10th July 2015 – Remembering the best trip of my life (so far)

Leaving Fort Dauphin in a massive bus, I reckon it went at 30km/h on the road. The road wouldn’t be considered a road in Europe, it was literally a bumby adventure. It was a 4 hour drive to Tsagnoria, a small village that would host us for a few weeks. All the windows were open (there were no windows really) and many times we had to duck down because branches and leaves were visiting us very briefly. The best temporary visit was by a frog!!!! Unbelievable. I saw it jumping all around me, on someone’s knee, then onto someone’s head and then back outside the van. It was a tiny white and red frog, like one I’ve never seen before.

To get to the village, and the school that we were going to reconstruct, we had to pass through a river. It was shallow, but the stories went that a few weeks ago a crocodile had eaten a piggy and a couple months back I baby! A human little being was murdered in this river…Nothing to worry about though. If you cross rivers inhabited by crocodiles, do it with a group of people! We were in many, the community welcomed us, with many kids helping us out carrying our luggage and equipment. When we arrived at our camping site, we set up our tents and ate lunch. The kids stayed and watched, and here’s a photo that perfectly represents my excitment.

Then we went through all the rules that we had to follow, and explained the culture appropriate and inappropriate behaviours so we’d be aware of not offending anybody by mistake. My shorts were too short and a girl’s tits were hella exposed, yeah, that was not okay. After we changed we had a meeting with the town Chief, who thanked us for helping out the development of Tsagnoria. We then had a tour of the rural village, with kids following us everyday, it was incredible and so so beautiful. And I was about to spend 2 weeks in this remote paradise, pure nature, untouched and full of life.