This post, a quick forewarning, can continue only so long as I can keep from being forced out of the lovely ex-patriate restaurant I am currently hanging out in and pushed back into the Tata bus. We arrived in Tulear after waking up at 4:30 to rush to the airport for our six o'clock flight, which landed about half an hour after our supposed embarquement time. The moral of the story; time in Madagascar does not exist as Westerners imagine it does. There is morning, lunchtime, and night; nothing else exists. We made our way through airport security, which consisted of filing past an x-ray machine and metal detector, one of which was broken and the other of which was off. Our flight brought us in to Tulear very tired, and the first thing we did was make our way to the Marine ecology center for a lecture which I'm sorry to say I may have drowsed through. But I got all the lecture notes on a thumbdrive, to read later! Anyway, once he realized that we were barely conscious, the lecturer instead took us to his home which he has turned into a manufacturing site for solar powered inventions which can bake bread, generate electricity, and generate methane gas and compost.... and I have to go!
So sorry! But I promise better updates soon, involving roomfuls of octopus and receiving the blessing of an Obiasa on top of a sacred mountain and my first ice cream in a month. LOVE
