Wilderness Wandering

Tim and I took a break from US National Parks to do a wonderful trip to Madagascar. We did manage a National Park tie in though. We visited one of Madagascar’s National Parks!

The world’s fourth largest island and a country of 30 million people. While technically part of Africa, many of the Malagasy people are of southeast Asian descent. It is the sixth poorest country in the world with an average annual income of less than $600.00. 90% of the population lives on less than $2.00 per day. 

A country with an unbelievable amount of unique wildlife due to being an island cut off from the mainland long ago. 90% of their species exist no where else on Earth. 

We came here with a team of 13  people from the US and New Zealand sponsored by The Fuller Center of Madagascar. Fuller Center is an international organization started by Millard Fuller, who also founded Habitat for Humanity. The Fuller Center’s mission is to offer a hand up not a hand out by helping people attain home ownership of a simple home. 

Our team came to help a community in Antsirabe, Madagascar build four homes in what will be a community of 30 homes for families with deaf and mute family members. 

We left Sat AM March 30, 2024

We got to the airport about 6:20 AM. We flew Ethiopian Air from Chicago to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We departed on time for the 13 hour flight. The flight was not full and Tim and I had the middle seat open between us. Yay!

 Since we departed close to noon, it was hard to sleep. We watched quite a few movies. 

We arrived in Addis Ababa and got off the plane on the tarmac. We had less than an hour before our flight to Madagascar departed.  They directed us to a bus. The bus drove around the airport  dropping everyone off at their plane. We never went into the terminal. We boarded our plane through the rear as everyone else was boarding from the front. We made it to our seats. This plane was smaller and every seat was full. The flight from Addis to Antananarivo (Tana), the capital of Madagascar, was 4-1/2 hours. 

Sunday, March 31, 2024

By the time we landed in Tana, we were fairly sleepy. We had been in airports and on planes more than 20 hours.  We got off the plane and got in line for Customs. It was good we had gotten our visa ahead of time. We found Ann and Jim from New Zealand, so we could share a ride to the hotel.  We were thrilled to see our luggage on the belt!

The four of us found Christian, the driver who was taking us to Hotel Sakamanga. 

Traffic wasn’t bad as it was Easter Sunday. 

We arrived at the hotel located in the center city. We checked into our room. The hotel is cobbled together from different buildings. It is easy to get lost. Our room was comfortable with a good firm mattress.  We took a quick nap. It felt great to be horizontal for even a little while.  At 6:00 PM LI went down to the lobby to see who was around and got to meet the team. Tim was still napping. There was a team dinner at 7:00 in the hotel if we wanted. Tim and I decided to just go to bed to be fresh for the next day. 

Monday, April 01, 2024

We got up and went to a French bakery next door to the hotel for breakfast. We each had a croissant. Delicious!!!

Madagascar was a French colony until 1958, so Malagasy is their official language, but almost everyone in the city speaks French. Tim had fun using his High School French. 

At 9:00 the team got on a bus and drove to a lemur park. It’s a lemur rescue. It began with mainly pets that people abandoned. Now it is illegal to keep lemurs as pets.  The park has 9 varieties of lemur.  They also have a breeding program. We walked along a path through the park. There were feeding stations along the path. They were feeding them as we got there. So, it was an interesting tour. We got to see many types of lemurs in a pretty natural setting, and we got to see them at close range.  We saw Black lemur, Crowned sifika, Cockeral sifika, a Mouse lemur, Ruffed lemur and Ring Tail lemur! Ring Tails are the lemurs that are featured in the Disney movie Madagascar. The Malagasy people are grateful that the movie raised awareness of Madagascar, but Disney didn’t worry too much about accuracy. There are no lions or zebras on the island of Madagascar, but there are in the movie.  We saw quite a few chameleons and several large spiders. There was a cute gift shop. Tony, our guide was excellent. 

Next, we drove to a nearby restaurant for lunch. Tim and I both ordered grilled tilapia. The fish was served whole with the head on. The sides were served family style. There are potatoes, rice and vegetables. Everything was good. We would soon learn that large bowls of rice are served at every meal every day!

Easter Monday is a holiday in Madagascar and it is customary for families to have picnics. It was wonderful to see so many families enjoying the countryside. 

