Lavanono and Birthday

Lavanono has become one of my favorite places on the planet! There are few better places to turn 30.

Lavanono (lit translation: long boob) is down in the very south of Madagascar, 10 hours drive from Fort Dauphin. We all packed ourselves into a car on Friday morning at dawn. It was a bit of a squash, 7 of us plus driver. We headed off, tunes playing, really excited about the weekend. We went through Ranopiso (lit: cat water), into deep spiny forest, stopping only for a luxury lunch of a cheese sandwich (definitions of luxury change when away from home). We arrived in Lavanono at about 4. It is so beautiful. After hours of driving along really flat terrain you suddenly come to the end of what turns out to be a massive plateau, that drops down to a plain running down to the sea. It is breath-taking. The beach seems to stretch for miles, with the dramatic platau meeting the coastline. Gorgeous!


We unpacked our masses of luggage (you have to take all your own food and water) and straight away leaped into the sea. It's winter here and the sun sets suddenly before 6pm. Lavanono faces West, unlike Fort Dauphin so it was great to watch the sunset over the water. As the sun faded to the west the moon rose in the east. It was a full moon and so bright we didn't need torches. Elevctricity is only available over dinner time anyway, then it's on to candles. A little sip of rum, home-flavoured with vanilla and honey by Gemma completed the evening.

Saturday was spent walking, reading, swimming and generally having a great time. Followed by another beautiful, wine filled evening.

I woke up early on Sunday and the first thing I saw as I opened the door was the moon, big and yellow setting over the horizon. I didn't take pictures, just sat on the step outside the hut and watched. After breakfast Ali, Sarah and I went to Cap Sainte Marie, the most Southern point of Madagascar, where the Mozambique Channel to the West meets the Indian Ocean to the East. At the cape we spotted a whale. A humpback. It was heading the same way we were. So when we headed down to the shore, crossing dunes scattered with remnants of the eggs of now extinct elephant birds, it was just off the coast. In fact there were a couple. Amazing to watch them playing. In the evening we had a bonfire on the beach and various flavours of delicious rum.

I got up again on Monday to see the moon and to quietly contemplate being 30 (with a headache!). What a spectacular place. I spent my birthday relaxing, with afternoon tea on the beach. Perfect.

Back to town on Tuesday and also Jo's birthday. Another fun 11 hour journey! I lost a flip flop, we ate turkey and stopped for beer. Good times. Back in Fort Dauphin it was also a big party evening: The night before Independence. A whole section of town had been turned into a giant street party, with bar tents and a stage with live music and some amazing dancers! We met up with some other Azafady people then headed on to a club to party the night away.

It was such a good weekend!!!

Fort Dauphin

Seeing as I've been in town for a little while now I thought that maybe I should tell you a little bit about the place. I'm settling in to my little abode, making friends with the dogs/cats/kids that live there. All of whom are very cute (apart from the tom cat that sauntered in and sprayed in my room!)

My room has a view of peak St Louis which dominates the skyline to the north west of fort Dauphin. In nearly every other direction from town lies the sea. Fort Dauphin is situated between two large coves, Ancoba (1) and Shipwreck bay (4), which extends far beyond the town all the way to Evatraha. I live on a road that runs straight from one beach to the other.

Ancoba is also a very long beach and is frequented by the surfers. The next bay along is Libanona (2) where I went on my first day. It's beautiful but the waves on that day were a bit scary! On the other side of this piece of land is Monsigneur beach (3), where I spent a good deal of Saturday! It's quiet, with a gorgeous view. Another surf spot. The area around these two beaches is the place to be for whale watching. July and August are the months when the humpbacks come by.

I have begun exploring more of the market (5). It's the hive of activity you would expect. Beans, fruit, rice, meat, fish, frip. It's all there! I'll try and sneak some photos later.

Tomorrow I'm off to Lavanono for a holiday. From what I've heard from the others I'm expecting great things! There are 6 of us going. We leave early tomorrow. It takes 10 hours to get there. We need to take all our food and water with us. I'm so excited. Back on Tuesday. A whole year older, but where better to spend a 30th than the on a beach in the spiny forest?


Here's a couple of photos from Saturday at Monsigneur beach. My feet and Forrest paddling off on a surf board.

World Environment Day

Since I arrived almost everything I have done has been about World Environment Day. On Wednesday afternoon we held Environment Education (which in truth differs only slightly from Club Atsatsaky). We were making a mess again with the kids. This time they were making their crowns for the parade on Saturday morning. We put the pioneers in place around the classroom, all manning a station. There was the glitter station, the pipe cleaner station, the painting station etc. The kids were given the crowns in the next room and then let in a few at a time (in theory - in practice about 50 of them descended on us at once). I was picking green glitter out of my hair and clothes for three days afterwards.

World Environment Day actually started on Friday night when a camion load of people from the office in town arrived at the campsite. After a hasty dinner we headed up to the Chef's office for a major gathering to show a film that Jo and Forrest have made about Sainte Luce. It's amazing and should soon be available for your viewing delight on the Azafady website. I'll let you know when it is! Followed by the Stitch Sainte Luce video (the place to go for all your present ideas people!) and a music video the boys made of a local group. Amazing dancing and drumming. It is beyond me how the girls can move their feet so fast and their arms so gracefully at the same time. I certainly did not look like that when I gave it a go on Saturday night...

