What It's Like: To Find the number for a Restaurant

From Jack:

What It's Like: To Find the number for a Restaurant in Antananarivo

The restaurants in Antananarivo have been excellent thus far.  I have only been to a few: Le Grand Orient, La Plantation, and Le Carnivore--but my darling wife has been to a good smattering of them for lunch during the day.  While the languid speed of service often leaves ample room for improvement (think Paris speed but without the snooty waiters), the food itself has impressed me (as well as the low prices)!

Finding information for a restaurant in Antananarivo, Madagascar, however, is a  much more difficult affair for those of us accustomed to gentlemenly ease of YELP, SeamLess, OpenTable, GrubHub on the world wide interwebs--namely because it turns out that the world wide interweb is not as worldly or wide (or webby) as one assumes living in the cushy, connected northwestern hemisphere.   For those of us with parents of a certain age, these elderly founders of our nation would no doubt feel at ease in the very papered and Yellow-Pagey 3rd world.  I mean, who among us hasn't embarked on a road trip somewhere and had a parent inquire as to whether or not we had a map packed away.

A MAP! A map you say!

 How cute.

How...dare I say it...retro--I can almost picture an old folded map ironically jutting out from the glove compartment of one of my hipster relative's car as he blasts the latest indie violin-polka album whilst sporting suspenders, a straw beret and impossibly tight acid washed jean capris...ahem...but I digress..

Instead here in Tana, one needs to find a free promotional tourism booklet that comes out periodically here in Tana.  At the back of which one will find an (incomplete) listing of restaurants here in town with their phone numbers.  Of course as you can see from my annotation, the numbers aren't always correct.

You might also note that there aren't any addresses for the restaurants below.  Try typing the name of most restaurants below in google maps and you won't get much a result for most of them.  For a few of them you will get a few questionableTripAdvisor reviews with outdated or outright fictitious restaurant information.  This largely stems from the fact that the majority of streets in Madagascar don't have names and they certainly don't have street signs (although this is slowly changing).  

So one is relegated to using Oregon-Trailish directions when describing the location of a restaurant:  "So you go past the American School until you get to Devil's Triangle, then you go straight past two sets of rice paddies and turn left just after the Lutheran Church--you won't think it's a street but don't worry people in the market will get out of your vehicle's way" (this is a near verbatim excerpt of directions I have commonly received). 

Luckily google maps has a mapmaker function where you can edit their map and even add restaurants and stores.  Some of the good ones have already been added: brunch n bio is on there already (albeit in the wrong location) to name one. 

In some future posts we will posts our own MELP (mada + yelp...get it) reviews of the local fare to include snapshots of the menu since you can't find those online either.  By the way, le grand orient below does takeout (for our readers in the US this is a big deal)!

I Want You To Know--A Poem On the Passing of Madiba

(from Jack)
I just started Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom last week and wish I had not let it languish on my kindle bookshelf for the past year.  I am about a quarter of the way through it and the news of Mandela's death hit me hard.

As I thought about the life of Mandela and what I wanted to say about him--I started to write and the poem below is that product.

I Want You To Know--A Poem On the Passing of Madiba

I want you to know sweet daughters

That a man lived, loved, sacrificed and forgave for his people.

I want you to know these words

Ndiwelimilambo enamagama

Let these foreign syllables roll in your mouth like marbles

Know that this saying was embodied by a man:

I have crossed famous rivers.

I want you to know that the world you see was not always this way

Just when our country had defeated the evils of the Nazi Germany

Another hateful plague descended that we did not stop

From the streets of Johannesburg to the rolling countryside of the Transkei

African, Coloured, Indians and white were set apart

—separated

Men, women, and babies

graded and annotated like animals on

pieces of paper according to the shade of their skin.

No my sweet daughters,

This did not happen 150 years ago

but 60 years ago. 

I want you to know that this evil was defeated

Not by armies, guns or atomic bombs—

But by bludgeoned bloody sacrifice

By generations

                                    of gut-wrenching perseverance

And finally dealt its death blow by a forgiveness so

deep                                                                              and                                                                                                   wide

that it baptized an entire nation.

My sweet daughters,

I want you to know the story a man called

Madiba (his clan name),

and Tatomkhulu (grandfather),

Rolihlahla (the troublemaker),

(Nelson was just an English name his teacher gave him because she couldn’t pronounce his African one)

who walked this earth for 95 years.

Of those years, eighteen he endured breaking limestone

rocks on Robben Island

his eyes burned out

hollowed by the sun’s fired reflection.

It is not enough, though, to simply observe and remember

That he spent twenty-seven long years imprisoned.

