Ann's-Mercy-Africa-Service-Trip

Yesterday was one week since I got here, and the first day to spend the day off the ship. The ship is awesome it has most things that you want, but it is also often cold (constant air conditioning), and can feel a little claustrophobic. I am lucky that I have 2 windows in my berth, but I often keep them closed because I don’t want the people on the freight ship next door to be able to see in when I’m changing. At night, I close them because there is a lot of lights on at the port so it is hard to sleep if they are open. We can walk around the port area which is enclosed and guarded, but it is not safe to go outside the port during the day or at night unless you are in a group. So even after a week there are times when I feel a little trapped. It is a privilege to be here. I am not complaining, but telling what it feels like to be here.

Yesterday, I signed up to go for a trip to a local conservation park where there are both wild and caged lemurs. The caged ones are from other parts of Madagarscar and they do not want them to inbreed with the local population for conservation purposes which is why they are caged in pairs or groups.

The roads here are very bad. In the rainy season there is a lot of flooding. The roads are narrow, there are lots of vehicles on them: very large trucks, large vans like the one I was in that held 15 people, to regular cars, Tuk-tuks (small motorized vehicles that look like a motorized Rikshaw), Bicycle rikshaws,

and of course walkers. Because of flooding there are large, wide, and deep ditches in the roads all over the place. This means that not only are the drivers having to weave through all of the traffic but they also have to maneuver these large depressions in the road that are everywhere! Needless to say it was very slow going. It was also very hot in the van.

Once we arrived at the park, we paid a park entrance fee, and each person paid a fee for the tour guide at the park. We also pain $10.00 for the van. The whole trip cost about $25.00. in US dollars and 120000 in Ariari, the local currency. Almost immediately we started walking on the trail. The tour guide pointed out different trees and plants, like a cinnamon tree (the bark is what we call cinnamon), then a clove tree, and eucalyptus trees. Then we saw a lemur on the top of a building. The tour guide started feeding it small pieces of banana. Then a whole bunch of lemurs joined the one. They were swinging from tree to tree and were very excited about the bananas!

Then the tour guide found a chameleon! We all took turns holding it and letting it crawl on us. I was very cool! I declined to hold the Boa Constrictor that we found along the trail!!

We walked a total of 7 km ( about 4.5 miles). We saw a waterfall and lots of different plants including a very large Palm plant that when you are thirsty you can poke a hole in the leaf and it will pour out water!

Then we had the same bumpy, hot ride home.

In the evening a bunch of us went out to dinner at a restaurant that was about a 30 min drive. There were 12 of us in all. We took 3 Tuk-tuks.

You must negotiate the price before the ride starts. The drivers always try to inflate the price and we are told that we should not allow them to do this because if we do, all the drivers will want to take only the ship patrons and the tuk-tuks will be less available for local people to use.

We had a really nice dinner in an open air restaurant. Everyone had steak, rice or vegetables, bread and drinks (beer, soda) the meal ended up costing about $7 US dollars.

I did not eat all of my large steak. A very humbling moment came after the plates were taken away. I asked the server if I might have my plate back so that I could give the leftover meat to a stray dog who was hanging around. I was told that it was no longer available as one of the staff had taken it to bring home. This had not even occurred to me but makes total sense and shows the cluelessness of my privilege.