We drove back to Hotel Sakamanga. We had a little break and then we had a team meeting with team leaders Bob and Leslie going over the rules of the build and what to expect. Bob and Leslie are an amazing couple who have lead more than 50 builds together!  They live in Homer, Alaska. They are fabulous team leaders. They work tirelessly in advance to make sure as many details as possibly are worked out in advance and when things go wrong as they often do, they are calm and get things worked out. 

 Then our Fuller Center guides and translators,  Alzie and Tatiana gave us a presentation about Fuller Center.  Fuller Center began work in Madagascar in 2016 and they have been growing quite rapidly. Their goal is to build 100 houses in 2024. The average cost to build one house is $3300.00. Fuller will build on an owner’s land if they have land. Otherwise, when Fuller Center can procure land at a reasonable cost, they do that too.  We had a fun dinner in the hotel restaurant and called it a night. 

Tuesday, April 02, 2024

We were up early and showered and packed. We took our bags down to the lobby and had breakfast in the wonderful bakery again. Tim has a yogurt parfait with a croissant and I had the yogurt parfait with a raisin bun. The parfait had gooseberries, pineapple , and banana in it.  We checked out and boarded the bus to take us to the city where we would be building. 

We had a lovely 166 KM (103 miles) drive from Tana to Antsirabe. The Malagasy people eat rice at every meal. There are rice paddies everywhere on every available piece of land. The amazing thing is that the government exports the  high quality rice they grow and imports inferior quality rice for ther Malagasy people!!

Madagascar is also known for its vanilla, but vanilla is not native to Madagascar. It was bright here from Mexico.  

 The Antsirabe region is the farming region of the country. There are fruit and vegetable stands lining the roads. There are also little stands that sell toy trucks that appear to be made of scrap metal. 

Beautiful vegetable stands along the road

About an hour in on the trip, we got a flat tire. We chilled at a gas station while our driver procured and changed the tire. 

The road started out pretty good, but quickly eroded. We couldn’t travel very quickly. There were huge pot holes.  Apparently these long drives on the terrible roads are known as an African massage!

We stopped for lunch. I ordered raclette, which is a melted cheese that you typically pour over your other food.  It was very cool. They brought out a griddle and plugged it in and I melted my own cheese and poured it over potatoes, and bread and olives. 

It took us almost all day to travel the 103 miles to Antsirabe.

We arrived at our very modern hotel. Our room was on the 3rd floor. It was huge. 2 king size beds, a kitchenette and a sitting area plus a balcony. The bed was very comfy. 

We had about an hour to get settled and then we had a meeting in the lobby to meet the families we were building for. Each family has a member that is deaf and/or mute. They all seem very sweet and excited. The Fuller group had dinner together and we went to bed. 

Wednesday, April 03, 2024

We were  ready to leave for the site at 7:20 AM. 

We had our spiritual focus (a morning ritual of the team that we took turns being responsible for) and boarded our bus. We had two more translators, a young man named Andraina and a woman named Anita, join us today so that each home had a translator to help us understand what we were to do. The drive out to the country was supposed to take about 30 min. The drive through the city was always interesting. You saw carts full of different products being pulled by cattle called Zebu. You saw pousse-pousse (human powered rickshaws)  pulling all different types of people and loads of things.  

People definitely carry heavy loads on their heads.  You saw kids on their way to school. Both public and parochial school kids wear a sort of jumper as a uniform over their street clothes. They go home for lunch. 

The road once we left the city was non existent. We were going through an extremely rocky, rutty, muddy hilly part and we got a flat as flat as a pancake. We had to get out and walk the rest of the way. 

We arrived at the site. It took a while for things to get settled. The site is really beautiful! It is three terraces facing a valley of rice paddies.

Finally we walked down to the houses to get to work. Tim, Dana, Chris and I were on the first house.  At the time, I didn’t realize how fortunate we were. The piles of materials were all up by the main road and most of the time, we had to carry those materials from the road to our site.  We were building for Therese. She is deaf and is married with 3 children. Each home site also had a team of masons who were Fuller Center employees who oversaw the project.  The foundations were dug on all of the homes and there were many bricks on site. Tim and I teamed up to get more bricks and Dana and Chris bent rebar. My Malawi brick experience came back to me. The masons had me building and mortaring the bricks into place.  The morning passed fairly quickly. We had a snack of tangerines and little cheese samosas at 10:30. Lunch was about 12:30. We had rice, vegetables, pickled onions, cucumber and tomatoes. There was also fried chicken. Everything was great! 

