volunteer – EXPLORING THE REALM OF EXISTENCE

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.

In the Summer of 2015, at 17 years old, I had the incredible oppurtunity to travel to Madagascar and volunteer reconstructing a school. The trip was emotional, surprising, unpredictable at times and absolutely fucking life changing. I consider it to be the best 2 weeks of my life, simply because I was at the peak in terms of new sensations and experiences basically every day. I want to document all my memory in this blog, because even 2 years later, my memories couldn’t be more vivid and frequently visited in my mind.

I wrote a diary throughout my stay there. I will share some of my stories I documented on paper and some that are encoded in my brain.

Wednesday 8th July 2015 – Day at Antananarivo, Madagascar’s Capital City

The day started off by going to the centre of Tana (the abbreviation of Antananarivo) where I immediately bought a map to get around.

The city was chaotic, people would scream stuff at us, probably vulgar remarks which was not surprising since we were the only tourist looking girls around. Also my travelling buddy decided it was appropriate to wear really short shorts, which could not have been less eye catching. Anyway apart from being a little bit overwhelmed by the whole situation we had breakfast in a lovely hotel restaurant. This was the interior, pretty cool architecture.

Then we suddenly got called by our volunteering agency, back then called Azafady but nowadays called SEED Madagascar. We were informed that we had to rush to the airport because our flight was going to depart in 2 hours. Basically AirMadagascar was on strike and we got really lucky by getting the chance of flying with a mining company’s airplane. We went straight back to the hotel where we were staying, my night there was cheaper than my taxi ride from the airport to the hotel the night before…Taxi drivers are known to rip off foreigners.

The streets where crowded and full of markets and loud music. It felt like being in a documentary. There were no traffic lights although at one point a man in the middle of the road helf a stop sign. Within seconds a massive train passed right in front of our taxi, with people stading only a few centimeters from it!!!! It was crazy. We were driving around to find a bank before heading to the airport because my travelling bud needed to exchange her money. The panoramas were incredible.

Unforgettable moment: He won’t give up on us

While we were driving around in a taxi, a kid grabbed the side of the taxi and couldn’t leave. The taxi was stuck in a queue so I started getting really worried about him since the road was completely polluted and packed with cars and motorbikes. After a few minutes I handed him 10’000AK which I thought it would be a lot for him and his family. He ran on the side to what seemed his family and his mom (I guess) looked at me and thanked me with a smile. That was the moment I thought they were all satisfied and happy. Instead the kid, whom looked like a 4 or 5 year old started running after the taxi when it was back in motion. It was so dangerous and insane. The kid would run inbetween the two lanes where trucks would speed through like crazy. Our taxi driver told him to stop and be careful. It tooks us around 20 minutes for them to let us free. I mean, I never felt in that way before. Scared, worried, worthless, shocked, anxious and guilty all in one go. Finally Holley, my scottish travel buddy managed to exchange her money and we headed to the Airport.

FLIGHT TO FORT DAUPHIN

The view from the airplane’s window was just spectacular. When we descended from the heavens, jokes, from the sky, I remember going into the clouds and seeing nothing but while and suddenly, we were above the sea with a view of the east coast, with the sun shining through clouds and over the mountains. I am reliving this moment as I wrote this. So magical and divine.

Once we landed we went into this car that basically had a couch as a back seat. We headed to a camp site where we were going to stay for 2 days. It was lovely, it remained me of The Philippines. We set up our tents in the dark and then headed to the Azafady office. We introduced ourselves and chatted then we went back to the camping site and ate dinner: Potatoes, carrots with rice. Nice.

Tag: volunteer

Rural Madagascar – Tsagnoria

First day in Madagascar