Manakara and Fianarantsoa cultural festival

Lately work has been pretty slow, I'm still working on the Treemad campaign however there is some information and documents that I need to complete my work that have not yet been given to me. This has, however, given me the opportunity to see some of the other aspects of the work that Feedback are doing. On Wednesday morning I accompanied my colleagues Sophie and Dadah to the Old Town in Fianarantsoa for the annual cultural festival.

The Old Town in Fianarantsoa is a UNESCO world heritage site due to the beautiful architecture of the buildings there and is on the World Monuments Fund watch list of the 100 most endangered sites due to many of the buildings needing repair work. Feedback Madagascar works in the Old Town with the local community to help restore the buildings there and to promote cultural tourism, helping to provide an income for those who live there.

The cultural festival that took place on Wednesday is a yearly event to celebrate the International days of culture (poetry, theatre, and storytelling). As we arrived there were many people dressed up waiting to take part in the festival and hundreds of local children had come to watch. The festival was around 2 hours late to start because the local authorities still hadn't turned up (I'm getting used to this over here now though!) But eventually the Head of the Fianarantsoa District and a number of other important people turned up and things could get going.

After a number of (very long) speeches were made by the different authorities, different people from the local community got up to sing songs, dance, read poems, and act out short stories. Many of the poems were in Malagasy but a couple were in French- despite the majority being in Malagasy it was still easy to see the effort that the people had put into them through the way they were presented. It was a really interesting day and I was really glad to have had the opportunity to go and see it, especially as I have been wanting to go to the Old Town for a while to see Feedback's work there.

Outside of work I travelled to the coast last weekend by train which was a very interesting experience. Before coming to Madagascar I'd heard about the Fianarantsoa-Cote-Est railway which linked Fianar with a town called Manakara on the East coast, and I'd wanted to go since I heard about it. Travel guides on Madagascar all say that the train journey is one of the most popular and best things to do whilst in Madagascar as the journey takes you from the highlands through the rainforest eventually ending up at the coast. The train also provides a major lifeline to people who live in the villages along the way as they can transport their produce to markets in either Fianar or Manakara.

So I set off at 6 in the morning on Saturday to get to the train station for 6.30, I arrived and was told that the train was going to be delayed for 2 hours... I'd been prepared for this ('Malagasy time' and also had been told that the train was being a bit unpredictable lately) so I hung around at the train station waiting for the train to be ready. 2 and a half hours later, I was told that the train would 'definitely' be ready in an hour and half. So I left the station and waited around outside. Sure enough in an hour and half, I was able to pay for my ticket and board the train, we didn't set off however for another hour and a bit, eventually leaving Fianar around 1pm (6 hours after the train was meant to leave!)

The beginning of the journey was great, the scenery was amazing as we were going through the rainforest across the mountains, however by 6pm  we weren't even halfway and it was beginning to get dark... By half 7 it was completely pitch black and without anything to see, the journey began to drag. By 9pm I was beginning to panic about how I would get to my hotel if we arrived really late as Manakara has no taxis and the hotel owners who had agreed to pick me up in a car would probably be asleep, I wanted to ring just to let them know I was on my way but because we were in the middle of nowhere there was no phone reception. Talking to a French couple who were on the train with me though, we realised we were both heading to the same hotel so I stopped panicking as atleast I wouldn't be on my own.

After many many many hours we eventually arrived at Manakara at 5 am(!!!) And got picked up and taken to our hotel and I went straight to sleep with the sun coming up... needless to say, I didn't enjoy my journey and do not plan to travel by train again! Waking up at the beach was lovely though, I was staying in a bungalow right next to the sea and the weather was beautiful. I had lunch with the French couple I had met on the train and spent the rest of the day lazing around at the beach. On Monday I met up with the French couple again to get a taxi-brousse back to Fianar (a journey which should take around 6 hours), it took us 9 hours roughly to get home due to various delays, however compared the train journey I wasn't complaining!

The 29th March in Madagascar is the anniversary of an uprising against French colonial rule in 1947 where around 40,000 Madagascans were killed, and is now a national holiday meaning I have no work tomorrow or Monday (Easter Monday) so I am hoping to visit a national park in the middle of the country. I will be back at work on Tuesday, which will be my second to last week of placement! Time has gone so fast since I've been here, its crazy to think I only have 2 weeks left, but I have learnt so much from it.
I have also extended my flights to give myself more time to travel once I have finished my placement, so on the 18th April I will fly to La Réunion for a few days, then I will come back to Madagascar for 3 weeks, after which I will spend 10 days in Uganda on my way home to visit people I met when I was there 2 years ago- something I'm very, very excited about!