Velondriake Post Number Two

Coco Beach
Blue Ventures is based at the Coco Beach Hotel in Andavadoaka, a scattered arrangement of huts on a point jutting out into the ocean on the south-west end of the town. The volunteer huts are on the top of a dune overlooking Half Moon Beach, which is sheltered from the incredible winds that shake the staff huts and the restaurant on the other side of the hotel compound. When we come together for meals on the restaurant porch the volunteers all look like they live on a tropical island and the staff are all in jeans and fleeces and hats. I’m sharing a hut with Sabrina (a dive volunteer from Manhattan), Vicki (an independent researcher (of OCTOPUS!) from London), and Jess (on a medical student elective from a school in England).

The volunteer huts

The view from our hut

The village of Andavadoaka

My Project
I spent my first week in Andava reading a bunch of materials about WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene), lots of stuff about PHE programs, and ‘Tales of Shit’ which is about CLTS (community-led total sanitation), an approach to stopping open defecation that involves “triggering” the community to be totally grossed out by their own shit being everywhere (a key point is using the local equivalent of the word ‘shit’ to avoid euphemisms/sugar-coating anything, etc) and realizing that it must be getting into their food and water. I will not be doing anything like that while I’m here, but it was an interesting read – or at least as interesting as 200 pages of development-speak can be. On Monday the directrice of the school was finally back in town so I got to meet with her about working with the school and Wednesday I led my first lesson about WASH. It went really well and the kids were totally interactive which was quite a relief since my biggest fear was that they would be too shy to talk or just give me vacant stares because they don’t understand my Gasy at all.

My "office"

The view from that window

A poster I made about diarrhoea

The "Aja Filako" - a bottle baby to demonstrate how diarrhoea causes dehydration

Other cool stuff
Last Friday I went by motorized pirogue with Issy, Vicki, Vicki’s Malagasy assistant Dany, and one of the CBD supervisors Balbine to Tampolove, a smaller town south of Andavadoaka. We helped out with the Depo-Provera clinic that BV runs in Tampolove every two weeks, and then Issy and I stayed on for the weekend to help Vicki with her octopus surveys. Friday night was a full moon and low tide was at 10:30 pm so we went out with some BV aquaculture people to count and weigh sea cucumbers. We walked way out into the middle of the bay where there are about 10 sea cucumber pens, each belonging to a different household from Tampolove. The pens are completely submerged during high tide but at low tide you can see the fences sticking up out of the water, which was about up to my knees while we were walking around. Again, pictures are really the best way to describe the experience, but the sea cucumbers were all between 200 and 400 grams and, well, they’re kind of gross. They’re bumpy and hard when you pick them up and then suddenly they squirt a stream of … sea water?... out of their butt and go limp in your hand. So we waded around in the pens for a couple hours shining our headlamps on the sea floor and collecting all the sea cucumbers we could find into a basin that we floated along next to us. The Gasy women from Tampolove that came with us all carried big bright lanterns that made an eerie whooshing noise and looked really picturesque scattered across the dark bay. It was a totally surreal experience: standing out in the middle of the sea at midnight, under a full moon, in Madagascar, weighing sea cucumbers.

The sea cucumber pens at low tide during the day, and the watchtower to prevent sea cucumber theft.

The sea cucumber pens at low tide

A sea cucumber!

Walking out to the pens at night.

Bleh, little sea cucumbers...

Angelo and Gaetan weighing the sea cucumbers

On the sailing pirogue to Lamboara

The clinic in Tampolove

On Saturday morning we waited around for low tide and then went out into the bay again, this time to do transects with Vicki. We waded out too early at first and the force of the tide going out was so strong that we had to go back to the beach and eat roasted peanuts for another half an hour before it was low enough and steady enough to do our transects without being dragged out to sea. Vicki’s research involves laying out a 30 meter tape measure on the sea floor and then writing down what material is on the ground at 20 cm intervals. My job was to write down the codes she called out: “SA (sand)... SA … RB (rubble) … SA… RB… TA (turf algae)…URC (urchin)…SA…etc.” While we were doing that two Gasy women were walking on either side of the transect with fishing spears, looking for octopus dens. I saw them spear one small fish and a squid, but no octopus. (We did, coincidentally, have octopus for lunch that day though).

