Tsiribihina

In 2009, National Geographics ran an article about a strange, unique place at the end of the world, Tsingy de Bemaraha. It took the reporters several days to reach it and they described countless dangers, including the high risk of an accident. With medical help days away, slipping on one of the sharp rock needles could have cut an artery and kill the photographer. No way we would make it there, I thought, but Ileana Ruxandra and Ioan had other ideas. We designed our whole trip to Madagascar to allow us to reach the tsingys and here is how we managed to get there.

Grand Tsyngy, Tsingy de Bemaraha

It is a national park and a World Heritage site for it's unusual limestone formations and ecosystems, unique in the world. There are hundreds of visitors every year (it's only accessible during the dry season) and our Lonely Planet guidebook laid out all the options. I found an SUV at the taxi station in Tana, the driver Mami, has been a guide for seven years and he held his price. We rode for four hours from Antananrivo to Antsirabe, 180 km, $100. Mami wanted twice the money for the next leg of the road, we said no thank you. I went in the market looking for a car and found a spacious Mercedes van for the right price. After a night spent at "Chez Billy", a cheap but nice guesthouse, we rode to Miandrivazo another 220 km and four hours down the road. There we stayed at Akory Aby, a tolerable hotel. We had booked a boat to take us down the Tsiribihina river. It started with a detour to the police station to register ourselves and another 30 minutes in a beat up van to the loading dock. They have been organizing trips for tourists for several years. Classically it is a pirogue trip, three days in a narrow carved tree trunk on the river. The locals do it for about $100-130 per person. It takes them one week of paddling to get back upstream!

Loading dock! Everybody waves at us.

Mass transportation, Tsiribihina way

We had the more comfortable option, a little power boat. We had a guide Ernest, two cooks and a three people crew. The river is wide but very shallow, they ride in zig-zag continuously to avoid the boat getting stuck in the sand. When it does get stuck, the crew jumps in the water and pulls the boat out. At the busiest time of the year I counted 18 foreigners taking the trip. There were four power boats and one pirogue. All the time we were almost alone on the river but we would ran into the others at the night camps, tiny tents perched on the sandy banks. With eight people, we were the busiest boat and we had the best of times with three Canadian ladies. The first night we arrived at the waterfall, visited it quickly and when to move a couple hundred yards upstream for the camp the engine was dead! They somehow managed to get us there in the dark, using another boat and the guys in the water pushing the boat. The next day we got back to the waterfall for a bath, later visited a local village.

The waterfall

Sunrise over the river

I am a vasa

Amazingly, one of the pilots of the other boats almost cut off his finger in the engine, but they found a hospital where he got the first aid. The emergency room physician who was on our boat went to check it out and when she came back she shrugged her shoulders: "their doctor did everything he needed to do". The pilot went on, helping as much as he could with one hand and suffering in silence. The last night, the locals danced for us and with some of us. I would have expected a collection at the end, but no, they just had a great time and went on for many hours after all the tourists retired. At midnight I scrambled out of my tent and begged the remaining party to shut up.

Ioan, Maria, and some of the dancers from last night

We had some good talks with our guide. We discussed the poverty of Madagascar, politics, traditions and his life plans. At thirty two he wouldn't marry until he would be sure that he could send his children to school. He wanted to go to the university, but his parents couldn't afford it. With the corruption of Madagascar he would have to pay big bribes to get a decent job, being a guide is the best he can manage, but is only a few months a year. He hopes to get a job as an English teacher if one of his friends from the capital can help him. Besides, the expected wildlife on the river didn't show us much. We saw a couple of lemurs by the waterfall, a couple crocodiles and sporadically a bird or two. The whole region seemed deserted, but still from nowhere, people would show up by the side and wave at us. Ernest told us about their lives. Here people are poor, but still they can find something to eat, roots, rice, beans, fish. In the dry season they would move on the banks of the river in little huts, when the rain comes they would move up the hill in bigger villages. He was more concerned about the poor people in the cities, "they really have nothing."

The fauna of Tsiribihina?

