Anjajavy

We spent our 24 May long weekend in Madagascar's only Relais & Chateau hotel - Anjajavy - L'Hotel. 

The pluses:

- You eat breakfast while watching lemurs swing from tree to tree.  The kids watch the lemurs in amazement.
- The weather during the winter season is perfect: not too hot and not cold at all.  The ocean water is warm.
- You get to stay in a palisander bungalow with two floors, so the kids get their own room upstairs.
- The restaurant meals are 4-star quality and there is fresh fish every day.  Both Bambina and Bambino gobbled up their fish at each meal. 

- The beach is stunning and you can do pretty much any water activity you want (but you have to pay extra for water skiing).  The Bambina has turned into a real diver and spent most of the time with her mask on.

Some minuses:

- The mosquito net had holes in the top of it, and there was a captive mosquito inside our nets on each of the

three nights we were there.

- Resorts are a relatively new thing in Madagascar - too new for things like kids' clubs or even a fully developed spa.  And the political crisis in Madagascar means that hotel owners won't be making any big capital investments in their hotels anytime soon. 

- Like all Relais & Chateau hotels, Anjajavy is expensive.
- You need a private plane to get there.

Any TEFL teachers out there?

Since January, I've been teaching English in our home to French and Malagasy people. I've also been teaching English to a group of grade 10 students at the Lycée Français here in Tananarive.

This is the first time I've tried teaching since I obtained my Certificate for English Language Teaching to Adults from Cambridge University (CELTA) at International House in Rome, back in 2008 (I got pregnant after that and no one would hire me, and then I had the baby and we moved to Madagascar, so it took me a while to get back into teaching).

Some observations:

1. ) I try to use the communicative approach but students really resist this method. They want me to stand up in front of the class and just talk and explain to them. They don't want to try to speak the language themselves. I find it especially a challenge to use this approach when students share a common language (usually French, in my students' case) because as soon as you tell them to talk about something in pairs or to the class, they start off in their common language! Grrrr.  What's more, since they know that I speak French, they often will try to speak to me in French instead of trying to say it in English.  Grrr.

2.) The teenagers at the lycée have a decent to good speaking level.  In many cases, their English is better than their parents' English. Now, I am dealing with the more advanced students but nonetheless I am impressed when I think back to my level of French back in grade 10.  One of my students has read the Twilight series three times, in English. 

On the other hand, their written English is not so good. Their regular English teachers also use the communicative approach for teaching, so maybe the poor writing skills is evidence that this approach is good for learning to speak but not for learning to write.

3.) The present perfect tense is perhaps the hardest grammatical concept in English to learn.  Even my teenagers at the lycée don't seem to fully "get it" and I am becoming persuaded that unless you have grown up with English or have moved to an English-speaking country for good (see, I've just used it twice, no make that three times!), you will never fully "get it" as a non-native speaker (unless you're Spanish-speaking, 'cause apparently Spanish has the same thing).   

Actually, there is one thing harder than understanding the present perfect - undertanding when to use the present perfect tense (e.g. I've gone) and when to use the present perfect continuous (e.g., I've been going).  It might seem obvious to you as a native speaker but to a non-native speaker who hasn't been immersed in English and who is learning the concept as part of an English lesson, this is tedious and complicated stuff.

4. ) I'm not in the right market. I have been trained to teach adults. In fact, adults don't care too much about their level of English anymore. But they really really really care about their kids being able to speak English fluently. I've been asked again and again and again to start a class for kids but the thing is,

• teaching children is not the same as teaching adults, and I haven't been trained to teach kids;

• teaching children would mean that I would have to give lessons when those children, and therefore my children, are not in school, meaning when my own daughter was home and I had things to do with her; and

• I honestly don't think that language lessons are that much use to a child under seven years of age. As small children have minds of sponges, they get much more from the immersion approach, not the lesson approach, and the immersion approach requires more than one or two hours per weeks with a "teacher" for the child to get anything out of it.  Proof: Dutch people my age speak pretty good English, yet they only started learning it formally when they were around eleven or twelve years of age.  Their advantage comes not from taking lessons when they were only five years old but rather from watching television shows and movies in their original language version (no dubbing!).

But I will be the first to admit that I could make much more money out of teaching English if I taught children!

Any other TEFL teachers out there?  I would love to hear what you think and how your experiences compare with mine.

Christmas in May

It's poinsetta season here in Madagascar.  This photo was taken at a birthday party yesterday in the backyard where the party was taking place.  These trees are blooming everywhere here, though.  The Malagasy are very surprised when I tell them that for us, the poinsetta is a Christmas plant.

The Bambina shows no amazement whatsoever at these kinds of plants.  I think she's become to used to it all. 

Organic, homeopathic products, dirt cheap?

Do you like to buy beauty products that don't contain parabens, phenoxethanol or other nasty stuff?  Do you find that these products can sometimes be expensive?  What if I told you that you could get all natural, organic beauty products for dirt cheap? 

I've recently discovered Homeopharma.  Homeopharma is a Malagasy company that specializes in homeopathic medicines as well as organic body care products.  And now they are exporting, at least to Europe.  I don't think their products have hit North American or Asian shores just yet.  I have just bought their children's shampoo (see photo at left).  The shampoo contains no preservatives.  The ingredients are mostly plants, although there is some sodium laureth sulfate in it.

