 helps other people to know where they are is missing.
But there is hope for people like me. (I am sure I am not the only one in the world; it is just too embarrassing to admit). Last Sunday I went to Ely to see a friend. I have been to Ely scores of times, and I know how to get to the Cathedral parking, and if it is full, I know how to get to another parking.  In such situations I gratefully remember one of my wonderful granddaughters who insisted, two years ago, that “Granny wants a smartphone for her birthday”. There are many things I use my phone for (least of all for phone calls), but is was the first time I used voice navigation. Wow, how much I loved this nice lady who told me, softly and patiently, like you should speak to a topographic idiot: “In a quarter of a mile, in the roundabout, drive straight through and stay on the road”.
Read the previous posts: part one, two, three, four, five, six and seven.
“Mora-mora” (or something like that) means “slowly but surely”. Don't rush. It will take the time it takes. Sooner or later.
My old Russian self is comfortable with the attitude. Mora-mora your luggage will arrive. Or maybe not. Mora-mora your flight will maybe depart or maybe not, but mora-mora it will.
Our flight from Toliara back to Tana was scheduled 12.25, but Mami told us already the day before that it would probably leave at 4.40 or probably delayed indefinitely. Apparently, Madagascar Air has one Boeing that jumps up and down between the capital and smaller cities at random intervals. Because of the delay we had time to visit Arboretum. When we were finally taken to the airport, the plane was there, but not going to Tana yet; first to some other place, then back to Toliara, then to Tana. Mora-mora.
In the morning, I went to get some money from the ATM. You never knew how much you might need, and I didn't want to take out too much. The highest amount the machine allowed to withdraw was 200,000 ariary, but when I tried, the display said it was unavailable. I tried 100,000; I tried another card; Anton tried his card. The long line behind us got impatient. We moved aside, and the next person tried. The machine had run out of cash! Mora-mora. I was truly amused.
The plane eventually came, and the next day in Tana we went to the Lemur Park, and the day after we flew home with seven hours stop in Nairobi that almost killed me.
And it took me mora-mora to come to terms with Madagascar. In my journal, I sometimes wrote that I hated it, that the culture was alien to me, that apart from short walks I didn't get anything out of the trip. I was wrong. I wrote in my first Madagascar post that the experience was life-changing, and it was. It just took mora-mora to admit it to myself.
First, I had to tell something to my friends and colleagues, who eagerly inquired whether the trip had met my expectations. I was obliged to say that it hadn't, but only because I had had wrong expectations. When people asked me: “Was it fabulous?” I said cautiously: “It was interesting”. The more I had to account for, the more vivid the memories went, and the more they shifted. When people asked: “Did you really see lemurs?” I said: “Yes. But we also saw people”. And mora-mora I realised that it was significant.
Mora-mora I looked up charities that work in Madagascar. I realised that I am paying more in pet insurance that it would cost to send a Malagasy child to school. Does it mean that I should stop paying pet insurance, stop making miniatures (although I make most of them from rubbish, like the man in the miniature-bike shop), stop gardening, stop going out for dinner or have my hair cut? No, not at all. But it sets everything in perspective. The money we spent on our trip would be enough to build a school. But then, if we hadn't gone on the trip, we wouldn't have known.
Every morning when I shower, I remember discarded plastic bottles that Mami filled with tap water and gave to people along the road. I have always been ecologically aware, so nothing was a revelation. But even with my Russian background, I take too much for granted.
The good thing is that I don't feel guilty. (I used to feel guilty about Russia, but it is another story). I feel, in a strange way, peaceful, because there are more important things in the world than my small everyday problems.
£5 will provide tools...
£10 will provide seeds...
£15 will provide a stove...
£25 will provide a school desk...
Mora-mora, Madagascar, I may come back.
Read the previous posts: part one, two, three, four, five and six.
But what about wildlife? you may be wondering by now. Where is this wonderful unique flora and fauna, biodiversity, endemic species, the famous lemurs?
Well, we saw as much as you can expect to see on a trip of this scope, if you read the trip description carefully. We visited three national parks, Ranomafana, Andringitra and Isalo. Only in Andringitra we stayed sort of inside the park, but we did not sleep in tents, which I don't regret. There were ringtails all over the camp, half-tame. In Ranomafana we stayed in a lodge close enough to the park to have a sense of being in a rainforest, and it was the only night when we saw the magnificent Southern sky. In Isalo we stayed in a fancy-ish hotel in a village far away from the park and only went into the park for a couple of hours. In total we have not been in the nature for more than perhaps twenty hours out of ten days. But they were mostly good hours, and the walks made me happy.
The road from Antsirabe to Ranomafana National Park was winding up and down mountains (I was glad I sat in the front seat that day), and by the afternoon the views began to be magnificent. The road itself got worse, but our driver Guy was imaginative, carefully avoiding potholes. All in all, we covered 240 km that day. As we entered the park and started the descent into a gorge, all of a sudden the familiar green walls of the rainforest appeared on both sides, a river along the road developing into cascades. It was as if we had gone through a portal into an alternative world.
That night, we soaked ourselves in insect repellent, and it was the first time ever I slept in a mosquito tent.
Outside, the rainforest was full of those wonderful rainforest noises I remembered from Brazil: crickets, frogs, birds. The smells, the touch of humid fog. We were promised a full-day walk with a picnic lunch the next day.  The previous two long and strenuous days were merely travel days, and from now on it would be nature all the way.
In the morning we met our local guide, Nono, and then we went into the park, with our backpacks, bottles of water, binoculars and cameras.
I had been worrying that I wouldn't be fit enough for the walk, but I was, and I was glad I had done all those endless step-ups at the gym, because we climbed up and down, bumping into other groups looking for lemurs. Nono stopped every now and then to tell us something, but perhaps mostly to let us catch breath. There was also a young boy who was an “animal spotter”, a scout sent in advance. Presumably, the guides had mobile phones to communicate, because all groups conflated in the same spots. I was still naïve and thought we were in genuine wilderness, even though it was a park, but it eventually became clear that everywhere the park rangers and guides fed lemurs at certain locations for tourists' benefit. But, who cares, we did see the locally famous Golden bamboo lemur, two black-and-white Milne-Edwards sifakas high in a tree, two awahi who are nocturnal and therefore obediently slept, and several Greater Bamboo lemurs who came down to the ground so I could almost touch them.
I could have stayed there forever, but we were rushed further, walking up and down for a while without seeing anything else. Then we were led back to the entrance, and the picnic lunch was a ham sandwich we ate standing by the van. We were then taken to another park where we were promised an abundance of birds, and right by the entrance we saw a group of Red-Bellied lemurs.
The rest of the walk was an anticlimax, and our birdwatcher Lynn was particularly disappointed because we didn't see one single bird! We saw some insects and a tiny frog, but there was nothing of Attenborough-photoshopped diversity of hundreds of species per square meter. The walk was almost flat. I did feel tired a bit – after all, we had been out for six hours – and proud of myself. Mami had mentioned hot springs, which sounded enticing, but it turned out to be a regular swimming pool full of local