July 16: Ambohimahamasina is the village in which to conduct part of my research. Maybe it's a bit 'premature to use the information. Perhaps I should say. I arrived just four days and began to look around. I do not know where to start, I admit it ... but I will have some ideas.
Ambohimahamasina is a rural town east of the town of Ambalavao, which is 42 kilometers away, an hour and a half taxy bush. It has about 20,000 inhabitants, which would seem a lot if they were not divided in 15 small groups, scattered over an area of \u200b\u200bseveral kilometers. In the village there is the only hospital in the area, with only one doctor and two nurses who take care of all, two elementary schools, a state and a private Catholic high school and two or three churches of different denominations, and in Madagascar, when everything is missing, a pastor of souls will always find him.
The days of the week are busiest on Mondays and Thursdays, when there is a market. What actually happens is that men get drunk most of the other days, since the goods sold is the most nefarious toaka Gasy, a local rum, and cheap alcohol is officially illegal. For the rest, as the locals like to say, it's all very, very quiet.
The day starts early, at five-thirty in the morning and ends just as quickly, shortly after sunset, which is around six. In homes, and not in all, electricity is only one hour per day, adjusted by a local diesel generator which must be subscribers. Each bulb costs Ariary 3000 per month (about one euro). In the hour of light, the children gather in the few houses that have a DVD player and watch some music video or some unlikely action movie. The movies are always in French, but strange case, here is spoken in very few. The miracle of moving pictures always work! For Ambohimamasina state television does not and can not even take the papers. There is no telephone network, except on a hill about half an hour of walking, and the nearest internet place is at left, 60 km. My voice comes like an echo, with days, perhaps weeks late. For
Ambohimamasina I arrived in the footsteps of FIZAM; joint tourism venture fully managed by Malagasy and I would like to study organization and goals. But for the moment of tourists, apart from myself, you have never seen anyone. The place definitely deserves a speckled valley of rice fields, surrounded by sacred mountains and bordered by a corridor of jungle that separates the highlands, the Betsileo country, from the lands of Tanali, ethnicity of gatherers of the forest. The night is dark, the sky above you as if to swallow. There are a number of stars from science fiction. Can almost touch them, they are so bright and close. To be more
versed the object of my studies, I chose to stay with a family. Actually I do not know what this is a final settlement for two reasons: first, is that I find it hard to explain that I really want to stay here for a while, so I think that it will negotiate a cap of fifteen days in a fortnight. I have the feeling that the researchers do a little 'fear, so I'm impersonating a tourist who wants to learn the Malagasy, but honestly do not know how this story will hold. The second reason is that I would not be possible because of jealousy between the families, those that are home to me and those who can not. So long as I can, I will try to take turns, so nobody is offended, and that bit 'of pennies that will inevitably bring in a little town are distributed' among the various families.
the moment so I'm at the home of Monsieur and Madame Flore Ema, FIZAM of hoteliers, the association for economic development - tourism Ambohimahamasina. M. Ema is a farmer and an employee of the municipality. Incidentally, it is also the brother of the mayor, who is also the husband of the president of the association. My accommodation is a room on the ground floor of their traditional house, known varangue for its beautiful carved wooden balconies. The conditions are basic but comfortable after all: the shower room and bathroom are outside. Of course the water fountains there is only local, so we wash the buckets with hot water is heated on the grill and charcoal on request. The only sore point of this arrangement is that next to me there are three young apprentices evangelical pastors, who spend the nights and dawns murmuring fervent litany probably simulate battles with demons real and imagined temptations. Fact is, the faint light of the candle and the silence broken only by the barking of a dog, their grunts and groans that I can not give an atmosphere of dark, not exactly according sleep.
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