My sweet daughters, we must count the years together out LOUD

For I want you to feel the weight of those decades on your tongues:

One year

Two years

Three years

Four years

Five years

Six years

Seven years

Eight Years

Nine Years

Ten Years

Eleven Years

Twelve years

Thirteen years

Fourteen years

Fifteen years

Sixteen years

Seventeen years

Eighteen years

Nineteen years

Twenty years

Twenty one years

Twenty two years

Twenty three years

Twenty four years

Twenty five years

Twenty six years

Twenty

Seven

Years.

As those years wore on him like so many boulders

As the goliath death beckoned and demanded him

Madiba struck back and answered with the call of his proud father

Andizi, ndisaquala: I will not come, I am still girding for battle.

I want you to know,

That this man walked out of that prison

And left his hatred with his chains

I want you to know sweet girls

That the grace of love is more powerful than hate

But far more costly

And I want you to know

the most incredible thing:

Madiba’s long walk to freedom

was not just for those shackled but also for the oppressor.

His sacrifice liberated a nation

I want you to know this:

Forgiveness trumps evil and trounces hatred

In the end it was forgiveness that tore down apartheid

and built up a nation.

Finally my dear sweet Macee and Betty

I want you to know that on the 5^th of December 2013

A mountain of a man’s battle ended

And Madiba lay down his weapons

and crossed one last famous river.

What it's like to drive in Comoros: A Matador, A Bull, or the Cape

From Jack:

Comoros: A land of near misses

    I  traveled recently to Comoros--specifically Grand Comores (there are actually 3 islands that make up the state of Comoros: Grand Comores, Anjouan and Moheli--many Comorans claim Mayotte as part of the nation but currently it is an overseas department of France)--for work.

A billboard proclaims/admonishes along the coastline of Moroni:

"Mayotte is part of Comoros and always will be"

 I spent a week in its capital city Moroni, only venturing to the northern side of the island once.  Most of the week I had a driver (in Comoros and Madagascar, your rental car comes with a driver whether you desire one or not) but on a few days I had the opportunity to drive myself.  There's a plethora of things that one can write about the island and people of Comoros but for today I will discuss what it's like to drive in Comoros.  

Comoros is a country of near misses—if you are driving that is. 

You know how sometimes you can be driving somewhere in the US and you suddenly arrive at your destination with no recollection of how you got there?

This probably never happens to Comorans and certainly not to Americans driving there.

One cannot blithely drive down the roads in Comoros—zoned out and soaking in the lush green scenery (and the scenery is breath-taking--think north-side Kauai jungle).  By and large, the concept of a two-lane road is one that is foreign to Comoros. Sidewalks fall into that same category.  There are no shoulders, or drainage ditches in Comoros (with the exception of a FEW well-heeled neighborhoods perched in the high part of the city).

Driving anywhere in town is less an exercise in driving than in automotive hop-scotch—a constant series of dodges, accelerations, decelerations, stops, feints, and sphincter-puckering squeezes.   Your brain must be constantly calculating mental trigonomery to determine whether your vehicle or the one approaching will first reach the section of road only passable by one car at a time.  Another variable in this are the ubiquitous pedestrians (most Comorans don't own a vehicle) that are traveling down the same roads.   Finally add in the myriad potholes (some sections of road are less roads than long stretches of loosely connected potholes and craters) and heavy rainshowers and you have mathmatical calculations that exceed far beyond that of this English major.  All that said, the Comoran drivers that would zip past my slowly lumbering Toyota Prado were smoking butts and chatting distractedly as they nimbly navigated their vehicles centimers past mine with nary a furrowed brow.

As I parked the Prado in the hotel parking lot after my first jauunt, I thought of the person who would make the perfect driver in Comoros--the skilled, thrill-seeking matador.

For one must bravely face each oncoming car while calculating the exact time to pull back one's cape (i.e. veer to your right).  But I would venture that, drive long enough in Comoros, and sometimes you are instead the bull.  Matador, bull or cape--it is a decision you must make  hundreds of times during every two mile drive in Comoros. 

Ready to launch to Madagascar!

Today we purchased our final set of plane tickets and we are all set to head to Madagascar in just a few weeks!

This week we also received our visas which was the last administrative hurdle.  More to post here soon!

Great Post from Djibouti Jones on 15 things to tell your children that are raised overseas (great parenting advice)

Great Post from Djibouti Jones on 15 things to tell your children that are raised overseas

I've cut and pasted a teaser of the first three below; you can check out the rest here.

