Home.

I'm now back in a sunny but cold (or colder than Madagascar anyway!) England. Unfortunately due to a family illness I had to cut my trip short and come home early. This meant that I was unable to go back to Uganda, which I am very sad about, but I will hopefully be going back in December (by using the excuse that I am writing my thesis on Uganda and need to go back to do research!)

My last few weeks after finishing placement were an exciting few though! I first flew to La Reunion which is BEAUTIFUL! I found it like a miniature France but better! While there I managed to go hiking and paragliding in the short time I had, both of which were amazing, and I also managed to get a free night staying in the poshest hotel I've ever been to in Mauritius due to a cancelled flight- I wasn't complaining though!

Once back in Madagascar, I travelled back down to Fianarantsoa, where the house I've been renting is- not the best journey, hitting a cow on the road about 100km in, resulting in the 10 hour journey turning into a 21 hour journey and not arriving 'home' until 5 in the morning!!! Atleast I managed to make it back though and no one was hurt, and I can add the story to my long list of exciting taxi-brousse adventures!

Once back in Fianar, I choose to go to Andringitra National Park- one of the best national parks in Madagascar due to its stunning beauty and relatively small number of tourists due to accessability issues. Andringitra is set in the mountains south of Fianarantsoa and Ambalavao and I spent 3 days hiking there, making it to the top of Pic Boby, Madagascar's second highest peak and also its highest most accessbile at 2658m!! The walk was incredibly difficult and painful due to my walking boots being a tad too small (I still have the blisters!) and there were many points where I easily could have given up but I persevered and I am extremely proud of myself for making it! On the second day when we climbed to the top of the peak, we started walking at 7 in the morning, reaching the peak and back in 3 hours, after which we walked another 20km to the other side of the valley- I was so exhausted by the end of it but so happy at what I had achieved!

After Andringitra I spent a few days back in Fianar recuperating and seeing friends for the last time, before travelling to Tana where I spent 4 days and met a number of different tourists and people visiting Madagascar for work- it was really lovely to be able to hang out with these people and to exchange stories, and my taxi-brousse journeys provided a lot of entertainment!

I left Madagascar on Tuesday, flying to South Africa and then to the UK- I was shocked at just how sad I was to be leaving Madagascar, these past 3 months have truly been amazing and I've had some amazing experiences and met some life long friends. My placement has also taught me so much and I am so glad to have taken the opportunity to go there.

Something which really pleasantly surprised me during my time away has been the genuine kindness of some people, which I have felt wherever I have travelled in Madagascar- from a small act of giving me some food when our taxi-brousse has crashed and we're waiting for a replacement, to offering me a lift free of charge when I'm stranded! I'll never forget all those acts of kindness and my experience in Madagascar in general, I will definitely be going back as soon as I can!

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!

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!

Ranomafana national park!

So I finally decided to do a bit of travelling at the weekend! Probably not the best idea to go when Madagascar was in the middle of a cyclone... but I wasn't going to let that stop me!

I decided to visit Ranomafana national park which is about an hour and a half to two hours drive north east from where I am in Fianarantsoa. The park is a rainforest that's home to 12 species of lemur, 2 of which are some of the rarest in the world. After waking up at 6 in the morning, I set off from my house around 7ish to walk to the taxi-brousse station (most tourists who go to Ranomafana use a private car organised through a tour operator but to save some money I decided to use public transport). As I got to the taxi-brousse station so many guys tried to grab me to get me to go on their taxi-brousse, they were all shouting various locations at me but after me having to repeat numerous times to people that I wanted to go to Ranomafana not Tulear (500km away on the west coast, also where the cyclone had just hit so not sure why I would have wanted to go there...) I found myself buying a return ticket to  Ranomafana after bargaining on the price a little. So after the guy who sold me the ticket telling me that my taxi-brousse was ready to leave, he took me to a taxi-brousse that only had 2 other people on it (they seat 14)... I'm used to how public transport works here now though so I knew it was just a matter of waiting until it filled up. Ended up waiting just over an hour for it to fill up (not without having a guy come up to me, kiss my hand, then tell me he loves me... ) and then we left with about 21 of us squashed into a 14 seater... at one point there were 7 of us sharing the front 3 seats!

