Those smiley faces...

The smiley faces that greet you at on the Usedtravelbooks.com.au home page are from a photo taken in Madagascar, Africa in May 2003.

Travelling by road from Tana and then boat in the north east through Lake Ampitambe you reach the isolated Bush House (with resident large geckos in the rooms!). An offer was made of a visit to a local village to organise some musicians and singers for a concert later that evening. The village was on the coast between the lake and the Indian Ocean, with a small school with one teacher and 54 kids.

While waiting for the head musician to arrive for the negotiations we treated the local kids to some biscuits from the local store, and the little guy in the blue jumper charged up to the head of the queue pushing everyone else out of the way, but was promptly told to get to the end. He still kept that huge smile on his face.

Later I saw him with two biscuits in his hand – he’d worked out the angles! He’s probably head of the village by now. Biscuits probably weren’t the best thing to give these guys – but from their smiles afterwards they sure weren’t complaining! The musicians were excellent and the whole area was amazing – crocodile farms, lemurs, giant snails, nepenthes (carnivourous plants) and many, many varieties of flavoured rum. You get there by road and boat from the capital Tana or by boat via the Pangalan canal from Taomasina / Tamatave.