On Sunday we sailed across the bay to Lamboara and did more transects, a kilometre out into the ocean (we had to be in the octopus reserves) where the ground was all really sharp uneven coral with loads of sea urchins that was exhausting and painful to walk over, even wearing thick dive booties. When we finished up and went back to town the wind was coming from the north so we couldn’t sail back to Andava and had to spend the night in Lamboara, sleeping three to a bed in the president’s house. The next morning we got up at six to sail to the mainland (Lamboara is an island) where a zebu cart (ox-cart) was waiting to take us on a bumpy but beautiful two-hour ride back to Andava, through spiny forest and only a handful of meters from the ocean for much of it.

Waiting for the tide to be low enough to do transects.

Vicky with a ... sea creature of some sort.

A Few More Random Things
• Matt asked me to take over the volunteers’ Malagasy lessons for this expedition so now I am officially a Malagasy teacher. I taught my first lesson on Tuesday and I have another one this afternoon. It seems a bit silly to have a vazaha teach Gasy when we’re surrounded by native speakers, but I guess sometimes it’s easier at first to learn from someone who speaks English too and had to learn the language recently. Or maybe they just don’t want to pay a Malagasy teacher. Anyway, it’s exhausting but fun.
• On Monday I went swimming at Half Moon Beach at low tide and stuck my hand on a sea urchin. I barely grazed it but it hurt like crazy – my whole hand was throbbing – and left about 6 blackish-purple dots on my hand that Issy and I couldn’t figure out whether they were just puncture marks or if there was spine in them. I soaked my hand in non-scalding hot water for half an hour until it turned all pruny and then Issy was going to try to pick out a couple so she shot some local anaesthetic into my finger near one of them which really hurt (Issy afterwards: “normally I would have used a smaller needle but we didn’t have one”) and then we decided that actually they were all really tiny and would probably dissolve or come out on their own. The upshot of all of this is that while I was soaking my hand I read a BV guide about marine stings/envenomation and now I actually remember which things you’re supposed to wash with fresh water versus salt water or vinegar for – unlike when we got a long powerpoint presentation on them in Wilderness Medicine. They have some actually relevance now because I hear the other volunteers talking about fire coral and lion fish when they get back from dives.
• On Tuesday I saw a whale!

Velondriake Post Number One *NOW WITH PICTURES*

Hi All. Turns out I do have some internet access of sorts. I am in temporary possession of the “staff dongle,” which allows for a very slow connection via a Telma sim card – all newly possible just this past year when they built a Telma cell phone tower in Andavadoaka. No pictures or anything fancy but I’ll add some in when I get back to Providence because you have got to see this place.
First off, Tana and Tamatave.
Not much to say about Tana; it’s still crowded, cold, and unexciting.
We went to Tamatave for 3 days (though 2 were in mostly spent in the taxi brousse) at the end of my week in Tana which was wonderful. I played Scrabble in Malagasy and French with Mika’s family. It was warm and sunny. I ate ananambo and lychee chinois (those are the spiky ones that look really cool but just taste like grapes). Everything was green green green and tropical even though it’s winter. Everyone speaks the dialect I understand best. I love Tamatave.



On the June 25th I met up with the newly arrived group of Blue Ventures volunteers to take a 4 day overland tour to Toliara. We drove down to Fianar the first day, which is a beautiful drive through hills and forest and terraced rice paddies, and sentimental for me because it’s the first leg of the trip from Tana to my old Peace Corps site. The 26th is Malagasy Independence Day and the official entertainment in Fianar for the occasion was … Mika & Davis. Unfortunately we left the morning of the 26th to continue south so I missed the concert.

The 26th was momentous because we were finally heading into a part of Madagascar that I hadn’t seen before, and everything was new from there on out. We stopped at a ring-tailed lemur park and hiked around over giant boulders with incredible views of the cliffs and a valley of rice paddies. After lunch we drove on to Isalo National Park, re which I think I’ll just wait to describe till I can put in some pictures. Big rocks. Lemurs. Natural swimming pools. Cliffs. Desert; spiny and otherwise.

