Around the world - Madagascar - Trekking day N°2 - Redder than the earth I walk on

6:30am - time to wake up, eat the breakfast and head out for yet another trip to paradise. That was the plan anyway. Instead, the guide who had 5 too many glasses of rum last night (I believe that equaled to almost a half liter), woke up at 7am, gave order to the others to prepare our breakfast and only then we could leave. And that happened exactly at 8am, 1h behind the schedule. Which is quite normal if you have to run through the whole village to see if they have coffee beans, to grill them slightly, to ground them and then cook the coffee. Fun for us but not much for them from what I've seen.

I was quite glad to see the sky clouded because that meant less heat during the very difficult walk. But I assure you, this didn't last. Even though some clouds stayed, the sun always managed to pierce through (this reminds me of surely a jewel of this year! - has Bong Joon Ho's Snowpiercer movie come out yet? - yes, I'm asking you and you know exactly who you are!). Oh, how I could do with Hokkaido's snow right now!!! I'm a bit jumpy in my text today, my most sincere apologies.

We arrived rather quickly to the first village of the day - Vohitrandriana and stayed there for little over 90min talking with Tiana (yes, that's the way one spells his name but you still pronounce is Tina). While he talked, we sat on the tiniest footstools I've ever seen. Homemade, that goes without saying. And highly used. I have actually learned that the round ones can be turned feet up and you can cut your food on it, then turn the feet down again and sit on it. Quite ingenious if you want to know my deepest thoughts. So there we were, sitting in a tiny house on a tiny stools, listening to Tiana talking about exhumation, rotating the dead. Again, to make a long story short - when a person dies, there is a traditional ceremony. They eat a lot, drink a lot and dance a lot and when they are done with it, they put the deceased into a family tomb. Five years later, they will disinter the dead in order to change her or his old and damaged clothes, eat, drink, dance and talk with the spirit of the deceased. Well, I think I'm gonna make it into a long story after all. This ceremony is called Famadihana. Family and friends will walk sometimes long miles to get to the family tomb to participate in it. Old ladies wait at the entrance, wearing their straw hats. Middle aged men indulge in lethal home-made rum and dance (jerkily, apparently) to the rhythms of the band. One by one the corpses will be brought out, wrapped in straw mats and danced above the heads of the joyful crowd. The bodies will be rewrapped usually in pristine white burial scarves called lambas, they will be sprayed with perfume and meticulously labelled by name. Sometimes they can be cleaned before all of this and it will be all done with the biggest endearment there is, as if it was a newborn. Everybody will want to touch and talk to the ancestors and so they will take turns.  It is all in the purpose of reminding a good souvenir of the collectivity, to enjoy his/her presence and to ask him/her an advise or protection and then make his return to "au-delà" more comfortable. This can last 2 to 3 days. After that the bodies are danced one more time around the tomb, a few verses (traditional) are read out and the stone is sealed with mud for another 5 to 7 years. Depends on many different factors of life or actually, depends on who's telling you about traditions and ceremonies because believe me - it is not a fix story! This ceremony takes place between July and September. A tourist can eventually attend one but only as long as your visit is arranged through a local tour company or hotel. Obviously, taking a picture of such tradition is highly unwelcome.

As you can imagine, this took a while to talk about and so when Tiana saw the time, we rushed out of the house and off we went to the next village - Andraitokonana. That was the village where our guide showed us his extra-but-not-ordinary talents in the kitchen. He made us pasta with a ton of margarine, oil, onions, carrots & cheese. Put them in the wrong order and you lose the cheese because it will get glued on the bottom of the casserole, the onions will be raw and nothing very linked together. Then put an egg on the top of the greasy mountain of very well cooked pasta and you can start hmmm-ing about how "yummy" it tastes! Like nothing you have ever tasted before. As diplomatic as I can sometimes be, I ate maybe 3 mouth full spoons of this absolutely fat free dish and said with "Puss the Boots" kind of eyes that if I ate any more than that I would fall asleep while walking and he would have to carry me. That, I believe, did the trick!

And so off we went to yet another village. Tetezandroitra, slightly bigger than the previous one but oh so much smaller than the one that followed afterwards. Since the sun came back and we started our walk about 5min after we have ingested that unforgettable meal (at 12:30 dare I to say), it was not very motivating. The walk was beautiful but hotter than hot and since I was preoccupied with my digestive system (which is working perfectly well, thank you very much!) - I forgot to put the sunblock on my ears. Big mistake, let me tell you that much. My left ear has turned into a painfully red color. Redder than the earth I have been walking on throughout the last few days.

At 5:30pm we finally arrived to our final destination - Sakaivo - a huge village that is most certainly heading towards a touristy future. Feels rich, feels frequented, feels almost modern. The children, comparing to other villages we have been to, are not shy at all around us. Quite the contrary. Feisty little things they are! There must be around 700 people living there and I must say, I felt like I fell into a bee's hive.

I felt exhausted and I must admit of not wanting to mingle with people at that point and so I didn't. Waited for dinner while I read a book and just chilled with a cup of hot tea. That felt nice! Now, do you remember the chicken we bought on the market before we left? That's what we were supposed to have for dinner. But where the chicken went, will remain a mystery to me. I saw exactly 2 very skinny chicken drumsticks that were charred as if they were carrying a disease and they had to get rid of it by grilling it to the bone. Nah well, but I guess that is another story. At least the pine tree smell remained in my nostrils and made me feel better as I went to sleep.