Cultural Notes from Madagascar

Sorry for not blogging sooner... Things have been pretty hectic here and in addition to not having abundant internet access while living in the bush, I've also lost my camera's photo upload cable, gone on several wild trips around the country, and been dealing with the hassle of getting a new visa so that I can start working at Ranomafana.

Anyway, for now, I'll post some little tidbits from Madagascar and will get some juicier, photo-ful stuff up when I can.


The People

Madagascar has eighteen different ethnic groups (although because this is Africa, people usually call them 'tribes'). These groups are divided based mainly on geography--it's not like you can tell what tribe people are from by what they look like, although there is a huge diversity of physical appearance in Madagascar. Every group does have certain things all their own... specific hat styles, icons, customs and taboos, as well as their own dialects of Malagasy, which are occasionally not mutually intelligible. There is also an even wider variety of "sub-tribes", sometimes mixes of two tribes, although it varies whether people identify with just one tribe or more. People generally speak their regional dialect best, in addition to the "official" dialect--that of the Merina group, which provided the last Malagasy regents and still populates the capital area--but as increased access to university education and larger businesses move people around the country, people are more and more familiar with other dialects. Imitating other dialects is also huge sport here, and it's particularly funny if you can get a foreigner to do it, so I've heard a decent amount about several regions' local slang.


The Language

Although there is significant regional variation in Malagasy, some things interesting features are common across all dialects:
-There is a definite article but no indefinite articles.
-When using words like "this" or "that", they are repeated both before and after the noun, so to say "this cat", you would say "ity piso ity", where ity = this. Depending on the situation, the second iteration will change slightly, but I haven't really figured out those rules yet.
-There is no rule for how to change verbs from active voice to passive voice. You have to memorize the different forms for every verb. There are a few (highly frustrating) rule-less changes like this.

The Currency

Interestingly, Madagascar has one of only two currencies in the world whose basic unit (like the dollar, euro, pound, etc) isn’t divided on a base-10 system (the other is the Mauritanian ouguiya). Rather, the basic unit, the ariary, is divided into five subunits (iraimbilanja), which would be fun if only the ariary was worth enough that anyone ever had a chance to use them. Unfortunately, 100 ariary (about five cents) tends to be the smallest transaction unit. More frustratingly, Madagascar used to have a different currency, the franc Malgache, which was worth even less than the ariary and was phased out in favor of the ariary through a 5-to-1 ratio some years ago. Despite the now-long history of the ariary, the value of bills is also printed on them in francs and people often give prices in francs, an incredibly obnoxious habit that requires more mental math ability than I can usually come up with on the spot, especially since the price also has to be translated from French, which often already requires more French ability than I have on the spot.

The Frip

The frip is where you go to purchase second-hand clothes in Madagascar, and it usually takes the form of a series of market stalls with some clothes hung on the walls and most just dumped into huge piles along the street. People shop by pawing through the street piles, and the Malagasy name for the frip means “you pick it up and you put it back down.” Frip clothes generally start their journey in Tana, with the clothes you find getting older, more worn, and less fashionable (but at least cheaper) as you get towards Fort Dauphin way down in the southeast. Frequently in Fort Dauphin, the clothes are sold with the Goodwill, Value Village, or Savers tags still attached. In other parts of the country, clothes and shoes are meticulously washed before being sold, especially places like Fianarantsoa and Tana (Antananarivo), where streets will be lined with thousands of shoes for sale.

The French

Most of the French seem to have left with the end of the colonial era, but there are still holdouts here. They’re usually recognizable as older men, often with a bit of a paunch, a ponytail, and a run-down, world-weary look to them, and frequently, they are in the company of an attractive young Malagasy woman. (This does work the other way too; older vazaha/foreigner women of all nationalities end up with local men far younger than them.) It grosses me out and rubs me the wrong way that so many young, beautiful local women leap into relationships with lecherous, fetishizing old vazaha men (or the new generation of slightly younger but otherwise very similar icky vazaha guys), but I suppose the money and the potential for a glamorous international life are attractive lures. As for the guys, in addition to getting an “exotic” young babe for a wife, marrying a Malagasy person opens up the only route for them to own property here in their own name, as it has been illegal for vazaha to own property in Madagascar since independence*.

