Home Sweet Home

Over recent years I have become increasingly annoyed with adverts. However, there are a few which I love come Christmas time. The "Holidays are coming" one by coke, the Irn-Bru ad featuring the snowman and that mastercard ad when all the families are reunited in the airport. All good wholesome stuff and after what can only be described as an epic trip home I felt a little like I'd been in that mastercard ad!

Mr Snowy. The Christmas guardian of Desford House

Our very symmetrical christmas tree

It is brilliant to be home and amazing to see people again. I've been fairly exhausted and a little bit dazed and confused by it all. I initially spent a few days at home sluicing down my gear and checking the mulled wine was ok before Christmas proper hit. I then hopped on a plane to Aviemore to see Gaz and bump up my ever increasing carbon footprint a little bit more. It's been so great spending time with him again.

I went to work with him for a couple of days at RSPB Abernethy helping him to sort and identify lots of bugs in bottles of anti-freeze. We had to work in an outhouse because the chemicals they use to preserve the bugs are really noxious. This means sitting with the door open, in an outhouse, in Aviemore, in winter. Very very cold. But great to see what he's been up to all these weeks. Hats off to him, I think I would've lasted about a week in those arctic conditions!

Gaz Marshall, Senior Reserve Ecologist at Abernethy concentrating hard and sorting pit fall traps whilst sporting good knitwear. Awesome.

Sadly the conditions in the Cairngorms wasn't right for skiing/winter climbing so I've put my tools to rest for another year. 2009/2010 is going to be the best winter season anyway, I can tell already.

Me on Twin Ribs, Coire an't Sneachda, Cairngorms last season

Gaz getting the "admin" done on Fiacall Ridge

Then down to Somerset with Gaz to his parent's place which was a picture postcard festive scene. We decked the halls, supped a lot of wine (cider and brandy) and had a wonderous time.

Rosie taking five in Somerset. Gaz maintains she is evil, I believe she is misunderstood.

Then it was Christmas day! I went for my first run in over 3 months which was the most apalling 20 minutes of exercise I have done in a long time (I have work to do!). Grandparents, Aunties and Uncles were assembled, we ate, drank and were very merry (I mostly ate all day). Hats off to the team for an amazing dinner (complete with yorkshire pudding in keeping with Overton tradition) and all round merry day! Ho ho ho!

So, people keep asking me "what's it been like?" and "how does it feel to be back?" and in truth neither of these questions can easily be answered in a few sentences. One thing that I can say is that I've had some of the worst culture shock that I can remember. Things which have scrambled my brain include:

the cold
not living outside
the lack of children around
how white everybody is
how I can understand everything and everybody around me
how sad everybody seems
how fat everybody is
how busy everybody is
driving on motorways
how much food there is everywhere
cleanliness
going days without speaking to a stranger
absence of rice
not having animals scuttling under your feet from the moment you step outside

I think one of the hardest things about going away for so long is trying to step back into the routine you had before you left. Almost every bit of daily life has been completely different the past few months.

It's also difficult because there aren't really the words, or the pictures, to convey how much an experience like this means to you. You want people you care about to be a part of it, but it's impossible to do that as there just isn't a frame of reference. (You also don't want to come across like a pretentious arse either by wittering on about it all the time!).

Having said all that, even though I've only been back 2 weeks, I already feel a lot less mithered by all the differences. And people, as always, have been very sweet and understanding if I have had a bit of a moment when it all feels a bit much.

So I hope everybody is enjoying a very merry Christmas season! I'm hoping to get up to Edinburgh for New Year so hopefully see a few of you then.

Big festive hugs to all

Homeward Bound

Wow. I’m coming home really soon. Thinking about it makes my stomach go a bit funny and makes me excited so as a distraction I’ll chat about what we’ve been up to.

Weeks 9 and 10 of the October pioneer scheme have been fairly relaxed compared to time in the bush. We’ve been renovating the police garden in Fort Dauphin which on the face of it seems like quite an odd choice of project. But Azafady does a lot of great work in the bush which most people in town never hear about. So, we were helping to redo the police garden (where the families of all the poor arrested souls wait to find out the verdict on whether they’ve been charged or not) as a sort of showcase project of work that Azafady has done in town.

