Miora

 

 Out of the Success Stories we’ve come up with, there is one talking about community managed ecotourism sites that have gotten started during the last few years.  The specific example one of the field agents took was a very new site that was just inaugurated in July.  Since it’s so new, there aren’t any photos, and most of the story is about how the financing was set up.  I thought that before finalizing this particular story, it might be useful for me to go test it out – sort of a tourist perspective as to whether the project is really a success.  So, it was helpful to work to get photos to add to the SS, and awesome for me to do a hike for free.  It’s a 17km circuit just outside Andringitra National Park, and climbs up through rainforest (which is not a national protected area, but is managed by the surrounding communities as part of a transfert de gestion (management transfer) process that encourages communities to conserve their forest areas), continues past a natural pool, up above the treeline, peaking just above 2000 meters before descending back down.  There’s a campsite after the descent starts, and overall it was a fantastic hike!  I saw lemurs, a chameleon, some cool bugs, cute lizards, and amazing panoramic views.  I was pretty hard though – hiking up steep terrain that goes up and down a lot carrying a 20lb pack is hard work!   My muscles were satisfyingly sore for the next day or two.  Overall, the whole ecotourism circuit is really well set up, and they’re got something very special to share with tourists and thus generate income.  However, it hasn’t been marketed, and nobody knows it’s there.  The directors of it say it’s a question of no tourists – they’re all on their way to Andringitra.  When I asked if they’ve distributed all of the brochures they have at tourism centers or anything though, they said no.  I’ve passed on the information to people here at work, and hopefully they’ll be able to help out a bit with spreading the word.  Really, I liked this circuit better than my visit to Ranomafana, and it was cheaper too!

notice the clouds…beneath me

this guy was really cool, just walking along right by the path. you could see his little 2 pronged feet and his rotating eyes - seemed weird to me he wasn't in a tree though...

these guys are so friggin' cute!

long tail!

ready to jump

not a madagascar hissing cockroack. just a giant cockroach. i tried to let him crawl on my hand, but he was scared.

someone call the po-lice! this rolly polly is on steroids!

just some perspective to show how big he was

sunset from up top

these lizards are all over the place, in varying sizes

Wild Silk

Ambalavao has various wild silk shops.  The one I visited is part of a women’s foundation, providing work to single women and widows.  The process of making silk was explained from start to finish – it’s really a lot of work, and it now makes sense to me that wild silk is so expensive.

silkworms being raised (there are also wild ones nearby)

silk is extracted from these cocoons and then boiled for a few days

spinning the boiled product into threads

weaving it into products (dyes are all natural, and come from various flowers, leaves, and barks)

Ambalavao

 

In the last 2 weeks, I’ve now been to Ambalavao, a town about 45km South of Fianar, 3 times.  The first was an overnight stay with work to watch a farmer training.  The other two times have been with Maya for the afternoon, and then passing through on the way home from Miora.  I rather like it as a city, because it’s small compared to Fianar, but there are still things to see and people out and about.  From a tourist standpoint, there are 3 things of particular interest : the largest zébu market in (i think) the entire country (at LEAST in the region), an artisan paper factory, and a couple of artisan wild silk workshops.  

Here are the photos I took during my visit to the paper factory:

the plant used to make paper before it’s processed

woman pounding the soaked plant product into a pulp

taking shape in a frame

flowers are added

paper is dried in the sun (both before and after flowers i think)

final products – hanging decorations, cards, albums etc.

A couple of reflections

I have noticed a few positive changes in my general attitudes towards two specific things since arriving here.  On Friday, Karen’s daughter Maya needed to be picked up in Ambalavao after spending a few days with a friend, so Karen suggested I could go along and Maya could show me around the town a little bit.  Even though she’s only 16, Maya has a maturity beyond her years (certainly by american standards), and she has immense amounts of infomation to offer regarding life here.  Really, their entire family sets an example that makes me think maybe it wouldn’t really be so awful to start one of my own someday.  They function so well as a family unit, and are testimony that life doesn’t have to get boring once you have kids.  They’ve traveled all over the place together, the kids have had experiences that give them a global perspective with which to regard their own lives, and there is just so much joy between the 4 of them.  Their family creates happiness amongst themselves rather than a sense of burden, which is what I so often see back home.  Of course, the question for me with kids is: raising them in the US, at this point, how does one manage to get them out of the track of looking forward to the the next playstation game, craving all of the unneccessary toys, gadgets and possessions that most of their peers at school don’t cease to talk about ?   I sort of feel like home schooling might be the only option.  There are still an untold number of questions and apprehensions I have about the logistics of raising non-brats, but I am coming around to the fact that having children could, in fact, make my life better rather than being the end of all adventerous spirit and fun-having.

Also, I am incrediblly glad that I was able to come to Madagascar, rather than France, for my internship.  Before I left the states I seemed to have developed quite a cynical, even fatalistic attitude towards the world in general, and development/international aide specifically.  I distinctly recall a conversation in the car with Patrick, where I was lamenting the state of the world, counting off episodes of genecide, environmental destruction, political unfairness, and the pursuit of multinational corporations to adulterate the world for their own benefit.  After a few of the classes at UW that I took, I was beginning to wonder why I was even bothering to study what seem like such insurmountable problems.  I felt that the world had gone so far in the wrong direction that there is nothing to be done, especially due to the power and investment of all the multinationals.  It seemed hopeless.

Now, I still think that the multinationals are one of the biggest barriers to effecting change in developing countries (certainly when it comes to labor), as well as to many problems back home.  I still think that there are too many problems and hardships for the global population for us ever to be able to fix them all.  I still don’t have much faith in the World Bank and the IMF to do a good job of helping poor countries develop responsible and sensible goals.  But, there is huge value in much of the work being done in developing countries.  At ERI, many of the field agents despair that despite all of their hard work, the forest corridor will continue getting narrower, and their children will likely not be able to go for a hike in it to see the biodiverse richness within it.  However, in many of the small villages I’ve visited with work, individual people are thankful for ERI’s support.  Many of them have better food security and nutrition, due to the introduction of off season crops like sweet potatoes and better rice cultivating techniques.  Women have been introduced to vetiver, a kind of grass they can weave into baskets and bags to sell.  Community ecotourism projects have gotten off the ground, which benefit both the environment and the communities.  Then I look at the Project to Save the Old City.  Its scale is miniscule compared to government or foundation financed projects, but it has bettered the lives of SO many regular people !  One latrine at a time, one roof at a time, the residents of the old city have seen a huge improvement in shelter and sanitation in the last 10 years, as well as a sense of self-empowerment from helping with building, and gradually paying back half of what is spent on these projects.  Improvements have thus drawn more tourists into the Old City, who inevitably buy things, thus increasing livelihoods that much more.  It was started by one person.  So, even if the human race is still on its way out whether it be due to global warming, nuclear war, or a global bird flu epidemic, there’s so much good that can be/is being done.  It’s not pointless to try, because even if you can’t fix the world’s problems, you can fix a family’s problems, or a neighborhood’s.  I suppose this all sounds rather obvious, but I have to say that in some of my reading, watching and discussing the past year, I lost some perspective in the confines of the academic world and gave into the cynicism that’s so easy to embrace.  

Overall, I just feel like I’m in a very good place right now.  I’m really enjoying my time here, treasuring the friendships I’ve been blessed with, and also really looking forward to coming home. I can’t wait to see Patrick, my family, and my friends.  Somehow though, these 2 emotions aren’t getting in each other’s way.  I’m simultaneously having a great time and looking forward to coming home.  I feel calm, balanced, and happy.

 