In the afternoon, we moved more bricks and got all the walls about 1/2 way built. Tim kept asking Andraina if the bus was fixed. When it was time to quit, we walked out and the bus was there with eight good tires. 

We prayed for no flats as we drove back to the hotel. I was really looking forward to a shower, but we couldn’t get the water hot. The cold shower cooled me off though!

The team enjoyed dinner together again and we shared stories of how hard working our home owners were and if we had masons who liked to have some fun, or if they were more serious. We were very tired. We worked long and hard today. But our houses are looking great! We also received Fuller Center t-shirts. We are taking group photos tomorrow. 

Thursday, April 04, 2024

We traveled without tire issues this morning. We cheered when we got past the spot we had the flat tire yesterday.  When we got to the site, our homeowner Therese and the masons were already working. We took our group shots and got to work.  Tim and I worked with Chris to finish the rebar cages that stiffen the corners of the house.

Then we inserted the rebar cages into the corners of the house. Leslie and Bob’s granddaughters make a heart for each team member. We explained to the home owners how we are inserting these hearts into their houses so we leave a piece of our heart with them after we leave. Today we inserted our hearts into our homes. 

We had Malagasy bread (doughnut like biscuits) and corn on the cob for snack. Back at work we mixed cement and did a bucket line to pour the cement into the rebar cages. It was heavy hard work. For lunch, we had avocado, tomato, fried rice and eggplant parmigiana. The eggplant was awesome!

The sun was out and it got pretty hot. We moved a lot of brick while the masons built scaffolding and added more layers to the walls. Dana had the fun idea to recreate Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel. It turned out great! 

 It was another really good but tiring day. Therese, the home owner said tomorrow more of her relatives are coming to help. Back at the hotel, I tried the pool. Even though the sun has been out and the air temp was 80, the water was cold.  Chris came out intending to swim, but the water was too cold for him as well. I had seafood pizza for dinner. It was delicious! And cream caramel for dessert. It tasted like creme brûlée. 

Friday, April 05, 2024

It’s full sun today. It got very warm. 

We did a lot of brick lines and cement bucket brigades today. 

The walls are at the window level, and the masons built wood frames on the corners of the house that we inserted the rebar into and then filled them with concrete. 

Back in the US, we heard that the New York City area had an earthquake today. Luckily, it sounds like it didn’t do much damage. 

Saturday, April 06, 2024

Hard work today!! We carried tons of bricks and lots of plaster bucket brigades. I was super happy we were only working a half day today.  We had lunch and then got tours of several local businesses and did some shopping. Madagascar currency is called Ariary and a right conversion is 5000 Ariary to one US dollar. When you got money from an ATM, you got a thick pile of bills, but it wasn’t a lot of money. A bottle of water was 5000 ariary or about $1.00.   A large bottle of beer was around 10,000 ariary or $2.00. Cash is definitely still king here. We can pay with a credit card at our hotel, but everywhere else, you need cash. 

The first business we visited makes items out of the zebu cattle horns. The owner showed us how he takes the horn and cuts the items out and uses different grades of sand paper and other things to shape and polish the items. There was a wide variety of products from bowls and  spoons to earrings and hair clips. 

Next we toured a shop where some family members raise silk worms and weave things out of silk. The other part of the family makes small ornamental bikes out of recycled wire from electronics products. The wheels had intricate spokes and the wheels turned. They were quite amazing. The last shop was a woman who makes her own paper from the fibers of a natural plant in the area and she inlays them with natural flowers. I purchased quite a few of her cards and book marks. 

