Week 6

The game changed significantly this week.  Last Monday the de facto government, otherwise known as the HAT (High Authority of Transition), announced that they will hold mayoral elections across the country (including in Tana) on December 20th.  So rather than planning towards a Presidential election in May next year, or a Mayoral election some time after that, everything has turned around and speeded up!

This came about because of demands at the National Conference from the delegates, “representatives” (not necessarily via democratic process) of various community groups from across the country, that they be permanently appointed as representatives from their areas.  The HAT announced that these people would need to be elected (possibly assuming they could use their influence across the country to ensure their own candidates win) and announced Mayoral elections.  Ironic from an illegal post-coup government…

Haro initially planned to wait to see if the elections would be recognised by the international community, but through the past week has been pressured by his supporters to plant his flag and make the decision to run.  It also comes down to the fact that if the HAT win these elections due to lack of participation by other candidates (and corruption), it may give them the momentum to win the presidential elections (whenever they happen), which would put them in power for another five years – an inconceivable thought for many people.

There is a growing anger with the HAT, so there is plenty to work with.  People are starting to show their anger and frustration openly, the students and staff (faculty and admin) at the public university are all on strike / protesting because they haven’t been paid for several months, and citizens joined in a riot recently and stood up to the police – it all reminds me very much of the atmosphere when I was in Indonesia in 1998, the year that President Soeharto was deposed…

So we are now working with a whole lot more urgency towards a Dec 20^th election.  It will be a tricky balance for a while, maintaining discreet operations (to avoid attention from potential opponents) while building support!  The official election is only 45 days, so part of the challenge is to do a lot of pre-work without officially announcing or campaigning.  It’s also going to be a challenge sorting Haro’s team out too, because it’s all moving too fast for some of them, and several are also worried about security for themselves and their families – so sad that they have to think like that when taking part in an ostensibly democratic process.  So there is adaptive work to do there, and we are also constantly on the lookout for new talent – though in some ways the urgency of the three month timeline makes that easier.

As for what else I have been up to…

I had a great day last Monday working with the university students that we had identified at the previous sessions as proactive and insightful.  They came into the office for the day, and in the morning I ran the same mapping and visioning session with them that I had run with the very poor young people last week.  The results were very different in some ways (particularly as most of this group are working/middle class students of development, law or politics) but there were some points of commonality – jobs, a youth centre, traffic free roads, etc).  Interestingly, the boy’s group (I split them by gender) had no idea how to collaborate and ended up creating maps that basically showed all their individual ideas, while the girls worked together to create a common picture of their lives and wants.

Workshop with uni students

In the afternoon we worked with them on ideas for the projects that the NGO is considering – school improvements, birth registration, community spaces & civic education.  We drew out some interesting ideas, and identified some great young people who will hopefully be part of the work going forward – as employees or volunteers of the NGO, and/or as campaign workers on Haro’s campaign (even more important now!).  A couple of them turned out to be applicants for Fulbright scholarships for next year – it will be brilliant if they are successful and can put in some strong work here until they leave. 

I actually think the biggest challenge with this group will be similar to the one that I faced at Reach – how to practically support the big, idealistic projects of passionate young people within an NGO with limited capacity and resources!  It’s a great challenge though – they are exactly the kind of young people that Madagascar needs.

That night I went to visit another project – this time run by Tanja, the German women who I mentioned in week 2.  She runs a mobile maternal health care bus, that she and her team take to a different area each night to provide health care to homeless or very poor pregnant women (actually girls) and children.  There were various mothers and multiple children there seeking help – it’s great that Tanja does this work, but I once again struggled with the fact that these children probably have no chance for any kind of decent life.  Their mothers are illiterate, homeless, alcoholic; their births have not been registered so they can’t attend school even if their mother could get them there; they are malnourished and therefore developmentally impeded… one baby (probably about six months old) had a very strangely shaped head, and when I asked Tanja about it she said that the baby is so malnourished that its skull is still soft and therefore gets pushed out of shape… There was also a very sad man whose wife had disappeared shortly after their baby was born (he doesn’t know whether she ran away, or something happened to her), so he was left to look after the baby.  He hired a nanny, but then the baby became sick so he was spending a lot of time at the hospital, so he lost his job, and then his house, and now lives on the street with the baby.  Tanja has some real horror stories about the terrible things that happen in the health care system and generally to children here. 

Tanja's mobile maternal / child health bus

The next day I heard more shocking stories, though this time at a nationwide level, when Haro and I went to visit the head of UNICEF in Madagascar.  He provided us with some really interesting (and terrible) stats about the state of affairs here – eg the de facto government has cut all the budgets by 60%, half of the health care centres across the country are non operational or operated without medical staff, the stock of vaccinations has all been used including the buffer stock but the government hasn’t bought/ordered more, nor provided funding for the nationwide measles vaccination next month (which UNICEF will have to fund).  UNICEF are now funding regional health centres and NGOs directly, as they will not route money through the central government any more – in a way, they are acting as the surrogate Ministry of Health (at least as far as services for children go)!  We will hopefully be meeting again with UNICEF people this coming week to talk about possibly working together.

