La Patience – Pronounced paShauns

Our first French word learned while we traveled around France, and continuing to use this week in our travels to an island called Nosy-Be off one of Africa’s bigger islands, Matagascar. The internet and wifi is sporadic to say the least so pictures are barely uploading. PaShauns. If you close your eyes and just listen to everyone talking, you would think you’re still in France.

It all began with our temperature being taken just as we were walking into the Nosy-Be airport. Please ignore the twenty-hour-traveling-hair.

We have never seen poverty like we saw on the ride from the airport to our hotel. It was an eye opener and a bit scary at first for me to be here.

My mind was racing thinking, “what in the world did I get us into? I can’t believe we have one full week here. I’ll never make it.” When we arrived at our hotel, it felt somewhat better when I saw a good restaurant inside, the dive shop next door, and the pool on the second floor looking over the ocean. Of course, Jay wanted to explore the whole island, however I turned into a scardycat, I think, and said not me!

It doesn’t look too bad out our hotel window.

Our sunsets each night from the second floor pool area were gorgeous.

And a full moon this week.

We didn’t do well with our conversations here. The locals in Matagasgar speak French and Malagasy. Everyone we have had an opportunity to have a decent conversation with says Matagasgar is a very difficult country to visit if you don’t speak French. We concur.

We didn’t do very well with the French language the week we were actually in France. We know bon jour, merci, au revoi, avocat (avacado), ananas (pineapple), and we learned patience. As you can see in the lunch picture we didn’t do well here, no avacado or pineapple. We thought we ordered for lunch just a plate of shrimp and a plate of fries. After ordering they brought Jay a fresh whole fish and wanted to cook the whole thing for him. (You could probably get 15 – 1″ steaks from the fish.) I wish we would have been able to take a picture of the fish. I suppose this meal was better than in Spain when we thought we ordered spaghetti and got consumme which was pretty much clear broth.

Here’s our lunch chef in her kitchen.

This little guy was our breakfast companion one morning.

Their currency, an Ariary, reminds us of Monopoly money. Its value is .00027 to a US dollar. Our diving and hotel was $3,400,000…..AR’s. We’ve never bought anything for three million before. So here’s the math problem for this country….How much in US dollars did it cost to stay and dive in Matagasgar? You can breathe, George Barron, we haven’t drained our savings along with someone else’s. So keep on doing what you’re doing with it, please.

The average income in Matagasgar is approximately $68/month. I’m sad to say that sex trade is here, legal, and obviously in the open. Jay and I have watched older men picking up young girls every day. It is that blatant.

We actually watched it from our room window on the side street. As Jay said, “He definitely is not her uncle”. Ugh!!! As we walked the beach at sunset, one of the bars is a place it is happening. The girls were in their bikinis dancing on stage. Ugh, again. Another reminder of Thailand. Jay wants to give each of these cute young girls $68 and tell them to go home to their family for a month. However, the one thing we learned in Thailand is you have to go to the demand, the men coming to these parts of our world for this purpose. There are probably five young girls coming on to the street for every one you take off. It makes me sick and those of you who went to Thailand with me know what I want to do to those men. One of the many sad stories here is the political officials and police officers are some of these young girl’s first customers.

Changing subjects…..

Here are a few other common things you see as you walk around town.

Cleaning the beach outside our hotel.

Traffic jam on main street of Ambatoloaka, Nosy-Be.

Dozens of wooden fishing boats on the waters.

Shopping from my new friend, Angela, on the side of the restaurant. The merchant women are not allowed to come up on the deck of the restaurants, however they can stand on the sides and stare you down until they get your attention.

Tuk-tuks are small taxis on three wheels. They do appear safer and not as fast than the one’s in Thailand.

We came to dive with the whale sharks, however due to low tide on our second day, our dive was at the Mitsio wreck. You can only dive this area during a morning low tide due to the heavy currents and low visibility on the other days. It’s about an 85 foot dive with so many lionfish to greet Jay, who did not get to bring his spear because the lionfish are indigenous. We didn’t get to take a picture either because water got into our gopro case. So, here is a similar picture of what it looked like for Jay. Imagine a 50 foot boat at the bottom of the ocean floor and this everywhere. Really big ones too! Jay wanted to hit each one with the soaked gopro since it was his only weapon.

