To Ranomafana (and back)

5R-AAD, the Cessna 182 that I fly is still without an engine. A new engine is currently being built in France and hopefully it will be ready to ship to us in May. In the meantime we decided to use up some holiday and explore some of Madagascar.

Traveller's Palm 

Bethan was not impressed with a 4 hour car journey to Antsirabe on the first day. She fell asleep not long after leaving Tana but woke up 45 minutes later and spent the rest of the journey telling us, in no uncertain terms, that she did not want to go on holiday. Two and a half hours of listening to "I don't want to go to Antsirabe, turn the car around and go back home" felt a whole lot longer! Thankfully things improved after that.

Thoroughly enjoying her holiday after the initial protest!

Easter weekend is somewhat of a party in Madagascar, especially 'Picnic Monday' when everyone has the day off and makes the most of the sunshine. In Antsirabe most of the population head to Lake Andraikiba (described in the guide book as picturesque and peaceful) so we chose to give it a miss and comtinue on to Lake Tritriva, which was as stunningly beautiful as we had been told. We drove back to find that the road had turned into a sea of people. Fortunately, a policeman decided to help us and gave directions to avoid the worst of the crowds. It made a nice change to have dealings with the police that didn't involve a long wait and phone calls by the side of the road as they try to extract money from us!

Lake Tritriva, which from this viewpoint looks like a map of Africa

We were not looking forward to trying to make our way through the crowds on the road

Around lunchtime we headed south to Ranomafana. A combination of potholes and revellers meant the journey was very slow and we got there in time to put a sleeping Bethan into bed and eat dinner in our hotel room.

A smaller scale picnic at the side of the RN7 

While in Ranomafana we visited the National park, firstly for a night walk, where we saw some chameleons and the nocturnal Greater Dwarf Lemur.

Sleeping Chameleon

Short-horned Chameleon

The next day we visited the park again and this time we saw Red-Fronted Brown Lemurs, a Red Bellied Lemur and the endangered Golden Brown Lemur. We also saw a very cool Leaf-tailed Gecko and many interesting insects.

                                    

                                                  Red Bellied Lemur

Leaf-tailed Gecko

Golden Bamboo Lemur

While in Ranomafana we wanted to visit the thermal baths, which the town was originally built around. The bridge across the river was in disrepair so we waded through the river only to find the baths were closed for cleaning. We did manage to put our feet in a shallow pool of thermal water though and, at 38 degrees Celsius, we thought maybe swimming would have been too hot anyway! Instead we explored the town and walked through the rainforest again,

We opted to wade through the river rather than balance on the log carrying Bethan

The thermal pool looked like a lovely place to spend the day if it had been open!

Game of Pooh Sticks in Ranomafana National Park

Finding Frogs in the rainforest

After Ranomafana we stopped at a private nature reserve (Ialatsara Lemur Camp) for the night. The owner, Daniel, has set up his own camp and protected an area of the forest. He has done an amazing job of it and we all enjoyed staying there. In the evening he showed us the Brown Mouse Lemurs living just next to the camp and during a 3 hour hike the next morning, we found Eastern Lesser Bamboo Lemurs, Red bellied Lemurs, Milne-Edwards' Sifakas and Small Tooth Sportive Lemurs. The guides were clearly not used to Vazahas (foreigners!) with toddlers and treated us as they do everyone who comes to visit the forest. If the lemurs are somewhere unreachable they hack a path through the undergrowth and clamber up the side of the mountain - not so easy whilst carrying a 3 year old!

Matt trying to get Bethan through the gaps Marcel had created with his hacking device!

Milne-Edwards' Sifaka

Sportive Lemur 

Milne-Edwards' Sifaka and Sportive Lemur

Bethan loved it at Daniel's place because there are 3 dogs and 7 cats living there. She spent most of dinner and breakfast tormenting the poor cats. This was one of the highlights of the holiday for her.

Tormenting 'Tap Le Porte' the cat

Spotted this park on the way home so broke up the journey for an hours playing

On our way home, we broke up the journey with an overnight stay at Madalief, just south of Antsirabe. It is a hotel that has been set up to raise funding for the orphanage run by the owners and provide work for single mothers in the area. It is a very beautiful place, with a play area which Bethan thoroughly enjoyed and the best food we have eaten in Madagascar.
http://www.madalief.nl

Madalief Guest House

Frustrations

We were told before coming here that after a few months of living in a new country, life often becomes difficult for a while, when the initial excitement of experiencing a new culture wears off. We haven't experienced the symptoms of culture shock that we were warned about but there have been difficulties and frustrations recently. We have shared some the positive aspects of living in Tana and good times that we've had here so it's only right to tell you about the things that aren't so great!

