Day 305, Year 5 Rotary International in Madagascar
Date: Friday, August 27, 2010
Weather: Beautiful Day
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
Where to begin? We left Windbird at 11:15 am this morning and just got home at 5:45 pm. It took fifteen minutes to get to Sakatia Lodge where today’s Rotary meeting was being held and another fifteen minutes to get back, so that means we attended a six hour Rotary meeting. Everything about the day fascinated us as it was so different from a Rotary meeting in Concord, New Hampshire. First, we had to go by boat and wade and walk about a quarter of mile to shore because the tide was so low, as did all of the other members. This means you arrived bare-footed and basically you stay that way. There was no reason to wear shoes. In Concord the members arrive in suits and are certainly not bare-footed! The Concord club has at least fifty members whereas the Nosy Be chapter has fourteen, but only ten were present today. Of the ten members present today, seven were women. As I remember, you can count the number of women members in Concord on one hand. So that was interesting. The Concord meeting is held in a restaurant and so was today’s meeting here, but I’m afraid the Cat ‘n Fiddle in Concord is no match for Sakatia Lodge. This club meets at a different member’s business each week and since most members are associated with the hospitality trade, it means that each meeting is held at a fantastic ocean-front resort. Sakatia Lodge is managed by Isabella and Jose from Portugal and Isabella had us come to her home for the business meeting. It was a lovely home set high on the hill with a fantastic view of the bay. The windows were all dressed with recelet curtains. Recelet is the type of cut-out embroidery done on Nosy Komba and the long table that accommodated all twelve of us had another Nosy Komba white table cloth with colorful fish embroidered all over. There were bowls of bougainvillea flowers and a typed meeting agenda at each place. The meeting was called together with the ringing of the Rotary bell and the president of the club read the Rotary message welcoming a new member. Today’s new member was Joanna, a woman who has retired here from London to try and save Madagascar’s forests and the lemurs. Another major difference from a club meeting in Concord was that this one was multi-lingual. French is the main language understood by all in attendance, except for us and Joanna. The only Malagasy members present today were Dr. Abdul (who attended to Lynne of Constance when she had her infection) and his step-daughter Sandra who has just returned here after living in London for five years serving as a public relations person for the Hilton Hotel. She was born and raised in France, so living in Madagascar is a new experience for her. She came back to take over her mother’s family farming business but she misses London terribly and doesn’t know how long she can stay here. Dr. Abdul and Sandra both speak Malagasy and French and Sandra’s English is as good as ours. Other members speak only French and some speak Portuguese and French and others German and Italian. They did try to speak English for our benefit when possible and it was fascinating to watch the way every member moved from one language to another. The business meeting was very much like any Rotary business meeting. The club has been given a grant from a Dubai club and they discussed the best way to spend the money. It will go to build a school, but deciding where to build the school was the discussion. There will be a district-wide meeting in the capitol of Madagascar and this club wants to be well represented. The district here is all of the neighboring French speaking countries-Comoros and Mayotte, Seychelles, Reunion, Mauritius and Rodrigues, Djibouti in East Africa, and Madagascar. There will also be a celebration in Majunga in October honoring that club’s 50 years in Rotary and members here want this club represented. Ann Christine, a woman from Switzerland who came here fifteen years ago and built the only school on Nosy Sakatia, just returned this morning from a trip to the capitol of Tanna and to Majunga and had first hand reports on all of these activities. Wendy, a young woman from South Africa, seemed to be the note taker today. She lives on Nosy Komba and is currently trying to get an import-export business started. She exports crafts produced by handicapped Malagasy and imports goods from displaced and handicapped Africans. We will see her again at Sunday Brunch at Sakatia Towers. She is a diver and she speared the fish we will be eating on Sunday. I could go on and on describing the fascinating backgrounds of the members present today, but I must stop myself and report on the remainder of the day.
After the meeting we went back down to the Lodge for a scrumptious meal that was brought by each of the members. Once a month they have a shared meal and today was one of those meals. Since all of the members are in the hospitality business, the food was just spectacular. They all try to outdo each other. We had a raw fish salad, marinated in gin and mixed with cucumbers, lettuce, and onions. This was provided by Isabella and Sakatia Lodge and it was spectacular. Then there was thin-sliced pork, a zebu and rice noodle salad, potato salad, cabbage salad, and a tomato, cucumber, and carrot salad. Everything was delicious and there was white and red wine in abundance and Chocolate Decadence (flourless chocolate cake) and chocolate brownies for dessert. This meal was over the top. It was the best food I have had in years.
After lunch we walked through the village to the school and drug out a huge spinnaker that was donated to the club by the yacht Selema (over a 100 feet long). This spinnaker covered an entire soccer field. Mark and I had been invited to the meeting today to help with the decision-making on how best to cut up this spinnaker to make small sails for the local pirogues, but we don’t really have that expertise and it became evident that what various members thought sometimes differed from what the local men who were present thought. So we cut off the bottom portion of the sail and cut out one square that we now have on Windbird. We will sew the edges to make a pirogue sail and give it to the locals to try. If it works, then the club members will have a pattern to use for cutting up the remainder of the spinnaker. If it doesn’t work, then I think the club will try to borrow a local sail and use that as their pattern. While the sail was laid out on the field, local children started gathering and watching the sail as it would rise with the wind. I convinced a few of them to run under the sail with me and we had a fabulous time running in and out the other side.
It was quite the day and tomorrow we start again by going to the shore of Nosy Be with John to the hotel opening of one of the Rotary members we met today. We hope to be able to get a snorkel in before we leave as the tide will be just right. Ed and Lynne went in today and had one of the best snorkeling experiences they have ever had. The water was clear, there was an abundance of fish, and they saw beautiful nudibranchs. These are sea slugs and they can be unbelievably colorful. We have looked for them all around the world and never seen them, so we will give that a go in the morning before heading to the hotel opening celebration. What a good life!
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| 100827 Day 305 Madagascar–Nosy Be Rotary Meeting at Sakatia Lodge |
