Vacation in Diego

Just came back from a wonderful week in Diego, a large port town near the northern tip of Madagascar. Since I didn’t take hardly any vacation last year I’ve been traveling quite frequently now to use up my 48 days before the two years are up. It’s worked out well, since my counterpart has been gone from site a lot recently for regional and national health trainings and meetings. I wouldn’t have gotten much done without his help anyway.

It was two Mondays ago now that I and two other volunteers from my area met up in Vohemar and made the long, stuffy trek in a bush taxi up north to Diego. Theoretically, our destination isn’t that far from my site on the northeast coast—maybe 300 to 350km. However the road and the vehicles are in such poor condition that it took us 15 hours of car travel to get there. The 200km between Vohemar on the east coast crossing over to Ambilobe near the west coast is a rocky, hilly dirt road with many potholes and deep tire tracks left from semis. That section of the road is the longest and most frustrating. It’s also incredibly dusty during the dry season, as a lot of dirt is kicked up from the frequently passing vehicles and blown across the road from the strong, seasonal winds. After the ten hour journey to Ambilobe, we all stepped out of the 15 passenger van looking bedraggled and burnt orange in color from the thick coat of dust. In Ambilobe we hopped in the covered bed of a rickety pick-up truck, known as a “quatre-quatre,” which took us all the way to Diego. This stretch of road is “paved,” but probably hasn’t been repaired in over twenty years, so it’s more dirt road than tarmac in some spots and filled with potholes. Hey, it only took us five more hours, though! Needless to say, we were exhausted once arriving in Diego, and in desperate need of some relaxation and fun, which is pleasantly easy to find there.

Throughout the week, we had wonderful fellow volunteers show us around or suggest the best spots to spend our vacation. We went to some delicious restaurants where we were treated to great seafood and surprisingly decent (or maybe not terrible?) wine. One of our daytrips included a sailboat ride out to Emerald Bay, aptly named for its brilliant turquoise water, where we relaxed on the soft, sandy beach, ate freshly grilled barracuda and crab and got terribly sunburnt. Another day we hiked around Amber Mountain national park, which was very wet and cold but a great opportunity for us to see some wildlife, including the pygmy chameleon (the tiniest chameleon in the world), two species of lemur and a giant earthworm more than a meter long among other things. We also spent a day lounging at Ramena beach and another day drinking bloody marys and mimosas poolside at a fancy hotel with a swim-up bar. Hard life as a Peace Corps volunteer, huh? It’s times like these when it really hits me how lucky I am to be living on a tropical island for two years!

Diego almost felt like a different world compared to where I spend the majority of my time in this country. While there is absolutely still poverty in and around the Diego area, it’s not as ever-present and obvious and perhaps not quite as desperate as it seems in rural areas like my site. In the big city there is so much infrastructure—running water, paved roads, every kind of fruit, vegetable, fish and meat in the market, every kind of restaurant, well-built schools including a university, electricity 24/7, running water, wireless internet at cafes and in the regional PC transit house.

From Diego heading back south toward Vohemar along the dusty road winding through rural villages, I find myself transported back to the “real” world, with pothole-plauged roads, huge families with raggedy clothes living in one-room, dilapidated shacks, mothers digging holes in the dried up riverbeds in search of water, market stalls with nothing to offer but brown bananas and miniature tomatoes, communities scraping together a living panning for gold or digging for precious stones in the harsh, dry deforested terrain. This country is beautiful in so many unique ways, but it can be painful to see right before ones eyes the blatant, widespread destruction caused by the developed world’s exploitation of Madagascar’s environment and its impoverished people.

Even though the ride back from Diego was long, uncomfortable and incredibly frustrating, as our vehicles kept breaking down in the middle of nowhere, it was a helpful transition for me back into my life and work in my small village near Sambava. I came back refreshed and happy to see my friends and coworkers. I do have to admit, though, that I secretly wished Sambava or Vohemar had some of the nice things that Diego had to offer (even just one good seafood restaurant or beachside bar would be great.) Perhaps I’ll make another long journey up there before the rainy season starts in January.

P.S. haven't posted pics from Diego yet, but if you're interested in looking at my other pictures, Ive set up links to them on picassa. Just go to my past blogs in the archive and click on the title, and it should send you to the picassa album website if there are any pictures from that post. thanks for everyone's support, and keep reading!