You know those weekends when you take a taxi brousse to a town 155 km away and it takes six and a half hours to get there and you arrive covered in bruises all up and down your spine and then you get to your room and the faucet is… missing... from the sink basin so no running waterbut you still pay full price for the room because the mean patron tells you that all white people have lots of money and then you take a boat trip that leaves at 6 am instead of 5 am (the time you agreed on and were waiting at the dock in the freezing cold) and then you head home back on the road again and the trip that took six and a half hours two days ago now takes thirteen so you arrive home at 6 am tired and hungry and not sure if you should sleep or not because it’s your friend Laure’s last two days in Madagascar (bye Laure!!) so you drink coffee and stay up and decide not to take the first vedette to Mahajanga because, hey, there are two more but then they both leave on special trips so you get stuck on the big slow ferry leaving in the afternoon and when you finally get to Mahajanga you can’t get off the ferry because they tied the cows right up against the stairwell on both sides so people are climbing around on the outside of the boat and the nice lady from the church tells you not to do it because it’s dangerous so you wait which is good because when the cows are gone a lady makes you carry her child down the steep stairs (please oh please don’t drop her you think) tonga in the city, have a good night finally get some sleep and up in the morning to send your newly acquired bed (thanks Brian!) on the boat to Katsepy while you run some errands and when you get back the bed has been returned by the pous pous driver because he couldn’t find the guy who was waiting at the port so now you’re stuck not sure what to do except write a blog consisting of one long sentence?
It’s the same weekend that your friends showed up in your town and convinced you to go to Soalala so you hopped on a brousse where the lady sat on the hood for the last three hours and the sweet lady at the hotel took you on a tour of the town to find the swimmable beach and you saw them painting the new mosque to ready it for the holidays and then you spent two days taking lakana trips across the bay to see lemurs and turtles and eating delicious freshly caught shrimp and fish and drinking beers with two of your favorite girls and the people of Soalala were so nice and happy and you saw lots of Katsepy friends here and there and you and Maya ate liver cooked up on a grill at 11 pm in the middle of nowhere and got back home at 6 am and were so happy to see all of your villagers and spent the morning playing with children on the beach and eating coconuts and then took the slow ferry to Mahajanga but, hey, who cares because you got to spend more time with your friend who is heading back to France tomorrow (bye Laure!!) and sure, your bed didn’t get delivered but it will happen this afternoon because these things always work out and because this country is just pretty darn amazing? Just another weekend in the Boeny. Bisous!
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