Diving, at maximum depth, I had a couple of horrible, never-before panic attacks. Whew! They were tough. Then one other dive I was just about ready to abort it shortly after entering the water when the divemaster signaled us to go up. Yay! She did not like where we dropped in either. So, we climbed onto someone else’s boat because our boat was not watching for us. They carried us to the correct site. I told her, “I think I’m done”, but she convinced me I would be fine. Jay held my hand all the way down on quite a bit of that particular dive. I’m so glad she and Jay helped me through that one. We swam amongst a huge school of small barracuda. I thought they could be very large sardines. If you have seen the schools of sardines in the big aquariums, that’s what it looked like. There were other schools as well – yellow fish and blue fish. Very pretty. Glad I didn’t know they were barracuda.

Wish we could have gotten our own picture, however our gopro is still in a bag of rice. I think it’s a goner. Jay has hope it will work as soon as he listens to the YouTube on how to take it apart to clean it.

For two days of the trip we heard the Muslims call for prayer over a very loud speaker at all hours of the day and night. We don’t know why it stopped on Saturday night and haven’t heard it since.

Then Sunday while eating breakfast before our dives we could hear sweet singing voices coming from next door. It was a Catholic church we hadn’t noticed. It was packed and so many people sitting outside the door. Children everywhere. That evening the singing began again. So we walked over to see what it was all about and were greeted by these two. They latched on to Jay and the fun began the whole time we were in the church.

They loved touching my skin and hair and high fiving Jay. We might have been a bit disruptive, however no one seemed to mind. Pictures are blurry because they never stood still. At one moment they looked at Jay and said, “bonsoir, fotsy fotsy”. Translated: Good evening white man. I about fell over from laughing. Just before dinner I read an article that mentioned that phrase in Malagasy so I knew what she said. When we left they motioned to be picked up to give great big hugs. Oh my heart.

We named this blog “Patience” because that’s what these days have been about. After four days of language frustrations, a little fear from hearing some stories, anxiety attacks I’ve never experience before, so so and difficult diving, and the worst part, no whales sharks; Jay found Ivan, who spoke English, hallelujah!!!!

That’s me next to this beautiful animal and Jay photographing. She was so close we had to swim away in order for her to not touch us. At one moment we were eye to eye. Amazing! We saw six whale sharks that morning.

The day before was the most discouraged I’ve felt these past seven months. The whale shark was the sole purpose of this week. My hero, Jay, rented a gopro and found Ivan, who had a great boat captain, which made one of my dreams come true. By the way, the others in the picture with Ivan and me were on the boat with us. They are from Israel. So, when we go there we are hoping to catch up with them.

Not only did Ivan coordinate the whale shark excursion, we stopped at a little island off Nosy-Be for lunch and Ivan showed us around the village he grew up in. Ivan now has a bachelor’s degree in geography and hoping to get his masters one day. However he and his “Honey” (that’s what he called her) are expecting their first child in six months.

An older gentleman in the village splitting the bamboo and hand weaving fishing baskets with it.

We hiked to what they call “the Plantation” for Ivan to explain the growing of vanilla, coffee, black pepper, and elang elang flowering trees, used in perfumes.

As we were walking we met up with this little cutie playing with his water bottle built car on a string near the primary school house. He grabbed up Jay immediately, then the both of us.

Some kids playing a type of mancala in the sand with rocks, and shells. It’s pretty amazing how their little imaginations come up with ways to play.

To top off this amazing day, Ivan and his boat captain took us to snorkel with the biggest turtles we have ever seen. Gorgeous!

All we can say is God is so good to us and we are continually grateful for all He has for us. The verse that continually comes to my heart is Psalms 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” That’s what He did this day for sure.

If that wasn’t enough, our last day was spent diving, of course. The last two dives were comfortable and filled with schools of unicorn fish, a couple types of large clams, and several different types of star fish.

On our way back to shore, we came across the biggest whale shark of the trip. Many of us jumped off the side of the boat to swim with it. Jay stayed on and took some video and pictures above water. The crew was even in awe of the size.

I think God was just showing off on our last day with his wonderful creation underwater and in the sky, and his amazing way He loves us.

Blessings, Jay and Kelly