Enjoying rainy Madagascar

We live in a northern suburb of Tana, with decent-sized supermarkets,a big outdoor market, swimming pools, an excellent English-speaking church and the airport all within ten minutes of relatively fast-moving traffic (most of the time). This means that we don't need to venture into the city centre, where the roads are completely unsuitable for the number of vehicles that use them. With all the rain in the last few months, many of the roads are now full of potholes. In some places they span the width of the road so even areas where the traffic used to be OK are now gridlocked. Some drivers will crawl over them or weave around them, while others take advantage of the lack of rules on the road by using pavements, going through petrol stations or simply driving down the lane of on-coming traffic! Anything goes here and it's every driver for themselves so it is mayhem on the roads in Tana.

Oncoming traffic 

The first few times of crawling through Tana, doing 10km in 2 hours, is fine as it gives you the opportunity to take in the new sights around you and watch children entertain themselves with a tin can at the side of the road. Now, though, the idea of sitting in Tana traffic and having yet another policeman stop us for half an hour, demanding things that we cannot provide is just too frustrating to go out on a day trip. Unfortunately, most places worth visiting here involve driving through the city so we just end up staying at home. Living in a third world country, there aren't the opportunities that are available in England so we do miss being able to take Bethan to a children's playgroup (although she does go to her friends' houses every week), or to a museum or the zoo for example. Compared to our lifestyle in England, we do feel a bit isolated here with just a few possible activities to do out of the house each week. However, we have everything we need and we are fortunate to be able to enjoy the warm weather, swimming pools and to be part of the missionary community that live near us.

Watch out for potholes!

Becki has been going to Malagasy and French lessons most days for the last month and outside of those lessons, she has been at home (locked in the guest bedroom) with her notes and the computer, as she uses this time to improve both languages. In case you hadn't heard, the smaller MAF aircraft (which Becki flies) had its engine removed and sent to France for investigation after an oil pressure problem developed in December. The lessons have been beneficial and her Malagasy has come on impressively quickly. Unfortunately her tutor only works alternate months so these lessons will stop at the end of February. While it is definitely a good use of this time, when there isn't much that she can do at work, it has been frustrating that Becki hasn't been able to do what we came here to do. It is probably made more difficult as it came after a busy period in November and December when she was flying every day and getting a great deal of satisfaction from her work. Hopefully March will see the return of the engine and Becki will be able to see the benefit of having this enforced time on the ground by being able to talk more confidently with passengers. Speaking Malagasy is important for her as many outside of Tana don't speak French.

Bethan "helping" Becki learn Malagasy words

This weekend we were given the keys to our new house. We are moving just up the road to a house that is nearly identical to our current one inside but with a smaller garden that needs a lot of work. Living in another family's house made it easy when we first arrived as we didn't need to find furniture and just kept on the staff that work in the house but we have been looking forward to having our own home for a while now. It will be strange for us (especially Bethan) to be in another house and it will no doubt take time to make it feel like home.

New house on the same compound 

Front garden 

The weather has been unusual for the last 2 months. We were told that it is usually very hot at this time of year with rain showers in the afternoon, except when there are cyclones around, when its more cloudy, However, since Christmas its been very cloudy and extremely wet. Tana is very flooded at the moment and thousands of people have been affected.

Rain, Rain and more rain

Over 16,000 people displaced from their homes

Finally, we really enjoyed having Philip and Antonia visit us for a few days last week and are very excited about our friend Ruth coming to stay in May. We are also starting to look ahead to July/August when we will be back in England on furlough to visit our supporters.

Domaine Du Lac

After living in Tana for 5 months we felt it was time to explore another local tourist site. Only 9km from our house by road, at the end of the airport runway, sits Domaine Du Lac (site botanical et zoologic), but the road is terrible so it took over an hour to get there! Our journey there was further impeded by the local Citroen owner's club putting their poor vehicles to the test and making an outing of driving along the road!

The Citroen flag made us think it might be an organised event not just a traffic jam!

More Citroen 2CV's than you would expect to see on a dirt road 

The lead Citroen!

