Majunga Continued

10/23 Been in Majunga a week now and it is going really well! My first day here, I had to wake up at 5:30 to go to church with my family. It was quite early for me to be up on a Sunday but I was very content to be able to change out of long pants and a dress shirt by 8:30, before the midday heat picked up! It has been really great living on the coast because we have been able to eat a lot of seafood! I love seafood! We also get fresh mangoes everyday and I can’t complain about that.

Throughout the week, we continued our language classes of French and Malagasy and we got to make a few trips around the city as well. We visited a Mosque here where we got to walk around and ask questions to some of the locals. Another day we went to a Doany, which is the place of worship for a more traditional set of religious beliefs here. It was really cool because the Prince who ran the place welcomed us and he sat down to talk with us for a few hours. The following day we met someone who practiced divination who spoke of the practice and how he got started. He even read the future/lives of a few students but wouldn’t tell us too many specifics, like the dates of our death, which he claimed to know.

Now I want you to keep in mind that we are here as students and not tourists, we have “school to do”… Hahaha that being said, last Wednesday after class, because we had a half-day, a bunch of us went to the beach for the afternoon. We hopped on a bus here (same as Taxi-be just different name) with 25 other people and got to the beach within 20 or so minutes. The Indian Ocean is warm and was incredibly beautiful and calm. The beach was lined with umbrellas that cost $1 to rent and so we sat around drinking beer and swimming until we got to watch the sunset over the water. Probably similar to what UCSB students get, but very different from UPS.. But remember, we are students, not tourists ☺

Last Friday we took a small barge across a bay to a small fishing village nearby, the barge was overcrowded (surprise!) and many of the students got crammed into the small bedroom of the captain. We then found out that there are more spacious and quicker motorboats that we took back but the morning barge trip was for the “experience”. In the small village we were met by a Peace Corp volunteer who went to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wa – what a small world! It was really cool to get to talk to her because we automatically had a similar background going to small schools in Tacoma and I got to ask some questions about the Peace Corp because I am still strongly considering it.

We just finished up our second to last week of class so things have been pretty busy. Finishing up final papers and homework assignments. After next week, we are splitting up to begin our Independent Study Project. I will be returning to Tana and actually staying with my homestay family there because I really enjoyed them and consider myself lucky to be able to return. I will be there and doing research on music in Madagascar, hopefully meeting some music executives and artists along the way. I think that is all I got to update for now, hope all is well back home!

Here is an excerpt from an email that I sent to my parents, they thought it was funny and asked me to put it on the blog, enjoy!
“We have an outhouse toilet that you dump a bucket of water down to “flush”… The most bizarre thing is that they don’t have toilet paper, just a water spigot and buckets; not sure exactly what I was supposed to do, but I got some TP of my own as soon as possible lol.”