.

When the minibus arrived at the DCM's house, Zack, the DCM, contacted Gary and Sandra and they drove in a caravan to the hospital. They contacted Stephanie to begin the arrangements to get approval for the crew of a medevac plane to arrive and for clearance to get Ben and the RMO onto the tarmac for a flight out. The junior economic officer went to the hotel to get the RMO and then to one of the largest restaurants to see about getting ice to pack around Ben's leg. The RMO met Sandra and the others at the hospital they had agreed on as the preferred hospital where Ben underwent surgery to stop the blood loss and save the remainder of his leg. It was already too late to consider reattaching Ben's leg. 

While in the hospital, Ben remembered to tell Zack that his gun flew out of his holster during the accident. Sandra drove back to the site of the accident and searched in the dark until she found the weapon.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, the medevac plane arrived and took Ben and the RMO back to South Africa for further surgerey. From there, Ben was flown back to the U.S. to be fit for a prosthetic leg and rehabilitation.

by  sarah0s 

When things had settled down enough for us to think clearly, we considered options for filing a worker's compensation claim. My experience with both the death of the local guard in Sanaa and subsequent experience with the Department of Labor's attitude towards claims only being relevant if they occurred during the performance of duties led me to be pessimistic about the likelihood of the claim being accepted since Ben was on his way home from the office at the end of the work day when it happened. But Zack had more courage and pointed to that gun as evidence that the RSO was always on duty. He signed the claim form to state the accident occurred while Ben was performing his assigned responsibilities, the claim went in, and it was approved. Ben received compensation for the loss of one limb as well as coverage of all the costs for his prosthetic leg and rehabilitation associated with the accident.

My guardian angel had kept me out of the whirlwind that night. Maybe my guardian angel was on duty for Ben as well.

Day 336 - Ant Show

Cover of Tarika Soul Makassar CD

For my birthday, Sandra, Paul, and Kathy took me out to dinner at one of the the most interesting places in Antananarivo, or anywhere else in my experience. There was a restaurant in the middle of it, but it was much more than a restaurant. There was a performance after the meal, but it was much more than a performance venue. It was Ant Show, a cultural center that was the dream of a Malagasy musician whose passion is to share her culture with the world.

It is called Ant Show in part because it is in Antananarivo. But it is also Ant Show because the founder's name sounds a lot like Ant when it is spoke. Her name is Hanitra Rasoanaivo. (All family names in Madagascar begin with either "A" or "R" and are many syllables long.) The "H" that begins her name is silent and the "r" that follows the "t" changes the consonant sound into the "ch" sound of English. And the "a" at the end is nearly silent. That results in "Anch" with just a bit of air following the "ch" sound.

Hanitra and her sister Noro are the front members of the musical group Tarika, which was named by TIME magazine in 2001 on a list of the 10 best bands on planet Earth, although you probably haven't heard of them. Here's an opportunity to listen to a track from their album Soul Makassar, released in 2001. The album was a special project for Hanitra as she travelled to Sulawesi in Indonesia looking for ancestral origins. The video linked above also includes many of the traditional instruments that Hanitra hopes to preserve.  The deforestation of the island threatens the materials to make the traditional instruments as well as the wildlife.

Madagascar valiha

There are stringed instruments and percussion instruments made from wood. My favorite stringed instrument is the valiha, a cylinder of bamboo wood with holes at the back, much like you would find on a wind instrument. Strings are stretched from top to bottom of the cylinder all the way around the instrument. The strings are tuned by positioning movable frets, much like a series of violin bridges, to produce the specific note desired. The bottom of the instrument is held against the body in both hands with the fingers strumming the strings for the melody. The valiha is very similar to instruments from Indonesia and the Philippines, more evidence of the ties between Asia and Madagascar. Watch Hanitra and her sister dance on the video linked above and you'll see more similarities to Indonesia.

