Feels like luxury!

Fantastic! We’ve just been told that we can have our Saturday morning shift of shitpacking (jamming compost into plastic seedling bags) to recover from a late and debaucherous night of drinking and dancing at Gina’s (the local club). We were quite prepared to work on less than 2 hours sleep, no one complained, but Heather could see we were struggling and we have been working like oxen the last week.
We are working on building the cement blocks for another latrine, this time for a primary school that currently has no toilet. We alternate block-making shifts with teaching English at the Azafady classroom and the local high school, and shit-packing in preparation for two weeks of tree planting the week after next.
The last week here in Fort Dauphin has been pure luxury compared to Mahamdromata. Lanirano, our campground, has running water, toilets, showers, lights, a big dinning table and is across the road from an Epi-bar (essentially a hole-in-the-wall corner store with cold beer etc.). The landscape is dotted with palms, hibiscus and orchids and a fantastic mountain and rock face tower behind our tents. The campsite is busy with people working in the gardens and students who attend sustainable livelihood classes in the schoolhouse. We also have a flock of geese, numerous chickens and their chicks and a pack of dogs. Two of the camp dogs regularly accompany us to work, Gremlin – a very racist and grumpy guard dog who loves the Vahaza, and Tiny – a funny looking creature with a normal sized head and about 2 inches of leg.
Every morning we walk the 3.5 km to work along with children singing their way to school, men transporting two massive baskets on a stick over their shoulders with loads of bananas, fish or cassava and other workers heading into town. Really the work has become very monotonous and our banter has become increasingly desperate. I now know my fellow pioneers as intimately as a know some of my oldest friends. We entertain ourselves with innuendo day, opera day and rap day etc. The highlight of our town stay is food and beach! We have been treating ourselves to local restaurants and the SMAR (supermarket) has become a daily trip. We are all concerned about the return of rice and beans with our return to the bush next Friday. For me the best part of working in town is the beach. Each lunch hour we head down to Ancuba surf club and lie on some very dilapidated beach chairs or play in the perfect surf. If the mood strikes us we wander into the bar and order a crepe au chocolate or a cassis fanta. Luxury!
We estimate that we walk over 10 km a day, Fort Dauphin is actually a town of 40,000 and quite spread out. Although I speak of the amenities we are enjoying, most people here live a very basic life. Most houses are constructed of traveller’s palms and the majority of cooking is done with coal that is sold in little piles on the roadside. Most of the roads are deep sand and are littered with decades of plastic garbage. Garbage is a huge issue here. The beach I referred to before has been used as a dumpsite for so long that although the actual sand is now litter free the steep cliffs of the beach are practically made of garbage. Wind and surf erode more and more of it and I suspect it goes many metres deep. Another issue is that the beaches are used as defecation sites. Few people have toilettes and the result is that many of Fort Dauphin's beautiful beaches are unusable. Even Gina’s doesn’t have a toilet and Azafady staff jokes that building one should be our next project.
We are starting to feel more and more comfortable manoeuvring around the city though. Rich and I now regularly eat fried bananas and samosas from the market. And our basic Malagash is creating many happy smiles and greetings in return.
I feel I’ve been a bit remiss at including some of the other key people in my life here in Madagascar and Fort Dauphin. Heather is our group co-ordinater. She’s the one that fields our daily gamut of questions, rubs our back when we get sick and communicates between us the Azafady office and the construction site. She was a Pioneer last year and fell in love with more than one aspect of the country. She’s only 23 and I’m impressed how she’s mastered the balance of leader and friend. We’ve nick named her She-Ra for her stamina in the cement mixing pit and overall. We also have three guides that work as language and cultural translators, brute strength on the site, moral boosters and endless variations of the above. Lumba, Claude and Tinihy have become our close friends and we enjoy their constantly smiling faces, careful guidance and years of knowledge in bridging the gap between the Vahaza and the Malagasy culture. Frequent catch phrases are “you can do it” (I will have to repeat the exact tone when I get home), “elefa” (come on- use when you are sitting on your ass and others are working), “it’s against my culture” (often an excuse to not do something). Other group phrases are “you look lovely” (used particularity when you are covered in cement, or lamenting on the state of your body), “thought hug” (accompanied by fingers to the temples).
Tonight we are treating ourselves to a night of even more luxury. Catherine, Elsbeth, Rich and I are renting a bungalow in town to crawl back to after Gina’s. We did it last weekend and beds, hot shower, mirror and location were enough to tempt us one last time. The cost is about $9 each half what the taxi ride home would cost each of us. Well worth it.

I'm sorry but I can't cope with loading photos. It just takes waaay to long. Next blog will be a photo essay. xo