Playing catchup

I’ve been out of the office, working, or not having internet at work quite a bit the last few weeks, so there are a few different excursions to detail.  First off, I had a little adventure after getting back from Ifaty.  During the Success Stories Workshop, it was decided that the Tuesday after I got back from Ifaty (which was a Monday), I would take the train to Tolongoina to meet up with Bruno, who would take me to Ikongo en moto, and I would return to Fianar on the train on Wednesday.  Getting back late on Monday, I wasn’t able to check at the office to see if anything had changed, so I got up at 5AM on Tuesday to catch the train (after being in a taxi-brousse for 12 hours from Toliara on Monday…).  I got off at Tolongoina, and Bruno wasn’t at the station.  Having been to Tolongoina before, I walked over to the Maison Koloharena to ask if Bruno was around.  They said, “Oh, he went to Ikongo yesterday!”.  A guy there helped me find a pickup truck full of people that was driving to Ikongo, and off I went to meet him.  It took like 3 hours because the road is so bad.  I dropped my stuff off at the (1) hotel there, and headed to the maison KH in Ikongo to look for Bruno.  There, I inquired after his whereabouts again, and was told he went back to Fianarantsoa.  Great.  There not being transportation to much of anywhere till the next morning, I walked around town, met the Peace Corps volunteer there, and had a good crayfish dinner at the hotel.  At 5AM the next morning, I caught a taxi-brousse back to Fianar, which took like 11 hours despite the short distance.  The duration was due to the bad state of the road (until getting to the RN7), picking up/dropping off people, and a driver switch at a town where the two drivers seemed to be arguing about something for like half an hour.  It was all rather tiring and a bit annoying to have made the trip for nothing, but it was pretty there, and I made the best of it.  If nothing else, it made me realize that I really do feel comfortable here – I was able to figure out how to deal with everything on my own without any problems.

A few pictures of my short séjour in Ikongo:

 

countryside looking down towards Ikongo - beautiful region, but really fraught with deforestation...

 

the hotel I stayed at in Ikongo, and Schlofo, the owner's son who was in charge of showing me around

 

crayfish is abundant in the Ikongo region. I made a huge mess trying to eat this, but it tasted damned good!

 

people seem to get a kick out of this stuff, so yet another picture of a bathroom (at the hotel)

Fostering Dependence

During the lunch stop of the taxi-brousse ride from Toliara back to Fianar, I witnessed a sad phenomenon.  I was just standing outside, since I had snacks and didn’t want to eat at a hotely, and there was a man and his son standing next to the vehicle.  The kid was maybe 3 years old, although it’s hard to judge.  The man said to the child, “Bonjour, Madame”, trying to teach him how to say hello to foreigners in French.  It was kind of cute, and I though, “Oh good, teaching kids things in another language…that’s good.”.  I just smiled and maybe said bonjour.  However, I was quite dismayed to hear the next phrase he decided to teach the little kid for future run-ins with white people:  ”Donnez-moi l’argent, madame.”  (Give me money, Madame)  Rather than teaching his child a general language skill, or something useful, he was teaching his child how to beg from white people.  These people weren’t starving.   It was just a sad display of the attitude that many Malagasy people seem to have about vazahas.

There are plenty of children who beg in Fianar.  Leaving the grocery store there are always at least 2 that chase me for half a block before giving up.  It’s hard to tell their actual situations of course, but I’m convinced that many of them have been trained to beg out of habit rather than true need.  Why does this happen?  It seems that an attitude of dependency has permeated this country, and that many people learn to ask vazahas for help rather than learn how to help themselves.  I suppose one could look at the father teaching his child to beg as sort of a micro-view of the larger picture of development in general.  At the micro level, parents are teaching their children to beg from vazahas.  At the macro level, NGOs come and go, help with certain projects, but when they leave, it’s up to the Malagasy people and government to maintain sanitation or environmental standards (or whatever an organization has helped with).  The government definitely doesn’t always pick up the slack – after the FCE (train) rehabilitation project, the government has not made efforts to maintain it (or privatize it, another option).  There’s a dredge sitting in the port of Mananjary (maybe 40km from Manakara, but closer than that I think) that was bought with something like $100,000 of aide money with the aim of getting the port of Manakara up and running again.  The port in conjunction with the railway could be a very real way for people living between Fianar and the coast of Manakara to transport goods (thus helping income, food security, and general livelihoods), but the port is currently all but out of commission.  The dredge could get things moving, but it’s just been sitting in Mananjary apparently stuck in some sort of government/bureaucracy limbo, not helping anyone.

I’ve gone around in kind of a circle with this, but mostly I just hate to see a young generation that thinks rich white people are going to help them, and that it’s ok to just rely on that belief.