The journey was ok though, despite the insane winds from the cyclone, and the scenery as we went from the highlands to the hills being covered in rainforest was amazing! After about an hour and a half of driving, I got dropped off at the park entrace around 11am to be meet by a group of guides who all spoke english (thank god!) I arranged a 3-4 hour trek into the forest and for a 2 hour night walk later that evening, and after checking out  hostel 50m down the road and deciding it would be fine to sleep there (10,000 Ar / night which is the equivalent of £3!!) me and my guide, Emile, set off on the trek!

The walking was pretty hard going, despite the occasional massive gust of wind, the weather was absolutely boiling and the trek involved lots of scrambling up steep hills covered in trees, but it was fine and I wasn't complaining. In the first hour of walking we managed to see a number on different chameleons and lizards (one really tiny chameleon which the guide didn't even see, it was me that pointed it out!), some funny looking lizards and even a snake, which after Emile reassuring me a few times that it was completely harmless, I got to hold! (I'm not gonna lie, even though I knew it was harmless and it really wasn't that big, and the fact that I've held snakes before, I did keep freaking out everytime it turned its head towards me...)

We carried on walking for what felt like ages though in the search of lemurs with no luck whatsoever, despite Emile mimicking the 'lost' call in an attempt to get any lemurs to respond... until we bumped into another of the guides in the forest who said that some researchers had spotted a couple of lemurs just over the hill! So we set off at a really fast pace and had to leave the path to fight away through the forest down a really steep hill, where we found another guide and an American researcher who were staring up into the trees. I tried looking and with Emile's guidance I eventually saw my first lemur! To begin with I could only really see a fuzzy outline and 2 green eyes starting back at me, but after waiting around for a bit, the 2 red-bellied lemurs that we had found started jumping through the tree in search for food! It was so so amazing to see and I was surprised at how big they were!

After watching them for a while, me and Emile continued in the search for some more, and after stopping at a viewing point where there was the most amazing view of the rainforest and the landscape we continued further downhill to the bamboo forests to search for the rare Greater bamboo and Golden bamboo lemurs. We must have been walking for only 15 minutes when we heard a noise behind us in response to Emile's 'lost' call, so turning around quickly I suddenly saw a tiny brownish/grey lemur sitting on a tree branch only 2m away from me! Another lemur then came jumping through the trees and I got to experience being just 1m away from two greater bamboo lemurs which are really rare and the 2 that I found are the only ones left in the entire park!

That evening I went on a 2 hour night walk with Emile and a french family that was also staying at my hostel and we managed to see lots of chameleons and frogs (one of the chameleons was only 2cm long!!) And also a mouse lemur (the one from the film that's really small and annoys king Julien) which was so so cute!

The next day I hitchhiked halfway down the road to Ranomafana village and then walked the rest of the way to have a swim in the natural pool fed by the spings that the village is named after... the weather was lovely and sunny and the pool was so nice and warm, an amazing way to relax and enjoy my morning!

I then got a lift back up to my hostel (which the lovely Emile helped arrange for me) to have lunch and then wait for my taxi-brousse back to Fianar which was meant to pick me up at 1... After waiting at the edge of the road for 2 hours the taxi-brousse FINALLY turned up! The journey back was fine until we got to about 10km from Fianar and the driver started telling me that I had to pay 5,000 for the journey, despite the fact that I'd already paid for my return journey the day before... I had a ticket and everything but the driver was refusing to believe me saying it was 'clandestine' and clearly ranting about me to the other passengers in Malagasy. I refused to pay though and told him to take me to the man who had sold me the ticket, who we found when we arrived in Fianar which ended in the two of them having a shouting match in Malagasy and me getting a taxi home!

Work wise, I'm now really involved with the Treemad campaign and after a skype meeting with the director of Feedback I was told that everyone back in the UK are waiting for me to complete my work so that the website can get up and running and the campaign can be launched! It's a lot of pressure but it's amazing that they're trusting me with this much responsibility!