Pioneers were not too psyched by this project. After working SO hard in the bush they’d thought that they’d be winding down for weeks 9 or 10 but no! More digging and land clearance in the tropical sun for them! Ha! But to be fair they all took it on the chin, understood why we were doing the project and got properly stuck in. Go team October!

This week has really honestly been very chilled, lots of lazy days. We’ve been doing tree nursery work and community mapping interviews. This time round, the interviews are to establish people’s attitudes in town towards a proposed arts and cultural centre that Azafady is setting up in March which sounds like it’ll be a really exciting new enterprise.

I’ve also been spending time trying to make my skin less stripy (I am currently sporting a very fetching “pioneer” tan) and hanging out with Liv a lot. Liv and her friend Miranda arrived like a whirlwind in Fort Dauphin on the same flight as me but Miranda had to go home a month or two ago to start earning money in the real world. They are two immensely bubbly and, to an extent, mad pair of girls. Liv was out here on her medical elective and Miranda just came along for the craic for a month or two. They both have a really great effervescent attitude to pretty much everything and are always up for a bit of an adventure. They’ve been so much fun to hang out with and it’s a real shame that neither of them will be around after Christmas. But hopefully there will be some sort of NYE reunion in Scotchland, bring it!

Bug number four struck on Monday (boooo) which hopefully means that there is NOTHING THAT CAN GO WRONG BETWEEN NOW AND CHRISTMAS. NOTHING. Especially since I have now booked my flights up to Inverness. Snow! Reindeer! Comfortable temperatures! And most importantly, Mr Marshall. Lovely jubbly.

So all that’s left over the next few days is for me to attend the leaving party on Friday night, bundle up my Christmas presents (and my wish list) and head back over to the northern hemisphere! I am really excited about coming home and seeing everybody. I’m worried I may bore everybody rigid by waxing lyrical about my beloved Madagascar so, I apologise in advance. But hopefully by looking at the pictures and listening to the tales you’ll be able to get a better feel for this amazing place and it’ll inspire lots of people to come here too. Everybody should.

So, see you all in a few days! I can’t wait.

All things bright and beautiful...

all creatures great and small.

Pitcher plants. Reminded me a lot of being in Sabah.

And how abundant! Wow! Alongside finishing off all the projects in the bush, I have been giddily scrambling around looking at all these crazy creatures which keep turning up these last few weeks. I fear I might be turning into an entomologist.

Horrific looking spider which I almost head butted

Pill Millipede before it got scared

Scared pill millipede. They form a perfect sphere like a conker. Amazing. I wanted to take him with me in my pocket but I didn't.

Where to start, so much has happened since my last update but I’ll keep it restricted to the best bits.

Sunset over the rainforest at St Luce

Playing with a gecko

After the last break in town, we went to the village of St Luce. It’s a collection of 3 coastal hamlets which is surrounded by extremely rare and ever dwindling fragments of pristine, littoral rainforest. Some of these fragments are protected (i.e. nothing is meant to be removed from them) and some are not. Unfortunately, in some of the unprotected fragments, there are some of the last remaining specimens of the Dypsis stlucei, a palm which is endemic to the St Luce area alone. The Azafady campsite there is gorgeous, situated in a clearing in the forest and surrounded by lots of interesting bugs. Our tasks there were seed collection from the rainforest to supply the Azafady tree nursery, community mapping interviews (to establish the attitudes of the local people towards conservation and the protected areas of forest) and tree nursery work. The tree nursery is a really exciting initiative. Azafady are collecting seeds from the endangered Dypsis (raising their numbers from 50 left in the wild to at least 300 growing in the nursery) whilst also growing alternative fuel sources so that there’s less pressure put on the remaining fragments of forest.

