Lazy Sunday

Lazy weekends at the beach in Fort Dauphin are hard to beat. Sun, sea, surfing and lounging.

Lounging on the beach with Lisa

"Zay" a new bar on Ankoba beach right next to the sea. A five minute walk from the office and our second home.

Bed-loungers at "Zay" on Ankoba beach

Flav's brother Yvon trying on new beach wear

14 days left of sunshine.

Start the Clock

I hate calenders and count downs. They fill your head with numbers when you should be concentrating on just enjoing yourself but heyho..human nature is not known for its flawess logic and so it is that I have found that over the past few weeks I have entered the zone of the count down.

I’ve been on this big red island for 15 months now with only a 2 week break in the UK last Christmas. I am expecting my arrival back in the UK to throw up a few issues with integrating back in to western society but for the moment I am focusing heavily on soaking up as much as I can from my last few days here (19 days from today).

Work in the office has stepped up a few notches with several reports for funders being due at the same time which keeps me good and busy!

Spare time is taken up by sunset drinks at freedom to watch the sunset, surfing (still can’t stand up), meals at Chez Bernard and trying not to dwell too much on thoughts such as “I wonder how many more times I’ll get to do this before I go back to the UK?”. Not a very constructive or positive way to look at things!

The single biggest thing I will miss from being here is the people. Both the Malagasy people in general and the vazaha friends I have made over the past year or so. You have to rely on people so much more out here for support and you go through some bizarre and sometimes scary situations together. As a result, you form incredibly strong friendships with people out here in a very short space of time. It’s hard to imagine that I won’t be seeing these people who are like a family to me on a regular basis in a few weeks time.

I have come across situations I would never have imagined coming across whilst I have been here. The political crisis, cyclones, serious illness in myself and in friends and seeing how Malagasy people approach these difficulties with a smile on their face a shrug of the shoulders and joke makes you think long an hard about how you respond to the same situation. That attitude along with the incredible generosity and community spirit that you’re a part of here in Madagascar is something that I’ll never forget. I hope some of it has rubbed off on me!

Leaving Madagascar at the same time as me is Lisa Carrier (bag) from Lemur Venture. Whilst I am sad for her that she’s going to leave something that she loves doing, I am delighted that there’s going to be another flat broke and uncouth young female not too far from where I live that I can go and act childishly with. She’s been an absolute star and I know I’m going to miss my sidekick a lot when we head off.

I don’t want this post to turn in to a reflective, morbid and snore-inducing piece so I’ll keep it short. I am so looking forward to seeing friends and family (and how pale you will all be, ha ha!) but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a little apprehensive about how I’m going to fit in to the UK mid-winter with no money and with most of my friends living a fair way away.

So, please have patience when you see me if I waffle on for too long about stories from a far and distant land and please don’t be offended at the way I will devour and inhale a roast dinner, a fried breakfast, crumble and custard, cheese and biscuits or fish and chips given half a chance. Remember that it's been a long time!

The last few weeks

Over the last few weeks I have been steadily beavering away in the office and managed to piggy back two trips to the bush. I went out to visit the pioneers in Volobe a few weeks ago. It was very surreal going back to the bush and not being involved in any way shape or form with the running of the scheme but it was so good to be back in Volobe and to just be able to sit back and enjoy being there without feeling guilty that I should be doing something or other.

My second bush trip was out with the Lemur Venture volunteers to the forest at Petriky. Petriky is one of only three remaining parcels of littoral forest left in Madagascar (with St Luce and Mandena, where Rio Tinto are already mining ilmenite being the other two). The main reason for my trip was to provide a bit of extra support to Lisa (who is more than capable but two pairs of hands are better than one).

Azafady had an extra Lemur Veture volunteer for the second half of their scheme. This extra volunteer's visit is due to the recent announcement that Azafady have been chosen as the Prix Pictet 2009 Commission Project. The Prix Pictet Commission is an annual invitation for a photographer, chosen from the Prix Pictet shortlist, to produce a series of images by visiting a region where Pictet & Cie are supporting a project or group of projects related to the theme of the award. For 2009 Pictet & Cie will support Azafady's work in Madagascar. The images made for the Prix Pictet Commission 2009 will be shown in London in early 2010.

It is an amazing opportunity for Azafady. Not only will the pictures taken in Madagascar in January 2010nshowcase Azafady's work on afforestation in Madagascar, but the photographs taken by this year's winning photographer are to be made into a coffee table book which will be sent out to ALL the banks investors and shareholders. Fingers crossed this opportunity will raise the profile of Azafady still further and may lead to more funding opportunities which would make a huge difference in the current economic climate.