Brief thoughts about excrement

Upon arrival in Madagascar, general bathroom habits had to make a big change. My gut feeling about using a pit latrine was nervousness about missing the hole and making a big mess. Luckily, as long as your feet match the footplates, everything goes where it should, so any feelings of apprehension were soon gone. Another thing to note about Madagascar is that really, everywhere is a toilet. It’s not just men that pee in alleys here. It’s also a common site to see men just peeing on the side of the road without searching for properly camouflaging bushes. Many beaches (Manakara included, but not the beach I vacationed at) are not even safe to walk on barefoot for those wanting to avoid some sort of parasitic worm found in the sand due to locals treating the beach as a public toilet. I have read that in some areas (mostly coastal?) it is fady (culturally taboo – it’s also fady to wear red in sight of water in the Manakara area, eat pork in many places, or point directly at some monuments) to bury feces. This creates huge sanitation problems where latrines of some sort aren’t available.

In many village areas, there are long drop pit latrines (as opposed to composting). The pits are extremely deep, and strike me as pretty labor intensive to construct. They’re often plagued by flies, and I’m not sure what ultimately happens to the waste, or how it breaks down. It’s sure that they are by no means cement lined, and therefore I’d imagine they pose a problem with groundwater depending on their location.

Of course, many houses, businesses (including my office), and government buildings have Western, flush toilets as well (used mostly by the upper class and foreigners I’d imagine). Despite this being more sanitary, during the dry season there gets to be a water shortage in many places. The tap up in the Old City that gets turned on twice a day for everyone to fill up their buckets has only been available once a day lately because water’s starting to run short (the wet season starts soon). With this shortage in mind, it seems pretty silly to have flushing toilets. I suppose I could say the same for Arizona – if water’s going to run out at some point, why not revamp the waste disposal system?

At my own house, we have a composting latrine. Solid waste goes in the hole, which is covered by a plug. Urine drains out in front of you and exits into a soak pit that I believe also contains sawdust and ashes. Once the pit is full, it’ll be left to sit for awhile, and will eventually compost. Since it’s dry, it doesn’t take nearly as long as if both solid and liquid waste were in the same pit. Toilet paper will compost with the feces too. This latrine is not smelly at all (before I got here I was picturing something more like a smelly outhouse). It seems like about as environmentally friendly a shit processing system as could be found.

I came across this book review on slate.com today. The energy we put into disposing of excrement in the Western world is astronomical, as is the damage it does to the environment and human health. The picture painted is sort of an end of the world caused by poop scenario, but it really is something to think about. I ask myself, would it be realistic for households in the US to start using things like composting latrines instead of toilets? Perhaps jobs could be created when said pits need to be emptied. Surely the cost of hiring someone to pick up our composted human manure would be balanced by the money not spent on water for conventional toilets as well as an environmental credit of cleaner water that needs less treatment before hitting the tap.

Somebody tell Obama to put dealing with the financial crisis on hold and run with this. Joe the Plumber can become Joe the Latrine Emptier. This is huge.

I can’t believe Colin Powell endorsed Obama!

I’ve gotta say, things are looking better and better for Obama.  From afar, it’s sometimes hard to judge how things are really going, but when people like Colin Powell and Ken Adleman endorse Barack, it’s hard to refute – things are going well.  Even conservative republicans think that McCain has gone off the deep end, evidenced by first and foremost, his VP pick, but also his reactions to the financial crisis, as well as his combative and negative advertisements.  Hell, a while back, even Karl Rove thought McCain had gone too far in his attacks of Obama!

I just finished the book Dreams From My Father, that Obama wrote before he was in the spotlight.  I was already obviously a supporter, but after reading that book I think that not only will Obama be a good president, but that he will go down in history as one of the greats.  For any élitism that the right accuses him/the left of, Obama has had real experience with the least among us.  Rather than immediately starting law school as a (relative) youth, he worked on the South Side of Chicago in some of the worst neighborhoods you can imagine.  He also witnessed extreme poverty in Indonesia, and discovered his roots in Kenya.  If this guy isn’t real (as much as a politician can be), I don’t know who is!  

I can just taste the excitement in the air.  It’s like the end of an era.  Even though all of America’s problems won’t immediately just dissipate (the financial crisis might never be resolved it seems), if Obama is elected president, at minimum the winds will change, and possibilities of amelioration will exist.  I’m missing the excitement, and especially the humor, but talking with Gabe and Karen I get my political high horse fix.  If he wins, Karen’s having a party for all who voted for him (or wanted to, i.e.  the French people around here).  If not, she has given strict instructions for nobody to come near her for the entire day.  