*I suspect this is a far less significant motivator, though, as most vazaha who want property here can find Malagasy “business partners” to provide names for deeds without too much trouble.

Names

In Madagascar, people have several names, usually three. Interestingly, none of the names are inherited along family lines, unless someone is named after a relative or multiple siblings are given the same name (or both), which isn’t uncommon. But there is no “family last name” that gets passed through generations. There also isn’t any particular convention about which name gets used—people go by any of their names or a nickname. However, there are a few conventions that most people follow. On any official document, the first name is written in all caps and it generally fills the “nom” spot, with the other names filling in the “prenoms” spot. Traditional Malagasy names often start with “Ra,” which doesn’t really have a meaning but is a respectful or honorific unit. The rest of the name is generally very meaningful. Some of my friends’ names translate as "happy" "good friend," " no suffering," "not alone," and "makes people feel comforted." There are also some less phenomenal ones, like “girl again,” (as in “not another one…”). There are also names (or parts of names) that come up a lot. “Fara” means ‘last’, and it’s usually part of the name of a family’s last child, if they know they’re stopping with that one. More common is "Solo." It's often given to the next baby born after one child dies in infancy, and it literally means "replacement." Also, older men are often defined by their children, and after a certain point, they are referred to mainly (or only) as "so-and-so's father," rather than by their name.

Creative Compound Word Vocabulary

Malagasy has a number of interesting compound words, only a few of which I can think of off the top of my head, but they do merit repeating:

Masoandro -> "eye of the day" -> the sun

Ranomandry -> "sleeping water" -> snow

Solomaso -> "replacement eyes" -> glasses

Solosaina -> "replacement brain" -> computer

Fofombady -> "smell of a spouse" -> fiancee

Tanindrazana -> soil of the ancestors" -> homeland

Cats

All cats in Madagascar are named "Mimi." People don't really keep animals as pets here--dogs and cats both live outside, and though they are fed, they're not really interacted with in the same way as pets in the States (a strong limiting factor is the ubiquity of fleas everywhere in Madagascar). Nobody cuddles with their animals or really plays with them, and dogs aren't trained. Some dogs get names and are put to work as guardians, but many people consider them untouchables and abuse them. Cats fare better, but they still aren't individualized--instead, it has just become agreed upon across the country that any cat can be called with "Mimi."

Hotelies

The name for any small restaurant that serves mostly or only Malagasy food is "hotely." They are usually identifiable as small, slightly dingy establishments with signs offering the day's menu options. Most hotelies advertise themselves as serving Malagasy and Chinese food, but almost invariably the "Chinese" food options only consist of 'soupe chinoise', a thin clear soup with noodles and green onions; mi-sao, fried noodles with vegetables; and 'riz cantonais', fried rice. For whatever reason, these three dishes have become a staple of Malagasy menus nationwide, regardless of a town's actual Chinese population or influence. "Cuisine Malagasy" is often 'loaky' and rice, with loaky being essentially anything--almost always meat, but rarely more unusual pairings, such as noodles. Generally, hotely meals cost $1-2, and they come with a free drink, ranon'apango. This is often called "rice tea", but it's really just water that has been boiled in the rice pot to loosen up the layer of burnt or stuck-on rice lining the pot (the "apango"). It generally comes out a murky brownish color, but it's tastier than it looks.


Picking Your Nose

It is entirely socially acceptable here. I've seen people do it in staff meetings. So is blowing your nose into your fingers, and I've even seen hotely staff do it at work.

Unnecessary Deaths

On a more depressing note, people often die here from causes that would be easily treated in the States, even adults in major cities, simply because they are unable to reach adequate medical care in time (this can require a multi-day overland trip to the capital) or because it simply doesn't exist here. I've been in the country for about six months and already at least two people I've met in Fort Dauphin have suffered a preventable death (from childbirth, a collapsed lung). Out in the bush, death is an even more regular occurrence, and seeing a doctor hardly crosses people's minds, as ombiasa (so-called "witch doctors" with arcane, complicated treatment regimens) provide a cheaper and closer source of information, and one that more easily fits the consensus that any given illness has a spiritual source.

