No evacuation, peacefull days but not nights...

No evacuation at least not for us, the U.S. ordered the evacuation of all non-emergency personal and their families last week, we had flights to get out on Friday but decided against it after alot of thought and talking. We were not in danger and if things got worse (which they didn't) we could always go. The school was on spring break last week so I guess it was a good time for a coup de' tat.
The ex-mayor (now president of madagascar) took power after the military took over, there are still rallies downtown but peaceful for now, and the riots have stopped leaving me with one store left to shop in. Thank goodness we just finished getting the house set up.

Things were back to normal so we thought, Saturday night around 1:30am we had 4 guys cut the bobwire fence in the back yard (only one guy got over the wall) thank god for a great security guard that heard something and ran back to see what the noise was all about to find a man coming over the wall and told the guard to go away so they could rob the house. Most security would have gotten scared and ran, but he ran around the house to hit the emergency button on the wall and the siren started, lights flashing and within 2 minutes we had 7 security guards here with full riot gear on running all over the yard.
It took us a few minutes to figure out what was going on before we realized how lucky we were...Jeff gave the security man a bounus of about one to two month pay for keeping us safe.

Needles to say we now have razor ribbon on all the walls, 2 extra panic buttons, security was doubled during the day and night with a dog to top it all off. We have installed lights on every wall outside the house and yes bars are going up on the windows.
But we have been very lucky for the last 9 years doing this work in these places and this is the only (hope last) time we have had problems...

This is when me and Rachell went to the grocery store and the millitary started to surround the store and the demonstraiters were trying to come in.

On to other fun things... We have chameleons all over our yard, they are wild here and we only dare to touch the small ones the big ones bite. All of our neighbors(kids) climb in the trees to find them for us and of course try to sell them to us, even though the chameleons were ours to begin with.

Madagascar on the verge of civil war, US ambassador warns.

Madagascar is on the verge of civil war, the US ambassador warned yesterday, after soldiers who support an opposition leader ousted the country's army chief.
The move came as opposition leader Andry Rajoelina, who has been locked in a three-month power struggle with President Marc Ravalomanana, said he would boycott peace talks due to start today.


We are not sure what this means for us just yet....The embassy non essential personal (wives & children) are evacuating now because they don't feel comfortable that the Madagascar government will resolve this soon (and they are a bunch of babies).
We will see if they shut the school down and if they do if we can home school, if things get worse we will be sent back to all of you until things calm down. But for now we are safe and don't feel like we are in danger this makes for interesting living, we have never been in this position before but most of our friends have been, and so far they aren't worried.

Malagasy Attitude...

Push carts are used to transport everything even people.

Over looking the rice fields in Antananarivo, Madagascar

Saturday is laundry day, everyone meets at the river (the red one in the first pictures) and scrubs all their dirty clothes and bedding..Don't know how they keep everything so white. But this is what you see all over the city.

This is the view from our living room.

The city with several small fires while the police and the local people have it out using tear gas and rubber bullets firing for several hours.

This is the city looking from our living room, the colors of the city are amazing.

We arrived at our pre-booked hotel of La Marina. The best part was the free wireless internet. We couldn't believe it when we found out.....it was actually free, Madagascar of all places. Needless to say we wasted no time in logging on and catching up with emails and stuff.
The hotel was very nice indeed. With an excellent restaurant and large sunny court yard garden where you could take your morning breakfast while surfing on the laptop!

The American International School of Antananarivo (can you say that fast 3 times) I can't, was just next door to the hotel. We had alot of visiters that came by the hotel the first 2 days to see if we had changed our minds about staying. After me asking where do we get 0ur furniture at so we can start the shoping process we were told everything had been burnt down a few days before our arrival. But there were some shops they were more expensive but atleast we had some options, but the only problem we wern't allowed to drive to them with all the road blocks the embassy had said better to stay at home until things calm down...

We had been ready to leave Johannesburg before getting the news that there was a cyclone hitting the island. But got a phone call from friends living in Madagascar informing us we might want to hold off flying in because of the Mayor trying to overthrow the government (he declared himself president) and the real president didn't want to share the position. The whole country was in the middle of a political war and burning down the stores....So we held off one more day, good thing we did the flight we were originally to be on was refused and had to turn around and fly back to Johannesburg.
We finally got to Madagascar, very excited to see the island from the plane (didn't realize how big it was) seeing all the rivers that were red flowing into the ocean.

Before leaving South Africa

We went Great White shark diving before leaving South Africa, this was one of the smaller sharks about 9 feet, the largest was 12 feet, amazing and awsome thing to do. Rachell and Sydney were having so much fun.