Mr. Blue Sky, Please Tell Us Why, You had to Hide Away for So Long...

(written July 6, 2008; posted by MOM)

After all my complaining about the rain in June, the month of July has been absolutely beautiful. Sunny days, clear nights, although still breezy and cool. Let us hope I am not jinxing the weather by writing this!

I want to give a quick thanks to Ryan Fasano and Kirsten Mizzi, both of whom sent wonderful care packages full of magazines and treats. Among the goodies, they both included Bill Simmons articles and the same Maxim issue. I guess my tastes are well known. And speaking of magazines telling me of events from a month ago, it sounds like the NBA finals were pretty fantastic. I enjoy reading magazines I get as if they were current; at this rate, upon my triumphant US return, I will only be a few months behind the on world events, sports and pop culture (as opposed to 2 years). Of course, even in the states I was perpetually behind-the-times, so maybe nothing will change!

Quick tangent—like a little kid, I have taken to covering my walls with interesting photos and such from magazines. One such picture is an Adidas ad for deodorant featuring a gang of Notre Dame football players making a tackle. Setting aside the difficulty in finding a recent photo of Notre Dame players actually making a tackle, since when does ND sell-out for deodorant? This Adidas ad is a far cry from the classic Champion-ND commercials of my childhood (“It takes a little more to make a Champion!”), the timing of which always seemed to coincide with the Planicka household getting a bit dusty. Oh well, I guess I should be happy to see ND portrayed in any sort of positive light after last year. If the wearing of Adidas deodorant leads to a national champ..., I mean, a winning season, then I guess it’s alright.

Getting back to Madagascar, one of the skills I have been trying to master since my arrival is the ability to observe everything around you while walking. You never know when you might see an interesting critter, in the trees, on the ground, anywhere. I am pretty terrible at this, and usually rely on others to point out chameleons or frogs. But today I got lucky, and as the cliché uttered by so many sports players say, it is better to be lucky than good. For the second time, I saw a Tenrec (which I previously wrote about), and this time I had my camera! The little fella posed for me and allowed some good pictures, but when I tried to put the camera on a timer and get in the shot with him, he quickly scampered away. The same thing happens when I try to get in a picture with the geckos at my house. Apparently the local wildlife is worried I’ll ruin their photo-op!

As for the Malagasy people and photo opportunities, I think we are making progress. At a recent compost lesson, I succeeded in getting most of the people to look at the camera and smile, something that has proven challenging. The nice thing about digital cameras is you can show people the shot immediately, and they can self-police with phrases like: “hey, you’re not smiling” and “can we take another?” Technology is wonderful, and I promise I will be able to share some of these photos with you all eventually!

Random Madagascar fact—the Indri, the type of lemur I hear each morning from my house, has an impressive voice: its song can carry up to 3km. Spread out throughout the rainforest, Indri call to each other every morning and again at nights. The following is from Bradt’s Madagascar Guide : “In Malagasy the Indri is called babakoto which means “father of Koto.” It is fady (fady means taboo basically) to kill an Indri, the legend being that the boy Koto climbed a tree in the forest to collect wild honey, and was severely stung by the bees. Losing his hold, he fell, but was caught by an Indri which carried him on its back to safety.” A timely alarm clock, with a haunting wailing song AND life-saving credentials make the Indri far superior to that other more annoying morning and evening crow-er, the rooster. Fady is itself an interesting concept, and each local area has their own set of fady or taboos. A relatively benign one in my area is you cannot work in the fields with a shovel. More interesting ones are you cannot wear red during a thunderstorm (because you will be struck by lightning) in parts of the country, and a friend of mine on the south coast says its is fady in his town to have stairs, perhaps because someone fell off a particularly high flight of stairs? Of course, we Americans harbor our own share of social taboos that may trike outsiders as odd (throwing salt over you shoulder, calling “shot gun” in a car, not walking under a ladder or other “bad luck” fears, etc)