The Lemur-Eating Snake

One day, I was in the shop in the town near our campsite with some friends when we noticed a huge crowd of people moving towards the main forest entrance. The shopkeeper explained: there was a snake in the forest eating a lemur! Obviously, I dashed out to witness such an event. Once on the road, I realized that there were hundreds of people (some armed with slingshots) streaming into the forest in a mob, which would occasionally break into a run so as not to miss the excitement. Eventually, after we had charged maybe a kilometer or so in, it became increasingly apparent that no such spectacle was to be found. At one point, a woman was standing surrounded by a group of people and vehemently insisting that it was only slightly further in, but when we did find the group of lemurs, there was no snake and they were entirely unperturbed. As it turned out, the myth of a giant snake, so big that it eats lemurs and can't be stepped over, is a recurring one in the community that resurfaces every few years whenever someone thinks they see something weird in the forest. In a place where a culture-wide, unbelievably intense fear of snakes and chameleons sends even the cockiest men running in terror at the sight of me picking one up, an armed mob is the community's only defense against such a beast.

Taxis

In Antananarivo, taxis are a standardized pale yellow and in miraculously decent condition, although many appear to have been manufactured during the sixties or before. In Fort Dauphin, they are whatever random cars the cabbies happen to own, held together mostly by small bits of twisted wire and a decent amount of luck. Seats rock wildly around whatever single point of fixation connects them to the floor, doors are only opened by reaching deep into the guts, the engine is started by pushing the car up a hill and then letting it roll down again, seatbelts are a distant memory at best. You get what you pay for; cab rides anywhere in town are only about 40 cents.

The Most Popular Song in the Country

Listen to this song five times a day every day and you will get a good sense of Malagasy pop culture, especially in Fort Dauphin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmpocUVTdg0

It actually sounds pretty good on a computer, but on the tinny speakers found in most hotelies and personal radios/MP3 players in Fort Dauphin, it has a particularly obnoxious whiny tone to it so hearing it over and over again is really irritating.

Popular Foreign Music

In addition to its own pop music, Madagascar has developed a taste for some imports from Andafy (abroad). These are most popular around the capital and some favorites include:

-When Jesus Say Yes (this one is so popular in Fort Dauphin I thought it was Malagasy at first)

-When a Man Loves a Woman

-The Power of Love

-That song from Titanic

-Really, pretty much any sickly, sappy, romantic music in English, French, or Spanish

-Boy bands of any decade

-Wiggle


Toaka Gasy

Toaka gasy is Malagasy moonshine, by itself about 60% alcohol and with an odor of paint thinner. It's brewed in rusty oil drums in fields or by the side of the road. Most people use it for "rhum infusee", rum flavored with a virtually infinite combination of local ingredients. Fruit, vanilla pods, cinnamon sticks, and other ingredients are simply tossed in a bottle and left to sit for several months. Afterwards, they are a deceptively tasty local delicacy that has left many a vazaha with a nasty hangover.


Pirogues

Also called "laka", these are the dugout canoes that are as much boat as most people have access to here. Sadly, all the trees large enough to make new pirogues have been cut down, at least in the region by Fort Dauphin. Now, most pirogues are riddled with holes poorly plugged with bits of fabric and plastic bags, though numerous men still brave the open sea in them as fishing is a main source of income for the coastal communities.


The Coast-Mountains Trade Route

In the bush, the products people consume are entirely dependent on what grows in their area, so people on the coast tend to eat a lot of fish and cassava. In the mountains, more fruit and vegetables, as well as sugarcane, are grown, and the two regions trade with one another whenever they have a surplus. Unfortunately, even zebu carts are unable to make the journey over the uneven terrain, so all goods are carried by foot from one area to another, often a distance of 30 km or more. In the case of fish, the long journey under a hot sun is likely to spoil the meat, so anyone hoping to sell their fish inland has to jog the distance, occasionally carrying as much as an entire shark cut up in baskets or hanging from a stick.


Seasonal Fruit

The ease of obtaining most fruits popular in the States at any time just by going to the store really ruins the joy of seasonal fruit. In the bush, fruit is rare during winter, so the first mangos of the season create huge excitement and anticipation. Soon, the markets are flooded with mangoes, which usually sell for 100 ariary (5 cents) each. Just about the time that people are getting tired of eating mangoes all the time, the trees erupt in a brilliant cascade of red lychees and the entire process repeats with them, then again with pineapples, and so on. I've also found the mangos and lychees here to be the tastiest I've ever had--usually I don't like them in Andafy!