Taking a break from the Treemad work though, yesterday I was able to travel to some villages to the East of Fianar to survey them for the possibility of building wells there to provide the villages with safe drinking water. The area has no road access so there was a lot of walking involved but it was an amazing way to really see the challenges faced by people who live in the villages here and how different life is compared to in the town, which is only 30km away! In every village that we visited people must walk down steep, slippery hills to water sources near the rice fields in order to collect water which they then must carry all the way back up the hill- I was out of breath just walking back up so I can't imagine how difficult it must be when carrying 10l of water with you! Each village aswell had more children than adults, the majority of which looked under 5 years, really hitting home the problems that Madagascar has with its growing population...

Rain, rain, rain

I now know what rainy season is actually like... Today is the first day since Sunday where it hasn't been raining non-stop!

I've had such an interesting week though despite the rain! On Monday I travelled south to a village called Ambohomasima which is in one of the most beautiful locations I have ever been to... I was travelling down with Josephine who I work with who manages Feedback's projects of a women's cooperative and youth centre in the village. We were travelling down with a couple from France (Ludo and Coco) who were interested in seeing the projects and doing some trekking in the area. Both were really nice and gave me a chance to properly practice my French (48 hours with no English whatsoever!) The drive down was through the mountains and the scenery is just amazing. It took us around an hour and a half to make it south to the town of Ambalavao (really pretty town situated in the middle of the mountains!) with a stop on the way by the police- I'd stupidly forgotten to take my passport with me so when we got stopped by the police for a random check I had to pay 20,000 Ariary (around 7 quid) to bribe them to let me through! A bit of an inconvienience but it was my own fault, we made sure to avoid the police after that by going off road when we saw that a police stop point was coming up!

Once we got to Ambalavao we had to go East along a dirt road to get to Ambohomasima, which was another amazing drive through the scenery just a lot more bumpy... Ambohomasima is a little village at the end of the road right next to one of the largest rainforest corridors in Madagascar and it's absolutely beautiful. We arrived on the market day which means everyone is drinking Tokagash (Madagascan rum) which is way stronger than anything we have in England- it costs 2000 Ariary for a litre (just under one pound!!!) so when we went for a walk through the town we were surrounded by drunken men everywhere who kept speaking to us in Malagasy despite us not being able to understand a word!

In the afternoon we visited the women's cooperative where they make crafts to sell to tourists, the youth centre which was set up by Feedback with the help of volunteers from Southampton university, the local health centre, the new secondary school, and an eco-tourism project that organises treks in the surrounding countryside. Unfortunately it was raining so much that Ludo and Coco couldn't do the trekking they wanted but we had a lovely meal in the evening cooked for us by the women's cooperative. The next day Josephine was meant to be interviewing people for the role of youth advisors however there were not enough applicants for this to be possible so after Josephine had finished having a meeting with the women's cooperative we headed back to Fianar with a short stopover to explore Ambalavao and fortunately no police on the way back!

Wednesday I was off again to a different village further North where there was meant to be an inauguration ceremony for a well that Feedback had built there. After leaving the office around 8.30 am we didn't actually leave Fianar until around 10 because of different hold ups, but as everyone kept saying we were on 'Malagasy time' haha. The village itself isn't far outside of Fianar but there is no paved road so with the rain it took us around an hour to get there. After getting to the village however it turned out that some people who were meant to have turned up hadn't so the ceremony wasn't going to happen after all... we were told to stick around though as they had already slaughtered a Zebu cow for us to have at lunch. With everything running behing schedule though we didn't eat until around 3ish and didn't end up leaving the village until 5! And not before I'd been shown the carcass of the cow that we'd just eaten (Jess you would have been repulsed aha) and one of the village elders (who was insanely drunk) had come up to me around 20 times speaking to me in a mixture of English, French and Malagasy telling me that he wanted me to marry his son who is studying economics in Tana...

As we were leaving all the kids from the village (I've never seen so many kids compared to adults, made me really understand how 50% of Madagascar's population is under 18...) were chasing after the cars and trying to climb on aha It had been raining non-stop all day though so the road coming back was awful, thank god we had a 4x4! I found it really fun though and we made it back fine so all was good!

In the evening I met up with Ludo, Coco, Sam and Abel (my boss and her husband) for dinner in Fianar before Ludo and Coco went off travelling to the coast. It was a really nice evening and found out that Ludo and Coco are planning to walk from France to Asia after their Madagascan adventure! Pretty cool but I could never do it!

