Seeing the country

Two out-of-town trips of late, one by air and one by van. This country is hard for travel but when you make it to a destination it’s pretty cool.

Work’s been nuts, and once the bone-crushing deadlines passed, I took a flight to the west coast city of Mahajanga. Accompanied by a visiting friend, we hit the beach, a couple of caves, a park with a legit baobab tree, and of course lemurs.

I’d originally planned to go alone but one of my friends contacted me in April and asked if she could visit in April or May. I was like, you mean *this* April or May? Most people don’t plan trips to Madagascar on the spur of the moment, but Foreign Service people aren’t “most people.” But since I had the bone-crushing work project, it wasn’t possible for her to visit before May 15, and I already bought a flight ticket to Mahajanga. Luckily, she was up for not only a trip to the capital but there, so she managed to get on the same flight as I had.

Since I’d originally only planned a super boring weekend, I had to step up the plans and arranged a guide and driver. As a result, we had a real itinerary, as opposed to the “read books by the beach” I had figured on. It was a lot more fun with another person along, that is for sure.

The Cirque Rouge was possibly my favorite, outside of being within sight of the beach. The Cirque Rouge is just a really cool valley-ish walk in an area with red clay walls. Due to erosion, there were a lot of these little stalagmite-type things, little baby towers (some of them really small) that each had what appeared to be a rock sitting on top of it. But they weren’t rocks – that was just how they eroded. For me, it was just fascinating. I felt like I was scouting ideas for a Pixar movie – there were scads of these things, and they almost looked like little cities.

My friend hadn’t seen lemurs and we went to two different places with them. They’re cute little suckers; I think we saw two species. At one of the same parks, there was a huge baobab tree, too. That was my first one, and it was so big I could climb up in it and sit back leaning on the trunk. It was huge, and, according to the guide, about 200 years old.

But just seeing the beach was lovely and peaceful. My friend collects seashells and we just walked up and down the beach looking at them. At one point, I waded out what seemed like a distance, but it was low tide and I never made it to water deeper knee-deep. I just sat and watched the waves.

 Last weekend, I went with a group to a place south of here called Antsirabe. There were about 10 of us and it was in conjunction with a work thing that I coordinate, so it was sort of a work trip, but not really. Or at least that’s what my intent was – to go for fun and not work. Except on the way there, there was awful road construction (which was new and we didn’t know about) that screwed up the trip by hours. Like three after we started – where we should have been over halfway – we were still in Antananarivo. So I was on the phone with my colleagues, who were in another car, trying to figure out how to change the plan with the least amount of stress for everyone. We wound up flipping the days we were going to do stuff and did the “on the way back” stuff on Friday and driving back a completely different (but longer and windier) way back on Sunday.

The trip was sightsee-y and culture-y,  and we saw demonstrations of stuff like how these really pretty papers are made, how they create aluminum pots and make some stone items and what work goes into creating a little model bike, which is made from mostly recycled parts. We ate traditional foods (and cooked a meal) and saw a performance of dance and drums.

And we froze. The place didn’t have heat and the place was colder than Tana. I was so far under the covers sat night and did not want to get out of bed. Heck, the first night I didn’t even take a shower because I didn’t want to take off my clothes.

Winter is officially here and I’m already colder than I was last year. I have no idea what’s going on. I can’t believe I am the same person who lived in both Minot and Minsk. It’s about 45-50 in the mornings and I’m so bitterly cold. Seriously, at that temperature in ND or Belarus, people are still wearing shorts.

Today for some reason I decided to buy broccoli and on the spur of the moment, I decided to make soup with it. It turned out really good and it’s been nice to have something warm.

But now the days are getting a little longer. My dog doesn’t like waking up in the dark, and since we lave for our walk around 5:20 a.m. and the sun hasn’t been rising until 6:20, she is not happy. Then it’s dark by 5:30 p.m. and we don’t walk until 6. This is why on the weekends and we go out in the afternoon, she just plops her but down in the sun and doesn’t move. Can’t say I blame her.

Cujo is a dirty girl

My dog hates girl dogs. And their owners. We’re working on it, but the thing goes all-out Cujo when, particularly, three neighborhood girl dogs walk by. She’s been happily social with two of them before, so I’ve no idea what happened there. The third she’s never met but absolutely goes insane when she walks by.

Yesterday, I figured out she also seems to hate the owners, or at least one. And this person is extremely friendly and nice, so it’s not like she came after my dog with a whip or something. Her fault, in my dog’s eyes, is that she’s the mother of a girl dog. And I thought it was just the dog and not the dog parent, but yesterday, Kudzu and I were hanging out in a green spot and she walked by. Kudzu turned into Cujo and tried to go after her.

I’ve no idea what to do. We’ve now got a “head collar,” which is kind of like a halter, but it doesn’t work for her any more than it did Kocur.

