Monday, January 10, 2005

Surfing in Fort Dauphin

In the morning I went to send some e-mails and ran into this guy called James. He worked for an NGo called Azafady (based in Fort Dauphin). Bqsically they are involved in various projects around the area from conservation, to teaching to health education.

James's speciality was water and sanitation and as well as fitting new wells he was also tasked with encouraging the locals to use toilets. In some areas (especially outlying ones) it is fady (taboo) to use toilets - meaning that the people take to the bushes or beaches (nice). They have a huge issue with fadys over here, there are some weirdest rules about things, many of them pretty nonesensical.

We chatted a while and arranged to meet up for lunch. He'd been in Madagascar for 3 months (he was intending to stay a year, but really loved it, so said he would like to stay for longer. From what I could make out he was salaried (sort of) they paid him 5k per year as a contribution to his living costs.

He introduced me to a few of his friends and we arranged to go out for a meal that evening.

In the afternoon I visited Fort Flacort (overlooking the bay) it's a military institution and I was shown round by a soldier (we couldn't really communicate as we both only had bits and bobs of French in common, and you can only say "it is sunny" so many times!)

I then met up with James and the others at the far end of Baie Des Gallians beach. I tried my hand at surfing (I'd tried once before in Oz) and yes, I was still rubbish. There were a couple of rastas there who were simply incredible surfers. Basically they hadn't worked for 12 years and had surfed all day, every day!

We had a nice meal that evening in a local resaurant, about 6 people from the charity and me. It was a scary walk home in the dark, but mostly I think because I'm not used to a town not having streetlights!!

No comments: