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