Wedding and The Zoo

9/9

Today was a good day! The morning went along as normal: French class (although we all had to do a short presentation – I did mine on the Malagasy private school system, after talking with my host family about it for a while on Wednesday night), Malagasy class, and then an all group lecture (which this time was a lecture for a little while, and then we split into groups to talk about all that we had learned/observed thus far in Madagascar). After lunch is when the schedule was different.

We were given the afternoon to go around and explore and possibly look into topics that interest us for our ISPs (Independent Study Project). I either am going to do mine on astrology in Madagascar, or on the scientific education that takes place here, I think. There was no one for me to talk to about the first topic on short notice, and I could have gone to the university, but I didn’t really want to go alone, and another girl invited me to go some other time with her and her host sister (who goes there) to walk around. Instead, my friend Michelle and I decided to go to an artisan market (she wants to do her ISP on handmade crafts, so this was perfect for her). We took a taxi there because we didn’t know how to get there, but it only cost 5000 ariary, about $2.50. This market was absolutely amazing and I plan on going back multiple times. We saw so many amazing, handmade things and I’m sure I’ll end up spending a ton of money there. Going home we were able to find the right taxi-be to take back, because a really nice woman who had a store there took us into the street and showed us exactly where to go and told us exactly which number taxi-be to take. In comparison, the taxi-be costs 300 ariary per person, or about 15 cents.

After that, Michelle came to my house so that we could practice Malagasy. It is such a strange language and things aren’t pronounced at all how you’d expect. We practiced by ourselves for a while until Cynthia, my 8-year-old host sister, got home and came in. Then we played a game wherein one of us would say a number (0-1000) in either French or Malagasy, and the other 2 had to give the number in the other language as fast as possible. Super helpful and pretty fun! To give you an example of the language, the numbers to ten in Malagasy are:

0: zero

1: ira

2: roa

3: telo

4: efatra (pronounced ee-fatch)

5: dimy

6: enina (pronounced ehn)

7: fato

8: valo

9: sivy

10: folo (pronounced fool)

Then we went meet 4 other girls from our program at a restaurant for dinner. We needed to take a taxi, because it isn’t safe to be outside here at night, so my host father went to get one for us. It was confusing though because the restaurant had changed names, so he ended up needing to talk to a waiter at the restaurant in order to know what to tell the taxi driver. He got us a really good price, because we stood out of view of the driver (had he seen us and known that the ride was for us, the price would have been a lot higher because we aren’t Malagasy). The dinner was pretty good, although expensive by Malagasy standards. I think I paid 25,000 ariary (about $12.50) for a decent dinner in a really nice restaurant and it was a good time so I didn’t mind. We stayed around talking for a while and then had our server find us taxis and get us good prices.

This weekend is going to be busy! Tomorrow I am going to a wedding with my host parents and Tania, my 13-year-old host sister, and then on Sunday my family is going to the zoo with my friend Hannah (and maybe her mom?).

I’ll try to put up more pictures soon, but at least now you can see who all the people are that I am spending my time in the classroom with. I’m hoping to get a good picture with my host family at the zoo so assuming that I do, I’ll post that so you can all see who I am living with.

To those at Carleton (and other schools), have a good fall term! Don’t kill yourselves!

9/11

Yesterday was the wedding! We got ready in the morning and left the house around 11:40 to drive to the church. When we got there, another wedding was just ending, so we saw everyone walking out of the church and driving away, and then we entered from the other side. The church was fairly large and nicely decorated. The ceremony was very similar to Christian marriages in the US. I didn’t notice many differences. The wedding party was fairly large and a bunch of different people read little bits of something (I don’t know whether it was prayers, or bible verses, or something they had written, because the entire ceremony took place in Malagasy.)

At the end of the ceremony everyone got in a huge line to congratulate the bride and groom and their parents, which involved giving cheek kisses to everyone (which was strange for me because it was the first time I had met any of them).

After that we got in the car and drove out a little ways into the country for the party. It was in a big reception hall that was nicely decorated, just how it is in the US. There was always music playing (a mixture of French music and popular American music, which was strange to hear at a wedding). There were 6 different courses to eat, and in between each course there was some dancing. I sat with my host parents and some members of my host father’s family, while Tania, my host sister, sat with some of her cousins. The food was pretty good, especially the 5^th dish, the main one. There was some sort of fried rice and what I thought was chicken, but was actually duck. The dessert was really good too. It was ice cream with “exotic” (not really) fruit. We all got a piece of cake to take home so we brought the cake home and ate it last night.

During the bride and groom’s first dance at the party everyone watched, but something that I found interesting was that the bride put her veil over both of them. After that dance, other couples joined them for another dance, and then a lot of people did a traditional Malagasy dance (which our program has been taught twice now in different situations: when the Hira Gasy group came to perform for us at the Relais du Rova and when the Malagasy storyteller came and was super picky about how we did the dance). The cake was gorgeous. It was 5 or 6 tiers and white with flowers and little silver balls (I’ve got a really good picture of the cake).

This morning I went to the market with my host mom and our night guard person to the market. (I don’t actually think he is a night guard, but I really have no idea. He basically just does whatever they tell him to, such as buying bread or snacks, or coming along with us to the market so that he could carry everything we bought). We bought a lot of meat (I think it is supposed to be for the whole week). Rather than buying it in a supermarket like in the US, you buy it from little stands on the road that have the meat just hanging. It is quite a sight to behold, and definitely not something that I could do. When she wanted a smaller piece of something, the butcher would take the meat, put it on a table, grab a huge (and I mean giant) knife and just start hacking away. Then we went to an actual supermarket to pick up a few things. There were policemen with guns stationed in different parts of the store (I have never seen so many huge guns out in the open as I have here, although I haven’t seen anyone actually take it out of its holster) just watching all of the customers. Then we came home. This afternoon we are going to the “parc zoologique” so we’ll see what that entails later! (I think that it is a small zoo and there is a lot of open space to run around? I’m not entirely sure though).

Update: So we went to the parc zoologique, which was basically just a zoo. The first thing we saw was a ton of various birds in really vibrant colors. Pretty cool. Then we kept walking through and eventually got to the exciting part: lemurs! I have no officially seen lemurs with my own eyes. And I get to see more on Wednesday! (And on Wednesday they won’t be in cages, just out in the open!)