I slept for almost 10 hours and felt so much better when I woke up at 530 and change. The Indri were singing. It was completely light out. I decided to do a couple of Duo Lingo French lessons (It definitely couldn’t hurt). After doing as much as possible offline, I got out of bed and decided to do yoga on the balcony for a bit. Finally it was time for breakfast which was made up of rice stew, slices of cooked zebu (the cow with the hump, a highly regarded food to eat here and often reserved for celebrations), bread, and breaded and deep fried plantains. After sitting, a cup of fruit and a plate of cheese arrived. I had already eaten a protein bar and a protein shake so I didn’t eat much this morning. 
We left around 710 surrounded by the sounds of the Indri. My guide was informative, pointing out insects, birds and plants. Of the 400 animal species found here only 12 are found anywhere else. Of note: The Malagasy Cycads sound like a South Campus dorm fire alarm (if you went to UNC this will make you cringe with nostalgia, a happy cringe if there ever was such a thing.). 
She showed me a plant that cures stomach issues, one that cures malaria, an antiseptic plant, a plant to fix your hair (straighten and soften), and a sacred plant used for anesthesia during circumcision (to name a few). Curiously she at no point asked me or found out what my job is. She went on to say that the sacred waterfall that I had seen yesterday is where the village circumcisions are performed. They are done at 3 years of age and are obligatory. The plant is crushed with water and applied after the circumcision. She then went on to say that no part of the body can be thrown away so the foreskin is eaten and it is a great honor. Of course I asked who gets to eat it, the grandfather. Yum. I can’t imagine how she would feel about how much foreskin we discard or what would happen if I started offering families the foreskin back in order to eat. Yikes. 
At some point she told me to wait where I was for 10 minutes and that she would be back. I had a lot of time to think during that period of time with the Indris wailing in the background. Chances of me moving were almost zero because I had no idea how to get back to anything at all that I might recognize. Two, this is how a friend of mine’s date recently ended, with the person never returning. Three what if I did just walk a little closer to the Indris?? The pull of the lemur is strong (kind of like The Force. Lemurs aren’t that different from Ewoks). She came back and told me we were headed a certain way. Then the Indri called louder and closer and we took off running in that direction. It was it? She kept pointing in directions that I didn’t think sound was coming from (it made me question everyone who was involved’s hearing. We chased the Indri for a while but never saw them. They sounded so close. All of the sudden my agile guide from the day before popped out of the woods with my camera lens cap. He was apparently out and about mapping the Indri. He said they were too far.
From there we explored some more and then went to the village where my guide is from. I met her two year old and he was TERRIFIED of me. I said “Salama” and he started shrieking. His face was filled with pure horror, maybe because the giant white person also speaks. I gave him a cartoon frog figurine which he accepted with great hesitation. I tried to explain that it was from Disney, but she had never heard of disney or anything related. In my French I think she got that he was a cartoon. After that she showed me a house and her family’s rice silo which was a hump in the ground where rice is buried directly in front of the house. The houses are one room and made of clay bricks stucco’d with a sand and manure mix. One window in most houses is blackened with smoke because the houses do not have chimneys. From there we went to the rice fields. She was very specific about what work was “women’s” and what was “men’s” . This was bothersome to me. I attempted in French to explain to her that women could do anything. She definitely didn’t agree. 
We headed back to the camp and I ordered lunch, ravitoto, a local dish and a honey mousse. It was incredible. It is zebu cooked in cassava leaves and cashews. I am not completely sure but it appears that Madagascar does a “siesta” type thing from 1130 or so until 2. And thus, We would reconvene at 2PM. In the afternoon we wandered through the forest for 3 more hours and saw a chameleon and more diadem sifika.
For dinner I had the mushroom dish. I am pretty sure it was mushrooms and mayonnaise which grosses me out to even type. I ate it because in a country like this it seems so disrespectful to waste food. Even when it is bordering on inedible.
Tonight was the night walk. We immediately saw the eyes of a dwarf lemur. We also saw lots of chameleons, frogs and bugs. At the very end we saw more eyes right outside of my tent. She said this was a mouse lemur. After the walk ended I sat on the porch and looked at the stars for a while before heading to bed at around 900 PM just enjoying being disconnected.
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