I saw a wild giraffe today. Kind of. Actually it was more like a brown blob in the distance... but definitely a giraffe. I just arrived back in Nairobi after a week long research related trip to the coastal region of Kenya and will likely be going back to that area as it holds a promising study site for my work. I have found that all of the people I have contacted have been extremely accomodating and willing to help. And my potential future accomodation lies about a one minute walk from the ocean and very near a marine park that apparently boasts good snorkelling conditions. Field work is rough...

Last weekend on the way to the coast our little research team (consisting of a Canadian prof, two student research assistants, and myself) stopped for two days in a village called Kisayani where my professor and his assistant are doing some follow up research on a community water project that was implemented about ten years ago. I heard of this project about four years ago when it was presented as a case study in an undergrad environmental assessment course, so it was extremely interesting to see it in person. The project involved a water diversion from a natural spring to feed a few very dry villages with fresh water. Two local women took us to see the beginning of the pipeline at the mouth of the spring and we were surprised to find a new pipeline system currently being built to service another town. The new pipes are almost double the diameter of the ones currently there, and so serious concerns about the sustainability of the water supply for the original communities have been raised. The local women were also quite concerned about keeping adequate distance between themselves and a large hole in the ground which they say is the home of a snake so large that you can't even take a picture of it.

I've decided that any spelling and grammar fanatic could find plenty of work in this country. Signs and menus are more often than not written in English, and provide me with a more or less endless source of amusement. Perhaps in the morning I could get some scrumbled eggs from the shoping centre. For a treat, I can get some healthy sauce on top of my ice cream. According to my official government issued research permit, I am from the Univesity of Menitoba. Perhaps my favorite - not so much lacking in spelling as in logic - is a notice posted in the lobby of a research institute reading 'in case of fire, yell FIRE! FIRE! and then run a fast as possible towards the incident.'

Until next time!

A New Adventure

After a long journey, I have arrived safely in Nairobi - the starting destination of my new adventure. My first experience of the city was being stuck in morning rushhour traffic and being quite impressed at how close vehicles could get without actually hitting one another. The guest house I am staying at is really quite quaint, with lots of space, trees, and birds. And I've really loved waking up to crowing roosters again.

My first day was quite productive. I picked up a cell phone that was waiting for me at a nearby office, got my research permit from a masters student from the University of Nairobi, and had lunch with a professor and his colleagues. On my second day, my new friend, a lovely Kenyan girl, gave me a tour of the area around my guest house and downtown Nairobi, and taught me how to navigate the city by matatu - the minibuses used for public transit. So now I should be set for Monday, the first real day of my research work!

More to come soon!

Yet Another Epic Gasy Road Trip

Originally, Yvon and my trip to Antananarivo, the capital city of Madagascar was supposed to take about 10 or 12 days round trip. 23 days later, I have finally arrived back in Fort Dauphin.

Going to Tana was exhausting but in retrospect, smooth sailing and reasonably quick. Two days and two nights on a taxi-brousse headed up the middle of the country. At one point I was sharing a seat with four men, a woman who smelled like sour milk, and a chicken.

I enjoyed the capital city more this time around, perhaps because after eating rice, rice, and more rice for nine months, Indian food, pizza, and ice cream seemed like a real treat. As I was sipping a chai latte and eating a chocolate cookie at The Cookie Shop, a north american style coffee shop, I almost forgot that I was in Madagascar. A bit strange.

The 50th anniversary of Madagascar's independance day was celebrated while we were there. The streets were filled with temporary markets, carnival games, and food booths. We went to watch the fireworks, but got caught up in a bottle neck of people trying to get closer. We spent most of the show trying not to get trampled, and then helping the husband of a fainted pregnant woman to put her on a motorbike and push her out of the crowd.

The trip home is the truly epic part of this story. Nine days, a train, 7 taxi-brousses, and a mail truck later we traveled the 900km. Being that there was no direct brousse to Fort Dauphin on the Friday we decided to head down the east coast. A train ride, on which I saved the life of a drunk man who came dangerously close to teetering head first onto the tracks, took us through some beautiful scenery to the coast town of Manakara where we got mobbed by crazy pousse pousse drivers and waited for a taxi brousse headed south. We managed to find one early the next morning that took us to the village of Vangaindrano where we spent time with some of Yvon's family who he had never met while we waited for yet another brousse. It was a tiny village, where apparently a vazaha had visited about 10 years ago, but a foreigner hasn't been seen since. Needless to say, I was the main attraction at the village soccer game that evening.

