Madagascar Afremail Part 7 - Djembe jam
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Sorry if this entry is a little roughly. It's hard to edit here and I am under an expensive time constraint as this town has little competition for computers. The internet is expensive here by the minute.

I am in Fort Dauphin. This Rasta guy, Samson who really looks like a Samson, who is the local surfing guru, is giving me lessons for the next 5 days. It was really difficult getting to Fort Dauphin, as it is really remote and it takes roughly 4 days in the wet season to get here by road, although it is only 300 miles or so. But we flew here and it took only an hour from Tulear. A really cool trip for the more adventurous (but not necessarily dangerous), would be to come here and rent/buy motorcycles for a few weeks and travel around, it's safe enough, to do this in the bush, but not on the roads. In the bush, you can drive for days on no roads. I wouldn't drive on roads here though, but I don't at home either I guess. Anyway, rambling again. Back to this amazing surf/beach paradise. I hope surfing for the next week gets me in shape.

Last night we went to Samson's house, and previously I had gone to the market with another Rasta/ local guy and we bought lots of king fish steaks and snapper. We had a feast at his house. It was in the village, totally, his house is a shack, like all others, but he lives on the top floor (2nd) and has a small balcony. They played local music with a few djembes and a guitar. We jammed all night, we brought a case of beer and the music and the food his mom cooked was awesome. It was so amazing. To top it off, we were jamming too much I guess and there were to many people on the small 12x6 porch, if that and I stepped thru a plank, we all laughed and then joked about how we were on a shack and it was bowing in the middle. I was like, I am the heaviest there, no wonder, heavier by at least 20kilos. Then I stepped through another plank. HA! We kept playing music. He said it was local beat, traditional from a long time ago. Then, about 20 minutes later as we were starting to gear up to leave, Rob's whole leg went right thru a plank. It was so funny; we were about to crash right thru this shack to the floor. But we didn't.

>> The Actual Music & Surf Video: Follow the link to the next page

We walked home in the dark, through the village, tipsy and fell asleep to the waves. We just ran over to this internet cafe after a morning lesson and plan on going out again in the later afternoon. Hang 10 man!