So, back to Petriky. Lemur Venture were there to conduct a population census on the Ring tailed lemurs who live in the forest. Because the area is due to be mined, Rio Tinto have carried out extensive research on the flora in the area, but for some reason no research has been done on the fauna in the area. The forest of Petriky is approximatey 700 ha in area and in 5 days there I did not see a single ring tail. It was very hot and the trails are all 6 inches deep in hot sand. My patience did wear thin at times! The night walks were much more fruitful with loads of mouse lemurs and fat tailed dwarf lemurs scampering about in the brush and there were plenty of snakes, bugs and beautiful flowers to hold my interest during the lemurless days!

The forest at Petriky lies alongside a huge brackish lake. No bucket showers for Sarah this time!

Cacti flowers

The forest at Petriky. The forest has only been protected for the past 2 years and as a result is severely degraded in places. There are hardly any trees with a diameter above 20 cm as the forest has been used so intensively by local communities that trees never get the chance to grow any larger. Our local guide told us that local people are still hunting and eating the lemurs in the area.

Male snake...I forget the species


Female snake of the same unknown species as the male above

Pill Millipede eyes. No lemurs results in novel means of entertainment.

I have also moved house! A new wave of lovely volunteers meant that I could move in to my own little house in the grounds of the Azafady office. 24 hour internet access!

My new house. The bottom floor is an office, the upper floor has two rooms where I now live.

Bedroom in the background, sitting area in the foreground. Cosy!

As you can see from the picture it's made of traditional Malagasy materials which mans it is very well ventilated and wobbles a bit in the breeze but it has withstood numerous cyclone seasons so I'm not too concerned!

5 weeks today I'll be eating a jacket potato with cheese and beans with a big piece of gammon and probably feeling very disorientated. The next few weeks are going to truely fly.

Office monkey

I’ve been an office girl for 4 weeks now. A new set of Pioneer volunteers have swept through Fort Dauphin and off to Volobe being shepherded by the very capable hands of the new Coordintor, Jim. It’s been very strange not being involved much in the meeting and greeting of new volunteers and having to get used to sitting down for the vast majority of my day but there have been some perks.

I have become domestic once more. I revel in my weekly trip to the market (woven market basket in hand and ridiculous grin on my face) where my veggie lady gives me freebies as a reward for using her as my regular supplier of green stuff. I love the patter you get from buying things from a person as opposed to picking it from a shelf. I look forward to doing my laundry on a Sunday morning before it gets too hot. I sweep my house out every morning. I am also loving being able to cook for myself so much, definitely getting my 5 a day now. I think I’ve eaten rice once in the past 3 weeks! Spending my weekends lazing by the beach evening out my “pioneer tan” and devouring books again. Carrying on my knitting, learning how to surf, trying to get better at French (I have realised that in order to work in large parts of Africa, French is pretty much essential…why did I do Italian A-level?!) and spending hours on the internet trying to update my frazzled and infested laptop. I have acres of time to myself with nobody ringing up at the last minute asking me to organise something.

And yet I think all of the aforementioned things would feel much better if there were more people around. As it is, Lisa and Jim have shipped off on their bush placements with their volunteers and other Lisa isn’t due back in town for a few days. Not many vazahas to play with in town, just me and Davey (who works for one of the mining conractors in the area). It’s so pathetic, I used to be so good in my own company, what’s happened to me?! I’ve gone soft…

And that makes me think of all the things I miss from the bush. I miss being outside constantly, even when it rains, the sunrises and the sunsets, I miss the simple routine of the day (eat, work, eat, sleep) I miss the constant music and not caring at all what I look like. But I think what I miss the most is the banter with the bush staff. There’ve been some great times and some not so great times in the last year and without the guys in the bush, I wouldn’t’ve been able to do my job at all. They’re a great team and I know that with Jim as Coordinator they’re going to have a ball in the coming 12 months.

But having said that, I do not miss the Pioneer diet, not being able to escape the insane heat at this time of year, desperately trying to stay neutral in between various work related issues and feeling permanently exhausted.

What a contrary young lady. Jeez I’m a hard one to please…

On the plus side I’m heading back out to Volobe for a long weekend tomorrow so that should be enough to get myself a good bush fix for a few weeks. Then a new batch of volunteers are arriving next week to do english teaching, helping with the HIV project and other random tasks. It'll be great to get some new blood in the town and I'm hopeful that one of them might have brought some cheese.