The next morning we found another taxi brousse headed south to the village of Manambondro where we were told that there were no taxi-brousses going any further south, but there are always 4x4s willing to take passengers. We spent the evening and the entire following day sitting by the road with our luggage waiting for a car to drive by. Not a single one. We tried hiring two guys to take us on their motorbikes 70km to a village where there might have been a taxi-brousse, but they were asking a ridiculous amount of money (vazaha price). The next day, we decided to head back to Vangaindrano and then to Farafangana. We couldn't wait any longer for a car that might never come in a village with no cell reception or any other communication with the outside world.

In the end, we decided that we would have to go all the way back to Fianarantsoa and south through the center of the country. In all, a detour of about 600km. The brousse that took us from Farafangana to Fianara arrived at 2:30am so we slept in the car in the station. The bus from Tana passed by but was jam packed full, but we were told that the post office had a truck going directly to Fort Dauphin that morning. The post worker said he would be happy to pick us up, but only from Ihosy (200km south) as he was afraid to take passengers in the company truck past the gendarme check stops. After a brousse ride to Ihosy, the driver again said he would be happy to give us a lift, but only after we took a taxi out of town past one more gendarme checkstop (note that the gendarme here aren't the scary variety that one often thinks of when in Africa... although perhaps still somewhat corrupt. Numerous times I saw brousse drivers slip gendarme bribes to be allowed to continue with their over capacity cars through checkstops). We traveled in the back of the truck with the mail, or more accurately, on the mail for the remainder of the afternoon.

The Chariot

We stopped in a small village just after dark. Apparently a taxi brousse had been attacked by bandits or zebu rustlers a few days previously, so no one was driving through the night. I'm half convinced this was only rumours... I never once felt at all unsafe. The next day we set out again and traveled until mid-afternoon when the post truck broke down in another middle-of-nowhere village. I think I shed a few tears at this point, due to a combination of being tired, a little bit ill, and having to wear the same pair of underwear for three days. Luckily for us, Yvon's grandparents live in the village so we had a place to visit. They were surprised and happy to see us, and I was given the gift of a live chicken. We were informed that the truck had been fixed and would be ready to head out again at 4am. After pushing it up and down the road for 1.5 hours in the wee hours of the morning, we managed to get it jump started and after a few more hours finally arrived back to Fort Dauphin.

Me and my chicken

If you feel in need of a grand adventure, I highly recommend Madagascar:)

See you in Canada in a couple weeks.

Going to Winnipeg...

The last month and a half was spent in the bush village of St. Luce, where I was helping out with the organization's conservation programme. We spent part of our time there camping on a narrow penisula bordered by a river on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other. Among other things, we searched for lemurs, amphibians, and reptiles, and saved an endangered species of palm. Previously, there had been only 50 Dypsis stlucii individuals left in the entire world, there are now an additional 523.

The boys and I also tried our luck fishing in the river (which has had numerous crocodile sightings). We used a significant sized chunk of chicken intestine as bait, convinced we were going to catch a big enough fish to feed everyone on camp. We didn't catch any fish, but had one bite that broke the line and almost pulled Martin into the river (okay, slight exaggeration). But you can't tell us we didn't almost catch a crocodile!

I'm back in Fort Dauphin at the moment, but will likely be heading out this week for one last epic adventure that is the taxi-brousse system of Madagascar. Three days and two nights driving up the east coast to the Capital city of Antananarivo. Stories to come.

In other news, I have decided to return to Canada a bit earlier than expected. I will be home on the 1st of August and shortly after will be moving to Winnipeg (yup, going to Winnipeg...) to start a Masters degree program at the University of Manitoba. I'm already beginning to dread the inevitable reverse culture shock of returning to the 'developed' world, especially when I'm leaving a place that I have such a deep love for. But it will be good to see friends and family again.

Holiday in Madagascar

Having mom here in Madagascar has reminded how completely strange this place is, and yet how completely normal it has become.



For example, a few days ago I heard one of the bungalow/restaurant staff members talking to mom. When I asked her what he had said... "Oh, he just needed to get past our bathroom so he could get some chicken." As she finished telling me this, we heard the unmistakeable sound of a squawking chicken before it meets death. Mom had expected him to go to a freezer and pull out some frozen chicken. When the sound registered we looked out to see the beginnings of our fresh chicken soup lying dead beneath our window, and proceeded to laugh to the point of tears.

We spent part of the morning wandering through the market looking through the 'frip'... piles of second, third, or possibly even fourth or fifth hand clothing that were likely Value Village and Salvation Army rejects. The skill of bargaining has become very useful here, and since mom has been here we have negotiated decent prices for a flannel bush shirt, a pair of flip flops, a variety of fruit, and a three foot long tuna.