Two percussion instruments also made from cylinders of bamboo are rain sticks and kaimba. The interior of the cylinder of a rain stick has "stairs" that catch the dried seeds that flow down through the obstacles of the stairs when the stick is upended, making a sound very much like rain. The other percussion cylinder, a kaimba, is usually smaller and has nothing inside to impede the movement of the dried seeds inside as the musicians shake the stick. One of the performers the evening we were at Ant Show included this percussion instrument with his music, but he didn't have a wooden instrument. His was a modified Bayer aerosol insecticide can that did the trick, although I missed seeing the delicate carvings around the cylinder. Mine have lemurs, of course.

A rain stick (the larger of the two)
and a kaiamba

There are also scenes in the video of the preparation of a typical Malagasy meal made from peanuts and other grains which are wrapped in leaves and then cooked. Every day I saw people carrying these oversized loaves above their heads through the streets and wondered what was in them. I finally found out at my birthday meal.

The group started out as Tarika Sammy in the 1980s but by 1993 when the members had relocated to London, Sammy split from the rest of the group and the reformed group debuted as simply Tarika, the Malagasy word for group. Tarika has since returned to Madagascar.  Tarika Sammy has regrouped - or at least Sammy Andriamalalaharijaona is back in the music business - and has been contributing to the education of the children at Avany Avoko having most recently added instruction in traditional musical instruments, including the valiha and a small traditional guitar, the kabosy.

The highlight of my birthday was when Hanitra learned it was my birthday that evening and sang a song a cappella just for me. I have no idea what the song meant, but it was thrilling to listen to.

Ant Show also offered classes in traditional Malagasy music and dance, in yoga and meditation, and had rooms for rent. I am not certain if Ant Show survived, however, as I cannot find any information about it online.

Since Paul was the assistant public affairs officer at the embassy and had responsibility for cultural programs, including educational and cultural exchanges between the U.S. and Madagascar, it was easy to understand that Paul's calling in Madagascar was Ant Show. 

Day 333 - Centre Fihavanana, Antananarivo

by  Maxfear ® 

There was another Sandra in Antananarivo, the foreign service nurse practitioner at the embassy. And the call for Sandra was Centre Fihavanana, an enterprise run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Antananarivo. The Centre has operated since 1985, providing a safe place for abandoned or abused women. The sisters set up homes in groups of three so that the women would all have two close neighbors they could turn to for help. In exchange for having homes to live in, the women embroider tablecloths, runners, napkins, aprons, and clothing items, especially T-shirts on which they embroider images of the many different types of lemurs. They also made cards combining handmade paper and cross-stitched or embroidered fabric. The women earned the profits, part of which went towards paying for their houses, important for their self-sufficiency and independence so they would not fall back into patterns that led to their being abused or abandoned or to begging, the only means of support most had before becoming part of the Centre's programs.

The Centre also provided health care for the children and training for mothers on how to care for their infants. Sandra volunteered with the Centre each Friday as part of that program.  She weighed all the infants to ensure they were gaining weight consistently. If a child failed to gain weight, Sandra provided the child's mother with instructions for what to feed the child and the Centre sent food home for the mothers as well as they also needed to be well nourished. Children in Madagascar did not look like most children in the west. They had no baby fat, no chubby cheeks. Toddlers in Madagascar looked like miniature, almost anorexic, adults. While I was never able to go with Sandra to the Centre, I imagine her spending much more time than necessary to weigh each child so that she could hold and cuddle them, provoking a smile and laughter to match her own infectious smiles.

Cards made by women
of the Centre Fihavanana

The Centre also provides schooling for street children between the ages of 3 and 12. Some of the children do well enough in the school to be accepted into the state secondary schools. A number of western tourist organizations have teamed up with the Centre, organizing trips for tourists to see for themselves how a very small donation can have an enormous impact. Hilary Bradt, a travel guide writer from the U.K., has included information about the Centre in her guidebook on Madagascar for the past ten years, and she brings groups to the Centre each year.

