Two Weddings and a Bus (Tana to Tamatave)

I got back to Tana Thursday afternoon at 5pm almost exactly 24 hours after leaving Diego. 

Back in Tana I didn’t do anything too exciting until Saturday.

Thursday night I visited Sr. Mamonjy (I knew her as Zafy).  I taught her and her family in Ivato (out by the airport) but they had been coming to church for almost a year, waiting on some papers and ID cards so they could get legally married and then baptized.  Cellin is to the left of me – he’s 11 and dope.  And then there’s the twins Pita and Bota (“Chubby”) who are always adorable.  Zafy’s husband (Fr. Fabrice) was down in south Tana 1 ½ hours away at work (he works down there on a construction project on weekdays and comes home to his family on the weekend).  To the right of me is Sr. Tina, which is Sr. Fanja (far right)’s younger sister, and Gino’s mom.  Gino is probably my best friend in Madagascar and he’s serving a mission now in Mada. 

On Friday I hung out with Christianna who is a girl that also wasn’t baptized when I worked in Ivato, but had to wait until she was 18 to get baptized because her dad didn’t approve.  Anyways we went around Tana getting me signed up as one of the witnesses for her marriage (which was Saturday).  She speaks English really well, and French probably better than she does Malagasy.

PROGRESS!  In the past 10 months, somehow they’ve constructed several of these really fancy pants bus stations which are like totally mind boggling.  They might not look like anything to Americans, but the whole concept of a bus station is in fact totally foreign to Malagasies, despite their propensity for bus usage.  This has a roof, and benches, and a map, and signs about which buses stop here and where they go.  Super crazy.  As you can see taxi-bes (city buses) and taxi-brousses (buses that go to outlying cities) are not really any different at all.  Except that they only put 14 people in a taxi-brousse, whereas they put 4 to a row in a taxi-be, meaning 18 and then usually cram a couple more to get to 20 or 22.

On Saturday, Christianna got married to her fiancé Johnny who is from La Reunion. I was one witness, and some government worker lady was the other.  Other than that only her family was at the ceremony.  Her little brother was hilarious.  Oh and the missionaries were there to take pictures.

Coincidentally, Saturday was also the day that the sister of one of my mission companions (Ratsimanohitra – my only native companion) was getting married as well.  So I went to the brand new chapel and saw the wedding and a bunch of missionaries and members from all over Antananarivo (Tana).  Afterwards E. McIntire and his companion Collins (who taught me as a fake investigator in the MTC) and I went and got some “soft serve icecream” which was only 75cents, and still not as good as the stuff at McDonalds lol.  America really is just awesome.  But I still love Madagascar.

It was getting late in the afternoon, so I got a taxi out to Ivato (30 minutes, no traffic) to grab my gear, and then back to the bus station in downtown which actually cost me 30,000Ar which is twice what my ticket to Tamatave (9 hours) cost… bagh.   Got on my bus to Tamatave at 5:30, we left around 6pm and then promptly got stuck in a terrible traffic jam (a taxi and a taxi-be had been in an accident... on a narrow 2 lane road) and we were a giant charter bus so it was like Ultimate Log Jam of Doom.  Finally around 7 or 7:30 we got out of the city and arrived in Tamatave at 2:30 in the morning.

I got a taxi to the “hotel” where Busteed was staying.  I was so happy to see Busteed after bumming around for a week and a half!  We chatted for a couple hours (even though we should've been sleeping) and laughed about Madagascar. And then fell asleep for about 2 or 3 hours. 'Twas good times.