Seven days and seven taxi brousses.

With several weeks of holiday ahead of me and very few people in town Lisa and I decided to take ourselves away and have a budget adventure. I was really keen to get up to Andringitra national park and Lisa was desperate to see the black and white ruff lemurs in Ranomafana national park. We were on a serious budget so it would be taxi brousse (any form of wheeled public transport) all the way. 7 days, 7 taxi brousse rides…it had all the makings of a true adventure!

Our adventure started at 5am on a Sunday morning. Eager and bleary eyed we slumped on the bench at the taxi brousse station waiting for our noble steed to be loaded up. Then it was only 400 odd miles and 36 hours on a heavily pot holed dirt track until our first destination of Ambalavao.

Our mobile instrument of torture

Loading up the beast

My best sardine impression

I’ve read a lot about taxi brousse journeys and I was fairly apprehensive. I’d heard nightmare stories of breaking down miles from anywhere and having to wait days for parts or until another taxi brousse passed by. Music screeching constantly, screaming children, livestock everywhere, crazy drivers, vomit and other bodily fluids flying around with the jostling of the truck and four people plus children squeezed onto a seat designed for two people. I think I was right to be a little apprehensive!

Our first 36 hour epic ride took us through the spiny desert of the south in to the granitic highlands of central Madagascar. It was eventful as we’d expected. Along the way we broke down twice (problems which were rectified fairly quickly), a kid almost threw up on Lisa, we picked up a woman with a broken leg, we didn’t sleep at all (no head rests, very bumpy ride and relentless very loud music) and we completely lost all feeling in our hips, knees and feet. I remember waking up wondering what the squashy thing was under my feet. I turned on my head torch to discover that the eight children sharing the back seat with their extended family were all bedded down under our chair and I had been stomping on the faces of one of the kids, oops! I have never felt so cramped for so long.

Having spent one night in Ambalavao we headed off to Andringitra national park for the day. It was an amazing day and was even better than I’d hoped. Sadly we were there in tavy season (the time of year when local people burn the land to ready it for planting and grazing) so the air was really hazy and the views not as good as they could’ve been but it was still incredible.

Where the fun began

First glimpse

Walking in

Zebu and Andringitra

Amazing packed lunch provided by our lovely guide

Wandering amongst the granite

Walking around the inner bowl of Andringitra

Sunset

From Ambalavao we headed north in a wonderful taxi brousse (we got to sit in the front!) to Fianarantsoa, Madagascar’s second city, where were going to organise a trip to Ranomafana national park. We got mobbed at the taxi brousse station and managed to get a ride within the hour which was lucky as Fianar station isn’t a particularly nice place to hang around.

Taxi brousse ride number 3 was the second worst one we had. Shoehorned into the back of a minibus, we hurtled along to Ranomafana. Just when we thought there wasn’t space for a newborn child, let alone an adult, seven grown men would somehow fold themselves into the bus and off we’d go again. Very very unpleasant, especially when the man sat next to us was obviously very drunk and reeked of sick.

But we got to Ranomafana in one piece and it was as beautiful as I remember. We had one night there with a night walk and a 6 hour trek in the day to try and find lemurs for Lisa. Sadly, we had a seriously crap guide. We seemed to know more than he did and we didn’t get to see the black and white lemurs Lisa wanted to see. Very frustrating, especially when a group came back about 10 minutes after us saying they’d seen them five minutes after we’d left!

Big moth hiding on Lisa's pillow

Comet moth

From Ranomafana it was back to Fianar in a wonderful 4x4. The ride itself was smooth, peaceful and relaxing until I felt something substantial on my head. In the back of the car were several huge bunches of bananas. A huge spider had been lured out from the bananas and taken up residence on my hat. Lisa kindly flicked it off on to the man sat next to me and we spent the rest of the journey terrified that it was going to make a return and crawl up our trouser legs.

On arriving at Fianar we were told that our taxi brousse back to Fort Dauphin had been brought forward from the scheduled time of 6pm the following day to 2am that night. After a manic few days this was not the news we were wanting to hear. We had a leisurely day of bumming around Fianar planned. Instead, we were back at the taxi brousse station at 2am to be told that the bus wasn’t actually coming til 4am. Great.

Eventually it arrived, we squeezed in and we were on our way home.