The year I was in Madagascar, I sent Christmas cards that were made by the women at the Centre. The cards had a cross-stitched design with Best Wishes stamped under the embroidered square. Sandra told me she had ordered Hanukah cards from the women for another friend and the women did beautiful cards with a menorah on each, but they then added the words Merry Christmas under it. The couple who ordered the cards were amused by the incongruity, but gladly collected and sent out the cards. 

I also bought a few cards with two beautiful white doves holding intertwined gold rings in their beaks embroidered on fine linen as well as cards with a cross-stitched pelican holding a baby by two corners of a blanket wrapped around him. I had a hard time parting with them, but I realized I could share the impact of them with others by using the cards to congratulate couples at weddings and the birth of a child.

It was not at all a surprise that Sandra had found the Centre and spent several hours each week with the women, children, and Sisters. Before she joined the State Department, she had volunteered for extended periods in Moldova where she collected watercolor paintings and sold them in the U.S. to raise funds for orphanages in Moldova. She also spent time in Rwanda after the genocide of 1994 that pitted the Hutus and Tutsis against one another. Sandra was able to return to Rwanda when her tour in Madagascar ended, this time with the embassy.

Centre Fihavanana was not my calling. It was the calling of the other Sandra. And I felt blessed to have gotten to know her.

Day 332 - Akany Avoko

My reasons for bidding on a job that would take me to Africa were quite selfish, but once I was assigned, I began to feel called to go there. Once I arrived in Madagascar, I was determined to keep my eyes, ears, and heart open in case the reason for the call was there. Instead, I found what others were called to do in Madagascar. Kathy's call was Akany Avoko.

Kathy and Gary

Kathy was one of two family members who shared responsibilities of the community liaison officer position. She and her husband Gary, the assistant regional security officer, lived next door. For much of the time I was in Madagascar, Gary was on temporary duty in Liberia where a second civil war had been tearing the country apart since 1999. In July 2003, two months before I arrived in Madagascar, the U.S. sent in troops to Monrovia near the embassy which had been under attack earlier. The result was a big gift for me as I had Kathy as my personal guide.

Kathy had learned of Akany Avoko, a children's home and school just outside of Antananarivo, and she was drawn to it immediately. Kathy included the school in many of the cultural activities she organized for the embassy. The managers of the home and the school were careful to ensure that it not be referred to as an orphanage. Some of the children were orphans, but many had been left with the home by families when the parents could not afford to keep them or had been removed from families when the children suffered from abuse. In addition, once a child reached a certain age, he or she could not be adopted. And if a child that age had younger siblings, those younger children also would not be adopted as they did not want to separate the siblings.

    

back of label of earrings made by
children at Akany Avoko Children's Home

    

earrings made by children at Akany
Avoko Children's School

The children who could no longer be adopted remained at the school until they were able to live on their own. In order to ensure they could support themselves and care for other family members when they left the home and school, they were given training in skills such as carpentry or sewing, embroidery, and other crafts. The home and school sold their work to raise funds to support it.

samples of raffia photo frame and placemats and decorative
handmade paper

Nearly all of the items the children produced relied on materials that they recycled. From soft drink and beer cans, the children would cut out designs, sometimes incorporating letters or other design elements from the cans into earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. The children were also taught to weave raffia, a native plant (the finest raffia in the world comes from Madagascar), and to create decorative paper from a variety of plants. These were items that Kathy arranged to have available for embassy staff to buy as Christmas gifts.

assistant public affairs officer Paul
at the embassy's Christmas party

As Christmas drew closer, Kathy, Paul, and I went to Akany Avoko for the school's Christmas program. It was held during the afternoon since electricity wasn't reliable at the school. In fact, when the program was about to begin, the electricity went out and the program had to be delayed until the power was restored or batteries could be found for the cassette tape player that provided the music for much of the program.