Sunday, April 07, 2024

We had nothing planned until lunch today.  A group of us took the opportunity and walked to a nearby open air market. There were so many different displays of foods. Very few Malagasy people have refrigerators. They shop for fresh food daily. I found it interesting that if a vendor had carrots, they sell them several different ways. They may have them whole in bunches, but also grated in big bowls, and also cubed. The egg sellers had racks of eggs and you could buy one or two if you wanted. Of course, there were all the fresh chickens, fish and sausages hanging out in the open too.  One team member found the hand made broom she wanted to find. 

On the way back, one woman wanted to try a pousse-pousse ride. The pousse-pousse is a small cab pulled by a guy on a bike or a man walking. They are an extremely economical and common way to get around here, as many people are unable to afford a car or even a bike.  She wanted someone to go with her, so I did. It was pretty fun! 

We had lunch and then we got on the bus and drove to see the current homes of the families we are building for. First, the young family with the baby. The mother is mute. They are living with his mother in a very small, dark house. The new one will be a huge improvement. 

Next was Lucie, the hair stylist. She is a single mom with 2 small kids. She and the kids have a single room with no windows. She has to cook outdoors. I am thrilled for her and the kids to have a new space! I can’t imagine living where she was.

The 3rd home wasn’t terrible, but they rent and now they will be able to own a home. Their current rent was about $45.00 per month and they had nothing to show for it. 

The monthly repayment on the new house will be $12.00 per month and in about 9 years, they will own it!

Last we visited the home of Therese, that Tim and I are building for. Therese is deaf.  Her husband, herself and her 3 kids rent. The house was decorated very nicely and was pretty and clean. I don’t think the new one will be that much bigger, but it will be in the country and light and bright. 

Next we visited a few homes that Fuller Center built with other teams. We had a meeting with the  Fuller team. We wanted to know what more we can do. The homes we are building don’t have running water, indoor plumbing or electricity.  Their answer was solar panels and water purification filters would be the best way to help. But, everything has to go through Fuller and be handled the right way. They try to keep the houses uniform in amenities. 

Monday, April 08, 2024

We returned to the work site. It was full sun and hot, and we did lots of very manual labor with bricks and digging out dirt about 2 feet around the house foundation and moving all the dirt to the front of the house to level the lot for a little patio. 

We usually work until 4:30 PM. At 3:50 Anita came around calling everyone to drop what they were doing and hurry to the bus. There were storm clouds on the horizon and if we don’t get back to town with the bus before the roads get muddy, we might get stuck. None of us wanted that to happen, so we skedaddled back to the bus! We made it back into town without issue. 

On the way home we stopped at an ATM for those of us who spent all our Malagasy Ariary over the weekend.  A doctor from the US who was working on a boat docked in Madagascar for the past two months to do corrective surgeries on cleft palates, and things like that, met us there. He wanted to see some Fuller Center homes. We took him to 3 different homes. 2 of the 3 were very nice. One had some land and a paradise of fruit trees.  

When we got back on wifi at the hotel, we learned that Iowa had lost in the NCAA women’s championship game.

Tuesday, April 09, 2024

I woke up and saw the last 4 minutes of the NCAA men’s basketball. UCONN beat Purdue. My brother won his a work pool with the UCONN win. 

One of the biggest challenges on the work site is the shortage of tools. Each site needs levels, towels, hammers, pliers, wire cutters, nails, wheel barrows, buckets, etc. Way too often we had to wait for a hammer, or if you put your tool down to go get something, it had been picked up by someone else by the time you came back. 

Several members of the crew wanted to donate some tools, so we stopped at a hardware store on the way to the site this morning and picked up a new mallet, saw blade, and a few other things. 

Obstacles in the road this morning-Zebu and a sleeping dog. Alzie got out twice and chased them out of the road so the bus could get by. We arrived at the work site. The first thing we did was finish hauling the dirt from the foundation that we couldn’t finish yesterday because we left early due to the rain.   Next we  hauled gravel and sand for mixing cement. So hot again today. Then we consolidated several brick piles. Then they had us splitting large rocks with mallets. We were singing Back on the Chain Gang by The Pretenders! Super hard work.  We also pulled nails out of boards to be reused.  The masons began the roof and some more plastering.