Tuesday also included a half day spent with the Directors and heads of Parents Associations of the poorest primary schools in Tana (the ones that we visited last week).  It was another chance for them to put forward what they need for their schools, to see if the NGO can help them out.  I think it was a great opportunity for them to also meet with each other and understand how much everyone is struggling.   Some schools had very humble requests (eg concreting an area of the schoolyard, as it is very dusty in winter and muddy in summer) while other requests were a bit larger (toilets, classrooms, extra teachers etc).  One guy (from the poorest school!) started talking about sports gear for the soccer team (just after the director had explained how they would like to get the electricity turned back on because the classrooms are very dark in the afternoons!) – Ny Aina gave him very short shrift!

Directors from the public primary schools

And then it was time for a few days’ break.  It was probably not the best timing considering the announcement by the HAT about the elections, but we had to wait for some indication about the international recognition / legitimacy, and the trip had been planned since I arrived so there didn’t seem any point in cancelling it (though was originally supposed to be to Toamasina on the very hot and humid east coast until there was a reported malaria outbreak there).  So I headed off with Dina, Ny Aina, and Ny Aina’s boyfriend Patrick (and Jean the driver) to Mahajanga, the third biggest city in Madagascar, on the very hot and dry west coast. 

Still not sure what this fruit is - brown watery flesh with seeds - but v. nice!

 The journey is 600 km each way, so we basically spent the first and fourth days on the road there and back – on the return trip we left at 7am and arrived home at 7:30pm.  The road is one of the better ones in Madagascar – sealed the whole way and mostly in fair condition – but still barely a dual lane road, with no proper edges, which is hairy on the mountain turns… It also goes through many villages, and here everyone walks on the road, sits on the road, sells things on the road, drives bullock carts on the road… so there’s a lot of slowing down and horn beeping… but also great opportunities to see Malagasy life and take photos!

It was an amazing drive – through the highlands for the first half, and then down to the coast, through miles of barren landscape (I wonder what it was like before deforestation and burning) and villages poor and relatively prosperous.  It is like a different country from Tana, which while it has a huge poor population, is definitely an urban environment.  The minute we left the outskirts of Tana, we only saw small villages, most made of mud huts with straw roofs.  The occasional bigger village had a few houses (and community facilities – schools, health centre, community office) made from concrete.  There was also the occasional fancy house being built – which my travel companions disparagingly identified as probably HAT supporters – the only people with that kind of money these days!

HAT house?

Charcoal on sale everywhere

Typical village hut

We stopped for the night at Ankarafantsika National Park – where I finally saw some lemurs (four species), chameleons and baobab trees.  Tick!  I was amazed at how fast moving the lemurs are, and how slow (non) moving the chameleons are.  I also saw lots of birds which apparently were very exciting, according to our twitterer guide… The landscape and flora continues to remind me very much of Australia – possibly because this is the dry area of the island.

The Madagascar "bush"

Baobab trees

Chameleon

Lemur

One of the best parts of the stop at the park was seeing Dina and Ny Aina’s performance at checkout the next morning.  The bungalow that we stayed in was quoted over the phone as 80,000 Ar (about $40) for the night.  We arrived late afternoon, and the park official explained the guided tours to us – I decided to go on the baobab walk, the nocturnal walk, and, early the next morning, on the lemur walk.  The official connected us with a guide, who looked after us for all these.  Unfortunately, the baobab walk was very short and we didn’t really need a guide, the nocturnal walk was just along the road as the HAT have ordered the nocturnal walk closed (fear of rebels in the bush?) and we didn’t see that much, and the bungalow turned out to be 100,000 Ar.  The only one that I really cared about was the nocturnal walk, but Dina and Ny Aina were disgusted at the exploitation of me and by extension all foreigners, and the lack of professional communication, and had a real go at the guide and the park official.  The guide infuriated them even more by (apparently) saying things like “why are you worried, she has money” and “don’t block me” (when he was trying to push me to go on yet another walk).  I have to say, it was worth being exploited a bit to see them stand up on my behalf, and how angry they were about this kind of attitude from other Malagasies and the way it reflects on their country.

After that, we headed on to Mahajanga, and spent quite a lot of the time there escaping from the heat.  Patrick’s uncle used to be the Mayor of Mahajanga, and had invited us to stay in his (very big, very pink) house.  We had bought some freshwater crayfish on the road down, so cooked those up for lunch – they have a delicious recipe for this here which I have had several times – must get it to take home!

Freshwater crayfish for our lunch



The house of the ex-Mayor of Mahajanga, where we stayed

Because Dina and Ny Aina were guiding the trip, we did things that they were excited about too – which put an interesting perspective on the holiday.  We were able to go to places that they would normally never go to, either because I was paying or because the hierarchical society means that they would not go there without a foreigner or an elite.  We visited a sacred lake, and then headed to the beach at a resort hotel for a swim (talking their way past the guard by saying I was taking them to lunch at the restaurant).  Dina had never swum in the ocean before, so that was exciting for her, but not as much as gate crashing the resort bar and pool area so that she could take photos to make her sisters jealous! 

