Ingavo Update

Written February 26, 2012
Fort Dauphin

    Yeah, no photos this time.  Just wasn’t a photo-takin’ kinda week.
    The only significant news is that I went out to Ebobaky again with the AVIA crew, this time to give a talk on malaria prevention.  Apparently malaria season has hit pretty hard; I missed its build-up because my house is on an almost totally mosquito-free hill slope.  I kinda thought the mosquito would appear in a giant buzzing cloud, like the Smoke Monster from Lost, and when they failed to appear in my immediate living vicinity I dismissed malaria as a major health problem in Manambaro.  And maybe it’s not a problem in Manambaro proper, but apparently it’s a major calamity in the outlying villages.  I’ve heard that eighteen children died in just the first half of January.
    Lalaina, the AVIA manager, drove Hanitra, Dany, me, and another guy named Lasa out in the big blue 4x4.  Dany met with the village committee, while Lalaina and Lasa went to inspect a pump somewhere.  Hanitra and I waited for the women’s group to finish pounding rice and come join us.
    “So we’re just waiting?” I asked.  “Okay if I walk around some?”
    Hanitra assented and I started towards the mountain.  Wasn’t going to climb it, of course, just wanted to get a better sense of the country therebelow.  I passed a marshy eucalyptus grove, then heard someone calling my name.
    “Eric!” Lalaina called from a spot on the other side of some yew bushes.  “What are you doing?”
    “Just walking.”
    The look on his face said, Oh, this vazaha is gonna walk right into some strange village and whatever happens, I’m probably gonna get blamed.  We got in the 4x4 with Lasa.
    “You shouldn’t walk by yourself.  The people here are still afraid of vazaha.  They think they steal children.”
    What, like fairies?  “Yeah, but I’m a vazaha who speaks Gasy.  I can explain to them that I don’t want to steal their children.”
    “Oh, that’s true,” he said mildly.
    We drove a short distance to where the road terminated in the middle of a cluster of huts.  This village was even poorer than Ebobaky.  Lalaina didn’t know its name.  The people seemed friendly enough.
    It’s eerie how easy it is to seemingly go back in time just by traveling farther away from a major road.  Makes me wonder if there are some hill folk or deep forest-dwellers on this island whose lives aren’t merely medieval, but neolithic.
    So because I might scare some folk on my ascent, I’ll try to avoid the villages altogether.  That’ll mean striking across some fields and bushwhacking directly up the face of the mountain.  Might be slow going, but nothing I haven’t seen before.  I’ll probably be able to find a trail on the way down, and even if that leads through a village it’ll be obvious that I’m departing the area, sans enfants.
    The malaria lecture went passably well, but I think AVIA will need a more hands-on approach if they’re really going to get the villagers into the habit of using mosquito nets.  Well, at least we got the women’s group thinking about the subject.
    Fear not, good villagers.  I ain’t after your kids, just your mountain.

    I’m 24 today.