Long talks on the boat, Danielle and Ioan

Our car is coming

Great companions

With the crew, last moments

The third river day, after lunch we were left in Belo de Tsiribihina. Out of nowhere, there was a little city, with churches, school, pharmacy and several crummy hotels. Our driver, booked with another agency, was waiting for us. The way things work here is to rent a 4WD vehicle with driver and fuel included. The cost is $110 per day and you pay for every day until the car gets back to the owner. Somedays it could be eight hours on the road, one day we only used it fifteen minutes. All the hotels have free lodging and food for the drivers. We got on the road to the national park. Four hours, 100 km, on a dirt track, words cannot describe it. These roads might be like paradise for four-wheel enthusiasts, for normal people they are just hell. Six-eight months per year the roads are unpassable, a huge truck could take a full day, if it ever makes it. Now at the height of the touristic season, the tracks where dry and manageable, but painful. Surprisingly every few kilometers there was a little concrete bridge, sign that we are on meaningful road. And even more surprisingly we arrived in one piece at the entrance to the national park, crossed the Bekopana river on a little ferry and got to our luxury hotel "Orchidée de Bekopana". At $90 per night for a nice apartment it seemed affordable, until we saw the cost of the meals. It was the end of the fifth day on the road. They ran their generator a few hours per day, there was electricity! Hot water, a toilet with door, a nice little pool, French music in the restaurant. We stayed three nights. The first day we visited the Little Tsingy just a three hour walk for a warmup. We saw some animals and birds and a couple of nice vistas. It was "too easy" so Ioan and his parents added a night walk to look for the smallest mammal in the world, the mouse lemur, and sleeping chameleons.

Let's get going

Little stingy

Mouse lemur at night

The next day we took a complete tour to the Great Tsingy. Besides the admission to the park, they offer various itineraries, all with the mandatory guide, at various costs. Our complete trip combined all available itineraries. One hour on the "road" for 17 kilometers, seven hours hiking, the most amazing scenery we ever saw. It is impressive how well organized they are and what they achieved at such a remote location, the good infrastructure – via ferrata (mountain route equipped with fixed cables, stemples, ladders and bridges), rope bridges, walkways. We carried a harness at all the time, using it occasionally when negotiating vertical walls or crossing ravines. We scrambled up and down impossible jagged rocks, crawling and squeezing ourselves through incredibly narrow caves and occasionally leisurely walking through the forest. Crossing over a couple of suspended bridges over the abyss, we had fun, until we got tired. Maria had her own sort of fun pestering our guide, Tata, with questions about Malagasy language. By the end of the day she was able to remember 43 words and we all learned some grammar. I couldn't stop thinking that I had my good pants on me, the same pants I had at the Sydney Opera, but that was the case for the whole family. I remembered the hesitant question that Ernest had for us, the locals were wondering why the whole family is dressed in black, "is it a religious custom in your country?", "No, we only have one garment each!"

It's early in the morning

What did we get ourselves into?

It's lovely

Piece of cake

Somewhere above, there is light

Out of the caves, smiling

The children hide in the shadow 

There is no source of money here. You bring everything with you, their biggest bill is a little over four dollars. I realized at some point that we don't have enough and we have to stop eating at the restaurant. The only other source of food was the little village down the road, they had some molded bread and tiny bananas in the market. Luckily, the hotel accepted our last dollars at 10% premium and we managed to get out.

The return to Antananarivo took another four days. First we did the same 100 km in reverse and crossed back the Tsiribihina river on a made up ferry, two boats linked with planks of wood and we got to the road for Morondava. Another 100 km on that, still dirt, but much better. We spent the night at the Ecolodge of Kirindy, a few cabins in a natural reserve. They decided some years ago to not allow tourists at night in the national parks, so this is one of the only places in Madagascar to see the night fauna, and the one where people can see the fossa, the main predator on the island. I didn't have much hope, after all we already looked for tigers in Nepal and lions in Africa without success. But here, in the Kirindy reserve, two fossas were camping by the huts, they were hungry and we were warned they could even get in the cabins and chew our shoes. The night walk was great, but was enough for my family, the last few days have been tough and the next morning they just wanted to sleep. I also took a day tour joining James, an English teacher from Nottingham and saw my last lemurs.

Fossa

My last lemur

After a few more hours in the quiet camp we got back on the road for the last attraction, the baobabs of Madagascar. This is the iconic image of the country, best visited at sunset, we didn't wait for it, we still saw some fantastic trees and got some good pictures. Half an hour later we reached asphalt, the feeling cannot be described.