Rainforest

Sadly it rained almost continuously for the five days that we were there. So bad that emergency trenches had to be dug around tents. Fortunately, we only lost one tent to the rain (and it wasn't mine! hurrah!) and we were leaving the next day so it could’ve been worse. The toilets were fairly bad in St Luce and the water is a really off-putting brown colour, and smells of eggs. All in all, the team were pleased to get back to Beandry!

Kids in St Luce on the way back from collecting firewood. Hopefully not from one of the protected forests.

Kids in Beandry getting less scared of my pasty face.

Beandry now has a beautiful school (even though the wrong colour green was ordered so that the school looks more like a giant mint humbug/ice cream parlour), 40 lovingly crafted school benches and a well. Not bad for 5 weeks work in a blazing tropical sun!
What a pretty school! The night after the party. Look at the size of the speakers!


Well complete with white picket fence.

To celebrate on our last night, we hired a sound system from a neighbouring hamlet and I think everybody from all the villages within a 15km radius was outside the Beandry school on our last night! It was a really surreal night, jigging about with village elders and children while the Vengaboys was blasted out into the wee hours. When I got up to pack up my tent the next morning at 6 the sound system was still on and people were still dancing. I think a few people got up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet and ended up back at the party dancing away in their pyjamas, awesome.

Hands up if you love the Vengaboys!

Chef de Quartier of Beandry having a wild time with the moonshine.

It felt really sad to be leaving Beandry. We’d been there for 5 weeks in total and really got to know a lot of people. We taught one little boy, Kanesy (the cheekiest chappy in all of Beandry) how to write his name. He practiced over and over on this little piece of paper which he always kept in his shirt pocket. He was so proud of that piece of paper, he went round showing it to everybody. I can’t wait to go back in 6 month’s time and see Kanesy in his school uniform with his backpack (which will be bigger than he is!).

Kanesy (back) with his brother Nesta.

Me and Kanesy tripping the light fantastic

Our next port of call was Emagnevy where we were going to do some health and sanitation education with the local schools (hand washing song and a play on good hand hygiene) and build some fuel efficient stoves. Doing the fuel efficient stoves is one of my favourite things. It only takes a morning to build a stove. The family who’s requested the stove get really involved so that they can go on and train others how to build fuel efficient stoves, and the stoves themselves are awesome. They use a lot less wood and burn a lot hotter than an unprotected fire. You can use a lot less wood (less wood means women don’t need to spend so much time searching for wood and have more time to do other things and the fact that they use less wood is a great way of reducing the pressure on the forest), cooking times are a lot quicker and the stoves are a lot safer than the open fires which are traditionally used in the wooden houses.

Sadly, the stoves are made from a mixture of clay, sand and fresh zebu shit. These ingredients have to be mixed by hand. The smell stays on your hands for hours no matter how many times your scrub and, at the end of the day, you’ve had your hands in soggy poo all day. There were always an emotional few minutes before the first stove of the day was done. You have to properly psyche yourself up for putting your hands into the poo mixture but you just have to pretend you’re mixing crumble topping or something and chat a lot so that you forget what it is that your hands are really doing.

Mmm. Poo stove.

Mixing the awful stuff together. Happy faces.

And then we arrive at yesterday, our last day in the bush. A new camion driver meant that it took the best part of 6 hours to get back to Fort Dauphin from Emagnevy and we had to get out and push start the camion twice. But hungry and stinking, we arrived back in one piece.

One thing which has really touched me on this scheme is the immense generosity of the communities which we’ve worked in. Without exception, we’ve received daily gifts of lychees, chickens, rice, sugar cane and moonshine (which mysteriously went missing, I blame the Chef) from incredibly poverty stricken people. Everybody is genuinely so grateful for the work that Azafady has done and it’s really humbling when you get given these gifts which are worth several weeks wages. Especially when you consider that over 80% of the population are living on less than $2 a day.

So now it’s only 2 weeks til I’m back in the UK! I’m starting to allow myself to get really excited because time in town always goes quickly. In no time at all I’ll be swaddled up in thermal layers before a roaring fire (in Aviemore or at home) supping mulled wine and eating mince pies. I can’t wait! It’s been great to get so excited about Christmas without all of the usual build up. You just get really excited for seeing everybody and having a good time which, cheesy and naff as it may sound, is what Christmas is all about after all!

