We have arrived at the Hotel Vatolahy after a somewhat harrowing four hour drive up into the mountainous part of Madagascar. The road is narrow and filled with trucks and busses and the drivers all want to be first in line. Everyone strives to pass anyone who dares to be in front of them, blind curves, bicyclists, mothers carrying loads on their heads, babies on their backs and grasping a toddler in each hand – none of these deter the determined driver. Of course around the next curve will be another line of trucks and another challenge.
It turns out I’m lucky to be at this hotel. The Residence Des Hauts Hotel (former old and destitute people’s home, I think,) is more like a dormitory with four people to a room and shared bathrooms in the hallways. I’m sharing a room tonight but will have a single starting tomorrow. Though there is no central heating or cooling here and only one electrical outlet per room, it is otherwise quite nice. I’ve turned on my mobile hotspot so the WI-FI is pretty fast and reliable.
I don’t have much to add but there were a couple of interesting things we saw on the way up. The fields I saw on the drive from the airport – there are now some photos of them on the Shutterfly site – are indeed rice paddies, but they also serve as mud fields for brick making. Brick making by specialized brick makers is a huge activity here, and the bricks are made from clay dug from clay pits which are located near rice paddies. The best clay is there, perhaps due to the starch leaching from the rice. We also learned that good clay is found near turbines because the mist generated has sap in it from the wood burned to generate the energy. Finally, we saw men hanging bags from spouts they had driven into evergreen trees, much like those driven into sugar maples in Vermont, around their clay pits. They collect sap and mix it with the clay.
Once the clay is dug, each brick is made by hand, packed into a wooden mold, then lined up and dried in the sun. When the bricks are dry, they are piled into towers and slowly burned with either wood or peat moss for one to two weeks, depending on the number of bricks and the weather. The burning process makes them more durable and resistant to rain. We also saw a couple of ruined towers with the bricks all melted together, a reminder that a poorly timed rainstorm can ruin days or weeks of labor. The houses and other buildings are constructed of bricks held together with adobe and covered with thatched roofs. More expensive houses have adobe covering the bricks. I’m uploading some photos, again taken through bus windows and moving, so bear with me.
There will also be a picture of a small stand of a charcoal vendor. Deforestation is a huge problem in Madagascar where the people rely on wood and charcoal for heat and fuel.
It turns out I’m lucky to be at this hotel. The Residence Des Hauts Hotel (former old and destitute people’s home, I think,) is more like a dormitory with four people to a room and shared bathrooms in the hallways. I’m sharing a room tonight but will have a single starting tomorrow. Though there is no central heating or cooling here and only one electrical outlet per room, it is otherwise quite nice. I’ve turned on my mobile hotspot so the WI-FI is pretty fast and reliable.
I don’t have much to add but there were a couple of interesting things we saw on the way up. The fields I saw on the drive from the airport – there are now some photos of them on the Shutterfly site – are indeed rice paddies, but they also serve as mud fields for brick making. Brick making by specialized brick makers is a huge activity here, and the bricks are made from clay dug from clay pits which are located near rice paddies. The best clay is there, perhaps due to the starch leaching from the rice. We also learned that good clay is found near turbines because the mist generated has sap in it from the wood burned to generate the energy. Finally, we saw men hanging bags from spouts they had driven into evergreen trees, much like those driven into sugar maples in Vermont, around their clay pits. They collect sap and mix it with the clay.
Once the clay is dug, each brick is made by hand, packed into a wooden mold, then lined up and dried in the sun. When the bricks are dry, they are piled into towers and slowly burned with either wood or peat moss for one to two weeks, depending on the number of bricks and the weather. The burning process makes them more durable and resistant to rain. We also saw a couple of ruined towers with the bricks all melted together, a reminder that a poorly timed rainstorm can ruin days or weeks of labor. The houses and other buildings are constructed of bricks held together with adobe and covered with thatched roofs. More expensive houses have adobe covering the bricks. I’m uploading some photos, again taken through bus windows and moving, so bear with me.
There will also be a picture of a small stand of a charcoal vendor. Deforestation is a huge problem in Madagascar where the people rely on wood and charcoal for heat and fuel.
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