Mom had flashbacks of her childhood when seeing the overwhelming popularity of the game of marbles among the kids here. However, the feelings of nostalgia only went so far; we've also seen a kid carrying a leashed chicken on his head with a younger sibling following behind holding the leash in her teeth, boys playing soccer around their herd of goats, and I've even seen kids climbing on the bloody head of a zebu. Some games just don't translate.



Mom has also been introduced to the endurance test that is a Malagasy road trip. I knew she she was becoming accustomed to it when on the road back from Andohahela National Park she groaned when seeing a sign saying Fort Dauphin was still 22km ahead of us. At home, we could cover 22km in a mere 10 minutes. Here, I'd say we'd be doing well if we covered 3km in 10 minutes. And a road trip wouldn't be complete without getting stuck in the mud, having to scout out a partially collapsed bridge, or having to walk multiple kilometres around sections of impassable roads.

It has been a great holiday for both of us, and time has slipped by very quickly. Mom's flight is "scheduled" to leave tomorrow morning, although 'schedule' is a loose term when talking about Air Mad. Soava dia!

Sometimes, Being Robbed Has Its Upsides

In my last post, I mentioned the unfortunate robbery at my little house. In a somewhat amusing turn of events, I have recovered my computer. I returned to the police station to pick up my declaration in order to submit my insurance claim, only to find my computer sitting behind the commissioner's desk. I was amazed, mahagaga even, as the competency of the authorities was previously questioned by all. Nice work team. The amusing part of this story goes like this. Pre-robbery, the computer was suffering from some old-age health issues. The backlighting worked only some of the time, so more often than not I had to sit with my back to a window in order to see what I was doing. It turns out the thieves reconfigured the computer, fixed the backlighting, and installed updated versions of everything. So among other things, I now have Office 2007 as opposed to 2003. It works better than it ever has before. Love it. Now I'm just waiting for my stolen tin bowls to be transformed into fine china.

Mom has been in town for over a week already. We've been staying in the Dadamanga Bungalow on the beach - a bizarre little oasis of luxury that includes daily hot showers. Okay, maybe I'm just extremely easy to please. We also went on a two day bush excursion and entered the wonderful world of tents, long drop toilets, and rice and beans. Even though it was the first time in a tent for mom in 25 years and likely the last for the next 25 years, we both thoroughly enjoyed the croc hunt in a pirogue, the forest walk, and the drive through the countryside. We are now sitting in our cozy little bungalow waiting for the rainy day to pass so we can get out to the lemur reserve.

Misy Vaovao

It seems like a lot has happened in the last few weeks.

The cruise ship day was a bit of a flop. It was extremely strange to see so many very obese, very demanding white people wandering the streets of Fort Dauphin. I had forgotten how large Western culture is. Sadly, it was a case of the rich get richer. Fort Dauphin isn't what you would call a typical cruise port. For one, there isn't really anything to see. A lot of them just went straight to the one upscale hotel, had drinks, and went straight back to the port. At least the taxi drivers had a good day.

My English teaching days have finished... a bit of a relief I have to admit. I spent the last couple weeks in the bush village of St. Luce. I was doing some monitoring work where fast growing tree species were planted to serve as a source of firewood for the village in the future. I love the bush! There is nothing better than a night sky in rural Madagascar or waking up to the sound of frogs and roosters.

A Peace Corps volunteer is living in St. Luce and is currently working on a bee project. Yes, bees. Now that I've learned how to build a bee house, capture bees, protect them from enemies, and harvest honey, I'm determined to start a couple hives when I get home. In fact, we were all so excited about the project that part of the lunch break was spent coming up with semi-clever bee-related puns to include on the 'to do' list.

In not so terrific news, I arrived home to Fort Dauphin to find that my house had been broken into and everything was turned inside out. They stole my computer, ipod, dishes, and foam mattress. Luckily I'm living in a country where there is no use for credit cards. Although they were obviously found, they weren't taken. I'm just thankful that I wasn't there when they broke in. I've spent the last couple days in and out of the police station filling out declarations and drawing maps of Canada in an attempt to explain why I don't speak French.

Because of the whole ordeal, I spent last night at a friend's place. She's one of the few people in town who has hot water, so I had my first hot shower in six months.

It's been one of those times that just makes me want to talk to mom. Lucky for me, it just so happens that her plane is landing in Fort Dauphin in 4 hours from now! Hooray!