Two nuns and a legendary boxer walk into a bar…

Yay! My ISP might actually happen! This morning my mission was to scope out the office of Ny Taninstika and have a meeting with Ifalina. The whole ordeal took me about 4 hours start to finish, but it was a great success and I now know my way around the city better. However, Malagasy people are THE WORST at giving you directions and for some reason assume that when they give you landmarks that are about 2 miles apart along very windy roads you can’t get lost and then say things like, “Oh, it’s not far just like 5km or so.” “WHAT 5k?!?!” “Oh, I meant like 50 meters…” “Wait is it 5k away or 50 meters?” “You can’t miss it!” So basically my landmarks were a church, a sign, and a yellow building. Not kidding, I probably saw 10 yellow churches with signs along the way. So then I started asking for directions again. Some people were kinda helpful but then I decided to “step up my game” so to speak and made friends with two cute little nuns who then proceeded to keep me company on my mission. They didn’t really know either, it turned out, but things worked out find because then some random dude skidded to a halt on his motorcycle in the middle of the road right in front of us. It turned out to be their good friend/ Muhammad Ali’s doppelganger.  After a brief discussion between the nuns and Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Ali’s face lit up. He knew where the office was!!! Then I broke the last cardinal rule of the program and hopped on the back of Muhammad Ali’s motorcycle and we drove off into the sunset, and by that I mean down the street 500 feet to the Ny Taninstika office.

Everyone at the office was really nice and I learned everybody’s name and then subsequently forgot them despite intensive repetition. It turns out Ifalina speaks English, which is GREAT for my project but not so great for my French skills…The meeting went really well, except for the fact that the theme of my project is to develop sustainable tourism strategies in the Faliarivo forest and she wasn’t aware that it needed more development…awkward. However, I can still look for ways where they can improve and grow and also collect local opinions, which is something they should probably be doing periodically anyway. I also met my translator this afternoon, who is Ifalina’s sister. She is super cool and speaks awesome English/ French/ German and is really fun and seems genuinely interested in the project. Way better than any translator I imagined getting haha. Only, she has a super complicated Malagasy name that of course I can’t remember…(Sidenote: she is no longer my translator…she got a better job offer…I am translatorless again but I met this person today who speaks really good English and seems like he is a legitimate guide, or in his words “I am not one of those spidey-full boys.” “What you’re not Spidey? OH you’re not spiteful. Well great!” He looks like my best option thus far)

On Friday I’m going to the forest and meeting the community as well as their mayor. Next week I’m hopefully gonna be able to survey people in the Faliarivo forest and collect their opinions on how they want their forest to develop and then the week after that I’m trying to go to Soatanana (the weaving village) to collect their opinions. I’m super worried because there is only 20 days and literally no time to mess up and I might not even be able to work with the weaving project, which is really the main reason why I decided to come here. Regardless, I know I’ll learn a lot even if my project is terrible haha. We’ll see.

I’m kinda torn because right now I’m staying in the hotel called Hotel du Centre, which was really just because the hotel next door never wrote down my reservation so I had nowhere to stay the first night BUT it’s turned out to be a gem. The only thing is it’s a little bit pricy. However, it’s owned by an ADORABLE group of elderly Chinese people and they’ve been SO incredibly kind. Last night the 3pm thunderstorm was particularly severe and the hotel lost power and one of the owners came and brought me a candle and matches (which was also slightly worrisome, because, well, fire…)!!! So nice! Today they gave me really thorough direction to the (which actually were not helpful AT ALL but really really thoughtful nonetheless) to the office and even gave me a shiny tourist map. Plus, they are also a pharmacy and sell funny miracle cures, like Spirolina, Madagascar blue-green algea that is part plant, part bacteria, part animal…don’t ask me. It cures everything – indigestion, cancer, you name it. Clearly they are very nurturing and good-hearted people so I think I might just decide I’m going over budget and stick with them. Tonight or tomorrow I’m gonna eat at the restaurant on the first floor so I guess that might tip the scales one way or another.