After lunch, my body couldn’t split any more rocks and our hammers were bring used by the masons. We moved some broken bricks to rough in the patio area  for Therese. Then the masons made plaster and let us try plastering. There are two techniques. One is a wrist flick and you thwack the plaster onto the wall. The other way, you hold the plaster palette below where you want the plaster and sort of spread and press the plaster on. I liked the flick method, but I was not good at controlling where the plaster went!! I guess I must have been doing OK with it, because the mason asked if I had done plastering before. Finally, time to stop for the day. Every morning we drive by a little shop advertising wax batiks. I adore batik fabrics. I asked Alzie if we could stop on the way home and she said we could.  Quite a few of us made purchases.  The shop had beautiful things. It was not fabric yardage, as I had hoped, but wall hangings, and lamp shades, finished products versus raw materials. There were some hats and purses as well.  I bet we made his day. Quite a few people bought things. 😊

I bought some panels and a batik hat. We had a great team dinner. 

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Today is our last day at the worksite.  I wrote a note to leave with Therese this afternoon telling her how much I admire her and how I hope her children are able to get the education she be wants for them. Her 15 year old son Piero worked with us at the site several afternoons. He told us that he hopes to become an English teacher. 

On the way to the worksite this morning, we stopped by a hospital to drop off a suitcase of expired medical supplies that Dana brought from an organization in the US called Not Just Tourists. Not Just Tourists is an organization that collects expired medical supplies in the US and sends them in suitcases with tourists going to countries where they can still use these supplies.  The hospital these donations went to is a maternity hospital  sponsored by Global Health Organization. They work with mothers and children. 

We met with the director of the hospital, the two staff doctors, a midwife and several nursing students. They were very appreciative of the donation! I’m going to look into where Not Just Tourists has offices in the US and what countries they make shipments to. I would totally take a suitcase with me for them in the future! 

We also picked bouquets of wild flowers for the owners on our way to work!

It was a great day at the work site. We made excellent progress on all four houses. The walls were all up, the roofs were on and all the houses had a good amount of the plastering done too. Things that remained to be done were the shutters on the windows and the doors, putting the cement for the floors, painting the plaster with primer, and finishing the yards. The homeowners will choose the colors they want to paint the inside and outside of the house.   Leslie had me pick a good brick for us all to sign for our surprise birthday party for Chris tonight. Tim, Dana and I all plastered the interior walls of the kitchen area this morning. It was a tight squeeze but we did it. About 12:30 we were done!! We had lunch and then the party began. 

A band marched down the road playing lively music on what appeared to be homemade instruments.  

All the village people and the owner families and us joined in and paraded by the homes. The band played more and we all danced.  Then up on the bluff there was a series of speeches by the local elders. The head of Fuller Center Madagascar and Bob, or team leader gave short speeches as well. There was a sign language interpreter present as well, so the homeowner families could “hear” the speeches too.

There were many kids and they were adorable! I got wonderful hugs from Therese and Njian (the mason) and other family members. We said our good byes. 

We rode back to town and showered and had our debriefing with Leslie and Bob and the team.   After that, Alzie treated us to pousse-pousse rides to dinner. It was fun! We had dinner at Chez Jenny. Tim and I split a buckwheat pancake stuffed with veggies. Then we each had a yummy ice cream dessert. Then we had Chris’ birthday cake on top of that! Chris liked his signed brick.  Back to the hotel to pack. We leave in the AM for the Rest and Relaxation part of the adventure. 

I was truly impressed with The Fuller Center team members, and all the Malagasy people we worked with! Fuller Center Madagascar has very ambitious plans for the future and they appear to be doing a great job at implementing those programs. The Malagasy people have very hard lives. They work very hard and tirelessly all day long and are always singing and smiling. It was an honor to work with them on achieving their dream of safe and affordable housing for them and their families!!

Thursday, April 11, 2024

We both slept well. Tim went to breakfast and I walked on the tread mill for a while. We boarded the bus at 8:00. We stopped halfway back to Tana for lunch and Alzie, Tatiana and Dana left us there. Alzie and Tatiana had a 7 hour ride on a bus back to their home village. Dana won’t be joining us for the R & R. 

 We drove back to Tana. Pretty scenery along the way. 

I saw a Rotary “end polio now” sign in Tana. We arrived at our hotel for the night, The Au Bois Vert. The grounds are gorgeous! It’s an amazing oasis in the middle of a Tana. The lobby has lots of cool fossils and old wood lodge furniture.