Now this is a big tree, the locals think it has magic powers

Avenue de baobabs in Madagascar

Morondava, a tiny city by the Mozambic channel is the return to civilization, Malagasy way. They have an airport, some stores and countless hotels by the beach. It is 700 km from Antananarivo, but they improved the road in the last years. We had a reservation to fly, my family was ready to take the road and save money. I didn't know what to do. With four dollars in the pocket and the whole bank system in Madagascar "en panne", I walked all over, 8 km in the sun, from one bank to another and to the airline office, trying to decide. For ground transport we could rent a car, it was really expensive (paying the trip both ways) or we could take the public option called taxi-brousse. These are Toyota or Mazda minivans with 14 tiny seats, they don't leave until they fill all the places, they stop frequently and break often. A guy stopped me on the street offering me a full taxi brousse by myself, the price was too good. Buying all the places on the van would have been $230, his price was $180. It didn't sound right, but it worked.

The great beach in Morondava

After one day of rest, in the hotel rooms and by the beach, we left at 6 am for Tana. Before we left the driver and my guy had a little scuffle about the price, but we held steady, left them figure out their problem. When I payed the driver 13 hours later he was very happy to take the money. The whole ride was uneventful but taxing, I was glad to see this beautiful country by the road and by not flying we saved $582.

Problems in Madagascar

When we tell people we're going to Madagascar (or, later, have been to Madagascar), their first reaction is "Whoa! That's so awesome!"

And it is awesome. But beyond that, it's really hard to go to Madagascar. Don't get me wrong. It's a beautiful country. There are amazing animals— lemurs, for example, are only found in Madagascar, and there are x73 species. And chameleons are everywhere. Not to mention snakes, spiders (there is a spider here that is huge, completely non-poisonous, and whose silk is used for making Kevlar vests), and a variety of flowers and butterflies.

As well as lemurs. Everywhere.

In some places, Madagascar is like a tourist destination— beaches, books, whatever. In others, it's for intrepid explorers only, who hike through forests where it rains every day, or who go through the forest at night.

It's home to a people who speak a variety of dialects. It's united by one language: French. However, it's not spoken well in the small villages on the side of the Tsiribihina River.

Two words are universal: savon? Bonbon? Soap? Candy?

Also widely used are Bonjour! La bouteille? Non, and au revoir. (Hello, the bottle, no, and farewell)

We reach Nosy Be, at the north of Madagascar, by plane. It's like stepping into a different world— all the cars are old. We're met by Ervais, (Ehr-veh) who, along with his friend, drives us half an hour to Hellville (Elle-ville, named after a general, if I'm not mistaken).

We reach the hotel, say hello to the proprietor… Ervay tries to translate from French to English for us, but speaks in French instead of English. It doesn't matter. We understand French a little, if not a lot.

There are a few things to see in Nosy Be. The Lemurialand— a sort of 'zoo' where they take lemurs from various parts of Madagascar and bring them to Lemurialand. They're on exhibit for 3 months or 3 weeks (the mouse lemur is only three weeks, all others are for three months), then set free in Nosy Be.

I'm not certain how great this is for conservation, since if a lemur comes from South Madagascar it's for a reason, and I'm not sure how long a lemur actually spends on exhibit before being set free… at any rate we were able to feed four Crowned Sifaca Lemurs. And yes, that probably wasn't the most ethical thing to be doing… but their hands are so soft, and they were so gentle! 

So we set aside guilt and fed them bananas until our hands were sticky and we didn't have any bananas left.

We also saw chameleons. Unlike what most people think, chameleons change color according to emotions, not their surroundings— so it's possible to see a pure white chameleon crossing the road. And they're brighter in the day time.

Some people have held a chameleon, but we didn't do that. The interesting thing about a chameleon is the gripping action they use. They have basically two opposing thumbs on each hand— or something like a mitten, with two claws on each side? To confuse predators, they rock back and forth on two legs once or twice before actually gripping the branch in front of them with their 'hands.' And then the cycle starts again.

It's fascinating to watch. If you want a human example… walk like an Egyptian!

Also in Nosy Be my sneakers were stolen and we didn't notice until we reached Diego Suarez, which is on the north part of the mainland.

We also realized that I have no way of walking on the Tsingy (big, tall, pointy limestone stalagmites without any stalagtites on top of them). This is not a good feeling to have on an otherwise sunny morning— trust me. In the end, after a lot of crying and screaming and swearing at the world, I decided— well, actually, we decided— for me to go to the Tsingy Rouge, which are a smaller, red limestone version of the Tsingy Bemaraha, in my Birkenstocks.

I was very comfortable on the long long journey as a result.

But! As if all the spirits of Madagascar had decided that I was not to have an enjoyable day… my watch strap broke off.

We tried hard to smile in the face of adversity.