The school was managed by a Frenchman and his Malagasy wife. As the wife opened the program, she explained that the music and dance in the show was possible due to volunteers from a musical group in Antananarivo who offered classes in music, art, and dance for the children. She further explained that the addition of these cultural lessons to the curriculum of the school had made a tremendous difference for many of the children. Where there had been discipline challenges before music, art, and dance were part of the lessons, there were no discipline problems afterwards. Children who had previously been bored in traditional lessons found something that excited them in music and dance. And the program made that very clear.

If I had been able to spend more time in Madagascar, I would have enjoyed spending more time at Akany Avoko. But it was Kathy's call, not mine. 

Day 331 - Elephant Birds, Dwarf Hippos, and other Mysterious Creatures

elephant bird egg on the left by  edenpictures  A dinosaur that lived well into historic times, the elephant bird probably survived in Madagascar due to the lack of competition and lack of fear of humans. Since the birds survived until the 17th century, humans had plenty of time to discover how to hunt them, although it is likely they became extinct because of disease introduced with rats which arrived along with humans arrived. It didn't get its name because it was as big as an elephant or because it had a large bill but because it was believed it could snatch up and carry off a baby elephant. From the skeletons found on the island, the elephant birds reached ten feet in height and close to a thousand pounds in weight.  Like other large birds we know, such as ostriches and emus, the elephant bird was flightless.

a dwarf hippo
 by  Jen McKenzie

The eggs of an elephant bird held the equivalent volume to 180 chicken eggs. There have been claims that a complete elephant bird egg has been recovered from the sea as far away as Australia. In April of 2013 a complete, partially fossilized elephant bird egg was sold at auction at Christie's in London for more than $100,000. The elephant bird eggs for sale in the markets in Madagascar are reconstructed from pieces and go for much less, but since the birds are technically dinosaurs, I refrained from picking one up to tuck away in my suitcase.

There are reports that scientists may manipulate fragments of the DNA of the elephant bird, extracted from the eggshell, to resurrect it, a process called de-extinction.

a giraffe beetle
by  ledgr 

The oversized elephant bird is at one end of the size range of extinct animals. At the other end is the undersized dwarf hippo which also coexisted with humans for at least 1,000 years, perhaps longer. Dwarf hippos were not native to Madagascar. They probably migrated across the Mozambique channel from west Africa where another species of hippopotamus, the pygmy hippo, still exists, while the channel was shallow or while there were islands in the channel to help bridge the 225 miles that separate the island from the continent. But the dwarf hippo may have arrived in Madagascar as a normal-sized animal and grown smaller over time through insular dwarfism, a process of animals becoming smaller over successive generations when the area for foraging is small, such as on an island. The eyes of both the extinct dwarf hippo and the extant pygmy hippo of east Africa are on the sides of the animal's head instead of forward-facing on the top of the head as is the case for regular hippos.

In the 1990s, an anthropologist studying recent extinctions in Madagascar collected stories about an animal that had been seen in a west coast fishing village. Several villagers independently described the animal as recently as 1976 as resembling a hippopotamus that when frightened fled under water. No other animal in Madagascar fits that description, leading some to conclude that the dwarf hippo has only recently become extinct.

fossa
 by  csyork65 

tomato frog   by  David d'O

Madagascar has plenty of other unique wildlife including tiny frogs; insects including the long-necked giraffe beetles; geckos of all colors; chameleons; the lion-like fossa, the natural enemy of the lemur which is not in the cat family at all but rather is a relative of the monkey; and radiated tortoise. The inclusion of the fossa in the DreamWorks movie Madagascar was one touch that impressed me as it was entirely unnecessary for the story, but an accurate reference to Madagascar native animals. Since nearly all the large animals of Madagascar have all become extinct, and slash and burn agriculture has destroyed much of the natural habitat of the remaining animals, nearly all animal life in Madagascar needs protection.

