Friday we had our last language classes! It was weird. At the end our teacher, Olga, told us that we were much cooler than the last group and she wished us lots of luck in life and with marriage and our future families. It was really cute. Then we had a few random talks with Roland concerning any last minute ISP details. That afternoon we hung around and went to some markets and then to the cyber café before heading over to Bolo, any ice cream place, because Roland had invited all of us to go. It was so good (but the sundaes were pretty expensive, but it didn’t matter because he was paying!).
Getting home was interesting. I had asked Monsieur Nicolas, our homestay coordinator, where the bus stop was so he took me over and waited with me for about 15 minutes until I finally got on one, and even then I was literally only half in, with the guy who holds the door standing behind me holding me in. After about 2 minutes we were pulled over by the police because not everyone was sitting. The policeman pulled the driver out of the bus and talked to him for about 10 minutes before the driver ran back and drove away really quickly. After about a minute someone else stopped us, and it turned out that it was M. Nicolas who came to get me off the bus and drive me home. That night we had couscous with cheese for dinner, that Joelle made, and it was so good!
On Saturday morning, at breakfast, my mom turned to me and said that the girls (meaning me and Joelle) were going to be cooking lunch and then Joelle told me that this time, she’d be helping me instead of the other way around, so I had to quickly think of something to make. I decided to make chicken parmesan with noodles and veggies. The two of us set off for town to buy things. We managed to find everything we needed between Score (a big supermarket) and another market and then headed home to start preparing things.
The first thing we did was make our own tomato sauce. Then we started preparing everything else. The meal turned out really good and everyone really liked it, so that was a success! That afternoon I hung around with some of my siblings and then showered before we headed to the pot d’adieu for all of the host families. We all went down to the center and hung out outside for a while and took pictures by the water. Then we went inside where there was a lot of food and a few different people talked. First Roland, then M. Nicolas, then a host dad on behalf of all of the families, and then Jimmy on behalf of all of the students. Afterwards we just hung around for a while before I went with all of my family down to the boardwalk. I walked around with my sisters before joining back up with the rest of the family for dinner. We went to a place where you sit down and point at the raw meat that you want, and then the person marinates the meat and grills it in front of you. It was really good. Then we took a taxi home (and set up a taxi for the next morning).
Sunday morning I got up early and had breakfast, then said goodbye to my parents (Miangaly was asleep so I couldn’t say goodbye which was sad) and went into town with Joelle and Fabien. We sat together on the boardwalk for a while and exchanged email addresses/facebook names before we said goodbye and they left. Then we got on our taxi-brousse special and took off. We all signed our names on a sheet that was also stamped and signed by a host dad who is a kernel and it is good we did. More on that later.
We drove for a while and then stopped about 250 km into the journey to eat lunch. We all went to the same restaurant, which in retrospect was a bad idea, because they got really confused about our orders and some of us were served really quickly (like my table) and others had to wait about an hour. We finally got back on the road and just continued driving straight because we had about 300 km left. About 40 km outside of Tana we were stopped by the gendarmes, which is normal, but normally they just look at the driver’s papers (or see that we are all vazaha and do nothing) and wave us on, but this time, after seeing the papers, the gendarme asked for our passports. Our driver tried to tell him that we were students and showed him a bunch of other papers, but he was insistent. Eventually the driver gave him the sheet with our names, and thankfully my name was first on the sheet, so the gendarme said my name and asked for my passport, which I had easily accessible, unlike most of the people in my car. He looked at my passport and saw that I had a good visa but then looked at my birthday and said (in French) “born in 1990? Zazakely!” (zazakely means little kid in Malagasy). Then he came around and shined his light in my window and then waved at me and blew me a kiss before waving us on.
When we got into Tana we got dropped off at the hotel and Rivo came to meet us with pizzas for dinner which was nice. We ate there and then went to bed because we were all so tired (but I took the best shower I have taken so far in Madagascar! The pressure was amazing and the temperature perfect).
This morning we came to the center to get our ISP stipend money and on the way made hotel arrangements for tonight. After having cake for someone’s birthday, we headed back to our hotel to move our stuff to the new hotel, then I went out for lunch with some people and then Cassie and I (the other girl going back to the villages) went to get our taxi-brousse tickets. At the station we randomly ran into Madame Bakoly, the homestay coordinator from Tsiroanomandidy so we talked to her for a little while and decided that we’ll call her tomorrow night when we are settled into our hotel there. Then we went to shoprite and got new sim cards that will work in the villages before buying some food to bring them and heading back to the center.
My new number is 033-81-694-05 (so if you want to call me it is 011-261-33-81-694-05)
No comments:
Post a Comment