In some ways it's very strange to imagine the easy life that awaits at home. A life where electricity continually buzzes into our homes and water, hot and cold, can pour into our homes through tubes 24 hours a day. I know, I know, all very self righteous. But I'm wondering if my turkey dinner and all the frivolities will seem like too much of a stark contrast to the past 3 months. It is quite literally like leaping to a feast from famine. Having said all that, it is exhasuting living in rural Madagascar for weeks at a time. It'll be so nice to go home and become vaguely feminine and not have to be responsible for anybody for a few weeks!

Nice weather for ducks

The first half of our trip to Beandry is ticked off! The school is almost done and is looking really smart compared to the before picture. It’s such a satisfying feeling to see something tangible rise out of many days of sweaty hard work. The work itself has been fairly uneventful (lots of chiselling, sawing, hammering and hand mixing cement) but there’s always other random things going on in Madagascar.

Before

After. Ta da!

On one of our days off we headed to the market in the nearby village of Tsanoriha. A lot of fruit and veg, bling bling imitation American gear and woven goods. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more white in my life. You get stared at in town (Fort Dauphin) and are greeted by a constant stream of “Bonjour Vazaha” (hello white person) from passers by which can make you feel a little but like an exhibit in a zoo. However, with the QMM mining project bringing in a large number of vazahas from South Africa and
Canada, Fort Dauphin is less vazaha wary than it used to be (although the delightful “bogeyman” story that vazahas steal and eat vital organs, particularly the liver and the heart, is still believed by a scarily large number of people). The developments brought in through QMM haven’t reached into the bush and I think it’s fair to say that for the vast majority of people, the vazaha is a strange and relatively unknown beast. Especially when they drink from tubes which come out from a pouch on their back.

Pictures: On the way to market.

View of the eastern coastal plains and the mountains near Beandry.

Tsanoriha market. Do you think we stuck out much?!

Anybody for a custard apple? Sweet and appley and very cheap.

Wild pineapple (not good to eat) and lychees (very good to eat)

It was stupidly hot and humid when we visited Tsanoriha, we had warm cokes in a shack next to a policeman nursing some form of heavy firearm (very surreal), I fell into a rice paddy on the walk back, we found a black widow spider in one of the long drops (I think it’s now dead) and then it started to pour with rain.

Sheltering from the rain at the newly watertight school.

It’s been a fairly soggy episode in Beandry (more unseasonal weather I’m told, aren’t we the lucky ones?!). So soggy in fact that the tarp ceiling to our “dining room” (i.e., the tarp on the floor) split with the volume of water which collected in it over night. Construction work in the rain just isn’t fun. Trying to stay motivated and smiley when you want to whinge and gripe as much as everybody else is hard but it’s what I’m paid to do. So I thought back to the end of Day 1 of the OMM last year, realised that at least I didn’t have to run for 8 hours in this foulsome weather and ploughed on through. But enough of the weather. Brits are capable of talking about more than just weather.

In sad news, my tent is dead. A sound like ripping Velcro coming from your tent is always going to be a disconcerting noise. Especially when in the midst of a heavy tropical storm! One of my poles had snapped and ripped a huge hole in my fly sheet in the process. A bit of begging from somebody’s tent repair kit and inventive use of gaffa tape and my tent has happily been bodged back together to fight another day but I’m hoping I can purloin another tent from somewhere because I don’t fancy my tent’s chances in round two with the weather!

A really fun part of this trip to Beandry was interviewing some local kids about how they feel about the school being built. We found the cheekiest chappies in all of Beandry and asked them age, names etc and what they do in the day. One very shy and snotty seven year old said that he works in the paddy fields with his family all day. I felt my stomach drop when he said that. It’s back breaking work and the poor rice growing conditions around the village means that you don’t get much food for the energy you put in. The fact that everybody is incredibly physically fit is one thing that you really notice here. I swear the Malagasy must have bred with ants at some point because they can carry about 5 times their body weight as soon as they can walk! All you can do is watch on with a mixed feeling of inadequacy and amazement as a 10 year old child digs a 1m deep hole in the time it took you to dig 20 cm. It really does make you feel like a big fat lazy vazaha, these people are hard as nails.