Madagascar's Mystery Ingredient

At any local market here, you can find the normal staple foods and goods--bags of rice and beans, piles of fruit and vegetables, soap, laundry powder, etc... Everything you would expect, plus one more item: pure MSG. It's sold in single-serve Mi-Won packets, no need to even dress it up as a flavoring cube (although there are those too), and it finds its way into virtually every meal.

Okay, that's all I can think of for now. I'll put up some new posts with photos in the hopefully-near future and may add some photos to this one as well.

Tonga Soa a Madagascar!

Wow! What a first week it’s been in Madagascar! I arrived here on the 22^nd, after my flight on Air Madagascar out of Johannesburg was inexplicably delayed a full 13 hours. I enjoyed the extra time there, though, and managed to kill essentially the entire second day at the Apartheid Museum. I spent the next two days in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, which was less exciting, although I did venture out the first day to a small reserve housing about nine species of lemur. That trip was also my only view of the real Tana, since I was technically staying in the small town on the outskirts that contains the airport (Ivato), rather than the city proper. The areas I saw seemed surprisingly undeveloped for a capital city, even that of Madagascar, although I’m sure it’s not the only capital where children openly pick through small landfills along the road. Rice paddies and small farms spurt from between streets of shops and houses in a striking reminder of how much of the country still relies on subsistence farming and not far outside the main part of town, the roads are made of Tana’s dry red dirt.

My second day in the city was spent angstily at the Air Mad counter at the airport, since they had stated the day before that their flight to Fort Dauphin would leave at 1:45 PM, then actually had it depart at 11:15 AM, causing me to miss it. (Air Madagascar is fairly legendary for their poor service, and are banned from flying to the EU because their planes don’t meet its safety standards.) Nevertheless, I managed to make it out on the next day’s departure and wound up in the beautiful beach town of Fort Dauphin/Taolagnaro.

Taolagnaro was a French colony (Fort Dauphin) back in the day, but now almost all the Europeans are gone and Madagascar’s Independence Day (June 26^th) is the most enthusiastically celebrated holiday, with fireworks shot off the pier, a children’s parade with lanterns, and a multitude of light-up headbands, pins, and sunglasses. Laser pointers were also a popular attraction for the night, and the little red dots danced on the walls of buildings, ladies’ behinds, and the face of a poor truck driver who made the mistake of trying to get his huge vehicle up a crowded street during the fireworks show and then had to turn around with several dozen lasers unabashedly aimed straight at his eyes. Despite the enthusiasm for the independence celebrations, however, there doesn’t appear to be much anti-European sentiment, and groups of foreigners walking together will occasionally prompt clusters of roadside children to burst out into giggles and shrieks of “Salama vazaha! Salama vazaha!” (“Hello foreigners!”) Many people on the street will use the same greeting, and any man who speaks a little English will come up to me and exhaust his repertoire before ending with a suggestion that we meet again the next day.

One of the highlights of the town is the market (Tanambao), where you can buy everything from used clothing (shopping for such is called “fripping” in the local parlance), to fresh food of every variety, to baskets and mats made of mahampy reeds in the local tradition, to medicine sold in blister packs and syringe vials on the sidewalk. All of it is at prices that would seem unreal to a Westerner. Over the weekend, I purchased two handfuls of green beans, a cluster of about 8 medium-sized bananas, 6 mandarin oranges, two baguettes, three packets of laundry detergent, and a large bottle of dish soap, all for under $4. And I confirmed afterwards that I was given much higher prices than the locals for a few things, meaning that even the foreigner rip-off price for all that still brought it to less than the cost of a frappucino. Conveniently located between my house and the market is a stand where you can purchase fried bananas, which are incredibly tasty and cost less than about five cents. As a final point of comparison, the highest denomination bill here is 10,000 Ariary, the equivalent of roughly $4.25.

Tolagnaro is surrounded on three sides by beaches, which are beautiful as well as a great place to relax. Last week, I was floating in the water with a friend only to look over at the beach and see a herd of zebu (humped cattle) being herded across it. Livestock are a pretty common sight everywhere here and chickens are especially common, running freely all over the streets in a fashion that makes me question how ownership is ever determined. Late at night, cats scream in alleys, dogs bark in the courtyard, and a multitude of unseen larger animals groan and bellow, creating a surreal cacophony.