I love my watch. It was not a nice feeling to suddenly realize that it was no longer on my arm. We were on a gusty part of these cliffs that went all the way down to the Tsingy. Now, I wasn't sure if the watch was light enough to be blown away, but it didn't seem nice to be taking any chances… after sounding the alarm and putting my glasses on to backtrack, and looking everywhere… Dad found it.

I could breathe easily. Thank you, God.

I carried the watch around in my pocket for the next few days.

(The Tsingy, by the way, were beautiful.)

Later, we had the black plastic watch strap replaced with this lovely brown leather. The woman doing the work was very quiet. We put in a new hole on the strap, since it was just a bit too large (now, about two months later, the watch constantly slides because the leather has stretched).

We also got replacements for my sneakers. We went through the entire marketplace and found a great deal of very pretty shoes and very ugly shoes. The problem was that none of them had arch support or ankle support… which meant that everyone was staring at us as I tried pair after pair of sneaker on.

In the end we finally found some black Nikes men imitations for the equivalent of about $20. I don't like them very much. (I wore sandals whenever possible) But they were the best thing in the entire marketplace. 

After reaching Antananarivo, the capital, we stayed in bed for a while and just surfed internet. I also took advantage of this (and my newfound semi-obsession with Civilization V) to stay up till all hours of the night. I think it's healthy, in some cases, to pull an all-nighter. It educates you to the hardship faced by millions of first-world teens. However, compared to the hardship faced by the people of Madagascar, we look like spoiled children in comparison.

They're destroying their country to plant rice, because that is the staple food. At the same time, all most of the populace eats is rice. And rice doesn't have much nutritional value after a while. When we were on a boat cruising down the river, children would run after us asking for soap. When we said 'no, we don't have any,' they asked for candy.

And whenever they saw our waterbottles, they'd ask for those too. 

While Madagascar was beautiful, it was also exhausting. Roads are really bad, with enormous pot holes or irregularities. The drivers probably try to go slow to reduce some of the pain of bouncing up and down… but it doesn't help much. Even the asphalted roads are falling apart at the seams.

In fact, despite the amazing scenery and the beautiful things we did, by the end of Madagascar, I was exhausted. Exhausted of the trip, the country… I flat-out had a major/mini temper tantrum and sank into a 'this whole thing sucks' for a few days, all the way into the second edition of South Africa.

But on to happier things.

We spent time on a boat down the river, with three lovely ladies from Canada. Danielle, Edith, and Chantal. 

One of them, (Danielle, I think) had the option of going to Madagascar. She emailed Edith to ask her if she would like to come. Whereupon, "Sure!' was the answer, and Chantal came along too.

I want friends like that! Danielle acted as an alarm clock by clucking like a chicken, we spoke in a mix of slow English and rapid French, translated one of Ileana's songs, and talked over zebu meat at dinner.

(Zebu, by the way, I hope to never see again. It is quite possibly the toughest meat ever to chew in the world. Though maybe that was just how they cooked it).

Anyway. This was our day house:

Relaxing.

And this was our night house:

Grueling.

Yes, we slept on the beach in tents. It's a lovely thing, especially since we fell asleep very quickly every night (awesome!). But! The beach does not include toilet facilities.

At night, you walk around to a place on the middle of the beach where you hope no one will shine their flashlight. In the morning, you notice the lovely pile of bushes that everyone uses as a toilet and walk over there hoping that no one will come around looking for their own private toilet spot in the bushes.

All in all, after two days and a half of peeing on the beach I was heartily sick of it all. I wanted walls! WALLS!

You have no idea what great technology walls on bathrooms are until you don't have them any more.

But, with all that… there was one awesome experience I'd love to have again:

At the Tsingy Bemaraha, our guide, Tata, kept saying, "muramura fa malama." What does that mean? "Be careful, because it's slippery."

And, because walking and doing nothing has never really been my style, I managed to get him to tell me 50 more words in Malgasy. (Including enough to be able to sing 'head, shoulders, knees, and toes' in Malgasy, which I think might be the funniest video ever filmed, because I forget how to say shoulders in Romanian.)

Among these words is sarabe, which means awesome.

We walked the Tsingy Bemaraha, but it's really pointless to talk about it in words. Here are a few more pictures:

Madagascar sarabe! Msoutra, Tata!

Msoutra fa 'reading!'