Day 330 - Lemurs Galore

Ring-tailed lemurs at nature reserve east of Antananarivo

The animals that most people know come from Madagascar are lemurs. But until I arrived in Madagascar, the only lemur species I knew about was the ring-tailed lemur. They look like thin cousins of racoons, but with much longer tails. But there are so many more types of lemurs that are as different from one another as Chihuahuas are from Great Danes.

My first weekend, the assistant public affairs officer, Paul, and the community liaison officer, Kathy, offered to take me out of town to see some of the sights, including lemurs in a nearby nature reserve. We set off into the countryside where the hills were covered with terraced rice paddies. Even in Antananarivo there were rice paddies along the road between our houses and the embassy. Also in the fields were the local cattle, the zebu, which looked as much like buffalos as they did like cattle. The zebu are just one more connection between Madagascar and south Asia as the animals are native to that region. 

by  peach flavour 

Along the side of the road, we saw charcoal sellers, evidence of the forests being cut down for both this purpose and to make room for more rice paddies. What I hadn't expected, however, was that so much of Madagascar was covered by evergreen trees. I knew about the centuries old baobab trees that look like they are growing upside down with their roots in the sky  in the western areas of the island. Those trees once stood towering over dense tropical forests but now stand alone as the other vegetation in those forests have been cut down. The baobab is considered sacred, resulting it their being spared. An area between Morondava and Belon'i Tsiribihina in western Madagascar is the home of the Avenue or Alley of the Baobabs and is the center of local conservation efforts. In 2007, the Ministry of Environment, Water and Forests granted it temporary protected status, the first step towards it becoming Madagascar's first natural monument. Ecotourism is an important aspect of Madagascar's economy and visitors to the island frequently make their way to the Alley of the Baobabs. As I was not there for tourism, I missed seeing these magnificent plants.

black-and-white ruff lemur But the highlight of this first trip into the countryside, and every other trip thereafter, was the appearance of the lemurs. Lemurs are not to be confused with monkeys. Lemurs are prosimian primates, a line that did not evolve from the same common ancestor as monkeys, apes, and humans but rather evolved at the same time developing similar morphological characteristics. Lemurs have opposable thumbs, for example, but they do not have prehensile tails. They use their long tails for balance, but they cannot hang from them as monkeys can.

brown lemur

We arrived at a small nature reserve that Paul had visited before and were disappointed to find it closed. But there wasn't anything or anyone to keep us out, so we hopped over the bamboo fence that did little more than mark the outline of the park and headed down the paths that were lined by bamboo trees, many with platforms high above where the lemurs rested. There were no ring-tailed lemurs in this reserve. Instead, there were brown lemurs which look like pudgy cats with short ears and long tails, and black-and-white ruff lemurs which resemble monkeys dressed in tuxedos, and sifakas or dancing lemurs which do not walk or run but rather leap into the air and move sideways while throwing their arms in the air. Paul had just begun to describe the sifakas' unusual motions when a line of them headed towards us from the other direction. They probably were expecting to be fed, although there were bunches of bananas on all the platforms, making them easy pickings for hungry lemurs.  I chose to believe they were either curious or had danced our way in welcome. Here's a link to a video that shows first a black-and-white ruff lemur coming down from a tree as we approached in our canoe and then a sifaka will appear almost like a ghost dancing through the middle of the screen. An assortment of brown lemurs join them.

sifaka lemur, resting

Those three lemur types, the brown, black-and-white ruff, and sifaka lemurs, along with thr ring-tailed lemurs were what I saw most of during my stay. But there nearly a hundred different lemur types and new varieties are still being discovered. Hunting endangered species of lemurs for food and keeping lemurs as pets are both illegal in Madagascar, although both activities continue. An Italian couple I met in Antananarivo had a mouse lemur, a nocturnal variety, as a pet. The name was most appropriate as this lemur was no bigger than a mouse.  In addition, there are monkey lemurs, hair-eared dwarf lemurs, dwarf lemurs, giant mouse lemurs, fork-marked lemurs, aye-ayes, woolly lemurs, true lemurs, bamboo lemurs, greater bamboo lemurs, red ruffed lemurs, sportive lemurs, koala lemurs, and sloth lemurs. Many live in remote areas and only come out at night. A stay of many years would be necessary to be able to see them all.

