The outback experience

When I told people about my experience living in a remote African village with none of city life's luxuries such as electricity, running water or mobile phone reception, many looked at me in awe while others gaped in horror.

Two other girls — one from Canada and the other from Germany — and I were housed in a small wooden hut with a straw roof and a cement floor.

It was set in a cluster of identical huts — some looking new and others looking worn out and leaning over like old men.

There was dust everywhere, always. It got in through cracks in the hut and into everything, leaving you feeling floury and filthy in no time. I noticed that the villagers didn't bathe often and, perhaps, that was the reason why.

Children surrounded us constantly, something which I was not used to. These youngsters, too, worked really hard carrying water or wood.

They could be seen beating rice or corn with their siblings strapped to their backs. The children liked to shake our hands but their tiny fingers were strong enough to crush mine.

Fortunately, the village is so remote that outside influence is minimal — not only in terms of news but also in terms of pollution.

There are no shops, so there are no plastic bags, wrappers or containers creating litter. Everything bought from the market is carried home in baskets.

The arrival of three white girls did little to change the laid-back demeanour of Mahata, the village chief. He took our presence in his stride and looked relaxed, it seemed, at having three vazahas, the Antandroy word for foreigners — generally anyone fair-skinned is considered a foreigner — in his village.

The rest of the villagers fell in step with him and welcomed us with curiosity and charming hospitality.

Things might have been different if he were not as respected as he was. Mahata had been elected chief for the past 15 years.

However, in the elections held during my stay, he was unable to contest because he was illiterate — the government's new law stipulated that village leaders should be able to read and write.

The new chief came from a village a few kilometres away and, at 33, seemed to still require Mahata to help him in his new role — something both men approached amicably.

The blare of televisions and radios and the ringing of mobile phones was, thankfully, replaced with the laughter of children and loud chatter of adults.

Hens, roosters and chicks joined in song every morning to wake the place up, goats bleated and rubbed their horns and bellies on the side of huts, scrawny dogs and their litter paraded around the village looking for scraps while women beating corn added a pleasant rhythm to it all.

The zebu mooed, the men laughed and smoked and somewhere from inside a hut a woman could be heard singing over an orchestra of crying babies. Who needs television?

The WWF had provided us with foam mattresses, cooking pots and camping crockery. We were also given a lacquered wooden desk, three foldaway leather chairs, a stretcher for medical emergencies (although we were six hours by foot from a phone) and a gas burner/stove, though we were meant to be explaining the benefits of saving global resources. There was no satellite phone.

No interpreters or translators came into the bush with us. Sign language, a lot of laughter and miming became our way of trying to be understood.

Our site coordinator, Fanja, assisted us a few days every fortnight but we had language barriers bigger than we could cope with despite speaking five languages between us.

Madagascar log

Day 1 — Dropped off three volunteers at their village in Ankirikirk and saw the first baobab in this region. It was mammoth.

As we drove through the village, people started coming out of their huts to look at us. It was a bit overwhelming to be surrounded by about 100 little children.

There was an albino boy too. His friends were pushing him towards us, calling him “Vazaha'' (white/foreigner). He started crying. Nora (a volunteer) was telling them to stop and they did in the end but even the adults found the situation funny.

Day 2 — Arrived in Tsilamaha. The people seemed shy and the children didn't run up to us the way they had in the town.

We had lost phone reception about two hours earlier. We would be sleeping in little wooden huts. There were several children but I hardly saw any adult. We had another hut for use as a kitchen or storeroom.

Two boys came to talk to us after dinner. One of them, Frank, said his father was a teacher and that he understood some French.

Shana took out her CD player and made him listen to some songs. He danced around quite pleased and asked her if she had any Britney Spears!

Day 5 — Up at dawn, trekked to the forest with the chief and Fanja, the site coordinator, which took about 90 minutes. We did not see any lemurs but the forest was beautiful. The gas stove in our hut was an attraction.

We had a strong following already. The same children kept coming and, sitting on the rocks outside our hut, watched us and giggled. Dinner was rice and beans with onions, garlic and ginger.

Fanja gave us some meat she had left hanging outside to dry. It was really nice. We had brede, a kind of spinach, too.

Bizarrely, Fanja also told us not to go out to the toilet alone because there were ghosts in the forest. We all laughed, so did she, but the villagers had told her to come and tell us. They were serious about it.

Day 6 — We left at 8.30am for the reforestation area. There were about 120 trees planted at the end of February. The chief was quite proud.

Day 7 — After dinner we sat with the chief and some of the village elders and they asked us if it was true that a man had walked on the Moon.

Then they asked us if submarines really existed and how deep they went. We ended up telling them about the planets, shooting stars and satellites. Next question: “Do whales eat submarines?''