Hopefully, Michigan won’t need to open the absentee ballots to see what’s inside – I’m pretty confident that the Malagasy postal system will not deliver mine in time (I sent it yesterday, as it arrived last Friday).  If it doesn’t arrive by the 3rd, I’ll do the federal online write-in, but we all know that the popular vote counts for jack.

Also, I went shopping at the used clothing market today for a Sarah Palin outfit.  I was looking for some sort of a red skirt suit, which I suppose will make me imitating Tina Fey imitating Sarah Palin, but whatever.  I found a hideous red skirt, but no blazer.  Might have to go with black.  The biggest challenge is going to be learning how to pile hair that’s never been in anything besides a ponytail on top of my head and getting it to stay there.

Saturday Night Live: Update: Palin Rap

how i wish my internet was fast enough to see this…the transcript was even funny on it’s own though!

more about "Saturday Night Live: Update: Palin Rap", posted with vodpod

Mini Vaca in Ifaty

Last week Sophie and I took a trip to Ifaty.  It was a fantastic substitute for going to Morondava.  We left on Wednesday evening, equipped with sunscreen, snorkels, books, and cards.  We got to the taxi brousse station at 5 :30 to load our bags, but of course didn’t leave until like 7 :30.  The brousse wasn’t all the way full, and Sophie and I had the seats behind the driver, which have a little more legroom.  Stopping in various towns along the way to add/drop people, things seemed to be going fine.   An hour or so past Fianar, the road is super straight, which makes trying to doze a little easier.  However, around 3AM, a few hours short of Tulear (the city on the coast we were going to), we stopped.  Everyone got out, and there seemed to be a problem, although I couldn’t quite ascertain what it was.  Sophie explained we had run out of gas.  What to do…  3 other taxi brousses stopped where we were at as well to rest a little and to make sure they arrived in Tulear when it was light out.   The solution was that each of these already full taxi-brousses took a few of us, making for a very cramped end of the trip.  Once we got to Toliara, we took a taxi to the north brousse station there, and hopped into one of the coastal taxi-brousses for the hour or so ride to Ifaty.  Because the road is very bad and sandy along the coast, the brousses are more like trucks/buses, and are even more cramped than regular taxi-brousses.  Along the way we stopped once for the driver to change the tire. 

The hotel we chose was located North of Ifaty near the small town of Mangily, and was about a kilometer away from the main road.  We didn’t really know what to expect of the hotel, as it was cheap, but we were pleasantly surprised.  We had our own bungalow with 2 beds, and the bathroom and shower were only like 20 feet away.  The hotel was on the ocean, with a beautiful, clean, unbusy beach just underneath. 

 

looking down from the hotel

 

After such a long ride, we went down to the beach to relax and play in the water, and generally had a lazy day.  3 guys approached us introducing themselves as pirogue guides/captains asking us if we’d like to do a pirogue trip.  The price seemed good, so we said we’d do it the next morning.  A  fishing pirogue (dugout canoe) landed on the beach and Sophie wandered over to see what they had.  When she saw that they had caught a smallish lobster and only wanted 5000 Ar for it, she immediately bought it and asked the hotel to cook it up for us at dinner time.  I was not super in favor of getting it, as it still had eggs on it’s tail and therefore probably shouldn’t have been caught in the first place. 

i am going to environmentalist hell

The owner of the hotel confirmed that it was forbidden to catch lobsters at the moment because of breeding, but since it was there they agreed to cook it for us as an appetizer at dinner (it wasn’t really that big).

....it was pretty damned good though...

The restaurant at the hotel had lots of great seafood, and Gaston, the barman arranged the napkins in the glasses to look like birds.  On the menu one night was this little jeu de mot :

this is only going to be funny to francophiles... basically though, mister is pronounced the same as mystère, which means mystery. pêcher is fisherman. so it's like a mystery dish where you get a mix of whatever was caught.

 Gaston told us that the hotel did pirogue trips as well, and we decided to ask him if the guys we talked to in the morning were legit.  The answer was maybe.  It sounded like there are a lot of guys with pirogues that don’t necessarily know the sea that well, or that are running a scam to steal cameras etc.  We immediatley decided to take Gaston’s offer, as it was much more secure.  There’s an organization called Reef Doctor that is rehabilitating part of the reef in the lagon there, and there’s a protected marine reserve where you can snorkel. 

