June 2010
2 posts
I’m going home!! I can’t believe tomorrow I’ll be home!! For an entire month..!
I look forward to seeing you all very soon, lots of love! X
May 2010
2 posts
Chikungunya, riots & a baby, 22 May 2010
Time for a short update from Manakara…
Half of the Manakara population caught the Chikungunya virus (or claims to have caught it), a virus that causes a three day fever, aching joints and an itchy rash to finish it off. It is spread by the Aedes mosquito (that also spreads Dengue) and is a typical East coast annoyance. Fortunately, it is not life threatening and there is not much you can...
April 2010
1 post
Stuck in Tana, 17 April 2010
My parents visited me for two weeks and they had a very nice time. It was great to see them and I got to show them where I live, where I work, who I hang out with etc. so now they have a better idea of my life here (my mom found it very reassuring). The trip went very well, the roads had reopened three days before they arrived (after the cyclone damage had been cleared), the weather was nice, they...
March 2010
4 posts
Social Development, 29 March 2010
A lot of people have asked me about my new job and what it is exactly that I do. So here goes!
Ripple Fish collects eel from thirteen river mouths along the east coast. The eel are brought to farms where they stay until they are big enough for consumption, upon which they are exported mainly to Asia. There are small villages at each of these thirteen sites and rather than just pillage the river...
“Why any man would want two wives is beyond me. One is trouble enough!”
– Ravaka, my colleague, on the topic of polygamy
Hubert, 11 March 2010
Hubert is my first cyclone. According to the people here not a very big one, but according to me bloody mad!!! We’ve had non stop rain since Friday, but the wind only hit us last night, quite suddenly. And it hasn’t stopped blowing since, it’s completely crazy. So I don’t go outside anymore at all, I am stuck inside the house.
In Mananjary, where my friend Koos is...
February 2010
4 posts
Goodbyes, 24 February 2010
The past few weeks time went by extremely slowly, as it somehow always does when you want it to go fast. I was really anxious to go to Manakara and get started there and I just had to be patient until then. Now I am actually leaving tomorrow and all of a sudden I am really sad to go…
The students don’t have class this week, because of some kind of midterm exams, so I don’t have...
The pick-up truck, 19 February 2010
We got a beautiful Mitsubishi 4x4 pick-up truck on Tuesday and it is amazing!!!! Jeroen, a Dutch friend of mine, is a mechanic and works at the MAF (mission aviation fellowship, an NGO) garage. He hooked us up with a South-African missionary who is moving to Mauritius today and needed to sell his Mitsubishi before leaving.
It all happened really quickly. I got a phone call from Jeroen Tuesday...
New job meets camionette, 9 February 2010
Hello everyone! I have big news: I have a new job! I start working as Research & Social Development Co-ordinator for an international aquaculture company in Manakara on the east coast per 1 March and I am very excited… That means that I will stop teaching at IPA, but luckily everybody here is very excited about it too and two teachers are keen to take over my classes in order to thus...
January 2010
4 posts
Letters to Holland, 31 January 2010
Time to give you an update of what has been going on in Ampahidralambo. First of all, there has been a lot of rain these past few days. That means frequent thunder storms and power cuts, rain in my bedroom coming through the roof, streams turning into rivers and roads turning into streams.
Then there is the Africa Cup, which everybody loves to watch, even though Madagascar’s team...
Diarrhoea, 10 January 2010
It had to happen at some point and today was the day… Have been making runs to and from the toilet every half hour or so since this morning and have not felt like moving at all apart from that. I probably ate something I shouldn’t have eaten… The bowel movement has sort of returned to normal now, all that remains is a slight fever and a splitting headache.
Homesickwise, I am...
Missing home, 5 January 2010
First of all, happy new year to everyone! Hope you all had a good one!
Michiel was here for three weeks (hence the lack of posts…) and we spent a very good new year’s eve together. Unfortunately for me, he’s back in Holland now and I am feeling quite homesick. I don’t feel like working, I miss my friends and family and I long for machine washed clothes and cheddar sticks....
December 2009
2 posts
November 2009
8 posts
Entering the digital era, 28 November 2009
One of the things I want to do for the school while I’m here, is digitalise all administrative documents. They still write everything by hand, and spend a lot of time copying those really long Malagasy names onto yet another student list. Then the Ministry of Education says they want a list of the students in alphabetical order and they do that manually as well, which takes forever.
So I am...
Hokey Pokey, 17 November 2009
Teaching English is going well. Teaching in French turned out to be extra confusing, so now I just do everything in English, which seems to work just fine. Though the students are very well behaved, they do have a tendency to cheat. So I am now engaged in my very own war against cheating and my policy is zero tolerance!
We also sing lots of songs, because it’s a really good way for the...
Ilse's website →
Ilse, 14 November 2009
I have friend! Her name is Ilse, she is 24, Dutch, and she lives ‘in the neighbourhood’, meaning it only takes 90 minutes to walk to her place. She teaches physical education and English at a public primary school and she lives on her own, in a tiny house without electricity or running water.
She was at the Dutch consulate for some help with her visa (what else?!) and the lady there...
Sunday morning linguistics, 8 November 2009
Some Malagasy speak French remarkably well, however, a few things remain a bit confusing…
First of all, il and elle seem to be interchangeable, as do le and la. So it’s often not entirely clear to me whether we are talking about a woman or a man.
