Pics

Here are some photos of my current accomodations! This is my street lined with palm trees, and my "house" (really two rooms, each one with a big bed and a bathroom with hot water and a shower). You can also see the view from my yard of high and low tides--dramatically different, as you can tell by the kids playing soccer among beached boats. And of course, here is Mango. Little Peut-Être disappeared somewhere humans cannot follow, so I'll have to be sneaky with the camera later. I'll make friends with that kitten yet, just you wait.


Also, although my home in Tulear is beautiful, it's not representative of the city. Tulear is a French city with lots of ex-pats who frequent bars and restaurants, but the market and the residential areas are much less plush. There are more homeless people in Tulear than I have seen anywhere before: most of the rickshaw pushers and street vendors sleep under blankets draped across their carts at night. It makes me sad to walk through the town at night and realize that the people I've been buying peanuts from to snack on during the day are the same ones curled up under awnings, just waiting for another morning to come to make a few dollars if they can. Homelessness seems to be usual here, at least as usual as living in a house. It puts the scarily dark and empty streets of urban America into a totally new perspective -- those empty streets are a good thing.