Gently Down The Stream

“I want to go to that place with rocks sharp like a knife!” Mihai draws a blank. He stares at me like I’m an alien. I can’t say how many times he asked me what I want to see or do, never giving a straight answer, and now that we are in Madagascar I tell him about a place that I read several years ago in National Geographic’s magazine. Looking for it, we found that it is called Tsingy de Bemaraha (tszeen-ghee deh bem-ah-rah-ha), it is in the west of the country and to get there it would require several days and a 4WD. Unfazed by the difficulties and the price I claim almost two weeks from our time, not to mention the strain on our bodies and nerves.

We chose to go down the Tsiribihina (tszee-ree-bee-hee-nah) river in a motorized boat. We could have chosen to go on a pirogue, quieter, closer to nature, but, oh, so cramped and exposed to the force of the elements. No, thank you, I have good memories from going to Lokobe. Ernest, our guide for this trip, picks us up from the hotel and takes us to the police station, where we have to register. At the end of the trip we will make a similar stop, confirming that we didn’t disapear along the road. We drive toward the embarcation point on a road fit for motorcycle rodeos. And we were not the only car, there were locals too. In the end I got my answer why they were going that way: it was market day! Such a density of people and stuff, to get through they had to lift poles and move carts!

The moment that we stepped down we were surrounded by children, wide eyes and open mouthes. “Bon jour!” they greeted us. Knowing that there are no toilets on the boat we asked for one before. We followed the line of the gesture, walking between the fields and the brambled shore line. The children followed us, talking and laughing. Seeing no construction, eventualy it dawned on me that we were supposed to go in the nature. The children were glued to us. What to do? We took pictures, and that interested them more!

 Later we will stop the boat in the middle of nowhere to walk a long distance to hide behind some bushes. I ask why don’t they build a pit toilet, at least for the tourists, they would feel infinitely better if they don’t have to watch for snakes in the grass, or crocodiles, or for a matter of fact, for another human being. The villagers don’t like it, it smells. And after six months, the rains wash everything away. I try to tell him about contamination, he assures me that everything is OK, under control. I doubt that.

The boat will be our home for three days and two nights. We could go up on the sun deck where there are some chairs and matresses, or stay below, at the table, but in the shade. In the beginning we are taken by the views. The river snakes through a sandy valley, hemmed by narrow rice paddies or a few sweet potatoes. There are long stretches of nothing but sand banks, elevated. The waves eat them from underneath and there is nothing else for the sand to do, but fall, leaving sharp straight edges. Sometimes there is a tree still holding onto the muddy bank, though the majority of it’s roots are naked. Sometimes the battle ended with the leaves in the water.

From time to time we see people. They wash themselves or clothes. 

The children’s faces light up, start waving with frenzy their hands and yell greetings. Sometimes they run for a short distance, their eyes on us. We learn that in the dry season people move in little shacks close to the river to tend their crops, to fish (they salt it and dry it for later). In the wet season they talk and sing the rain and time away, weaving palm baskets, in their villages on higher ground, getting together in somebody’s house, bringing something edible to share. The crops are not always good, because their land is not good, too sandy. They could rent a parcel of a better land, but they don’t have the money. 

We stop for lunch and we get to know better our Canadian companions Daniell, Chantal and Edith. They have been friends for a long time and brought with them the camaraderie. We all had a good time together, talking about our normal lives, about our travels and plans.

In the afternoon we reach one of the highlights of the trip: a waterfall. We climb a little hill, enter the forest and look at some lemurs leisurely feeding themselves. Then we have to cross a stream blue milky waters with thick dirty foam floating on it. We jump from big rock to big boulder and reach a blue pool fed by the waterfall itself. From a distance it doesn’t seem much, now that’s in the shade, but it’s a thrill from upclose. The water ripples on huge calcar layered mushrooms, growing them longer with each drip (the acid water dissolves the calcar, that explains the foam). It reminds me of the Canary Springs (Yellowstone National Park) with their feathery fragile formations. We were promised a bath, but now is late, and we still have dinner and camp, so we return to the boat. Only it doesn’t want to get started. The men jump in the knee high water and push and pull. In the end we’re tugged by another boat and just yards away from the moorage spot, the engine starts again.

Dinner is served at the torch light. It contains beside white rice, zebu meat cut into small pieces. I presume is the leftover from lunch, it has the same taste and tough as a leather shoe. On the shore the crue assembled the tents and made the beds. In the night we hear a man singing while playing a rhythmic tune on a guitar. I look at the sky. Plenty of stars. And some white clouds that impair my view...My logic tells me that if they were clouds, I wouldn’t see through them and they wouldn’t be white, as there is no light to illuminate them (it’s new moon)... soooo meet the Milky Way. We go to sleep, but I wake in the night time, bundle up and go outside. If you have memories of a starry night, a quiet one, of darkness surrounding you, of peace, of water wisper, mix them together and imagine yourself there, my words fail me. 