Earlier in the evening, the bar and neighbors near my house often play music, with a variety ranging from Simon & Garfunkel through American pop and on to even Bollywood. In a house with no internet and few outlets, the only other music I ever really listen to is the selection of about a dozen albums on my phone, so it’s a welcome change.

 The house itself is pretty basic, with three bedrooms (the other two will be filled by volunteers coming next month), a dining room, a living room-type area upstairs with doors onto a small veranda, a kitchen containing a sink and gas stovetop, and a basic bathroom. No hot water and also no flushing the toilet paper. Sadly, Madagascar does not have access to electric showerheads like in Galapagos. The other disappointing thing about the house is that all the windows and doors have solid wood shutters on them to keep out burglars, which have the side effect of also blocking out almost all the light and making it quite hard to wake up in the morning. It’s not bad, quality-wise, for Madagascar, where you have remarkably nice multistory concrete houses on lots next door to shacks that are little more than boards nailed together, with a similar construction for their outdoor latrines.

My route to work takes me along a sand road and past several landmarks: the bar, a trash pile that supposedly gets emptied on occasion, a homemade bacci ball court, the intersection with the road to the market and the banana stand, a grassy hill where kids often play soccer, and finally a brief bit of cobblestoned road before the office. The trash pile is commonly picked through by dogs, chickens, and children, and even though it’s supposedly contained by a low cement wall on three sides, it ends up strewn across much of the road. Yesterday, I saw a little girl blowing up a discarded condom into a balloon.

Traditional Malagasy standards of hygiene are unusual to American eyes. While they are very concerned, culturally, with cleanliness, without the science to investigate the dispersion of microbes, their notions of what is considered hygienic are different from ours. For instance, many Malagasy prefer to defecate openly outside of the home (often on special beaches reserved for this purpose) rather than contain fecal matter within their homes, and many cannot afford to install latrines anyway. Various groups have tried to change this practice by subsidizing latrines and teaching people how to maintain them, but the defecation beach in town has yet to lose its original function.

This was kind of a long one, I know, but there’s been a lot to see this first week, and I also won’t have internet access for a while after this weekend, so I figured I should get it all out now. Veloma (goodbye)!

The Voice of the City

There were several things that I never actually posted about while I was abroad because the posts were long and involved and I just never got around to putting everything that I wanted to say into an entry. But some of them are worth sharing, and I've been thinking about some of these things lately, especially since everyone else has been posting so many Ecuador photos on Facebook, so I think I'll see about back-posting a little bit now.

Whenever people ask me what my favorite thing about Quito was, I can only ever think of one answer: the graffiti. I spent hours walking and driving around the city looking for more of it. I was captivated. Obsessed. The messages are simple, but frequently poetic and thought-provoking. Some are musings on romance, others on society. If you want to feel the discontent underlying city life and the hypocrisy of the current government, the writing is literally on the walls...

[Feel free to correct any of my translations or notes. Most of them have been discussed with Ecuadorians, but it's been a while.]

In Quito...

..."the walls are the voice of the city."

"I admit I'm just another Mahuad."

When I arrived in Quito, the upcoming elections were generating a lot of writing and Lasso (candidate for the CREO party) was a favorite target. Jamil Mahuad was Ecuador's president back in 2000, during one of Ecuador's worst economic crashes. Widely blamed for the country's problems, he narrowly managed to dollarize the economy before being deposed in a military coup less than a month later. Ecuador's continued use of the dollar even in the current climate of Correa's highly anti-American rhetoric is a testament to Mahuad's forward-thinking presidency, but his decision is often viewed as an imposition that Ecuador is now unable to free itself from rather than a move that may have saved the country. Nevertheless, Lasso's similarities to Mahuad generated a lot of support during the elections from people tired of the status quo. He also received support from many poor students in Galapagos, who hoped to see the end of the Correa policy preventing students in public universities from having free choice of study subject.

"I believe in the banking bailout."

CREO (the party name) is short for Creando Opportunidades (Creating Opportunities), but it also means "I believe."

 

"12 Oct 1492: nothing to celebrate"

I encountered this particular phrase several times around Quito. October 12, 1492 was the day Columbus first made landfall in the New World.