She loves, however, playing in dirt. I’d discovered this early on, when I was dismantling the rotted-out raised garden bed that was in my little yard. I’d be shoveling dirt out, she’d be digging at it in the opposite direction.

With that distraction gone, she laid off a bit, although she did recently find some kind of bird foot on a walk and carried it home through the neighborhood. Seriously, she held on to that thing for about a mile, then just short of the apartment she stopped and buried it. It lasted a week, then she dug it up and carried it home. She waffled on bringing it home because at the gazebo, which is right next to my apartment, she buried it again—dirt flying—and then immediately dug it up and brought it home. Fortunately, she took it right outside and I assumed she’d bury it—she’s buried bones both under the stairs and in these giant flower pots on the patio—but no, when I went out again, I discovered she’d left it right in the middle of the chaise lounge. Gross. Unbeknownst to her, I threw it over the fence. Please don’t tell my neighbor.

Now, her new distraction is this giant red dirt pile in a construction area near the tennis courts. (At the apartment complex but the gym charges American prices so not for me.) They’re building something back there and apparently it takes a lot of red dirt, much to the delight of my dog. She loves it, even more so in the morning before work when I am wearing light pants.

It runs the length of a wall, and her favorite thing is to run to the top as fast as her leash allows, which means I have to climb up behind her. White tennis shoes were good while it lasted. She loves to dig, roll around and just sit in it. I feel a little foolish just standing next to her, but I do indulge her a bit, especially if she lounges near the top, where I can sit on the fence and chill out. We amuse the guard immensely. I feel like a lot of guards are amused by the two of us.

Have a Coke after a long while

Happy Easter! It is Resurrection Monday and I am off. Pretty much enjoying a three-day weekend but not really. It’s mostly boring. Right now I am listening to a dog bark his fool head off in my apartment. For once, it’s not my dog; it’s her best friend. We don’t know why he barks, he just does. Sometimes it’s because his bowl is empty; sometimes it’s thunder or lightening, sometimes he wants the toys to move and sometimes he wants the water bowl to be filled. More often, it’s a mystery. It’s not too bad and he’s only here for a couple hours a day to ease his boredom while his parents are out of town. Kudzu likes having him around. She bosses him around and he’s patient enough to let her. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

Kudzu is now running back and forth from the floor-to-ceiling window in the kitchen, which has a little balcony thing that I leave open for her, through the apartment and out the sliding glass door to the fence, barking at full volume the whole time. The garden fence is a privacy fence so I can’t see what she’s barking at, but the whole neighborhood knows her. I live in the first apartment and the road sort of curves around, so she’ll see or hear someone (and usually their girl dog) out one and basically chase them to the other. It’s her exercise. Jax just looks bewildered.

Last week, the dogs tried to break me. We – Jax’s parents and brother and me and Zu – were walking and suddenly both Zu and Jax veered off and tripped me up. I crashed to the asphalt and curb. As I was falling, what someone told me crossed my mind: “We have to be careful when walking our dogs because if we fall, it takes longer to recover.”

Landed on my knee, elbow and wrist. Owie. I initially finished the walk with no major problems, but by the end of the night, the back of my knee was hurting. I hadn’t felt a pop like when I tore my PCL, but I was worried I’d wake up in massive pain from my knee.

That didn’t happen. Instead, my rib area was sore and I woke up at 2 a.m. with a severe bout of vomiting and diarrhea. Sweats, dizziness and the whole enchiladas. And my rib cage hurt. However, I’d also finished a jar of alfredo sauce that I had opened the week before, so I wasn’t sure what had made me sick – the pain or the sauce. And the dizziness could have also been a residual effect from the morning, when I somehow slammed the corner of a door into my eyebrow.

Let’s just say last Saturday wasn’t my day. I even had a low-grade fever and I wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to risk eating anything. So I was also completely fatigued but I wasn’t sure what was what. By Sunday, I was hungry again but my rib cage hurt like the Dickins and I was short of breath. I had some fake Tylenol PM and got some sleep, though.

Monday’s X-ray was negative so my rib is probably just bruised but more than a week later I’m still in pain. Hiccups and sneezing aren’t recommended, either. But there’s nothing that can be done so I’m just trying to stay comfortable.

I’ve been glad for the extra day of rest. I’ve had both dogs over after a late afternoon walk and then a movie. Jax was particularly into The Passion of the Christ but not so much Steel Magnolias.

I was happy Easter arrived because I gave up Cokes for Lent. Boy, that was rough but I stuck to it. I did cave and had two Sprites over the course of the 40 days, but one of those was Saturday when I was sick. I did pretty good and am going to try to stay off them for the most part. However, it was quite lovely Sunday night to finally be cable to open up a cold one.

Stop thief! Oh, the humanity!

