"DJ to President: Change Rocks Madagascar"

That's the title of a news article found online by Barry (our academic assistant). Oy. (TGV was a DJ first, then mayor of Tana, and now president.) Good pun, Cannaberra Times journalist...

Also here's a local North Carolina news article on Erin, one of the students that got sent to Botswana:

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=6717427

Well. As your may have guessed, or heard, Ravalomanana has officially resigned. There's debate as to whether or not it was forced at gunpoint. Hopefully not, because then TGV's govt can be recognized as legitimate and we can stay. Brattleboro (SIT's campus) is making a decision tonight and as of now they're leaning towards continuing our program. As far as we can tell, now that Ravalomanana's gone, people are pretty satisfied here on the whole. For the time being. No more grève.

This means we'll be leaving Friday morning for our beautiful tour of the protected areas here, ending at Ranomafana (literally, "hot water") National Park - a rainforest, finally! Then we'll be in Fort Dauphin for a few days for ISP prep, leaving April 2nd for our ISP's. I'll be studying with Reef Doctor, an NGO based in Ifaty, a village about an hour outside of Tuléar. It's right by the Bay of Ranobe, which is bordered by a big ol' CORAL REEF. Love. Hopefully I'll be studying the ecology of the known green sea turtle nesting beaches, and maybe comparing whatever data I decide on collecting to non-nesting beaches or to previously found data from other beaches around Madagascar or other parts of the world. Maybe it can lead to directing the focus of conservation efforts on the beaches? Some of the villages in the area are known to collect the turtle eggs, while at other sites WWF has told them that if they touch the eggs they'll go to jail. Maybe a bit harsh, but I want to look at how effectively that's being followed too. I still have to hear from my advisor on that, I have no idea how feasible it is. We'll see. There's 3 other SIT students, Sara Jackie and Chelsea, that will also be doing their ISP's with Reef Doctor. Should be fun!

Later gators,
Karen

Update on politics in Madagascar!

So we almost got evacuated from the country... repeat of Cedar Rapids last summer?

This guy Andre "TGV" (like the fast train in Paris) apparently had a love child with the daughter of the current president, Marc Ravalomanana, who won't let them marry cause of religious differences or something. So TGV is pissed and trying to take over the government. His people have tried to take over ministries by just walking in and like sitting down at desks and starting to work... unsuccessfully, obviously. Their logic is hard to follow. Another questionable bit is that TGV is legally too young to even be president here. What is he even thinking. This is such a big hysterical failure. Except also scary cause people have died. Not a lot, but some, via political demonstrations that had to get calmed down I think. Don't worry, I'm staying far away from those.

Oh and also Ravalomanana is just a jerk who's getting rich off of all his Malagasy industries and buying expensive airplanes instead of, say, repaving their awful roads here or, you know, helping out the hunger/unemployment situation. Which is kind of an issue here, with Madagascar being in like the top 15 poorest countries in the world. So there's that reason to try and kick him out of office. I just think their might be a better means of going about it? Maybe? I'm no expert, but this completely illegit method is not seeming to have any kind of success.

It started out with protests, walk-ins at the ministries, some looting here and there... Now rumor has it that more than half the military has joined the opposition. Some of them definitely have, but it's really hard to separate fact from fiction here. Negotiations were supposed to happen and didn't, several times.

The Peace Corps program here is temporarily suspended and its volunteers are being pulled out and moved to South Africa. (Which is ironic since a lot of Malagasy really hate South Africans - I think it has to do with QMM, the ilmenite mining company in Fort Dauphin that employs a lot of Vazaha esp Sud-Afs, who are kind of inconsiderate and get in fights a lot at the bars and discothèques and try to steal women... who knows.) Anyway the Peace Corps is like a barometer for SIT, so it wasn't looking good for us for a while. We were all really nervous that we'd have to go home. It was a real possibility for a few days.