This may be somebody just being creative with the spelling of "que", but I believe that it was actually made by a grafitero group called K, who are notable for posting questions around the city. Their trademark is replacing the Q in question words with a K and I did see several other examples of work that was undeniably theirs around the city, although sadly, I don't have any photos of it. K is notable for being one of the older grafitero groups in the city, active at least since the 90s.

"Legal abortion now!" "Penalize the patriarchy" "Decriminalization." On the left, similar sentiments continued, although I was in a bus and couldn't photograph them all. Other abortion-related graffiti occurs frequently around the city, with phone numbers purporting to offer safe abortions being a common feature.

"The impossible just takes a little longer..."

"El Comercio
Bonfire of yesterday
Slander of today
Ash of tomorrow"

Underneath ceniza someone has written 'zorra', which means a female fox ("bitch"?), but looks like it may be a signature in this case. In any case, El Comercio is a large newspaper in Quito, and like most Ecuadorian media, it is far from uninfluenced by the party in office...

Another that I wrote down but couldn't photograph was "Si compras el Comercio, me quemas de nuevo." ("If you buy El Comercio, you are burning me again.")

"Buy art, not cocaine."

"Imperial court defending talkers" (Habladores is a weird word, but I'm assuming it refers to government officials.)

CIDH is a group set up to investigate human rights violations in the Americas. This is one of several messages around the city criticizing them.

"All [women] are beautiful"

The end of this one got cut off since it is located on one of Quito's many narrow, winding roads and my car window photography skills aren't ideal, but it does have the S and it also has three v-style bird glyphs on it, which is the signature of one of Quito's fairly productive grafiteros.

"Marx didn't exist. -God"

You know what they were going for.

"Chevron, pay! Pay already!"

This one hits a little closer to my heart. Texaco was part of the extensive oil drilling in the Amazon through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and left huge swaths of land contaminated when they left. The indigenous residents have been suing the company's current incarnation, Chevron, since 2003 in an attempt to receive $28 billion in compensation for environmental damage, crop loss, and increased health problems. Ecuadorian courts eventually awarded them $19 billion, which Chevron refused to pay, and since the company currently has essentially no assets in Ecuador, the courts were unable to force the decision. Last year, the plaintiffs took their case to Canada in an attempt to receive the compensation from one of Chevron's subsidiaries, but the action was not supported by the Hague, which later ruled in Chevron's favor on the basis of a 1995 government document absolving them of responsibility for "collective damages."

"I was born free
I will vote no"

...on Ecuador's new constitution, a product of the Correa administration. (It was ultimately approved.)

"A bulletproof democracy"

This is another sentiment echoed on several walls around the city, but naturally, the only picture I have is of the least legible version.

"Without drama" and "six"

Both of these mysterious little phrases are all over Quito, on walls, mailboxes, everywhere. I never figured out what either of them signified, though...

"Mande" is an interesting Ecuadorian cultural artifact. The phrase literally means "Order me," and it dates to the time of the Spanish rule, when it was the required response of any slave when their name was called by a Spaniard. Despite its dark origins, however, the phrase has become a staple of modern Ecuadorian life and it is still used to respond to one's name.

"Nature is life... Smoke it"

On one of the most heavily graffitied walls in downtown Quito.

"You consume: You are consuming yourself"

"Get out USAID"

It's signed by the Communist Youth of Ecuador. More of their work:

"With joy and fun, we work for revolution."

"Your collector of songs"
"Thank you for teaching me that love is necessary"
"You can't live your dreams if you don't make them reality"
"When you remember me, I want it to be with joy"

"The walls are the voice of the city"
"Then my love is still great"
"You don't have to find meaning in everything"

Along the lines of "We award a doctorate to Augusto Barrera."

I believe UDLA is the Universidad de las Américas in Mexico; Augusto Barrera is the current Mayor of Quito. I don't know what the connection is.

"Juan T.
I love you and I hate you"

"2+2=5"

"Condemned by the media
Absolved by the people"

I don't know what the significance of 305 is.

Below, in light blue: "Who in this country will dare to say that the king is naked?"


The graffiti culture in Quito is so pervasive that almost every wall features it. There's even been at least one instance of a homeowner who painted over repeated graffitis finally being defeated by the message "Sr dueño de casa: Nada personal, pero su pared tiene un no se que..." ("Mr. Landlord: Nothing personal, but your wall had nothing on it...") [You can find this story, among others, in Quito: una ciudad de grafitis, by Alex Ron.]