I do have a couple of concerns with their products.  The labelling is not top.  Their website says that all their products have been certified as organic by Ecocert, yet the Ecocert label is absent from their beauty products' packaging.  The list of ingredients on the children's shampoo that I bought includes "parfum" (fragrance), with no indication that this fragrance is natural rather than a synthetic one containing phthalates, a harmful chemical known to disrupt the body's endoctrine system.  The label on the product does say "produit 100% naturel" (100% natural product), yet this cannot be true given that at least one of the ingredients is sodium laureth sulfate, a synthetic chemical.

Needless to say, this company needs a little more sophistication.  But it's an interesting start and their products are cheap!  The shampoo cost the equivalent of US$ 3.50.  The homeopathic medicines (a smattering of which you can see in the photo) cost about the equivalent of US$1 each.  That's here in Madagascar - the prices are probably a bit higher in Europe. 

Colours where we live

Sunset over Tana

A store at the marché artisanal

This plant has red leaves - all year round.

The beach at Nosy Bé

Buying at the Source - Factory outlets in Madagascar

You can buy this princess constume in Europe for about 30 euro.  It was made here in Madagascar.  We visited the factory recently and bought it for the equivalent of about five euro. 

There are other factories here as well.  There is a factory that makes clothes for Jacadi.  Take a look at this dress.  Jacadi is selling them at 69 euro a piece in Europe.  It's made here in Madagascar.  We bought one at the factory for a friends of ours back in Paris, for 15000 ariary - the equivalent of about 7 euro.  Actually, we bought another one too because at that price, why not? 

Here's another gorgeous one, also for 69 euro.  It cost us 7 euro, once again. 

While at the factory, I took a peek at the actual factory floor.  I wanted to know what the working conditions of these people were like.  The workers were mostly women - about 200 of them sitting down in chairs at sewing machines.  The factory floor was well-lit and the chairs looked decent.  Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take a photo.  They work about 45 hours per week.  And they probably make about 150 euro per month.
 
Should we feel guilty that we are exploiting people in a third world country when we buy these clothes?  My university friends would say that we should abstain from buying things from any of these places.  My thinking, having witnessed the conditions here as well, is that people would be far worse off if these factories didn't exist.  No, the working conditions are not perfect, but they are not what I would call Dickensian either - they get overtime, weekends, statutory holidays, and a ways that allows them to feed their children and buy school supplies.  They are unionized.  Do conditions need to improve for the workers?  Yes.  They need better wages and a shorter workday for starters.  As the economy of the country evolves, so will working conditions and wages.

Of course, as wages and working conditions in Madagascar improve, their products will become more expensive and the people in the developed world will, in turn, have to pay even more for them than now.

Adventures in Baby-Led Weaning

It's been five months since the Bambino has been eating solids regularly.  This time around, we didn't bother with preparing any purées or buying special baby food.  We didn't bother doing anything, really.  We just handed him the softest morsels of the food we were eating - pears, bananas, plums (when each of these has been in season here in Madagascar), potatoes, beans (I do smash the red kidney beans a bit with a fork because I don't want them to get stuck in his throat, chicken (cut into small pieces), red meat if I can get it tender enough, well-cooked broccoli, cauliflower and carrots.

The advantages of this method:

(1) Far less work in preparation  - in fact no extra preparation at all - baby just eats whatever you're eating.  We have been taking some small precautions in preparing our own meals - no salt added during meal preparation (we just add it at the table) and no egg white in the meals until now.

(2) No texture issues and no long-term addiction to purées.  The Bambino does not appear to have any of the texture issues that the Bambina had and still has - he will eat mashed potates and cut up whole potatoes.  He will eat food mixed together or separated.   And he loves anything with sauce on it.  Compare this with the Bambina, who has an aversion to any liquid food - so no sauce on pasta, no gravy on meat, vegetables cannot touch meat, rice must be plain.  Apparently, if you let them explore the food themselves from the beginning, kids are less likely to develop these kinds of food hang-ups.  I have friends whose three and even four year old won't eat solid food - only purées - because that's what the child was fed as an infant and he or she never got used to anything else.

(3) You are respecting your child as a separate human being who can feed him or herself at his or her own pace rather than treating your child as an oriface into which you shovel food.  A lot of children have food issues later precisely because they resent "being fed".

(4) Your child gets used to being an automous earlier on - with hands mind you, not utensils (at least not yet for the Bambino).

The disadvantages - it's extremely messy.  Lots of food ends up on the floor, especially in the beginning (age 6 months) when baby is really more interested in exploring than actually eating anything. 
And, contrary to what the Gill Rapley says in her book on Baby-Led Weaning, this method does not necessarily make for a less picky eater in terms of taste preferences.  The Bambino will not eat plain vegetables.  He doesn't have a texture issue with them - he won't touch them if they're puréed either!.  He just doesn't like the taste.  But then, neither do I.   If I am honest, most vegetables have to be sautéed in lots of butter (or olive oil) and garlic, salted, and / or covered in a lovely sauce and mixed with noodles or rice or potatoes for me to eat them.  The Bambino seems to take after his mom in this regard (but I do try to avoid putting salt in his food).

Here on Gill Rapley's Baby-Led Weaning guidelines if you're interested.