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!