The ride home was awful. I have never gone so many days consecutively with so little sleep. I felt like the living dead and lost the will to live after about 6 hours. It was so hot, so crowded, so noisy and I was so tired, and the best was still to come!

At about 10pm (18 hours in) we were stopped in the middle of nowhere to say that there was some trouble on the road (still don’t know what that elusive trouble was) and we had to wait til morning before we could continue. A whole 8 hours stuck in a taxi brousse and not even moving anywhere! So we slept, ate crackers, played eye spy and discussed where we would like to live and how we’d decorate to pass the time.

As the sun was just starting to rise we lumbered off again. In all, it took us 40 hours to get back to Fort Dauphin. I was completely broken, starving hungry, coated in sweat, dust and god knows what else and desperately in need of a wee! Never have I ever felt so delighted to stand up in all my life!

We made it!

So we did it. 7 days, 7 taxi brousse rides. It was a hilarious experience but I won’t be doing it again in a hurry.

My last day

My days as coordinator came to an end on Tuesday. I am very excited about all the new challenges ahead but with so many people now gone from the Azafady office Fort Dauphin does feel like a very different place. A change is as good as a rest and all that but so much change in such a short time can scramble your brain somewhat!

Parasy extraction

My last 10 days in the bush as coordinator were spent in the idyllic village of St Luce. We collected seeds from the forest for the tree nursery, mapped the location of some critically endangered palms, built a vegetable garden for the local school and spent a lot of afternoons off at the beach. It didn’t feel much like work at all!

Lisa elegantly serving up lunch

The beach at S17 and my last day at work.

The biggest fish I haver ever seen! Caught by hand by four Malagasy women at St Luce.

Lisa and Sarah are happy with their lobster meal!

Exodus

It’s a sad truth that whilst the Azafady family is very close knit, it is also very transient with a constant flux of people in and out of the organisation. On arriving back from the bush this time around, the office was a very different place. An exodus had taken place whilst I was away.

Sophie (Project Development Assistant), Kate (Nutrition and Health Project Assistant), Diana (English teacher and Arts and Cultural Project power house. Also my housemate) and Katie (Lemur Venture Coordinator and also my housemate) have all flown the Azafady nest in the past month. In addition, Gaby (Head of project Development) has been offered a new job in the UK so she too has flown the nest after over 3 years of incredibly hard work in Fort Dauphin.

They’re all going on to do amazing things in their respective fields but I am going to miss them all a hell of a lot. So now it’s just me, Brett, Lemur Lisa and Boss Lisa as the Vazaha contingent – a much slimmed down Azafady family! But come October there will be a fresh invasion of pasty faces to welcome in to the fold.

Random puppy who trespassed in my house and left me little brown presents all over my floor.

As for the pioneers, despite only having 7 volunteers this time round in Volobe Sud we still got the latrine done. 4 days of torrential rain stopped work for a while. The heavy rainfall also meant that the river was too high to get cement bags across from the village where supplies were stored. But, in the end, we still got it done with time to spare for some avant-garde landscaping.

Finished latrine

Nery modelling the futuristic latrine landscaping.

On the bench that Caitlin and I built.

Playing with a chameleon

One of the highlights for me on this trip to the bush was the discovery of a waterfall about 40 minutes from camp. It was truly gorgeous. The river ran down in a series of steps which meant that you could spend hours scrambling up and down the rocks exploring different nooks and crannies of the cascade. There was even a natural shower which was incredibly refreshing. Pictures really don’t do it justice.

The waterfall.

Flowers on the coffee trees in Volobe

My tent at sunrise

During our stay at Volobe there has been a lot of talk about the spiritual aspect of Malagasy culture. People becoming possessed by spirits, spirits visiting people in the night and attacking their bodies, ghosts, telling people’s destiny and the dead coming back to life and walking amongst the living (apparently the way to tell if someone is dead and has come back to life is to pour sand on their body as they sleep. If they wake up suddenly and try to kill you then they are somebody who has come back to life.). This time round our visit to Volobe coincided with somebody in the village being possessed by a spirit.

We went to see the man who was possessed. He was sat cross legged in one of the houses in the village with his brother, a friend and several other local people. His brother had a mandolina (traditional Malagasy guitar) and the friend had a marraca. Surrounding them all were the items needed to call the spirit. A bowl of water, a little cotton sack of coins and bunches of local herbs and plants. The friend and the brother started up a kilalaky rhythm (crazy fast) with the instruments and a really distant expression came over the possessed man’s face. As he sat cross legged on the floor his whole body started to jerk in time with the rhythm of the instruments. We were then told that we could ask the man questions. A lot of the girls asked him how many children they would have, if they would marry their current boyfriend etc. He rubbed water on the coins he took from the cotton sack and rubbed the coins between his hands as he muttered a series of words under his breath. He then put the coins in the bowl of water and made his predictions. His voice was stuttering and had a very odd tone to it. As if he’d just been crying and was finding it hard to speak or if the words were being pushed out of him. It was so interesting to watch. Time will tell if his predictions are correct or not!

