Church + All That Jazz

9/11: Putting up a few posts because my group is about to go on our first extended excursion outside the capitol city of Tana! I am not anticipating having any type of computer access so I wanted to post a few pics and give y’all some more news before we leave. On Tuesday we are leaving for Andisibe and Vatomandry and will be returning the following Saturday but you will hear about that stuff when I get back.

Yesterday, I just hung around our house and did some homework, read, etc. But at night, I went to Church with my family which was very interesting. It was mostly in French, so I could kind of follow although my French Catholic vocab is not quite up to par. There were actually quite a few French people there including the ones leading the ceremony. I didn’t participate at all but it was yet another insight into Malagasy culture. About half of the people here are some form of Christian and a little under half still practice traditional “religion” relating to ancestors and spirits – like the Famidiahana that I attended last week. From there about 1-2% are Islam and a fraction of a percent fall under the “Other” category.

Today my family left for vacation to Majungha (where we will go at the end of the semester) leaving the house to the uncle, cousin, myself and our helper boys. I spent the afternoon in Anelakely because there was a free jazz concert there! One of the cultural centers set up a stage at the foot of a huge stone staircase and hundreds of people came and sat on the stairs and got a free afternoon of entertainment. It rained a bit and wasn’t the usual Tana perfect weather but wasn’t bad enough to ruin an enjoyable event. Afterwards, my friends and I went to a café for a bit and I caught the taxi-be back to my house.

As I write this, the 49er game is on in about 4 hours… We better beat the ‘Hawks! Hopefully someone can give me some insight into how the game goes because Alex Smith is generally really good at making us lose by 10 instead of 21, thus making the score a lot closer than the game was…