I made it to Madagascar. Finally. After 2 delayed flights meant an 11 hour wait in Kenya, a 10 hour wait in 'Tana, the capital of Madagascar and an overnight stay in Fort Dauphin, the nearest local town, I eventually arrived in at the bush camp in Sainte Luce. Although it's only about 50km from Fort Dauphin the roads are so bad that even in the 4x4 kacak it took almost 3 hours. The 'roads' here are just sandy tracks with huge pot holes filled with muddy water that the driver has to manoeuvre around and through at tortoise speed. The water often came up over the bonnet, and that's not to mention the river we drove through! Lots of people around, herding zebu cattle, carrying fruits and fish into town or making the long walk back home.
Our camp is amazing. We have a wooden long house where we eat and hang out - it's the coolest place to be (temperature wise, not like hip and fashionable)! There's a smoke hut where there's a fire going all day and lovely Vaija cooks all our meals - 'mufu' deep fried rice balls, sweet rice and banana bread for breakfast; rice and a different type of bean for lunch, broad beans, lentils, black eyed beans, mung beans etc; and for dinner there's more rice with either a vegetable stew, spinach, pumpkin, a delish eggy omelette and sometimes we even have spaghetti. I am very quickly going off rice! Breakfast is the worst as it is always the same - and between you and me, I'm not the biggest fan of the sweet rice. There's lots of veggies out here, 3 of us at the moment (think it's something to do with the kind of people you get running off to Madagascar to do environmental research!). The meaties sometimes get freshly caught fish or chicken. I witnessed 4 chickens being taken behind the smoke house to end their days when we had a big group of visiting staff arriving. Not my favourite moment!
There's 4 vazaha's (foreigners) in the bush at the moment, Lauren and Callum the research assistants, Ben an Australian volunteer and me. Half of the time there's Jamie too, the research coordinater, but he spends half of his time in Fort Dauphin at the head office. Then there's Josh another volunteer working on another project at the moment who'll be back soon. There's also our guides Tsaraiki, Hoby, Raziva, Babaly and Solo, and a bunch of people who turn up from time to time from other projects or headquarters.
Back to the camp. As well as the long house and smoke hut there's a store hut, a research centre, shower cubicles and long drop toilets, thankfully positioned a decent walk away! The research centre is more of a store room for valuables as it's the only lockable place, so laptops and passports are tucked in there with our projector, reams and reams of research files and books and stacks of random stuff we've got no idea what it's for. We have solar panels in camp so if the sun is shining, and it always is, we can charge phones, ipods and laptops.
There's space for all our tents hidden within the trees - still not enough shade though. (Quick note; don't ever try to go into your tent in the day #sauna #hell). The shower block is out beyond the tents, though I say 'shower' I actually mean bucket. You pull water up from the well, tuck into a corrugated tin cubicle and use half of a 2l coke bottle to pour cold water over yourself. I never thought I'd be a fan of the ol' cold shower but with the temperatures here it is heavenly!! It's a base 33 degrees and it's often very still and humid.
Out beyond the well is the nursery where we're growing trees for Project Ala. We're working with them to help build forest corridors over deforested land. Then there's the bee hives. I've no idea what's going on with them, it's some other SEED project I guess.
Oh and there's a gym too. An actual Jungle Gym. There are rings hung from a tree, parallel bars for pull ups, stumps for dips, and even barbels made from two jerry cans full of water. It's pretty impressive.
We live on the edge of a village called Ambandrika which is made of worn wooden huts with thatched palm leaf huts. It's one of the 3 hamlets that make up Sainte Luce, along with Ampanasatomboky and Maniafiafy. It's full of people who smile and say 'Salama' when you pass, children desperate for a fist bump and a call of 'Duma' ('boom'), and chickens and pigs who roam wild. We lead Club A each Wednesday (Club Azafady 'gecko') at the school where we teach them about the environment, either a specific creature, the food chain or trees etc. Mostly they love the song at the beginning and the game at the end - I've never seen such a big circle for Duck Duck Goose, (though they say Duck Duck Crocodile) or kids run so fast!! Maniafiafy is a 40 minute walk away on the coast and we go there each Saturday morning for Club A too.
