The Razakarisoas!

9/1: After months of anticipation, I finally got to meet my family for the next few weeks. They are very nice and have hosted quite a few students before so they’ll have some patience (I hope!). Sosoa (the mother), Ivan (the father), Nino (14 year old brother) and Marie (13 year old daughter) all speak French so I should get pretty good (again, cross my fingers!). An uncle also lives with us as does a girl that is around my age but I am not sure exactly her relation. We also have to boys who live with us and take care of house hold chores and small errands.

The dad has a shop that is an extension of the house that sells basic corner store/convenient store items. The mother is an agent for one of the three telecommunication companies here and although it is becoming more prevalent, a two income house is not too common in Madagascar. Ivan also gave me a haircut!! I had been looking for one since I arrived and finally found it. Pretty sure it has a couple spots where he cut it too short and it isn’t the same length all the way around but it was a cool bonding experience I suppose. It will grow back anyway. ;)

The house is much bigger than I expected and, based on my discussions with classmates, is bigger than most of theirs. I have a room to myself that can be entered only through Nino’s room. There are 1.5 bathrooms and we do have a water heater. No bucket showers yet although I am 99% sure I will be quite good at them before I return to the USA. I’m actually living in complete luxury as we have a washing machine as well!
There are a couple pet tortoises here, they filled their fireplace with sand and let them roam around haha, très mignon (very cute). They told me they have two dogs that live out back. By far my least favorite pet is the rooster that may not belong to my family but does live within ear distance. It woke me up at 5:00 am my first morning here and made sure I only took 10-15 minute max naps until 6:30 when I had to get ready… Hopefully that does not become a common occurrence.

I’ve only known these people for about 24 hours at this point and spent much less time with them than that considering sleep and school so I will have more updates later.

Thanks for reading!

-Ben