The day before we were due to leave guess what?! It rained again! I think these photos say far more about the trip back than I can. Suffice to say that 4 hours when you’re wet through to your skin in an open sided camion is not really much fun. But going through the villages on the way back to town and seeing the kiddies running to the side of the road to wave and cheer at the vazahas in the plastic coats definitely helps to keep morale up.

Left: On the way back from the bush. Erika (one of the Azafady guides) and Nadira sporting bush chic. Right: Welcome party in a village we passed through on the way back to town. Inventive use of woven goods by the lad!

So here I am in town for a few days before we ship off to the bush again on Tuesday (4th November). It’s really good to be back in town but I know that after 5 days in town I’ll be itching to get back out into the bush. I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into the fuel efficient stove building, seed collecting for rare palms, teaching kids about hand washing and more grubbing about in the bush.

There’s something really calming about bush life. The routine isn’t very rock n roll (up at 5, work, eat, work some more, bed at 8 and repeat x 20) but the simplicity of it is really relaxing (when everything goes to plan). The long drops are foul beyond description (we can now smell them from 50m away), you wash out of a bucket, there’s no shade, everybody looks like a tramp and no matter how hard you try you are NEVER clean.

The team queuing for the "showers" (sheltered areas made of traveller's palm)

However, even though everybody lists their food cravings of the moment at hourly intervals (mine is currently mashed potatoes with peas sausages and gravy if you’re reading Ovy!), when you get back to town and the first sugar hit has been had, you’re wanting to head straight back out to your soggy tent in the arse end of nowhere. It’s such a great atmosphere. There’s the camaraderie of living in really basic conditions and working with awesome people who have to live like that every day and are probably more content with their lot in life than most Brits.

It’s also incredibly liberating to be somewhere completely out of the clutches of western ideals. No adverts trying to sell you crap you don’t need, no horrific magazines screaming at you to be prettier, or thinner, or richer and everybody’s always looking out for each other with a huge smile on their face. It’s a great opportunity to really think about what’s important but I have to confess, when you think about what’s important, it does make you miss it a whole lot more!

Talking of getting stuck into the wilderness, last weekend deserves a mention (my Mum’s favourite weekend of the year, the OMM weekend!). Gaz and Duncan were in 3rd position in A class of the OMM (Original Mountain Marathon, what was once known as the Karrimor) before the event was cancelled. Go team! Dad was told the event was cancelled an hour from the finish and went back to base to spend the night in the car. I think everybody was frustrated that they couldn’t finish (only 4 hours in apocalyptic rain and winds just isn’t enough for some people, strange folk). The event made the national headlines and was made to sound quite scary but I’m assured by all concerned that yes it was bad, but not so bad that they won’t be back. Hopefully I’ll be joining them in 2009, come on Chris, you know you want to!

And continuing with the good news from home both Gaz and Chris got jobs! Gaz is now the Senior Research Assistant at Abernethy Reserve where he will now officially hug trees, deer grass, blaeberry, pine martins (and if he’s lucky, maybe a stray reindeer) for a living. Good to know that one of us is getting some money in, nice one Marshall! One step closer to living the dream! And my not-so-little brother has bagged a job with the county council as a waste and recycling officer, he’s a real life Captain Planet taking pollution down to zero (I’ve got photos to prove it), go Chris!

Lastly – Gremlin, the legendary stray who has adopted the Azafady centre at Lanrirano as her home is a Mum! I’ve got dibs on the brown little guy, he’s a fighter!

Beandry and the curse of the ant.

Due to an ant taking an unexpected fancy to my left ear whilst I was happily reading under a tree hiding from the midday sun, I’ve found myself on an unscheduled trip back to Fort Dauphin. The remains of the curious ant have been siphoned from my ear canal and I’ve been given the all clear by the doc but there’s no transport back out to Beandry for a while so I thought I’d fill you guys in on all the news since my last update. My camera battery ran out half way through this blogging effort so I'll add more photos later.