1. You are the coolest kids on the planet. You cliff-jump and climb up and then down into active volcanoes. You flew internationally on your own before becoming a teenager. You sleep under the stars on the beach and know how to pee on a toilet or in a hole or behind a bush or where-there-is-no-bush. 
2. I know it is hard. I watched you, proud and teary, the first day of school when you didn’t know how to count to ten in French and on the first day of school in America when you didn’t know how to eat lunch in a cafeteria. I see your moments of hesitation when kids talk about something you don’t understand. I saw your shoulders droop that day you wore your traditional Djiboutian dress to church and then, once you saw how other kids were dressed, asked if you could take it off. I hear all three of you refer to a different place as home.
3. I don’t know what it is like. I know what it is like to parent a TCK but I don’t know what it is like to bea TCK. I’ve read books and listened to talks and attended seminars but you are forging a path I have not walked. I’ve got your back and I’ve got a box full of Kleenex and an ache in my belly from our shared laughter. I do not know what your particular journey is like but I will hold your hand, fierce, until the very end.

LINKS:
http://www.djiboutijones.com/2013/03/1-things-i-want-to-tell-my-third-culture-kids/

Books about Madagascar

Here's a smattering of books about Madagascar that I lifted from the State Department website.

 Attenborough, David, Zoo Quest to Madagascar, Lutterworth Press, London, 1961.

Astuti, Rita,People of the Sea: Identity and Descent among the Vezo of Madagascar (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003.

Bloch, Maurice, Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages, and Kinship Organization in Madagascar, Seminar Press, New York, 1971.

Bourgeacq, Jacques, and Liliane Ramarosoa, Voices from Madagascar: An Anthology of Contemporary Francophone Literature, Ohio University Press, Athens, 2002.

Bradt, Hilary, Madagascar The Bradt Travel Guide - 7th ed., Globe Pequot Press, 2002.

Brown, Mervyn, A History of Madagascar, Marcus Wiener Publishers, Princeton, 2000.

Cole, Jennifer, Forget Colonialism? Sacrifice and the Art of Memory in Madagascar, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2001.

Dahl, Oyvind and Yvind Dahl, Meanings in Madagascar: Cases of Intercultural Communication, Bergin & Garvey, 1999.

Durrell, Gerald, The Aye-Aye and I: A Rescue Mission in Madagascar, Arcade, New York, 1993.

Ellis, Stephen, The Rising of the Red Shawls: A Revolt in Madagascar, 1895-1899, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985.

Evers, Sandra, and Marc Spindler, ed. Cultures of Madagascar: Ebb and Flow of Influences, Leiden, Netherlands, 1995.

Fitzpatrick, Mary, and Paul Greenaway, Lonely Planet Madagascar - 4th ed., 2001.

Garbutt, Nick, Mammals of Madagascar, Pica Press, 1999.

Goodman, Steven M. and Bruce D. Patterson, ed. Natural Change and Human Impact in Madagascar, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London, 1997.

Goodman, Steven M. et al, ed. The Natural History of Madagascar, University of Chicago Press, (Jan. 2004).

Gow, Bonar, Madagascar and the Protestant Impact: The Work of the British Missions, 1818-1895, New York, 1979.

Jolly, Alison, A World Like Our Own: Man and Nature in Madagascar, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1980.

Kreamer, Christine Mulle, and Sarah Fee, Objects as Envoys: Cloth, Imagery, and Diplomacy in Madagascar, Smithsonian Institution, 2002.

Langrand, Olivier, Guide to the Birds of Madagascar, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1990.

Lanting. Frans, Madagascar: A World Out of Time, Aperture, New York, 1990.

Larson, Pier M., History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement: Becoming Merina in Highland Madagascar, 1770-1822, Heinemann, 2000.

Mack, John, Madagascar: Island of Ancestors, British Museum, London, 1986.

Mack, John, Malagasy Textiles, Shire Publications, 1989.

Mannoni, Octave, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization, Praeger, New York, 1956.

Mittermaier, Russell, et al. Lemurs of Madagascar, Conservation International, 1994.

Murphy, Dervla, Muddling Through in Madagascar, Overlook Press, 1985.

Tyson, Peter, The Eighth Continent: Life, Death and Discovery in the Lost World of Madagascar, Harper Collins, New York, 2000.

French

Acquier, Jean-Louis, Architecture de Madagascar, Arthaud, Paris, 1997.

La Cité des Mille: Antananarivo: Histoire, Architecture, Urbanisme, CITE/Tsipika, Antananarivo, 1998.

Cauvin, Patrick, Villa Vanille, Albin Michel, 1997.

De Flacourt, Etienne (annotated by Claude Alibert), Histoire de la Grande Ile Madagascar, Karthala, Paris, 1995.

Gallieni, Joseph, Neuf Ans à Madagascar, Hachette, Paris, 1908.

Guide Bleu Evasion, Madagascar, Hachette, Paris, 2001.

Guide Gallimard, Madagascar, 1999.

Randrianary, Victor, Madagascar: Les Chants d'une Ile, Cité de la Musique/Actes Sud, 2001.

Revel, Eric, Madagascar, L'Ile Rouge, Ballard, 1994.

Tronchon, Jacques, L'Insurrection Malgache de 1947, Karthala, Paris, 1987.

