Amherst Adventures Abroad: Anya Hardy-Mittell ’26
By Brooke Ingemi ’26
In this edition of Amherst Adventures Abroad, Staff Writer Brooke Ingemi ’26 spoke with Anya Hardy-Mittell ’26 about her semester in Madagascar, where she immersed herself in the island’s languages, culture, and unique natural environments.
During her semester in Madagascar, Anya Hardy-Mittell ’26 spent her days fully immersing herself in the island’s vibrant culture: studying lemurs in the rainforest, learning French and Malagasy, and creating music with her host family.
Hardy-Mittell has been learning French since middle school, and as she searched for a location to study abroad, she knew she wanted to expand her knowledge of the language by studying in a French-speaking country.
“I had it in my head for a while that I wanted to go to a Francophone country,” she said. “It was really important for me, when going abroad, to have some sort of language immersion.”
Given her interest in environmental studies, she also wanted a program rooted in the natural sciences. However, she noted, “there are not a lot of programs that have both a French language component and an environmental science component.”
Luckily, she found a program in Madagascar through the School for International Training (SIT), which she felt offered the perfect combination of her two interests. Given Madagascar’s bio- and linguistic diversity (French and Malagasy, an indigenous language, are both official languages), this program offered both language immersion and an academic curriculum centered on biodiversity and natural resource management.
Her program was based in Antananarivo, the country’s capital city, sometimes referred to as “Tana” for short. She and 15 other American students took courses at the program center, many of which included guest lectures from scientists and government officials on conservation and ecological issues across Madagascar. In addition to her natural sciences courses, she also took French and Malagasy classes. However, she felt her most meaningful learning happened far beyond the classroom. “The classes were probably where I learned the least,” she said. “I learned the most in the field.”
The program’s field work took Hardy-Mittell deep into Madagascar’s ecosystems. She conducted a lemur behavior study and a botanical project examining the endemicity — the extent to which a species is native to and found only in a particular area— of rainforest tree species. She also undertook a month-long independent research project of her own design. Interested in the relationship between locals and conservation organizations, she chose to do her independent study in the rural village of Andasibe, known for its protected conservation areas. “Most people know about Madagascar for its biodiversity,” she explained. “But the relationship between local communities and conservation org[anization]s … is very tenuous, and I was really interested in exploring more of that.”
To conduct her study, she collaborated closely with a local agricultural cooperative in Andasibe. She used participant observation — a research method that involves immersing oneself in the daily life of a group to understand that community’s culture — and conducted interviews to learn about how the locals interacted with conservation organizations. She felt this topic was crucial to explore because, as she noted, “there are a lot of pretty exploitative relationships of scientists coming into tropical places and conducting research that, in the end, does not actually benefit local populations.”
In addition to her independent study, Hardy-Mittell’s travel in her free time also allowed her to experience Madagascar’s conservation areas and remarkable biodiversity firsthand, despite the challenges of navigating the island. “Travel is really hard in Madagascar, because the road systems are pretty rough,” she said.
With only a few major roads, movement across the country is slow. Despite these challenges, Hardy-Mittell was able to visit many remarkable places, including the southwestern city of Tulear and Isalo National Park, which she referred to as “the Grand Canyon of Madagascar.” She also swam on both coasts of the Indian Ocean and traveled through beaches, rainforests, deserts, and mountain regions. “The array of different environments and ecosystems in Madagascar, despite being an island, [was] insane,” she said.
Homestays were another transformative part of Hardy-Mittell’s experience. Although classes helped her build a foundation with language, she said, “the most language learning that I did came from living with host families.” Although her host family in Antananarivo mostly spoke French, her host dad was also excited to help teach her a bit of Malagasy. “As the semester went on, he would start talking to me more and more in Malagasy, and towards the end, I was able to hold a very simple conversation with him in Malagasy,” Hardy-Mittell said.
Along with her host father, the family she was staying with in Antananarivo also included her host mother and three teenage host brothers. The boys were initially unsure about a stranger living in their house, but music quickly broke the ice. “[Music] was definitely a big way that I connected with people, starting with my host families, and then going out from there,” Hardy-Mittell said. Her host brothers played the guitar and sang, her host father played the piano, and she played the violin. Together, they would perform at larger family gatherings, blending English, French, and Malagasy music.
Her second homestay, in Andasibe, the rural area where she completed her independent study, involved a much bigger language leap. In this area, Malagasy is spoken far more than French. “That was definitely a struggle for me,” Hardy-Mittell said. “I was just kind of thrown into it.” At first, she relied on a Malagasy university student living with her, who spoke both French and some English, to help bridge the communication gap with her host family. When that student left, she pushed herself to keep learning the language and even found other ways to communicate, such as using nonverbal communication to connect with her three-year-old host sister.
Both homestays left a lasting impression on Hardy-Mittell. “I really loved both of my host families,” she said, “I got super lucky.” To her, homestays were essential for true cultural and linguistic immersion. They gave her a fuller picture of daily life and helped her build relationships she continues to maintain today.
Her time in Madagascar also forced her to confront what it meant to stand out as a visitor. “It was very interesting being a white woman there,” she said. The word “vaza,” meaning foreigner, came up often, and she grew accustomed to hearing it as she walked places. “It [was] not in a negative sense at all,” she explained. “It [was] just like, ‘What is that white person doing here?’” The experience served as a steady reminder of her place in the community, one she believed was essential to recognize. “I went into the program knowing that living in a place like Madagascar in the Global South was going to be very different than living in a place in Europe, and I wanted that for my study abroad experience,” she said.
With that awareness also came a growing sense of responsibility. “There are intense racial implications and class and social implications that come with this group of Americans being in Madagascar,” she said. She often found herself asking, “How can I be in this space and not have it just be a very exploitative thing?”
She also felt compelled to share what she learned about daily life in Madagascar with people back in the United States. “[For] a lot of people, the only thing that they know about Madagascar is from the Madagascar movies,” she said. Over the semester, she gained a deeper understanding of Malagasy culture, and many of the locals she met encouraged her to share what everyday life is actually like with people at home. “You need to bring this back to the U.S. and tell people about it,” they would tell her. She felt this was particularly important because, as she noted, “Madagascar does not get a lot of international attention.” For her, sharing these experiences was a way of helping people in the U.S. gain a more accurate understanding of life in Madagascar. “If you are studying abroad in some place, you have to see yourself as a part of that international community,” she said.
Even after returning to the U.S., Hardy-Mittell’s engagement with Madagascar has not faded. She remains in touch with her host families and has prioritized staying informed about the country’s political developments, including a recent military coup that occurred as a result of youth-led protests demanding access to water and electricity and opposing government corruption. Noting the ongoing lack of international coverage of this political situation, she urged people to “definitely keep an eye on Madagascar.” Reflecting on her semester, Hardy-Mittell hopes more Amherst students will seek out study abroad programs that will challenge them and help them develop the global perspective that Amherst encourages its students to cultivate. “I am a huge proponent of students studying abroad,” she said. “You will engage with a lot of really cool things wherever you go, but I think that more students should be studying abroad in cool places like Madagascar.”
All photos courtesy of Anya Hardy-Mittell ’26. This post was originally published in the December 3, 2025 issue of The Amherst Student. Anya studied abroad with SIT Madagascar: Biodiversity and Natural Resource Managementin the spring 2025 semester.