Have spent today and yesterday back in the office catching up on work and trying to move forward with the Treemad project even though the internet at the moment really doesn't want me to be able to get any work done!

Cyclone!

Been here just over two weeks now and have experienced my first cyclone! Not fully as it was worse further north and to the east, but I still got to experience the insane wind and rain! Sadly my visit to a project had to be cancelled as the roads would have been too bad, but its hopefully being rescheduled for this friday!

I spent most of the week working on ideas for the new Treemad fundraising campaign, whilst also looking at the original feedback madagascar website and seeing what needs to be updated and what can be improved on. I've also been working on ways to integrate the reporting process for the team and project managers out here so that information for donors/funding proposals/website information/treemad updates can all be collected and stored in the same place to make things a lot simpler and easier- having worked on that I am now doing research into the different projects in order to fill up this database with all the relevant information.

I have also been hearing rumours that I will be going to visit one of feedback's projects in a couple of weeks time for an opening ceremony which the prime minister will be attending!  This should be an interesting experience aha

Was introduced to some more english speakers at the weekend through a group set up by the american peace corps out here called 'tea and talk'- it was set up so that malagasy people who want to improve their english can come and speak with other malagasy people and native english speakers, and they meet up twice a week. The main members are now trying to turn the group into an association so that they can get funding for english teaching projects for the community around Fianarantsoa.

It was Jamie's last weekend before going home so we had a party for him at feedback on friday night and then saturday night we went to karaoke with some of the feedback staff and also people from tea and talk and I got to have my first experience of clubbing madagascan style! Weirdly it reminded me a lot of lola los... it was a fun night though apart from getting home to realise the front gate had been locked, but i left it up to Jamie to climb over!

Weather seems to be so much better this week (saw the sky at night for the first time without any clouds and it is insanee how many stars you can see!!) And hopefully it'l hold out til friday so I can visit one of the projects!!!

First week in Madagascar!

So after surviving the hours of travelling to make it to Fianarantsoa in Madasgascar on wednesday I could start my work for Feedback Madagascar. FBM is a scottish NGO working with a local partner NGO in Madagascar called Ny Tanintsika (where I am working) which works on implementing social and environmental development projects mainly along the rainforest corridor in central Madagascar. 

After a meeting with Sam and a skype meeting with Jamie Spencer (the founder of Feedback Madagascar), my main work will be to research FBM's projects and collect information on them in order to update their website and provide information for their new campaign, Treemad. This will involve me visiting projects to get the most recent updates from them, which i cannot wait for! Alongside this I will be helping with funding proposals and teaching the staff English! - have done 2 lessons already and it is definitely testing my french skills to be able to make myself understood aha thank god the staff already have a pretty good knowledge of english! Other than the english lessons, I spent most of the week reading up on the different projects and doing background research for the new Treemad campaign, and am hoping to be going to visit one of the projects this Friday! 

Outside of work, I met Jamie on Thursday,  another british volunteer who I'm gonna living with for the next week or so! He's already been out here for 6 months so has been teaching me alot! (Like how to use the broken shower and cook food other than rice and vegetables!) He introduced  me to a group of English speakers in Fianar on Friday- some american peace corps who've been here for almost 2 years and a group of English speaking Malagasy, and we all went to a couple of karaoke bars in town. You  can get a bottle of Madagascan vodka out here for 4, 500 ariary, the equivalent of just over 1 quid! (Living the student dream aha) Ended up staying until 3 in the morning and managed to find my way home through the shortcut for the first time without having to ask Jamie where I was going!
Managed to speak to a lot of the Americans (and Jamie) about places that are good to visit in Madagascar and I'm now contemplating extending my time here after my placement so I can have the chance to visit some places- realising now just how big Madagascar is and the 6 days I have at the end of my placement definitely won't be enough time to see things! Still early days yet though!

Spent the rest of the weekend at Sam's house being fed and watching Jonny Depp films!
The workload has definitely increased this week and I've now been given a set list of things that I need to do for the Treemad campaign so looks like I'm gonna be pretty busy for the next 11 weeks!!!