Verin, Pierre, Madagascar, Karthala, Paris, 1990.

General Mills Initiative Helps Vanilla Farmers in Madagascar

General Mills Initiative Helps Vanilla Farmers in Madagascar 

“Contributing to the viability and sustainability of vanilla farming could have a significant impact on the lives of Malagasy growers, their communities, and the environment,” Steve Peterson, director of sourcing sustainability at General Mills, said.

Peterson added that vanilla “is the way of life for these people.” Through sharing their “supply chain expertise, while leveraging our financial resources,” General Mills can help create a higher-quality, more sustainable vanilla supply, while increasing the vanilla farmers’ living standards."

Read more here:

http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/02/general-mills-new-initiative-helps-vanilla-farmers-madagascar/

From the Economist: Malagasy politics: Who will take over?

Malagasy politics: Who will take over? | The Economist

We are following the upcoming elections closely.  The opening from an excellent recent Economist article is below:

(NOTE: Malagasies is pronounced mahlahgaSHee)

"MALAGASIES have waited four years for a chance to vote for a government. In February 2009, Andry Rajoelina overthrew Madagascar’s president, Marc Ravalomanana, in an army-backed coup. Since then Mr Rajoelina has promised—and postponed—elections every year. But later this year the country will at last go to the polls; presidential and legislative elections have been scheduled for May 8th and July 3rd. But it is far from clear who will win the long-awaited vote."

Former President Ravalomanana

LINK:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2013/01/malagasy-politics?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/whowilltakeover

Queen Ranavalona Makes the Front Page (of Wikipedia)

Queen Ranavalona Makes the Front Page (of Wikipedia)

Wikipedia features a random article everyday on its home page and today's front page carried a story on the "Last Queen of Madagascar."

LINKS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Who are some popular Malagasy Musicians?

Who are some popular Malagasy Musicians?

Along with the literature and poetry of a nation, it's important to be familiar with their music.  I came across this link from National Geographic that seemed like a good place to start.

D'Gary is one of the best guitarists in the world.


Eusebe Jaojoby is a well known Malagasy musician and one of the originators of the salegy style.

LINKS:
http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/view/page.basic/country/content.country/madagascar_22
http://youtu.be/qcKzjnew98Q
http://youtu.be/TM6KMV91PKA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eus%C3%A8be_Jaojoby

Mango Season in Madagascar (A Vignette)

Mango Season in Madagascar (A Vignette)

Below is the first paragraph of a short vignette titled: "Mango Season: A Metaphor for All Things 

Wonderful in Life" by Madagascar Peace Corps volunteer Katie Brown.  The title links to here blog

but you can also find it on the Peace Corps website (link below).

You should also check  out the other Peace Corps resources available.

On November 1st, it was though someone had flipped a switch and the rains began to fall. Six 
long months and many a fruitless rain-dance had produced hardly a drop. Now, the opening of 
the sky is a daily event, one that requires due consideration for the afternoon schedule. For these 
are torrential downpours and venturing out in them is much akin in my opinion to snorkeling: 
extreme difficulty breathing, high likelihood of drowning, thus high risk to low reward.
Fortunately for the captives of the resulting mild afternoon hours, when only the dull roar of rain 
lashing the roof fills the ears, a three-fold blessing comes hand-in-hand with the change of 
seasons: mangos, mangos, and more mangos. For months I had watched them grow heavy on the 
trees, kicked them under-ripe down the back roads of my town, ate them as an accompaniment to 
street-corner brouchettes. For months indeed I tendered my patience and then, suddenly, as the 
rains arrived, the mangos ripened and Nothern Madagascar was swimming in both. Four for ten 
cents at the market, or better yet, send out a brigade of neighborhood children. Fresh mangos on 
a rainy afternoon: one starts to think this island life ain't so bad...

LINKS:

http://collection.peacecorps.gov/cdm/singleitem/collection/p9009coll2/id/224/rec/1

Peace Corps Malagasy Language Intro Document

Peace Corps Malagasy Language Intro Document

We came across the document below and it seemed like a good place to start to familiarize ourselves with Mada's native language of Malagasy (the 'sy' is pronounced 'sh')--French is the official language in the country but isn't widely spoken in the remote villages.

We have always had an appreciation for the Peace Corps because one of our grandmothers (Granny Nanny Darling) worked for the PC in Equador.  The PC website has a variety of interesting resources, including vignettes from past volunteers: 

http://collection.peacecorps.gov/cdm/search/collection/p15105coll6!p9009coll2/field/all/mode/all/conn/and/rmcoll/p9009coll13/order/title/ad/asc

LINK:
http://files.peacecorps.gov/multimedia/audio/languagelessons/madagascar/MG_Malagasy_Language_Lessons.pdf