So, what’s been going on since I last wrote? The pioneers arrived and the group’s getting on really well and working incredibly hard. Before the start of our first project in the bush there was a week’s orientation in Fort Dauphin and a trip to Nahampoana lemur reserve to give everybody their lemur fix. It’s a great time of year to see the lemurs because they’ve just had their babies! Ring tailed lemurs, brown lemurs and This one's for you Gaz - check out the granite! my personal favourite, the dancing Sifaka were scampering over all of us trying to grab bits of banana.

Me feeding a Sifaka. Ther hands are like little human hands and very soft!

Mum and baby ring-tailed lemur

Giant bamboo

After much oohing and aaaahing we headed off by camion* to the hamlet of Beandry. The roads were typically Malagasy, we had one minor break down (the guys only had to get out to push start us once) and we only had to get out and walk over one dodgy bridge. A promising start!

*A camion is like a converted lorry and travelling in one is about as comfortable as you imagine 4 hours in a converted lorry over horrific roads would be.

Dodgy bridge. Everybody out!

Beandry, population approximately 1000, is in a stunning setting nestled at the foot of the mountains where the hills turn into the eastern coastal plains. It’s surrounded by paddy fields, coffee trees, wild pineapple plants, zebu cattle and lychee trees. Families are generally pretty big and live in houses 2m x 3m which are made out of traveller’s palm (the Malagasy national plant). It’s very rural, very remote and very basic but everybody has been incredible at making us feel welcome. We were given a welcome gift of sugar cane and two chickens by the Chief de Quartier (chief of the village) folowed by some form of Malagasy ice breaker exercise similar to Simon Says where the unlucky people who were "out" had to stand up and dance in front of the whole village. Thankfully I managed to stay "in".

Me and Kyle introducing tea and dinner to each other

People from Beandry find Kyle's trumpet. How do people fit this into a 20kg allowance?!

Rosy Periwinkle which has anticarcinogenic properties which are used to combat childhood leukaemia. Also a puncturer of ground sheets.

The kids are adorable if they’re not scared of you! A toddler took one look at me, screamed, burst into tears and ran into his house. I was probably the first white person he’d ever seen. However, a smile and “salama” from a vazaha is normally enough to send a group of kids into fits of hysterics. It’s tragic to think that 1 in 5 of those kids won’t make it to their 5th birthday. We’re in Beandry to build a school and a closed system well. Both of these things will hopefully go a long way to reducing the infant mortality rate in Beandry and giving the kids an education which will make so many more opportunities available to them.

Very welcome inpromptu stall

When I left Beandry the wooden super structure of the school was up, they were due to start on the floor and foundations and it was looking pretty good! The kids had kindly set up a refreshment stall near the construction site selling fresh pineapple and cokes which were pretty welcome after doing hard labour in the obscene tropical heat.

<--- Working hard!

The heat is one of the things I’m having big issues with at the moment. There aren’t any thermometers but it gets so hot that you can’t stay in your tent between 7 – 4. No chance of a lie in! Even sitting still in the shade you're pouring sweat. I’m assured that it’s unseasonably hot for this early on in the summer which is good to know because I can’t imagine it can get much hotter!

As a treat for all their hard work we had a bush party for the pioneers. We ate a ridiculous amount of food: chips, cassava fritters, salad, zebu, chicken, eggs, fruit salad and banoffee pie bush style (heated up condensed milk caramelizes to make a great toffee substitute!). A group of dancers from the next village came to our campsite, and along with the whole of Beandry, the rum fuelled (Bush Mechanics) vazahas jigged about and learned the steps from the local kids as best they could to the crazy fast rhythms kicking up dust clouds in the twilight. Nobody was allowed to sit it out, everybody was filthy, sweaty and drunk, all very memorable, great fun and all by the light of a single light bulb run off our bodged generator. Who needs a telly.

Go vazahas go!