We were just given the news today that SIT has decided to continue our program - hooray!!! We're cautiously avoiding the dangerous areas, especially Antananarivo, the capital. We're in Tuléar for the afternoon, where there's been a couple lootings, but we're sleeping at this gorgeous place where our director Jim has a house, we're camping around it. It's right on a mangrove coast. I love it. Very safe, and isolated except for a couple neighbors including a guy whose building an alternative pirogue, a guy with a catamaran that I really want to sail on (but won't), and a Swiss guy and his Malagasy wife that own a restaurant/bar that we eat at and hang out at in the evening. Pretty good ambiance. Tonight is the big sheep slaughter party! Probably gonna sleep in a bit tomorrow morning...

Now the bad news - there's 2 students in our program, Erin and Matt, who are being forced to leave by their universities' stupid policies that are just obnoxiously cautious... The travel status was upgraded to a warning, and there's a BBC article with the words "civil war" in the headline (it is not a civil war.), so I guess since they're public universities (UNC-Chapel Hill and CU Boulder) funded by the government, they have to go. They might join a program in Botswana. We're all really upset that they have to leave. Maybe we'll organize some kidpnapping scheme and make them stay. What? Erin and Matt? Last I heard they were lost in the spiny forest, being raised by a pack of lemurs, who knows...

Gotta go meet up with the group again.

Safe and sound and happy to be staying,

Love Karen

PICTURES! and village stay.

ok guys i'm at a super white touristy hotel with free internet as long as i keep buying coffee so it's time for PHOTOS!!!

First off the rural village stay was crazy, we were divided up into groups of 2 SIT students per village, plus 2 Malagasy students in their first year at the Centre Ecologique de Libanona (CEL, whose campus we use for classes). Each group had different themes that they chose to study at the village - ours were health and religious beliefs. I'm obsessed with their traditional "jentilisy" religion here, they place so much importance on their ancestors and they build huge elaborate tombs for the families and the Antandroy people (the Androy region is where our village was) sacrifice the person's entire herd of zebu during the different stages of the funeral ceremonies and place the zebu horns on top of the tomb as a symbol of the person's wealth and hard work during their life.

I was in a little village called Ambory in the commune of Faux Cap (each commune is composed of several villages - all the students were in different villages within FC), in the very southern tip of the island. I stayed with Sara from Philadelphia, and we worked with Herman and Rodrigue from CEL. It was interesting. We expected none of the villagers to speak French, and we're all still completely useless speaking Malagasy, but it turned out the dad was a teacher so he spoke French, somewhat. Helpful. It was a struggle with the rest of the people, though. A lot of gesturing and having Malagasy words thrown at us, and nodding and smiling helplessly. Good times.

At the end of the week was the "fete villageoise" - we got dressed up in traditional Tandroy attire and makeup and danced all the way to the central village - 5 km - where all the 8 villages had a dance-off while they killed a zebu and shared it among the villages. I had a bite of boiled zebu blood. Most disgusting thing I've ever had in my life. It was greenish brown and kinda gritty and tasted like ... something awful.


left to right: Sara, Mami (her real name - also happens to be our host mom at the village), me, Flavienne, and the little girl is Priska - the adorable 5-year-old daughter. This is the traditional hairstyle and makeup that we wore to the village party/dance. The cloths are lambahoany's and every female in Madagascar has one I'm pretty sure. They have different designs, sometimes pictures of Madagascar or lemurs or baobabs or just pretty designs, with Malagasy proverbs at the bottom.

OTHER PICTURES!

The group at the CEL campus - the man standing in the middle is our program director. And yes, he always wears sweet outfits like that. Past those pine trees and down the hill is the ocean.



My homestay house in Fort Dauphin. If you turn around there's a gated "compound" area of little wooden shacks around it, where other family members live, aunts uncles cousins etc. Pretty sure we have the only running water and refrigerator.



People playing soccer on Ankoba beach, right by my house. Daily occurrence. I'm always tempted to go play with them. Haven't yet though. I'm so out of shape...

There were 4 more pictures but the internet crapped out before I could upload them. Another day!

Miss you all,
Love Karen