My day is very busy and also very relaxed at the same time. Breakfast is at 6:30 each morning, then we'll go out on a transect for a few hours. Lunch at 12, another session of something before dinner at 6:30 and an evening transect. There are 5 sections of forest we work within (S7, S8 North, S8 Remnants, S8 South and S9) and transects (routes) through each area. To get to the forests we have to cross different bridges of varying stability levels. A lot of the time there isn't a bridge and we just forge through the water. Always a much needed refreshing dip, but slightly scary because there's a crocodile in the area...
Generally the transects are barely there trails through dense forest, but they also pass through plains and my (NOT) favourite, swamps. I'm constantly surprised that our guides can even find the right trail let alone keep us on it. While we walk the transect we look out for either lemurs or herps - frogs, chameleons, geckos and snakes, and record who we find, where we found them, their life stage and other data. Sometimes there's loads of creatures around, other times not so much.
There are 4 species of lemur in this area. The Red Collared Brown Lemur which is the only diurnal species. I had an amazing surprise on my second day here when I looked up while taking a shower to see a female Brown just cruising over the tree above me. Seriously cool. Then there's the Southern Woolly Lemur, the Fat Tailed Dwarf (or Tomasi's) Lemur and the Mouse Lemur. We wander through the transects looking everywhere hoping to spot the reflection of our head torches in their eyes. We saw a Mouse Lemur only a couple of meters away one night when we were out on the road watching a lightening storm light up the sky. He was up in a nearby tree and kinda froze when he realised he'd been spotted and waited us out while we stood staring.
When we're not out on transects there's other data to collect, for example bird watching, shark counting, collecting caterpillars, spiders and fungi, Malagash lessons and we've even been able to make mahampy bracelets. 3 women from Ambandrika came and taught us how to weave the mahampy reeds into patterns. They also make baskets and mats they sell in the markets. Shark counting is a fun one. We sit outside on the road under a tree and play Bananagrams (world's best game by the way) until the fishermen start returning with their catch. Then we try and photograph them and collect information about the species they have caught. My personal favourite activity is when we go out in pirogues, basic dug out canoes. The other day we paddled along the river mouth past the mangroves and down to the sea looking for signs of mosquito net fishing. It was only when we got back a couple of hours later that Hoby said 'you do realise they do the fishing at night..?' Stellar. But it was just incredible paddling in such a stunning place where the water is so still and the mangroves give way to the mountains in the distance.
When we're not scurrying around somewhere there's time to relax. In the middle of the day it's too hot to do anything much so we laze around in the long house talking, playing Bananagrams, attempting to solve crosswords, listening to music and dozing. It's not so comfortable to lie on the long wooden benches for long so I like to retreat to one of the hammocks hidden under leafy trees and palms where there's always a cool breeze.
I'm back in Fort Dauphin for the next few days which means I can connect to civilisation once more. Though I have enjoyed being off grid it is nice to connect to home, and you don't realise how much you depend on google until it's not there. Though saying I'm reconnected, it's a 40 minute walk and the power in the whole town has been out all day so I ended up sitting in an empty cafe a few hours before I was meeting people for lunch, completely unprepared. But now I can finally upload this - I've been writing it in instalments for the last week.
Fort Dauphin life is very different from the bush. I can finally buy food that is not rice and drink things that aren't water. There's even, get ready for this, a real toilet, with a flush! The town itself is mad. Tiny ramshackle shelters on the side of the road act as stalls with fruits and beans and clothes, interspersed with houses and wobbly alleyways. The markets are busy and bustling selling absolutely everything, and there's lots of nice places to eat. Last night we went to Menuire, a tiki bar type place for incredible vegetable wraps and cocktails. The centre is paved and tuk tuks zip around there, while retro taxis can take you further onto the sandy roads. You do not want to be on the streets at night so we'll get a bumpy old car back after dinner and hope they've understood enough to get us to the right place.
I've got one more day here before we head back to the bush for another 2 weeks. Halfway through my stay already!