 

Since I got the dog, I haven’t walked home much because I don’t want to walk for 1:20, get home at 6 and then take Zu for an hourlong walk. I’m mostly taking the shuttle home but on Fridays, if it’s not too hot or I’m not lugging a bunch of stuff home, I still like to walk.

It’s really a lovely walk, or most of it is, anyway. In my mind, it’s a video game that I’ve broken down into 10 levels, each with its own challenges. For example, leg 3 is the longest one – so long I break it down into three smaller sections – is beautiful but has people pushing or pulling carts through the potholed-filled roads, random zebu blocking the path and motorcycles or bicyclists passing and kicking out exhaust or up dust/mud.

Other challenges include a narrow bridge, traffic, hills and cobblestone roads.  At no point has “fear of being mugged” entered the picture. Until Friday.

My week was rough, and I looked forward to the walk and listening to Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, which someone recommended. And I did enjoy it – through level 3, most of 4 and then 5. But 6 went sideways – I had my phone snatched!

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61qV0ieP64L._SL1500_.jpg
This is the book I was aborbed in.

Backing up, close to the end of 3, I walked past two guys. This is not unusual – I walk fast and there are lots of people, including kids getting off school. I say bonjour or salama to everyone, and everyone is friendly. And I didn’t think anything of passing the two guys.

A couple minutes later, they passed me. Again, not unusual – think of all the times this happens in cars. But then one slowed up and I passed him, and I remember thinking, “Hmm, I don’t like being between these two guys; I will slow down and let that one catch up.” And he did, so they were again together.

Then they slowed their pace slightly. At this point, I was coming up to level 4, which is where most people go left but I job right down a little hill and then wind around to the narrow bridge before hitting 5, which is the stretch between the airport road and the bridge – the big road I cross. I slowed some more, which was starting to get a little weird, as it seemed really slow. But at that point, I had a Spidey sense that something was off -  except I had no idea what to do with it.

Right where 3 switches to 4, I fully expected them to walk to the left. But they stopped completely – lighting up cigarettes (which not people do, incidentally) and I didn’t see that I had a choice but to keep going. I nodded to them as I passed --  bonjour – and kept going.

I tried to walk really fast, but I got caught behind parents with two small kids on the narrow bridge and I couldn’t pass, plus there were two people on bikes coming the other way, right before a guy with a giant sack of some sort. Basically, I couldn’t go fast. And I tried to check behind me to see if they’d turned, but I did not see anyone.

So, honestly, I forgot about it. I took a stop on the airport road to take a sip of water and turned down a narrow passageway, then exited to the cobblestone road that is level 7. Not five meters in, I suddenly heard footsteps and felt a bump.

I knew exactly what happened – someone grabbed my phone and took off. As it’s a little street, there were people everywhere and they started yelling and I took off after the guy – and so did they.

I am not fast, but they were. I ran back down the narrow passageway and to the road, where the guy was already 100 meters up. I was yelling STOP HIM! (in English, so not helpful) and others were also yelling, pointing and chasing.  This was pure Willie Nelson -Toby Keith justice, and, as people joined the chase, I honestly started worrying what would happen if they caught him.

He got to an intersection with a little road, and I could see other passers-by pointing where he was going, and about that time, a guy pulled up next to me on a motorcycle, asking what happened. It took a second to register it was a colleague, and then I pointed and said that guy had my phone.

So he took off, and I really have no doubt he saved the guy’s life. He told me later the crowd was wailing on him, and then a police officer (somehow) got him and was holding him but not making the crowd stop beating him up.

Eventually, the crowd helped me catch up to the cop and the perp, but another cop had my phone. (Seriously, I have never seen a patrolling cop, so I have no idea where they came from.) I was told I needed to go file a report, and I thought they meant in the police van. I went to the van and, lo and behold, the perp was also in the van. And I wasn’t giving a statement there; I had to go downtown.

Possibly that was the most surreal part of it – being in a police van, sitting in front of a guy who’d robbed me, lights on and all. And by “van,” think something probably minted in 1972, with no seatbelts, pretty much no upholstery (and certainly no A/C – the windows were open) and a sliding door that didn’t close. But hey, we had a light and a siren, not that one can generate speed on the roads of Tana.

In the van, looking at the guy, I realized he must have been one of the two I’d seen before. I asked him (in French) if he had been following me, but he didn’t respond. I did not tell the police about that suspicion, but filed a just-the-facts-ma’am report. Fortunately, my colleague didn’t listen to me when I said to not bother coming down to the police station with me and followed me to the police station. I hadn’t realized it was going to be the main one and assumed that it would be fairly nearby. Had he not followed me, I have no idea how I would have gotten home.