Indri by  Daniel Rubio :)  Today, the largest lemur is the indri which is about the size of a baboon although a variety as large as an ape once roamed the island. The indri does not have a prominent tail like other lemurs, and they are monogamous, living in family groups of the mated pair and their developing offspring. An adult indri will not take a new mate until after the death of his or her partner. They live and sleep in trees, only coming out of the trees early in the morning which is also when they can be heard singing their distinctive songs. There are many myths about the origin of the indri which most Malagasy consider sacred, perhaps because of all the lemurs, the indri seems the most like humans. The indri is a protected species as the slash and burn agricultural methods have reduced their habitat, even in protected reserves. While Alex was in Madagascar, we spent Christmas in an area where colonies or indri were known to frequent, but we did not get there early enough to see them. We did hear them and I will never forget the sound. Here is a link for you to check out why.

Day 329 - Arrival in Madagascar

by  torbakhopper  Madagascar is the furthest-away place I have ever been for more than a visit. Iran, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen are all further east, but Madagascar is much further south. The initial flight from Washington to Paris was the usual 6 to 7 hours, but the flight from Paris to Antananario was twice as long - 12 hours. My flight arrived at night so I didn't see much of the red island until the next day on the way to the office. And once I saw Madagascar, I wasn't sure I was really in Africa, a sentiment many Malagasies share. Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar and previously known as the Malagasy Republic, is the world's fourth largest island. While it sits just off the eastern coast of Africa, the land mass has more in common with the Indian sub-continent than with Africa. And the people of Madagascar have more in common with the people of Indonesia than with the people of Mozambique, its neighbor to the west.

The Madagascar land mass split from India about 88 million years ago, resulting in an isolated environment for the native plants and animals to develop into the unique breeds that exist there now. Over 90 percent of Madagascar's wildlife is not found anywhere else in the world. However, much of the biodiversity is threatened by encroachment by humans. Because so much of the island has been denuded of trees in order to be turned into charcoal for cooking, the rains run off the island, bringing its red soil into the sea, making the island appear to be bleeding. 

Like India, Madagascar has streaks of semi-precious stones underground. Garnets, amethysts, sapphires, topaz, tourmalines, citrines, aquamarines, moonstones, opals: all can be found in Madagascar. The markets are full of stalls offering these stones, rainbows of color arrayed for all to see and for the lucky ones to buy.

by  glowingz  The island was uninhabited by humans until just over 2,000 years ago when people from Borneo traveled in outrigger canoes along the coast of Indochina, the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian peninsula and finally along the east coast of Africa until they reached Madagascar. While most people in the cities wear western styles now, the traditional clothing worn by the people of Madagascar looks like the sarongs I saw worn in Thailand and Indonesia. The traditional religion involves ancestry worship. As is the case among traditional Chinese, several years after the burial of family members, the bones are removed from their burial places and are kept with the family during a period of celebration, then re-wrapped, and buried again. Where people live in houses made of wood and other impermanent materials, the bones of their ancestors rest in stone, brick, and even marble mausoleums since life is considered temporary and death, forever.

by  Praziquantel 

During the golden age of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries, pirates took refugee in the coves on Madagascar. The island wasn't unified until France absorbed the island into the French colonial empire. The island gained its independence from France in 1960. When I arrived, the last elected president, Marc Ravalomanana, had just come to power. The world, especially the west and the United States government, had great expectations of him.

That was the stage onto which I landed.