In the morning we have an ad-hoc photo sesion with the people who live on that bank. They have a lemur pet leashed with a string and a kitty. The guitar is just a driftwood with different sized fishing strings and the voice is a teenager.

            

A zebu cow and its calf (the hump on their back is just fat)

We go back to the waterfall. Ioan is the only one who really wants to take a bath. We follow his example. The sun makes its way over the top of the waterfall. We scream as we take the plunge in the cold water. But wonder of wonders, the one in the cascade is warm! We just sit there for a pounding massage.

The day goes the same way, meandering through the deepest part of the river, getting stuck sometimes, pushed by the crew, waving at children. We stop at a village, where they cultivate tobacco. Immediately as we step out from the boat, children surround us, hold our hands, greet us with “Bon Jour!” and ask our names. They smile, and they are happy just to be around us. 

We hear “Photo Wah-zah” and take their pictures. They all want to be in the picture, so the tall boy steps in front of the little girls and I have to stop and rearange them. They wait patiently to take as many photos as I like, but when I show them the pictures they crowd to see themselves, and laugh, laugh with no worries. 

We are showed the tobacco deposit where bundles of dried leaves are bagged in burlap and after that we return to the boat. 

A boy jumps to hold Mihai’s hand as he takes it out of his reach. They play for a while... Suafamil holds my right hand and I squeeze hers to let go so I could take more pictures. She moves to my left and feeling my wedding ring she looks at it as if it’s from the moon. 

My Suafamil...

On the side I see a boy, around 12. His face is not trained to hide his feelings, and I read his battle: he would like to see himself in a picture, but he thinks an aspiring man doesn’t have this childish wishes. From a food shack I hear a shy whisper “Photo Wahzah.” 

She was so happy, sooo happy...giggled with her friend.

We ask Ernest, what does it mean wahzah? White man. It feels awkward to be labeled, like I’m not myself anymore. Yes, for them I am just another wahzah, another white tourist, this moment here, next one forgotten. They asked shyly for soap, I didn’t give them. But I took with me their example of openness.

The scenery is mostly the same, we look for birds now, we see two alligators. 

This picture was taken by Ioan.

Let's see what's new and tasty....

We just take it in, sunset and all. 

After dinner we have a cultural show. At the fire light girls dressed with red pleated skirts dance. They all follow the lead girl, imitating her movements, shaking their bum, stomping the ground, undulating their arms. Sometimes the movements are called by the guitar player, sometimes by the dancer.

 We are invited too and have the time of our life. We’re not that good, we get out of breath, but in a take turns dance, we make the girls blush and laugh trying to follow us. When they get tired they sit next to the guitarist and sing about their country (Ernest records it on his phone). The small and tired children sit in their mothers laps. They join a particular dance, men come too, becoming children once again. We go to sleep on the sounds of the guitar and merriment.

The guitar that enchanted us.

The last day on the boat dawns sunny. We’re a bit nostalgic, I could have lived on the boat. Talking about last night, Danielle is upset because these people live in the darkness for a long time (the day here is 12 hours). The night’s images bring me the memories of evenings at the farm, when there was no electriciy and we would eat at the lamp light, gathered around the small wooden table, we would play shadow games and tell stories. “Maybe we live in too much light.”

The girls where 15 years old

We talk a little bit more with Ernest. Why doesn’t he marry? He doesn’t have the zebu. To marry a girl he would have to pay to her family a zebu upfront, and another one after a year. If a child is born, another zebu. If he doesn’t pay, he becomes the talk of the village, saying that he is good for nothing. He can’t earn enough money, because he works only in the winter, in the tourism business. He wanted to go to university, to have a better job, to work as a nurse, but everything requires either funds or bribes. He asks us about our country. Do we have cyclon? No, neither in Romania or where we live in USA. He envies us, in his country cyclons wreak havoc yearly. Do we have snow? Yes. Now he doesn’t envy us anymore, for him cold starts at 80 F. 

It’s time to say good bye to Ernest and the crew, to our companions and the river. 

And to you too, this blogpost is long enough, and you have other things to do, more important than to read my reminiscences. I’ll tell you the rest in the next number.