So what is this nice, bright wall doing in the middle of downtown Quito??

That, of course, is the wall surrounding the American ambassador's housing complex! (It is very heavily guarded.)


I do have other graffiti photos from elsewhere in Ecuador, but I've put up one or two in other posts and this one is long enough as it is. I also don't know that much about local politics outside of Quito, so I can't comment much on them. That being said, if anyone has more information about graffiti in Quito (or other Ecuadorian or Latin American cities), please pass it on to me. I have Alex Ron's anthology already, but would love to expand my knowledge and collection of examples...

Here's that Sloth!

You didn't believe me, but here it is!

Apologies for the shoddy photo quality. It was dusk and I didn't have time to edit these.

The Latest Wildlife Round-up

 There have just been so many exciting critters to see here in Gamboa over the past few weeks, and it's about time I did a photo dump. In no particular order:

A baby boa constrictor:

A katydid:

Our resident entomologist extraordinaire informed me that that long thing protruding from its tail end is actually an ovipositor, the bit that deposits eggs in the ground. This species needs to get its eggs reeeeeeally deep.

Leptodactylus pentadactylus, also referred to as the Smoky Jungle Toad, with my boot for size comparison:

Smoky Jungle Toad XXX edition:

They make little depressions in the ground to lay their eggs in. (The foam in the photo is egg foam.) We had inadvertently disturbed them out of it in this photo.

Trachycephalus venulosus, also called the milk frog because it exudes a milky slime when picked up:

Scinax staufferi:

Not actually wildlife, but a variety of skirted mushroom  that I've been hoping to see here:

 A praying mantis:

 A baby Bothrops asper, the deadly Fer-de-Lance snake:

Chiasmocleis panamensis, the adorable Narrow-mouthed Toad:

They are flatter than pancakes.

Scinax ruber:

One night, we were out collecting frogs and there were maybe a hundred of these guys all chorusing up a storm in a bunch of nearby trees.

Here's another piece of not-wildlife. Apparently one of the researchers' sisters brought this bunny to Gamboa and then decided she didn't want it anymore. The researcher didn't want it either, so she just turned it loose, presumably hoping it would just quietly disappear. It seems to have surprising staying power, for a domestic, and it now mostly hangs around the lab parking lot, where I worry the humans will kill it before nature will.

The yellow-headed day gecko, which actually has an orange head:

Smilisca phaeota:

Apparently, it's one of the species with paired vocal sacs, but unfortunately this male wasn't calling when I found him.

Here's an orb-weaver spider shedding its skin:

Here's the finished product:

One of the land crabs we get here:

They're in most of the streams here and they kind of gross me out. I don't know why, but freshwater crabs are just weird.

Here's a real treasure:

It's a snake. No really, that tiny little thing is a snake. A blind snake, for that matter. Kudos to my apartment-mate, who managed to spot and catch the thing as it traversed the sidewalk near our house the other day.

You can see the eyes in this one if you look really hard. They're there, they're just vestigial.

Here's some Hypsiboas rosenbergi getting it on in a puddle:

They're also called gladiator frogs because the males have spines on their thumbs.

Some variety of Anolis, expertly caught yet again by my apartment-mate:

This adorable little thing is Hyalinobatrachium fleischmanni, a glass frog:

They're called glass frogs because you can see through their bodies. When backlit, you can even see their hearts beating. You can see the internal organs in this one:

We went looking for them by the rivers out along Gamboa's Pipeline Road, a really popular spot for nature watching. We found ones calling:

Guarding eggs:

And in amplexus:

If you look closely, you can see that they both have vocal sacs, because they're actually both boys.

We also found a tiny little Craugastor fitzingeri:

This is a large male basilisk lizard sitting in a tree:

What they're really known for is their talent for running across the surfaces of ponds or streams, earning them the nickname Jesus Christ Lizard.

Here's a baby one!

An emerging cicada:

 This is something really exciting, a salamander (Oedipina complex):

My co-worker found it while we were out frogging last night. It's a really rare find here, so we brought it back to the lab for photographs. It was tiny, probably about as wide as a pencil, with a tail much longer than its body.

Anyway, that's it for now; more later!