The day began with Nicola asking me to examine a red, pussy mark on her stomach. It looked like a boil only it had this big, black head on the end. Having just performed minor surgery in my foot by removing a sliver that was aggravated I thought I'd make a stab at Nicola's problem. Thirty seconds of examination told me that this required intervention beyond my pay scale so the question was, do we have someone look at it here or wait till we get back to Canada. Nicola showed it to K who was concerned it might to a worm which freaked Nicola out so when asked if she would rather see someone later in the afternoon at the clinic or right away in the plant, she chose the plant. This required that the ambulance pick us up from the gate and take us to the clinic. However, when we arrived there was a Ford Explorer and Suzanne and to drive us. The ambulance wasn't available. It took surprisingly long to drive around the compound to the clinic. We passed three huge stacks of coal, sulphur and limestone all involved in the process. We also passed the the railway depot where these supplies are offloaded. We were able to see very little of the plant that it's made up of pipes and five story structure that looks like a building at night.
Interestingly, the clinic is the least permanent of the buildings composed of a work trailers. After filling out the various forms, Nicola saw a young female doctor from South Africa and received excellent treatment. The wound was lanced and then cleaned. The diagnosis was a spider bite which is what I'd thought was the most likely problem after a cursory internet diagnosis. Our return ride was in the ambulance with another young South African woman who was working as a paramedic. She said that she would never travel Madagascar. Instead, on her holidays, she liked to go to Mauritius. She did not like the dangerous living conditions of her own country and preferred to visit countries where her life was not in danger such as Botswana and Zimbabwe.
Lunch at Ocean 501 where we sat on the beach and watched the locals. Again with the older white dudes and their young Malagasy chicks, one guy in his sixties with a four year old. A couple of young guys competing in the thirty metre dash on the beautiful white sand. A fisherman heading out in his pirogue in the same direction as a tanker anchored off-shore.
We did stopped for chocolates at Roberts centred in Tana. They were truly exceptional. The company had competed in some international competition in France and won a bunch of awards. According to the consensus, it was the freshness of the ingredients that really made then distinctive.
Our final destination was the market where we negotiated in a stall for emeralds. K had obviously scoped this out for us. The owner was a 20 something woman who showed us a couple of groups of stones. One group was larger and not of the same high quality of the other. Nicola picked the largest of the second group with only one small flaw, well minuscule because we were looking at it through a jewellers magnifying glass. K jokingly reprimanded the girl for not having more on hand as she has talked to the husband earlier. That said, Nicola was happy with her selection and with the help of K, we negotiated a price which K said was good and I didn't think possible.
Our final job of the day was to change the reservation for our flight that was to leave at 7 o'clock on the 22nd just a few hours before we are to catch the Air France flight to Amsterdam. Both M and the ambulance attendant said that Air Madagascar flights could not be relied upon. K said that they liked to fill their planes and so will cancel some flights or reroute then to ensure that happens. She and M had recently been rerouted on a flight from Nosy Be. Nicola said that it was referred to as Air Maybe in the travel guide.
The building where their offices are housed has no signs on the outside and the only indication of its identity on the inside was a little Air Madagascar flag on each of the three desks where clerks can attend to their clients. After some wait, we sat in front of a younger man who knew enough English to make communication clear. He was not the least upset about being yelled at by a previous customer. In fact,he had no problem changing our flight to the 21st from the 22nd. The only problem was noticed by K who saw on the print out that there was no confirmation on that flight.
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