Sacred lake

Ocean swim in the Mozambique Channel

Dina's photos at the resort to make her sisters jealous

We also headed to Cirque Rouge, a multicoloured sandstone canyon, to catch the light on the colours at sunset. 

Cirque Rouge

On the way back to the house we found we had picked up a nail in a tyre, and then were dismayed (and in the case of the driver, angry) to discover that the owner of the rental car had sent us off on a 600km drive across desolate countryside without the tools to take the spare tyre off the undercarriage, and without a jack… !!!  So we spent two hours driving around town looking for other Ford 4x4 vehicles to see if we could find one that would lend us the tools.  We did find one, but it was owned by a French couple who said they didn’t have time to wait.  Unfortunately I was waiting in the car and didn’t see who they were talking to – there is a real French vs Malagasy thing here – and I wonder if I had shown my face if they would have helped out.  Eventually a Mitsubishi tool set did the trick.

Kids keeping cool with ice blocks

That night we had BBQ at a famous roadside stall – somewhere that I would never have eaten on my own.  But since Mahajanga is Patrick’s hometown he knew that this guy was the best, and the food was delicious.  We then headed on to several hours of karaoke and snooker.  Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody was a huge hit – who would have guessed!?  And once again I was amazed at how cheap food and drink can be here if it’s a place only locals go – the entire bill for a night of drinks and snooker for seven people (including a whole bottle of rum) was $35.  Large bottles of good quality beer cost $1 each.

BBQ



My $1 beer



Karaoke

The next day, after a slow morning, we spent more time around the town – visiting the massive baobab tree in the main intersection, having a ride in a pousse-pousse (rickshaws pulled by men – everywhere around the town), having a lovely lunch at a restaurant on the beach (the food here is really great!), and visiting some caves.  At the first cave, as the guide led us down through basically a crack between rocks, all I could think was that if I was in Australia I would know that this cave would have been tested by authorities and deemed safe, but here… what chance the rocks would come tumbling down on my head!?  So I pulled out – but luckily there were several more that were more open that I was happy to go into. 

Breakfast



The famous Mahajanga baobab tree

Pousse-pousse (I'm not in this one though I did try it out)



A "safer" cave

After that we headed to visit the pig farm run by Patrick’s uncle (the ex-Mayor) – while the pigs were a feature, I was more interested in the piles of lumber in the yard, that looked suspiciously like rosewood (illegal to cut and export, and a huge symbol of the transgressions of the current de facto government).  I took photos and will have to check them out with someone who knows.   (I was told it was mango tree wood – unlikely considering the shape and colour.)   

The ex-Mayor's pig farm

 

Illegal rosewood?

We finished up the day tour by going out to the university, and driving through the shanty towns – they thought I would like to see them due to professional interest.  When we arrived at the restaurant we had chosen for dinner, I ducked into the bathroom while the others were shown to a table.  When I came out I found them all standing outside again, because the menu included dishes such as tortoise and bat!  So we ended up having pizza at another place… before heading out early the next morning for the drive home to Tana.  And an early night!!

Kids taking the washing home - hard work uphill, fun on the way down



Street market on the road back to Tana



 I had lunch at Dina’s family’s house yesterday – with her mother and father (Jak), three sisters, one brother, two grandmothers, one grandfather and uncle, who all live there.  It was a lovely lunch – they had really put on a spread of everything that they know I like (shades of exchange student days again!) – and they are really such a nice family.  There are four daughters and a much younger son (the fourth daughter's name means roughly "ok, we won't refuse her / send her back"!!) - girls become part of their husband's family so it's important to have a boy to carry on the family name and look after the tomb and the ancestors.  The Malagasy sense of humour is very similar to the Australian one, and the girls all spent quite a lot of the lunch giving their father and each other a hard time.  I discovered that her grandmother (who is 71) was the first girl to graduate high school with her Baca Laureate in her rural area.  Quite an achievement! 

After lunch I had a meeting with Jak’s local community association, who are trying to get money to buy cement and rocks to build paths through their community, and concrete the ditch that flows through and floods every summer, trapping them in their homes and becoming a potential drowning hazard.  I insisted Haro come to the meeting, thinking it was a chance for him to shake some hands and hear some concerns.  But it turned out to be more of an inefficient community conversation, so I tried to hurry it along and ended up (through accidental literal translation) cutting it short.  I felt a bit rude, but at the same time we are going to have to get more efficient with meetings and Haro’s time if there is an election in three months!

So now there’s only one more week before I head home, and a lot to get done!  Time seems to have moved in parallel at two speeds while I’ve been here – both very slowly and very fast.  I’m looking forward to getting home to see everyone, and for small luxuries like English language entertainment, and being able to drive around independently in my own car, but it will be hard to leave the urgency and importance of all that needs to be done here.  Haro’s trying to negotiate some funding so that I can come back until the elections – stay tuned!