Day 8 — We built a clay oven for a family. We crushed earth using rocks. The dust thrown up, especially when the ash was sieved, was unimaginable. I asked the women around if they sang while they worked. They laughed. Then one of them started singing and her mother, I think, started yelling, singing and laughing.

The older woman was called Habobo. She was 38 and had 14 children. She still breastfed the younger ones. It must be strange for them having us there showing them what to do.

So far they all seemed really enthusiastic about us. Even babies joined in dirt-bashing. They wandered around naked all the time and ate bits of dirt. Some of the older boys and men just watched.

Day 9 — The names of the people were quite difficult to remember and pronounce. They seemed to have remembered ours, though, and little ones would just call us all day long. “Emmanuelle'' became “Manowela'', “Fransizka'' was “Fransisi'' and “Shana'' was “Sana''.

The village chief, Mahata, was very friendly and talked loudly. He had two wives and five children, of whom four, I believe, were already dead.

One of his sons died at 30 because of his liver, or the river, or perhaps both as he died of bilharzia, a chronic disease caused by infestation of blood flukes.

Tsilamaha is on the outskirts of a “red zone''. Bandits roam in groups of 20 or 30 and steal zebu (cattle) from villages in the middle of the night.

“If you hear gunshots at night,'' we were warned, “don't come out of your hut, lie low and don't cry for help.'' The bandits don't kill people, they want the cattle. Zebus are big business. Tsilamaha has about 900.

Day 10 — Children were everywhere. They sat close and observed everything we did. Sometimes they asked us what our names were or how old we were: “Comment t'appel tu?'', “Quel age as tu?'' The same questions over and over in sessions that easily lasted a good 30 minutes. They scampered when the chief noticed and yelled at them.

There are some taboos in the village, called “Fady'' in the dialect. We were still learning about them as we went. Near the stream where we filled our buckets, there was a tamarind tree that we were not supposed to touch or linger around.

We are still not sure why. In the village, there was also a large flat rock under one of the trees, the best place to catch the breeze in the shade, but it was used to slaughter cattle or chicken and was not to be sat on.

We had a meeting with elders and chiefs in the morning, sitting on woven mats on the ground under this amazing tree in a nearby cluster of huts.

We didn't understand much but they seemed to find us entertaining. As a sign of respect, we had to wear a sarong called Lambawon that covers the body from abdomen down.

Day 13 — Went to reforest with a bunch of men from the village and the big chief. They cut 1.5-metre-long branches off a type of tree and planted them.

They said they planted 369 saplings. I have never seen the tree before. It has a tall trunk and the branches shoot off it straight up.

They have tiny spikes and green leaves all over. We needed gloves to handle them but the guys just grabbed and carried them off with their bare hands.

Day 14 — We played Frisbee and got some of the children to join for a game. They were very excited. Initially they all just stared at us and a large group of people gathered.

A few of the children we spent most of our time with came closer and closer until we threw the Frisbee to them. It was a lot of fun.

Day 15 — We set off on a five-hour trek with the chief at 7am and finally saw lemurs. We crossed the valley and went up the hill on the other side. It was awesome. I ate many guavas.
There is a mineral, mica, all over the ground in some areas and it looks like fragments of mirror or glass.

We watched lemurs for about two minutes. They were ring-tailed lemurs.

Day 16 — The children started waving at us and I realised it was because I used to wave at them.

They usually wouldn't do it. It was funny because they would be right in front of you and wave like they were on fast forward. It was very cute.

Day 31 — A forestry expert from the WWF, Rolland, arrived to take us to make forest inventories. We hadn't met any coordinators for so many days that this was a godsend.

Day 32 — Saw more lemurs, tiny ones, mouse lemurs, I think. Rolland took us to the forest and pointed out the medicinal trees and parts of trees that were edible in some form — useful when famine struck.

The chief chopped down two trees looking for honey. There was nothing we could do. Rolland said this happened a lot. To top it, there was no honey.

Day 33 — Went with Rovasoa for a walk to her vegetable garden. We ended up going on a round for three hours. They plant peanuts, manioc, sweet potatoes, watermelons, garlic and courgettes.

We met a bunch of people who gave us sugar cane. They loved looking at their photos on the camera.

Day 46 — Went to the river to do some washing. Four children came along. While the girls were busy climbing trees, the boys looked at the soap bubbles with curiosity. I think they wanted to smell the soap.

Day 47 — The WWF coordinators showed up and started vaccinating the villagers. A nurse had come from the clinic a two-hour-walk away. They gave the children deworming tablets and vitamin A.

Mothers brought their children, who got their shots. Fanja gave a speech on family planning. She was really very good. The women responded well to her talk.

Day 48 — The river had turned caramel from all the rain. It didn't matter much, though, for washing clothes at this stage. A pregnant girl watched us the whole time.

I wished we could speak to her properly. All we could say was “river'', “washing'' and “soap''. Saying “baby'' didn't get us very far.