I’m not quite sure where I stand on this kind of thing. I know that if you believe in something badly enough then it can seem very real and you can convince yourself to believe anything. But then again I am aware that there are some things that cannot be explained by science and reason alone. All I know is that this possessed man who had never met me before and had never heard anything about me was able to tell me things about my life which he had no way of knowing anything about. It was exciting in some ways but quite unnerving at the same time.

At the end of our stay in Volobe we had a huge blow out party to celebrate finishing the school and the latrine and to thank the community for the huge effort they had put in to getting all the materials there for us to work with.

I was quite sad to leave Volobe. It’s the last extended bush placement that I’ll coordinate and it dawned on me that the times are a changing and I only have a few months left in Madagascar. But I guess that just means I have to get stuck in and make the most of those few months!

Coffee beans drying in the sun

Vanilla pods drying in the sun

Finished school

Big Hair South

Volobe Sud (literally translated as “big hair south”) is the most remote village I’ve worked in with Azafady. I’ve just come back from 3 weeks building a school there. It’s been an amazing 3 weeks but it’s good to be back. I have really missed cheese. Volobe is a hard place to be for a solid stretch of time that long!

The school has been built with no major problems but what has struck me about this scheme is the epic scale of organising the work here.

Volobe is a 3 hour camion ride north of Fort Dauphin (to Tsanoriha, just north of Mahatalaky for those in the know). On reaching Tsanoriha there was quite a sight waiting for us. Some 300 people from Volobe greeted us chanting welcome songs and blowing an old bugle to further rouse the group. It was pretty overwhelming. I’ve never seen a welcome like it! From there you have to cross a terrifying bridge or ford the river (I forded the river. The bridge looked so scary). It is then a 3.5 hour trek into the mountains crossing a further 7 bodies of water before you get to Volobe. Getting 15 volunteers and their bags there was in itself a serious undertaking. But then of course all the materials for the school building have to be transported there too! In all, it took the best part of 300 porters all day to carry all of our kit and materials the 20 km to Volobe. An incredible effort from all involved and an amazing feat of Malagasy organisation!

God awful bridge at Tsanoriha. I opted for wading the river.

Dodgy Indiana Jones style bridge

Army of cement bags arriving for the latrine we go to built next tuesday. Each bag weighs 50kg. Finished school in the background.

Volobe is the most beautiful place we’ve worked. It feels truly cut off from the rest of the area in the heart of the mountains. It gets incredibly cold at night and beautifully hot in the day. No phone signal, no car access and a very limited supply of bolo, frego, coke and gouty (all local biscuits and the lifeblood of pioneer schemes). Coffee trees scattered through the campsite along with pigs, dogs and disoriented roosters who crow all through the day and all through the night (but then we killed and ate the roosters so our vengeance was had!).

Campsite

Paddy fields

Beautiful Volobe

It’s so peaceful (apart from the roosters) and all along the local river there are secluded seating areas where you can sit and sun warmed rocks and watch the birds go by. Lunch hours are spent dozing under coffee trees and devouring more books.

The view from the square foot of phone reception in the area. It's a patch of sacred forest where local people are buried (hence it being the only patch of intact forest in the area). Has a very magical quality to it. I almost expected dinosaurs to come stumbling out at dusk!

The only major break in the peace (save for the roosters) came from round the clock partying by the local people. Winter season equals circumcision season in Madagascar, an occasion for a huge party with lots of round the clock moonshine consumption, singing and dancing. The stamina it requires to keep dancing and chanting through the village for 2 days straight is pretty incredible. The guides assured me that the spirits of the ancestors had possessed them and it was this that was giving them the strength to continue. I’m more convinced that they got their powers from the copious quantities of a local spirit of another sort…

Frog in the porch of my new spangly tent.

So, all in all, another good but hard (and healthy!) three weeks. I am now eating and relaxing as much as I can before we head back out next Tuesday.

P.S. I’ve added more pics from my holiday with Mum and Dad to my last blog entry. Enjoy them!