13 April... I recently got back from a wonderful two-week trip to South Africa. Excellent to see all my family and friends, and to consume too many cappuccinos to prepare for a “cappuccino-less” Madagascar. I watched plenty of rugby, drank a fair amount of red wine and stocked up on essentials like light bulbs and non-Chinese hardware. Here comes a diary-style posting. Enjoy!
14 April... Two days back at home and I’ve discovered that my fridge defrosts itself at more or less the same time every afternoon – around when people start coming home from work. Every day, like a tired old smoker it splutters, chokes, shudders and slips into a self-induced coma. Listening intently I wonder, “Will she wake up, oh, will she ever wake up again?” And then I find it gently purring to itself in the morning, as if the most natural thing in the world. Except that my milk develops a dangerous life of its own and I can’t keep anything in the freezer. This morning at around 4am I also woke up to the strangely-comforting sound of rushing water. It turns out my geyser had sprung a leak. A year ago I would have got upset. I’ve now learnt to shrug, turn off the mains and go back to sleep. Tomorrow’s another day. It’s things like this that keeps life interesting and beautiful in its simplicity!
15 April... I don’t know why, but I was feeling particularly chipper today – bizarrely so. My lack of sleep from my geyser incident wasn’t helping and I had had way too much coffee for the time of morning. So, anyway, standing at the front of my Grade 7 class, clutching my fluffy whiteboard duster, I was suddenly inspired by my old Granny Ruth whose vocabulary hadn’t moved with the times, and exclaimed, “I’m feeling decidedly gay today”. For kids who struggle with the English language they sure seemed to understand that! At least I helped them to go forth into their day feeling a bit gayer too. (Webster’s Dictionary: Gay - keenly alive and exuberant ; having or inducing high spirits).
16 April... Another little bizarre event in this country that thrives on the unusual... When I got home after dark on my trusty bicycle (after spending some time shooting Kim at Call of Duty) I found two men, one who introduced himself as a Colonel in the Gendarmes and working for inland security, waiting for me. He said he was looking for three South African men who had smuggled weapons and ammunition into the country last month, and who had used my address as their contact. Strange thing number one – they had names like Dimitri Vasiliev and Yuri Alexandrov. Second thing – I don’t even know my address, so how some clandestine Russians posing as South Africans got hold of it is anyone’s guess... Just another of those strange little stories that make this country tick, but one that’s quite disturbing considering the talk on the streets of a possible counter-coup.
17 April... Ah, back at Tana City Church. I did the sound for both meetings. The Malagasy meeting’s worship rocked, and the English one was a bit more sedate, but Kim preached an excellent message. And I didn’t even need to give the evil eyes to any of the musicians for trying to play too loudly! As usual I had two of the little Canadian girls, and their newly-added four-year-old next door neighbour, pleading to be tickled and then to be thrown in the air. Or as they put it, “Mr Robin, please can you make us fly?” I try to wrestle with the Midgley boys (including 3-year old Evan) at least twice a week, shoot Kim at least once a week and play good South African music like Robbie Wessels, or Bok van Blerk through my classroom walls for Sue as often as possible. It keeps them honest.
18 April... I’ve borrowed a little scooter-like contraption from Craig, one of the guys in the church, for a week. It’s called a Gizmo Hero and is a bit like riding an underpowered lawnmower. It rattles, rings its bell at inopportune moments and struggles to make it up some of the many hills here in Tana. I expect I look really bizarre – this large white man on an excuse-for-a-bike weaving through the traffic. Oh, that the Beast would be resurrected soon! I can see that the country is straining more and more under this illegitimate government – often in the little things, like restaurants that can’t provide certain items, prices increasing, and more beggars on the streets. We heard recently that South Africa’s Jacob Zuma had brokered talks between Madagascar’s former president and its current leader, the DJ. I’m not sure whether we should be rejoicing or lamenting, judging by his track record... Time will tell. But this is where God has us. And it remains a beautiful country with beautiful people!
19 April... Air travel in Madagascar is unlike anything the first world normally experiences. There is often no checking of passports, or screening hand luggage. I just heard about a local pastor who got a great deal on live lobster while in Diego in the north of the island, and flew back with them in his hand luggage. No-one batted an eye! Flights are delayed by hours, days, or simply cancelled. In the smaller towns if a plane eventually arrives, everyone patiently lines up to see if the plane is going in the right direction and whether they can get on it. The other day in self-same Diego a plane arrived and everyone hurriedly loaded their luggage to fly back to Tana after waiting for days for a flight. But before they boarded they were told that there were more people needing to go to the Comores, so that’s where the plane was going – complete with the Tana-bound passengers’ luggage. “Don’t worry, they were assured”, your luggage will be back in a few days...
20 April... I just had a real South African-style braai! With two Canadian families and an American family. Bizarre? No, beautiful! Our school, along with teachers from the American school are busy training a group of about 15 local prospective teachers. I don’t know how much they are learning from me because they mostly just stare blankly at my weirdness, but I am in my element teaching about the importance of Phys Ed, as well as experiential education and team work. Tomorrow I need to inspire them with a Geography lesson. Speaking of Geography, I was quietly chuckling to myself the other day when teaching one of the grades about the importance of town planning. You need to see the layout of this town we call home to see the humour in it, because it’s all that many of them know. Tana is very hilly, which means that few roads are straight, and every possible valley and lowland has been taken up by rice paddies, which take precedence over less important things like, um, roads. Along with that, she has no traffic lights, only the main roads are tarred, there are few parks or formal sports grounds, and building inspectors don’t exist. The 1980s song Road to nowhere from Talking Heads came flooding back to me recently while I was driving intently to town along a beautiful, purposeful, straight, 80km/hour road only to find that a building had been plonked down right in the middle of it! How did one of the verses go? “We’re on a road to nowhere, come on inside. We’re on a road to nowhere, we’ll take that ride. I’m feelin’ okay this morning, and you know, we’re on the road to paradise, here we go, here we go.” So, I shrugged my shoulders, turned around and found another, much longer way. After all, when you’re on the road to paradise, you may as well try to enjoy the unforeseen detours life throws at you!
21 April... Stories about planned coup d’etats, bombs in town, squabbling, bickering, chest beating. Nero fiddling while Rome burns... While out and about on Gizmo today, I was once again struck by the hotchpotch modes of transport – Zebu (cattle) carts, scooters, Citroën 2CVs and Renault 4s from colonial times, big 4x4s and modern vehicles, taxi brousses, motorbikes, bicycles and the snail-like homemade push carts – all in varying states of disrepair and fighting for their piece of the road. A common site is government convoys racing through this traffic stew. They seldom have flashing lights and sirens, so just have a few gendarmes hanging out of the windows wildly gesticulating and blowing maniacally on their whistles. (There was a joke going around here just after the coup last year that the army had sided with the current president but that the gendarmes would side with Marc, the former president. The joke is that the army had guns, but the gendarmes had much more powerful weapons – their whistles!)
22 April... And that then is it for now. Coming up this weekend we have a 10-year celebration at the church, and so they’ve got me busily threading beads for decorations in this cottage industry. I still love my Nikon, but haven’t been out to take many pics recently. I attach a few from the last few months...