Day 328 - Christmas Around the World, Part II

I wondered if my first Christmas in Germany was going to my loneliest because I had only arrived a few months before, I didn't have my Christmas things around me, and it seemed as though everyone else had somewhere to go for Christmas. Since no one invited me to join them, I decided I should invite a few to join me. But I didn't really want to learn that everyone else had plans to confirm that I was left out. So I came up with a back-up plan. I called a friend from my German class, Janice, who was in Bonn, and asked her if I could spend Christmas with her if it turned out that those I invited had plans already. She agreed, so I issued invitations. It turned out that several people agreed to come to my house for an early dinner on Christmas Day even though they had other plans for later, so I didn't travel to Bonn until New Year's Eve.

The loneliest Christmas I ever spent overseas turned out to be our first year in paradise, Barbados. I had arrived in Barbados right after Thanksgiving, and Alex and his son arrived the week before Christmas. Because Barbados did not have leased housing, we were stuck in a hotel room until I could find a house to rent. That is where we were for Christmas.

No one invited us to spend Christmas with them. I think it was because landing in Barbados is such a shock to most Americans that the tendency is to withdraw. The people I worked with had either just arrived (and were in shock) or were close to leaving (and were busy getting ready to leave). I suppose there were some who knew Alex and his son would be arriving and they thought we would like some alone time.

But on Christmas?

by  smcgee 

We joined the other guests at the hotel, all of them tourists, for a festive Christmas buffet on Christmas Eve. That, and the fact that the TV reported that President Nicolai Ceaucescu and his wife Elena of Romania were shot by firing squad that morning, is all I remember from that Christmas.

Our second Christmas was much better. One of the secretaries, Brenda*, invited Alex and me along with her boss and his family to her house for Christmas Day. She had picked up a large piece of driftwood from the beach in front of her house, painted it white, stuck it in a bucket and hung her ornaments on it as a Caribbean Christmas tree. The only black mark on the day was when Brenda's boss' wife said something about the embassy needing some good admin people. I felt compelled to counter that the embassy needed some more good admin people. Conversation died at that point for a few minutes.

Christmas in Moldova rivaled Christmas in Iran for discomfort as our Codru Hotel apartment in Chisinau was on the city's, not something so small as a building's, central heating plant. Most office and apartment buildings relied on steam heat which was never turned on before October 1 and was turned off in March. The year we moved to Moldova, however, the entire steam delivery system had to be repaired, delaying the start of the plant by a month or more. Again, the laws of physics didn't seem to apply as the heat never rose to our level. We used to go to work on the weekend to keep warm. In the evening, I went to bed very early so I could warm up under the covers.

Christmas tree in our Hotel Codru
apartment

Our second Christmas in Moldova, we were living again at the Hotel Codru, but by this time we had filled the apartment with furniture which helped warm it up. And we also invited lots of people over all the time. Body heat, as well as conversation, added a lot to our comfort.

That year, we also celebrated with the local employees. It turned out not to be such a good idea, but we Americans all brought in many wrapped gifts for a New England gift exchange - the kind where everyone has a number and when your number is drawn from the hat, you pick out a present from the pile unless someone has already opened a present you would like instead, in which case you can take that one and the person who had it gets to pick again. It probably has a few other names, too. It wasn't such a good idea because the local employees had a hard time understanding why anyone would want to take away a gift from them. It was fun for the Americans, but mystifying or even cruel in the eyes of the local employees.

While I was in Yemen, I got away twice to spend time with Alex. The first time was after the travel conference I attended in Budapest, and the second was at Christmas when I joined him in England where we stayed with his mom. Alex's son was still living in England at that time, so it was a great opportunity to spend the holiday with Alex's family - Mom, son Simon, brother Wayne, sister-in-law June, their son Steven and his wife Shelly.

Alex at the embassy Christmas party

Alex and I were able to spend Christmas together while I was in Africa as well. I was in Madagascar, the first of my three African countries. Alex flew in just before Christmas, in time for the embassy part at the ambassador's residence. After that party, Alex and I drove with Gary and Kathy, my next door neighbors, to a nature reserve where we had separate cabins, spent the days wandering the reserve to watch and interact with the lemurs, and explore the other unique plants and animals on the island, the fourth largest in the world.

