One week has passed and we already feel well-experienced. 1. We have learned that toilet paper and water are not things that come by themselves. So with troubled stomaches - this has been a challenging week. 2. We have learned that in Madagascar they dont use norwegian «ferdigmat». Cooking takes time, and we have realized that we are lazy cookers and do not really know what they eat here in Madagascar. Which resulted in being vegetarians for 5 days and having eggs and pasta everyday. And here they eat 3 times a day which for us norwegians means - we are always hungry. 3. We have experienced the Malagasy bus-system. We have been standing in a 5-meter line, pushed ourselves into the bus, filled gas, squeezed, hitchhiked and jump on while the bus was still moving. 4. We have experienced Malagasy time and learned the expression «moramora» (slowly). However for us it is no problem - it means no alarm in the morning and eating breakfast with the teacher (Hery). 5. Last but not least we have learned that Malagasy people are beautiful! Very good-looking :) And they are amazingly kind, funny and caring people - what could be better? All in all it has been a great week! We got to meet the amazing staff of UGBM. We got our visas and visited the NMS-center - and met the Connect team again. We joined a UGBU-camp in the countryside, where we got to meet a lot of the students in UGBU, kill chickens, sing, play sports and play table tennis (One very happy Pernille). And we even got a chance to go swimming with Hery and some former UGBU-students. On monday we started with Malagasy lesson, and we will have that every week for the next 4 weeks. So now we are walking around and saying the few sentences we know to everyone. Salama! The best part is that we have been so lucky to have the best contact person (ZukTina) and the best guide (Hery, former HALD-student). We laugh all the time with Hery, and ZukTina takes such good care of us and teach us everything we need to know. We also had our first meeting with cockroaches this week. It is a good thing we have Kristine who can kill it while the three others are standing on chairs screaming.
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Once upon a time there were two girls going to Madagascar. One lost her shoe, and the other one almost missed the plane and had 15 kg too much. However they both learned that its always time for taxfree and the statement «the ones who live closest shows up last» was confirmed. We are now safe and secure at the UGBM-base in Tana (Antananarivo). We got all our bags and they have now filled up our ENTIRE room. We (Ingrid, Lotte + us) were picked up by our contact person and a Hald-student from last year at the airport. And after 60 minutes in malagasy-traffic (we added 5 people to the already full bus along the way) we were welcomed by lots of students who live here at the UGBM-base. The night included a cold shower, no water for the toilet, suddenly no light and an amazing supper with our contact person - we could not be happier to be here! And to make the day even better Kristine found two extra chocolates in her bag. |
ABOUTWe are two girls from Norway, Kristine and Pernille, traveling to Madagascar for 6 months. Archives |