 

canale de mozambique sunset

 

i told you i would use my hammock in madagascar - not such a silly purchase? :)

The pirogue trip was excellent.  We first sailed around for a little while, and then made our way over to the reef area.  I jumped right in and snorkeled around for awhile looking at the fish, but Sophie was too scared.  She doesn’t really swim, and even with a life jacket chickened out. 

the water was deep but clear. the coral was pretty bland, but there were many schools of tropical fish, and a funny fish that was the shape of a ruler. i want to say needlefish or something looking back to my nature program memories.

 

here you can see how the mast of sailing pirogues is at a 45º angle to the mast rather than 90 like most sailboats back home. to 'come about', you just lift up the sail and put it on the other side of you. for a rudder, a guy sits on the back with a paddle.

They took us over to the fishing village of Ifaty, and gave us a tour of town, and then we headed down the beach aways to a nice clean area (around the village the beach was pretty gross),  and they cooked a picnic of fresh grilled fish, rice, and bananas.  It was delicious.  After eating, we discovered that one of the pretty shells we had collected was escaping (didn’t realize there was still an animal in it..), so we took it down to the water.

our picnic fresh fish lunch

 

patrick sure had good balance...i'd have fallen in after about 20 seconds of sitting like that, but he rode there most of the trip.

 

my shell collection, complete with (i think?) a shark's tooth.

 

he looks just like sandpipers back home...

 

don't you guys have your furnaces on in MI and WI???

 

 

 

 

The next day, we took a zebu cart to the Reniala reserve on the edge of Mangily.  We took a guided 2 hour walk through it, and although it was too hot to see very many birds, the baobabs there were absolutely awesome !  There were tons of them, and they’re all different shapes.  The biggest one is around 1300 years old !  They grow very slowly, so even smallish ones are easily 1 or 2 hundred years old.  There’s an area where there are a few tortises, and we also saw lots of little lizards, as well as a snake.

 

eventually these guys will likely grow together

if you look to this one's right, you'll see why they call it the coffeepot baobab.

 

 

finally - proof that they're another species - with latin name underneath to boot!

 

the snake we saw

at least sophie can't eat this one...

 

 

honestly, we could just about have walked faster - but that would have been less fun.

 The last night at La Voile Rouge (the name of our hotel, and also the hotel pirogue), the owners organized a traditional music concert during dinner.  The girls voices were so strong and loud!  If I tried to sing like them, I’d have nodes after half a song.  I have a short video clip that I can’t figure out how to format right to post, so hopefully I can get that up later.  The instruments were really simple.  The bass was square and had only one string (all the songs were in the same key consequently), there was one modern guitar, and a smaller square traditional guitar, and a djembe-type drum.

 

traditional (southern) malagasy music at La Voile Rouge

 

their instruments

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last day of the trip we spent in Toliara so that we could leave early from there on Monday to come back home.  Toliara was HOT !  Even though it’s on the sea, within the town there’s not always a breeze, and the sun was very strong.  It’s flat, so there are pousse pousses (rickshaws) everywhere.  Despite my general aversion to taking them (if someone can run pulling me in a pousse pousse, it means wherever we’re going I could easily walk), we took them a few times at Sophie’s request.  I would never use one alone, as I think I would just feel too colonial.

there are pousse pousses all over the place in Toliara - practical since it's flat.

at the fish market in tulear, sophie bought a dried octopus. there were flies everywhere...i thought it was pretty gross.

The ride back was uneventful, but it was really nice to do the trip during the day and see the countryside.  As soon as you get away from the coast, everything is very dry and not that vegetated other than grass and the occasional small baobab or other tree.  It seems very isolated, and for a good few hours it just seemed we were in the middle of nowhere. 

 

countryside between Toliara and Isalo

Continuing north, we passed through Isalo National Park, where it was still dry, but there were intersting rocky formations.  After Isalo, things start getting hilly, and the terrain gradually morphs into that of the Haut Plateau region of Fianar.  Other than the driver changing the tire at one of our stops, all went very smoothly for the trip home.   Arriving back in the Old City, it didn’t take me too long to feel relaxed after such a long ride.  However, I wasn’t really looking that forward to getting up at 5 to head down to the train station in the morning to head off on the field visit that we scheduled during the success stories workshop.