Village Stays

BV has recently introduced the opportunity of ‘village stays’ for our volunteers. A report from Lucy Ferguson highlights the joys of life in a vezo community:

The wind was strong on the way there and they sat me out on the outrigger of the pirogue for ballast – an hour later after my arms has turned white from holding on for grim death we arrived at my new home – Nosy Mitata (Nosy meaning island). There to greet me were the family, about 15 of them (which was a large proportion of the island when you consider in has a population of about 60), with grandparents, parents, and a gaggle of children and babies. Little did I realise how much entertainment I was going to provide for the following couple of days.

I was ushered into their hut, with a select audience (the rest of the family has to peer through the door of the window) and was presented with a cup of tea and a saucer. On cue I made my first mistake – I put the cup on the saucer. Vigorous laughter ensued and when when it finally subsided I was shown that the correct thing was to pour the boiling tea into the saucer and drink it from there as a means of cooling it. Not an easy task.

After tea I was kitted up with mask fins and spear and sent out in the pirogue with my three body guards to catch our tea. I personally didn’t catch anything (in fact had I tried it was likely that me, one of the body guards or a coral would have sustained serious injury) but they caught quite a few, included parrot fish, trigger fish, stripped bristle teeth, black spotted sweetlips, etc. (If you hadn’t guessed I am now fish enabled and collected data from my first fish belt last week).

After fishing we went back and I was sat in the hut with food. After about 30 minutes of waiting for the rest of the family to join me I realised that I was to be eating alone and tucked in. The meal times proceeded to be fairly strange – at dinner i was ushered into the hut once again but this time with Nahoda (the head of the household) and we ate alone together. I was very happy when the next day I actually graduated to eating with the entire family! The evening was passed with dancing and togagash (a lethal, and I think maybe illegal Malagasy home brew) and a considerable amount of laughing at my expense (I thought that it may have scarred me for life but a couple of epi-bar trips and my dancing confidence seems to have resumed to normal).

I was glad to returned to Andava but it was absolutely hilarious and well worth doing!