*a name, not necessarily the right one

Warming Up - Exercise 14

Out Of Africa

Africa is a continent of stories.  This is a taste of just a few of them.

Karen Blixen’s autobiography, Out of Africa, opens with the line, I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. Blixen’s story is of her life in Kenya from 1914 until 1931, during which she and her husband operated a coffee plantation until they divorced in 1921.  Blixen returned to Denmark in 1931 and wrote her autobiography which was made into a movie with the same name in 1985.

Whether you consider her attitude towards the Africans as compassionate, patrician, or bordering on patronizing, she was a compelling story teller who conveyed her love of Africa through her stories.

My next tale of Africa is a story about Jewel McKee, a friend I met in Africa. Jewel’s story might begin, “I once had a mountain in Africa.”  After trekking in the Himalayas five times, in the Alps several times, and in mountains around the America, it was no surprise to me that Jewel took her last few days in Africa in 2004 to climb Mt. Kenya before she transferred back to the U.S. from Eritrea.

Jewel identifies three significant rewards from trekking.

• Number One - The challenge of overcoming a sense of limitations, a trait that spills over into other aspects of life—like learning Chinese.
• Number Two - The enrichment of observing different cultures. She takes a sketchbook with her and draws the villagers, porters and other hikers. 
• Number Three - The chance to help. During her treks, she met mountain people who live in poverty and can’t even send their children to school. When she retires, she would like to get involved with a group like Habitat for Humanity or UNESCO to help preserve mountain villages and improve the lives of the people. 

I characterize Jewel’s attitude as the epitome of passion.

My third tale is from Sandra Bagley, another friend I met in Africa. If Sandra Bagley were to write her African story, it might begin with the line, “I once had a clinic in Africa.”  In 2002, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Antananarivo began a supplemental nutrition program for single mothers whose infants were below normal weight. The program gives food to the nursing mothers to maximize the opportunity for their children to thrive. In order to insure that the women get maximum benefit from the food being provided, in 2003 Dr. Bagley began a medical clinic that evaluates and treats the mothers and children for underlying medical conditions, such as failure to thrive, parasites, worms, malaria and pneumonia. While food for the program is provided by U.S. Government grants, the medical equipment used were Dr. Bagley’s personal items.  As she readied for her transfer to Ruwanda, she applied for and received funds from the J. Kirby Simon Trust to purchase medical equipment to leave behind for the clinic.

I consider Sandra Bagley’s African adventures to illustrate her attitude of compassion.

As for my African story, it would begin with “I once had a soccer team in Africa.”

It’s not that I owned a soccer team, or even that I managed a soccer team.  They managed me.  And I certainly wasn’t their coach.  There must be a word that accurately portrays my relationship with the team.

Opportunity in this case came in the shape of a group of 8 Eritrean boys who looked like they were about 6 years old, but turned out to be between 11 and 14.  They were looking for donations to buy uniforms.  They were somewhat convincing – or I was somewhat charmed by them – so I gave them a small amount – enough to buy shorts and shirts for three of them.  In addition to the 300 nakfa (local currency), they left with my telephone number written in ink on the palm of the tallest of them and a promise that they could be trusted to buy uniforms – not candy bars or whatever else was tempting to Eritrean pre-teens – with my donation.  I really expected to see nothing more of them.

The next Saturday, they called and arranged to meet me the next day to show me that they had used my donation to buy uniforms.  Instead of the 8 boys I met the week before, there were 14 on Sunday morning.  And from that day until my departure from Eritrea in June, I spent each Sunday morning watching them play soccer.  Afterwards, they came to my house to have sandwiches, popcorn, chips, and soft drinks and we would often watch a movie.

In addition to all the other wonderful people I met in Africa, including Sandra Bagley and Jewel McKee, my soccer team remains the centerpiece of my exceptional African adventure.