I did, of course, call out security team and reported it and all, and they offered to come give me a ride home, but my colleague had a motorcycle, meaning we’d get home at a reasonable hour. The traffic at that time of day is a complete standstill, so we weaved in and out and got home just before the rain.

I haven’t told too many people here, although I did run into the colleague who recommended the book and jokingly told her I’d gotten robbed and it was all her fault. (Mental note: when security says to not carry your cell phone in your backpack pockets or listen to headphones, listen to them!) But word gets out at a small post and I’m already being asked if I am OK.

And I am. I wasn’t mugged at knifepoint; it was the equivalent of a smash-and-grab. I’ve no idea how he did it so fast, really – I can’t pull the phone out of the pocket easily myself.

God looks out for me, and did, not only sending the colleague my way but through all the people who made sure the guy didn’t get away with it.  And, by my colleague’s estimate, it was over 100 people. They have no idea who I am, but they saw what he did and came to help.

The roads here

Although I bought a car before coming here, I don’t drive regularly. The most I’ve ventured is to the grocery store, which is less than two miles away, or, in desperation, to the kennel, which is near the airport. Both are equally terrifying to me. The roads are narrow with all kinds of obstacles in the way somehow – some of them living and breathing.

The grocery store is about five turns away, left out of my garage and then the drive, then a sharp (and blind) right up a giant hill. Then, there’s a left out of the apartment complex, thankfully assisted by the guard. But that’s where the scary begins, because the road doesn’t so much have lands or anything, plus there is always an assortment of people, vendors, motortaxis and such along the sides. This is in addition of it not really being wide enough for two cars to begin with, and that’s not counting the slight ditch on either side or the giant concrete thing that squishes two “lanes” into one.

But after that, as well as a bizarre right that’s sort of a cut through of a gas station with no real traffic pattern and a left at a pharmacy where three roads come together with no discernable right-of-way, it’s all downhill to the grocery store. I mean, there are taxi vans stopping in front of you all the time, people jumping out, random dogs and things like that, but the line of sight is good – at least until you arrive at the roundabout. If there are police there directing traffic, that’s always a mess, but if not, it runs more or less how it’s supposed to, although I’ll never enter one without saying a prayer and holding my breath.

Yesterday, it was a little scarier than usual because almost immediately after the roundabout, the grocery store is on the right. Since it’s a two-lane roundabout that feeds from a single lane, it’s a bit risky, and Friday morning there was a giant blue van sitting on the side of the road, out of traffic but getting ready to enter. I had to honk to make sure he didn’t run into me, but it was fine.

Honking isn’t impolite here, but mostly people, especially taxi van drivers, rely on a lot of (polite) hand signals. A wave outside the driver’s since window can either mean “I see you and I’m waiting on you to go,” “I see you and I acknowledge you’re there, but I’m going anyway” or “My turn, just hold on a sec.” No malice seems intended.

The kennel is a bit farther away but, after the initial downhill through a market (thankfully, one way, although there are way too many people there), a blind right turn and a much bigger roundabout, it’s less crowded and therefore not as bad. Well, unless it’s rush hour. Then, the turn out of the kennel road is a left and that’s never, ever done without a prayer.

So yeah, I drive as little as possible. We have a shuttle we can pay to take to and from work, and I have no problem letting a professional drive. Every day, I am reminded why I don’t drive.

It’s the rainy season, so the rains have compounded the issues with the roads, which are full of potholes on their best days. There are also little shops and such crowding the streets and people flooding the areas, making driving pretty heart-stopping.

The way itself isn’t more than 6-7 miles, but it can take an hour or more. Last rainy season, on a day I walked home in 1:20, it took the commuters three hours. There are only about four turns – one of them hairpin – but it’s a lot of winding on the overly-crowded road. Once we’re at the roundabout, though, there are two ways to go – the long way, or “Skinny Road.” The long way is the safe bet, but it takes forever because traffic is at a standstill before the next roundabout. After that, you’re home free, but getting there can take 20 minutes.

Skinny Road, OTOH, is a quicker route, but it’s also like a cut-rate Disney ride. It’s not paved, full of potholes and, well, skinny. When my colleagues take it, they tuck in their rearview mirrors so as not the dink them. One commented that every time he took the road, it took 10 years off his car’s life. Fortunately, it’s (mostly) one-way, although occasionally a motorcyclist or banana cart guy will buck the system and mess everything up. My fear is a flat tire – there’s nothing you can do.

Before deploying overseas, we have to take this week-long course that includes defensive – really defensive – driving, including how to get out of nightmare situations. This could mean ramming into a car to get away or jumping curbs. Well, on Skinny Road, neither is possible. The concept of curbs in general isn’t a thing here. It’s always a relief when you can see the end, although if there’s a car that’s going to try to go the other way, it’s going to be at that spot. But oh, to get off the pothole-y dirt road and back to pavement, no matter how potholed it is, is a relief.