Amie’s Adventures Abroad

Shortly after returning to Anivorano from my last stint in the cities I had Thanksgiving dinner at my new house. I had left town with explicit instructions to the men at the farmers cooperative and they mayor that my house had to be truly finished when I came back as I was going to have visitors and I would be really embarrassed if my house was not looking good. I was still waiting on my back porch, a shower room, a door on the kitchen and a fence. I arrived back in Anivorano exhausted and stressed about providing the perfect thanksgiving for my friends only to discover that absolutely nothing had been accomplished in my two weeks away. What had I expected? Something to actually get done. But I guess I had forgotten that this is Madagascar and nothing ever gets done here.

I spent my entire first day back at site sitting on the steps of the mayor’s office waiting to get to talk to him and harangue him into providing the supplies necessary to at least put a door on my kitchen and my back porch up so my guests wouldn’t fall out the back door (which is approximately 6 feet off the ground) when they got drunk and couldn’t remember where they were going. The prospect of having people come to Anivorano and see that he had not held up his side of the bargain spurred him into action. He would send the boards required for the kitchen door over to my house the next morning. And amazingly enough he actually did.

The second day back at site was the day of the Great Turkey Hunt. I had been told before I left town that I would be able to buy a turkey in Anivorano for about 35,000 Ary ( about $17.50) and I would have no trouble finding one. Well I don’t think this person had any idea what they were talking about. At about 9 am Mbola, his niece Rotsy and I headed out to Maurice a small village about 4 km from Anivorano. It was great fun, along the way we picked berries (I learned to identify the edible ones from the not so edible ones) stole lychees of the trees, and talked about shooting ducks and eating endangered species. Apparently lemur is very tasty. Unfortunately when we arrived in Maurice all the turkeys had died for some unknown reason. So it was back to Anivorano with us.

When we arrived back to Mbola’s unsuccessful in our mission it was decided that we should go along the road to Brickaville, maybe we could find a turkey there. So after asking around town and cunsalting with about 15 people it was decided that we defiantly needed to go in that direction we would have no problems finding a turkey. But we didn’t. We went the entire 20km to Brickaville stoping in about 6 places along the way with no luck. We found some turkeys but no one was willing to sell them to us. So once we arrived in Brickaville and spent about an hr scouring the market I decided to buy a chicken, then I would at least have something. Then it was back to Anivorano.

I had come to grips with the fact that there was to be no turkey at my thanksgiving feast, we would just have to make do with what we had but Mbola was determined that I would have turkey on Turkey day. So the next day (Wednesday) while I stayed in Anivorano awaited the arrival on my friends and supervised the building of the kitchen door he got up at 5 am and walked, biked and swam over 30 km in an attempt to find me a turkey. Once again he was unsuccessful. So we would be having chicken for thanksgiving dinner.

Thanksgiving morning dawned, early and bright and VERY hot. I had a new kitchen door and my friends had come to visit for the 1^st time. I couldn’t have asked for more. Poor