Inaguration of new lycée in Ikongo!

Have just returned from visiting a village in one of the most remote areas I've ever been to! Feedback has helped finance the building of new classrooms for the lycée there and we went for the inaguration ceremony.

We left Fianar at 6am on Sunday to begin the long and bumpy journey (Ikongo isn't that far from Fianar but there is no direct road so you even though it is south east of here you have to first drive north east through the mountains to then drive south along the rainforest corridor). We drove for about an hour and half on a tarmac road past Ranomafana where I had been the weekend before until we turned south and the rest of the 90km was on a very very bumpy dirt track. It took us around 4 hours to drive halfway along the dirt track to a village called Tolongoina where we stopped to have lunch. The area that we were driving through is a lower altitude than Fianar so the weather was absolutely sweltering! We realised during our lunch stopover though that the car's break fluid was leaking so we had to call for the local mechanic to fix it... we ended up waiting around in Tolongoina for 7 hours(!!) While we waited for our driver and the mechanic to travel by motorbike to neighbouring villages trying to find the parts we needed. We eventually got going again around half 7 int he evening and it took us another 3 and a half hours to get to Ikongo at 11 at night- the road was so so bad and after a very hot, sweaty and bumpy 17 hour journey there was just time for a quick shower and then sleep!

The next day was as boiling hot as the day before but we walked through the village to the lycée to check it out and see if there were any finishing touches that needed doing before the opening ceremony the next day. There were a few little jobs to be done and the plaque still needed to be put up so we spent the morning sorting everything. Apparently the Madagascan government had given 20 million ariary to pay for desks and materials for the school however much of the money has disappeared as it went through the mayor's office and the desks and materials that have been bought are of a really bad quality- just shows the corruption that is really common over here, and even though it is very obvious the perptrators are often not prosecuted but just end up resigning without having to pay the money back...

As I was waiting around at the lycée for the work to be finished a few of the boy students came up to me to practice their english and eventually I ended up in a classroom surrounded by about 50 students all listening to me speaking to one of the students who had a pretty good knowledge of english! I was quite shocked at how much the kids wanted to practice their english (so different to the majority of students in the UK learning a foreign language), I was also met with endless questions of 'how old are you' which after me saying I was 20 the next question was always 'are you married?' It's really common over here, especially in the villages, for girls to get married around 13/14 so its quite shocking/strange for people when I tell them that I'm not married, one boy even asked me if that meant I was a spinster...
Many of the kids who go to the lycée live in surrounding villages that have no road access, one of them told me that his family home is a 24 mile walk from the school meaning that he must stay in Ikongo. Children here pay for school and pay for teacher's salaries on top of that so only those who's parents can afford it can attend school, and even once they have finished it is still very difficult to go to university as it is expensive and they must move to a town (Fianar is the closest town with a university and then next is the capital) which involves living costs, so for many after finishing school they return to their villages to farm.

In the afternoon we went back to the lycée as a man from the military who lives in a village further on had donated 6 computers and 2 solar panels to the school and there was a thanking ceremony taking place- apparently though the man's wife is a politician and as their are elections coming up in May the gift of the computers was mainly for political reasons... There is some question as well as to whether the 2 solar panels will be able to support all 6 computers but hopefully it will! (The village only has electricity for a few hours in the evening as it is too expensive to run full time).

On tuesday it was the day of the inauguration and in true malagasy tradition the ceremony that was supposed to start at half 8 didn't start until half 11! The ceremony took place on the school's playing field and as me and Sam were walking up to the stand we were met by 2 students who shook our hands and gave us both a traditional malagasy hat to wear. The ceremony began with a number of speeches being made by all the important people including the mayor, the head teacher, the head of the district, head of education for the district and from Sam as the representative for Feedback Madagascar. All of the speeches were in Malagasy and they were all pretty long so the ceremony dragged a little for me! It was still really interesting to see the way in which the ceremony was carried out though. The kids from the school did a couple of dances for us which was really cool, I got a very nice standing ovation when the head of the district introduced me to everyone (no idea what he said though!), and the head of education for the district gave a small speech in english about the importance of education and how grateful the community was that Feedback Madagascar had helped with the construction of the school.
After the speech ceremony we walked to the lycée to cut the ribbon and officially open it!
It was then time for lunch for the 'important' people back at the hotel that we were staying at where I got to eat lunch sitting opposite the King of the region!

In the evening it was time for a party (the mayors way of making some money as he'd overspent on the lunch)! As we got there it was packed and looked as though the entire village had turned up! Everyone was dancing and seemed to be having a really good time, a table had been reserved for Feedback Madagascar at the end of the room so we had a great view of all the dancers. Everytime a slow song came on though a different village elder or 'important' person came up and asked me to dance ahaha. It was a really good night though and by the looks of it the mayor made his money back! (We didn't have to pay though as they said we'd already paid for a school which was a bonus!) Ending up heading back to our room around 2 to wake up a few hours later to start the long journey home... managed to do the entire journey in 9 hours which, compared to the 17 hours on the way there, wasn't too bad!

Am back in the office now today trying to get back to my work on the Treemad campaign although I'm still waiting for some documents to be sent to me from the office up north! Also just found out that it's International Women's Day tomorrow so all women get the day off! (Yay) looks like I'm gonna try and get down to the coast (a 7 hour bus journey) to make the most of my long weekend!