After passing the Citroen parade, which many people were eagerly awaiting with video cameras, the road got progressively worse. Every now and then there were brief sections of tarmac just to give you hope that it might improve. On the plus side Bethan fell asleep so was nicely refreshed when we arrived at the small zoological gardens. The 'zoo' bit was much better than Soavinandrimanitra Nature Parc because the wildlife was free roaming inside a tropical house rather than individually caged (although Bethan liked Soavinandrimanitra because the lemurs cuddled her). We were impressed with Domaine du Lac. Here are some photo's from the day:

Hundreds of tortoises

It wouldn't be Madagascar without some free roaming Lemurs

Enjoying the sunshine

Mini Baobab

Bethan liked these flowers so the owner picked them for her 

Biggest Green Gecko we've seen so far

Men fishing on the lake

Just eating my lunch with some Chameleons

Parson's Chameleon

Tomato Frog

Mantella Frog

So cool when they are jumping

Grounded

On the 18th December I did a flight from Antananarivo to Besalmpy with a team from US AID. I sat by my plane making felt food for Bethan's Christmas present (the glamorous life of a pilot!!) and met a lovely young lady called Sandra. She only spoke Malagasy but was quite happy to chat to me for half an hour and managed to make me understand that she liked my plane, introduce me to her father and leave me with a mango as a gift.
After a few hours, the USAID team returned to continue their journey to Maintirano, where I would leave them and planned to collect them from, a few days later. After completing the fun task of refuelling the plane (sat on the wing with jerry cans) I flew back to Antananarivo. Unfortunately half way home, whilst completing a routine check of the instruments, I noticed a drop in oil pressure. Normally it reads just above the green arc but now it was reading at the bottom of the green. Fortunately, I made it back to our hanger without any further problems.

After landing and talking to Rob, the chief engineer, the aircraft was temporarily grounded pending a test flight. The next morning Rob and the training captain taxied out to check the aircraft. When they taxied back a few minutes later we knew it was bad news - the plane was permanently grounded until the problem could be resolved. As the oil temperature and everything else appeared normal, the obvious conclusion was that there was a problem with the pressure relief valve in the oil filter so a new one was ordered just before Christmas. The new part made it through customs and into the MAF hanger in record time and was fitted before the new year. Unfortunately this did not resolve the problem so the aircraft is still grounded and the engine will now make it's way to France to be overhauled, which could take 2 months.

In the meantime, I have been re-writing the airstrip directory, which is a book of charts showing us important information about the places we land and what the runway and surrounding area looks like. Some of our charts had nothing on them and others were hard to decipher. Here is a before and after photo:

Bethan is also trying to help fix the plane! She has sent in drawings, tea and chocolate to make it feel better and finally resorted to building me a new one!

Christmas in Madagascar

Our first Christmas in Madagascar almost snook up on us without us noticing. Without the shops and radio playing cheesy Christmas songs from November but with warm weather and nesting birds, it didn't feel like the run up to Christmas at all. On the 17th December, we had the MAF staff Christmas party. Previously a work do has involved an evening out with colleagues, having dinner in a nice restaurant but this year it involved games, devotions, speeches and lunch, starting at 9am and over by 3pm!

Staff Christmas Party games

We had fun eating ice creams while doing our Christmas shopping at the 'mall' and stopped off at the souvenir market for some small toys to put in our home-made crackers (that didn't bang but did have hats and jokes) and a new dress for Bethan to wear on the 25th.

I'd really like all these teddies!

Thanks to a visit from Jo at MAF UK in November, we had some imported brown sugar, so Christmas cake and mince pies were on the menu!

Making mince pies

Christmas day arrived and thanks to the enormous fireplace, Father Christmas had no problems getting down the chimney! Bethan, however, was a bit unsure about what to do with her stocking of presents.

 

After a while she got the hang of opening them and enjoyed playing with the contents.

Opening presents

Christmas lunch was a lovely red onion tart (Delia) with the usual roast trimmings - roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, stuffing and carrots. Couldn't find any sprouts in Antananarivo but we didn't really mind about that! All enjoyed outside in the sunshine:

Not our traditional setting for Christmas lunch!

Christmas lunch in Mascar

The afternoon was spent opening presents, talking to family on FaceTime and enjoying the paddling pool. Then in the evening the power went off so a few presents were opened by candle light. Thankfully the power cut was only an hour or two, unlike last years Christmas in the UK when the power was out for 2 days!

Filling up her new paddling pool