Our guides for the next three days,  Kenny and Dhany met us at the hotel.  We had a delicious meal! The beds are very comfortable. 

Friday, April 12, 2024

Leslie said breakfast is fabulous here, so I went to check it out. It WAS great! So many cheeses and breads and yummy things. 

We drove 170 KM (106 miles) from Tana to Andasibe.  Our guide Dhany made a joke- In England they drive on the left of the road. In Madagascar, we drive on what’s left of the road. Drivers in Madagascar need a PHD – pothole dodgers. LOL!

Andasibe is east of Tana. It is a fairly industrial area, so there were many trucks on the road.  We arrived at the hotel mid afternoon. It is made up of individual huts. They are quite basic. We have mosquito netting to protect us from malarial mosquitoes here. 

 At 6 PM we went for a night hike. The National Park and protected areas are only about 10 minutes from the lodge, which is great! We split into two groups and each group went with two guides. 

 We saw a few mouse lemurs and dwarf lemurs. North are very small lemurs.  They are both nocturnal. We also saw a cool chameleon! We got back and ate dinner late. 

Saturday, April 13, 2024

We split into two groups again this morning. Our group went to a Preserve that is supported by the guides. 

We got very close to brown lemurs and black and white ruffed lemurs. I got some amazing shots! We also saw some chameleons. 

We returned to the hotel for lunch and a little rest. 

After lunch we drove to a lemur rescue park called Lemur Island. Lemurs don’t like water, so the park is located on 5 islands and the animals don’t leave.  Tourists are only allowed on one of the islands. We canoed across the channel. We saw black and white ruffed lemurs and got to hear their communication. It was exciting to experience that! We kept walking and found brown lemurs and bamboo lemurs. We could see Golden Diadem Sifakas and a single Red Ruffed Lemur across the channel on the next island. 

On the way back we stopped in the town of Andasibe to do a little shopping. I found some beautiful fabric panels for $2.00 each! I plan to add these fabrics to the ones I got in Malawi in 2018 and make an African quilt. 

Sunday, April 14, 2024

All of us went together to the Andasibe National Park of Madagascar. Around the edges there were non-native species and invasive species, but as you went deeper into the interior, it was more native species.  The Traveler Trees look like palms, but belong to the same family as birds of paradise and bananas! We hiked around in the forest for four hours. Andasibe is home to the largest surviving lemurs, the indri. They are known for their distinctive loud song.

We went to another Preserve after lunch and then our final walk was another night walk. The highlight of The afternoon hike was seeing The Giraffe Necked Weevil!

They are so amazing! We also saw some cool chameleons and frogs.  

We didn’t see many lemurs. It was misting during the evening hike, but we didn’t get very wet. We saw a few of the nocturnal lemurs. 

Monday, April 15, 2024

We had to be on the road by 7 AM this morning to get one team member to the airport on time. No one else leaves until tomorrow. We made a short stop at a grocery store. They do have them, but the vast majority of Malagasy people never set foot inside because it’s VERY expensive. We loaded up on chocolate bars to bring back as gifts. We were back at Au Bois Vert by about 2 PM. It was good to be reunited with the rest of our luggage. I had a wonderful shower and clean clothes! Heaven! I was feeling a bit ill most of the day, so I laid very low and got a lot of sleep hopping to feel better tomorrow as we head home. 

Tuesday, April 16,2024

Most people had a leisurely morning and we met informally for breakfast. Our taxi driver Christian picked up the three of us on the early afternoon flight and delivered us to the airport. Ethiopian Air had recommended getting to the  airport four hours before the flight. We checked our luggage, got our boarding passes and were at the gate in about 20 minutes. Our aircraft arrived and we boarded and left pretty much on time. A three hour layover in Addis Ababa and then our flight home through Rome. 

I’m very glad we went on this trip. Seeing the island of Madagascar, spending quality time with the Malagasy people, seeing so many of their endemic species of animals and plants, and meeting and making new friends from the US and New Zealand! It doesn’t get much better than this! And it certainly makes me appreciate everything I have been blessed with even more! 

Finished homes in about 10 days!