Another truly confusing fact is that the Malagasy never say ‘no’. Even when that is really what they mean, they will still...
Annoyances, 2 November 2009
I have a great need to share with you a few annoyances, so here goes…
First of all, the bed bugs. Every night I am eaten alive and it itches like mad. I am covered in tiny red bites and my sheets are covered in little red spots of my very own blood (my apologies for this gruesome detail). A week ago, I bought insecticide spray and sprayed my entire room with it, focusing mainly on the...
October 2009
13 posts
The AC-Madagascar school tour, 20-23 October 2009
I accompanied Rola on her round to deliver notebooks, pens and footballs to the 7 primary schools that the Stichting AC-Madagascar supports. These schools are situated in very remote areas and it took us some long bumpy rides to reach them. Visiting them was very interesting and sometimes quite a shock. The people in these villages are extremely poor, wearing torn and dirty clothes, often without...
Rola and Andasibe, 16-18 October 2009
Rola Hulsbergen, principal of the Aloysius College the Hague, visits Madagascar every year. She represents the Stichting AC-Madagascar, which supports 7 private primary schools and the Lycée Technique in the Talata-Volonodry area. When she visits, she brings supplies to the schools, monitors the teachers’ salaries and working conditions, as well as the maintenance of the school buildings.
...
Mademoiselle Tessa, 13-15 October 2009
I can proudly say that I have survived my first week of teaching in the tropics! The weather is getting warmer too, so it’s actually starting to feel a bit more tropical, which is nice. The first obstacle I encountered in my teaching adventure, were the names of the students. Their names are incredibly long and hard for me to pronounce correctly, which made for quite some entertainment. I am...
Wilhelmus, 12 October 2009
Today was the start of the academic year 2009/2010 in Ampahidralambo! At 8:00 A.M. this morning all the students and their parents sang the national anthem of Madagascar as the Malagasy flag was raised by two students, right after I alone sang the Dutch Wilhelmus (very proudly) to the raising of the Dutch flag. I found this a very pleasant way of starting the new year and I actually think we...
Dutch Computers, 4 October 2009
A Dutch woman who used to live near the capital left two computers behind for the school when she moved back to the Netherlands. She left them with a couple who moved to her neighbourhood about a year ago. The school owns five very old and slow computers, so any addition to that is quite welcome and so we made an appointment to pick them up. We left for the capital and took a city cab from there...
“In Madagascar time is your friend”
– Floris
School Business, 3 October 2009
School starts in one week and more and more things are becoming clear. For instance, I will be teaching English 10 hours a week (that’s two hours for each of the school’s five classes) and computing 6 hours a week. I will also be training the teachers in those two subjects in weekly two hour sessions. I am still in the dark about the timetable, but that has got to come up one of these...
Tana revisited, 28 September 2009
Even though I was scared to get into a taxi-brousse again after the accident, I decided I should face my fear and got into one anyway. Plus, it was the only way to get to the capital, which was where I was hoping to get a magical thing called internet.
Before I came here, I was prepared to do without running water, electricity, internet, etc. But luckily I didn’t have to, because the...
Le Chef du Village, 27 September 2009
After watching the exciting Talata semi-finals (see video below) I had to visit the Chef du Village to become an accepted member of the community of Ampahidralambo. Docteur Roland, Louise’s husband, took me to see the chef because he had to visit one of his patients on the way back anyway. We walked down the hill to where three men were crouched down playing what seemed to be quite an...
The ride home from Tana, 25 September 2009
The taxi dropped us off at the northern taxi-brousse station and as soon as the vehicle had filled up we were on our way back home. Louise pointed to the front and said I should sit there, but I told her no because I am most comfortable sitting in the middle, where I can position my legs slightly sideways. I am a regular giant here and I don’t fit in a normal taxi-brousse seat.
So we were...
Tana (short for Antananarivo), 25 September 2009
Friday morning I got up at 5 a.m. because I was going to town (the capital) with Louise and Sitraka to be at the important breakfast with the Secretary and we wanted to be there on time. We took a taxi-brousse and soon got stuck in traffic. Louise got impatient, so we got out and took a city taxi, which then of course also got stuck in traffic. Eventually we decided to walk past the traffic jam...
September 2009
8 posts
Talata, 24 September 2009
Thursday I could finally admire the scenery. Sitraka (Louise’s fifteen-year-old daughter) took me for a walk around the village, which is called Ampahidralambo and is situated roughly 30 kilometres north of the capital, Antananarivo. It is in the central highlands at about 1400m. We walked along the dirt track through the quiet village surrounded by rice fields, then returned home for lunch....
Arrival, 23 September 2009
After standing in line at passport control for what seemed like an eternity, I met Louise and her son Njato (to be pronounced as Nzato) at the exit. They were holding a big sign with my name on it over their heads. I was very relieved to have found them so quickly, because already lots of taxi drivers were offering me their services in quite a pushy manner. They took me to the taxi-brousse (bush...
28 September 2009
I am now at an internetcafe (typing on a French keyboard, which is just impossible!), but I hope to be connected later today so I can finally post some good stuff….
23 September 2009
Sitting in the car to the airport, it only just hit me: I must be out of my mind. Why am I doing this again?
“In order to make a positive change in your life, you have to expand your...”
– Tom Venuto