The crowns made an appearance again early on Saturday morning when some of the kids from the village came to camp, ready to walk up to Manafiafy for the parade to start. Lisa has brought back a onesie from the UK and we had the help from stitch Sainte Luce to attach a tail to it. We had been making the head for the costume back in town. As the day drew closer, however, Rivo, who was going to wear it became a bit ill and backed out. At the last minute Ginny stepped in and wore the costume, heading the parade, surrounded by an ever increasing group of kids in their crowns, singing their conservation club song.

At the Chef's office I split off from the parade with the ACP team in order to set up the ACP stand, putting up photos and the posters we had spent the last fortnight making. I made it up the road a little later on to meet the parade coming back from Manafiafy. All the different associations were represented in the parade, with banners and matching sarongs or jackets. The procession made it's way into the square outside the office and surrounded the edge. We all stood for the raising of the flag and a beautiful rendition of the anthem by the choir. Then came the speeches. Unfortunately the sound system that had worked the night before failed when it came to this moment, so only those closest to the speakers could hear what was said.

The kids performed their play and song, this time with Ali in the variky (lemur) costume, leaping about. General fun and merriment followed, with vast amounts of face painting. mostly flowers and abstract designs. I think I managed a few lemur faces quite well, but I'm not sure about the result of the boy who requested a shark... As the light faded the stalls disappeared and the music was turned up (different speakers had been found for this purpose). I danced manically, avoided the moonshine (Toko gasy) which I could barely get to my lips when i did try it, and we all staggered home, happy and exhausted at the reasonable time of 10.30 (very late comparatively).

Sunday was spent clearing up and lying on the beach (it's a tough job but someone's got to do it) and general packing up. On Monday we came back in the Camion. Bumping along I listened to the Flight of the Concords and couldn't help but laugh out load a couple of times and now everyone thinks I'm crazy! Good times!

 

Sainte Luce

So much has happened in the last 10 days I barely know where to start! We headed up to Sainte Luce, where the ACP camp is based. It's where I spent most of my time back in 2002. It has changed a bit, but not much. A new campsite, on the other side of the road to the one I knew.

To get to Ste Luce we took a camion, a sort of truck, which we all piled into the back of with whichever of our possessions didn't fit on the roof. There were quite a few of us, both the ACP crowd and the Pioneer lot. We traveled north, along a bumpy road with the sea just out of sight to our right and the mountains on our left. It took three hours of being bounced about in the heat to get there.

The work started straight away with a visit of the office of the head of Ste Luce, the Chef de Cartier. Sainte Luce is made up of three villages in a row. The campsite is based in the village furthest from the sea called Ambandrika. 10 minutes walk away is Ampanasatombiky. Then a few minutes further along is Manafiafy, right on the coast. Each village has it's own head and then one who is in charge of all three. We had a meeting with the whole group, along with the equivalent of the police chief, a secretary and other representatives. We went over the last few plans for World Environment Day. This will be the third WED to be held in Ste Luce, a celebration of the wildlife of the area and the achievements of the different environmentally aware groups that have been set up within the villages (such as tree planting and street cleaning). The meeting ended with a ceremonialised drink of bonbon Anglaise, which is like cream soda with extra sugar! It gets dark by 6 here at the moment because it is winter, so we headed home and had dinner and I got settled into my tent (which is dinky but I love it). I know I have mentioned how cold it is before and I don't want to repeat myself, but it is really very cold at night! Luckily I have my "cadeau" hat from the nice lady on the frip stall. I am living in it!


Over the weekend we held the kids conservation club, club Atsatsaky (it means gecko). Lots of kids, lots of singing and a lot of chaos over the pencils for the drawing competition. Lots of fun. I also went for a walk with Lisa (ACP coordinator) and Abi (same job as me) to Manafiafy and then back along the beach. The weather wasn't great so we didn't swim, but it was still gorgeous. I seriously love my job!

I wasn't well for a couple of days at the start of the week so didn't manage to do much. I did finally get into the forest, starting with lemur behaviour. We entered the forest just on the other side of the road from the campsite with our guide Solo. It was barely 10 minutes before he spotted a  brown collared lemur. We took data every 5 minutes for the next hour and half. The original lemur was joined by others and soon we were following a group of 7 in the trees above us. Springing from trunk to trunk and leaping across branches.

We also went on a night walk. It was 45 minutes before we got to the transect. The aim was to walk along the transect and spot lemurs and then you can use this data to estimate their density. The lemurs we were looking for were woolly lemurs. The first one we saw, though, was a mouse lemur. These should be in hibernation, but this one was out and about just a couple of feet above the path. There ware also sleeping birds - birds of paradise with long white tails and  a kingfisher with a stubby orange tail and bright blue wings, both with their feathers puffed against the cold. We were looking up in the trees for animals but also down to our feet to watch for things we could trip over and the giant snails (Mum you would NOT like these) which were mostly avoided although a few were less lucky and ended as a faint crunch-squelch. Oops. We spotted a few lemurs. I even managed to spot some myself. Their eyes reflect the light of our torches back as a blazing orange - visible 50 odd metres away. Love it!

My third and final trip to the forest for this visit was in the morning when we went looking for herpetofauna (frogs and reptiles). Six of us walked in a line through a swamp recording everything we found. This is a lot harder than it sounds when there are giant pandanus plants 10 feet across in the way with their sharp, toothed leaves. I found some teeny tiny frogs that could sit on a finger nail. One of the pioneers was determined to find a snake and broke off from the official line. It paid off and after a while he found one. It's great to finally be in a country where the snakes aren't venomous and you can actually handle them.

Enough for now. I'll write the rest of my week tomorrow. The big party for World environment day...