We spent all of the 27th in Isalo and drove the rest of the way to Toliara on the 28th, where we stayed in a hotel that had a swimming pool and wireless internet! Holy smokes. (Not that I had a computer with me, but still…)The rest of the volunteers took a camion to Andavadoaka on the 30th, but I stayed in Toliara with Matt (a former environment PCV who runs the Population, Health, Environment (PHE) program for Blue Ventures in Andavadoaka) to go to some meetings with various NGOs and the regional health authority, and to wait for the arrival of Issy, a doctor from England who is going to work with the PHE program for six months. Toliara’s a pretty cool town and it has a gelato shop, but I was definitely ready to get to Andava after a few days there. I didn’t have much to do and I wanted to get started on my project. Also, I moved into a cheaper hotel, so no more swimming pool.

The volunteers' camion

After almost a full week in Toliara we drove up to Andava in the BV truck (which only takes 8 hours compared to 12 to 18 in a camion (depending on how often it breaks down)), stopping in 5 villages along the way to meet with the village presidents to recruit new Community-Based Distributors (of contraceptives) who all came to Andava last week to get CBD training with a PSI (Population Services International) trainer. All of the villages were right on the beach and to get to some of them we just drove the truck right up over the dunes. I sliced a big gash into my ankle by catching it on a sharp vine walking/sliding down a sand dune. Then I kicked a stick into my big toe and bled all over the place walking back up the same dune. All of the volunteers here in Andava have band-aids and duct tape all over their feet from various foot lacerations. This is a dangerous town for toes.

Visiting a village

Meeting with a village president

As promised...

Antsika Jiaby

Saturday was the first Madagascar Tous Ensemble concert in Tana, so I got to watch 12 of Madagascar's finest musicians try to squeeze their 3 song sets into the daylight hours. Unfortunately this was not possible, because despite being May 1st (which is maybe the biggest concert day of the year because it marks the start of the DRY season) it poured rain for maybe 2 hours right in the middle of the concert, and we all had to take shelter under this one tiny tent in the "backstage" area while a mob of spectators hovered angrily around the gate being slightly menaced by two police officers but really being more menacing themselves, which was terribly inconvenient for poor Mika who really had to pee but was scared to pass through the mob, even though Mika & Davis had already finished their set so technically the crowd should have not have had any beef with them. But try explaining that to an angry mob. After the rain finally stopped it was still ages before they could start the concert again because all the equipment was wet and all the artists had stories of being minorly shocked/totally electrocuted by wet microphones etc., but all the spectators were demanding that the music start or they get their money back (prix d'entrée: 1000 ariary, or about 50 cents) so finally one of the artists procured a pair of gloves and agreed to go on with the show. By this time it was already late afternoon so the remaining artists did just two songs a piece, but then it was night and the organizers hadn't ordered lights (because how could TWELVE bands possibly not finish by 5pm??) so the last two groups played one song a piece, illuminated by the light of the remaining spectators' cell phones. Good times. And I got to speak English all day because my friend from Peace Corps was in town.Tomino (Hazolahy) and his awesome homemade giant wooden guitar. Video coming soon when I learn how to compress video files so they'll load from the internet cafe.

Chillin' with Bagzana.

Ok next article of business is spiders. There are some really big spiders in Madagascar and I have developed a serious fear of them since arriving two years ago. In Mahatsara Sud they would sometimes appear on my walls or worse on my chair and one time I smashed one behind a poster and I almost threw up, but I think the fear really started when I scared one off my chair and it jumped to the ground and made a THUD. As in the noise of an object that has significant mass. Here in Itaosy the spiders make huge webs between the trees which I frequently almost walk into when I'm hanging up my laundry to dry. Here are some pictures. I'll leave you to freak out.

In closing, a picture I took just this morning of my knuckles, bloody from ... washing too many clothes by hand yesterday. I wasn't actually bleeding into my laundry -- my knuckles were just kindof sore yesterday and then this morning all these little blood blisters appeared. Four months back in the US and I'm delicate as a new-born. What would my village think?

Back to the Present

Greetings once again from Madagascar. I've been back in Tana for about a month and a half now, halfway through my three month tourist visa. I'm living with Mika again, but we're out in the boonies of Itaosy now. Mika moved in with his brother's family a couple months ago because they were absolutely for sure going to tear down his building within days, but apparently the guy who was causing all the problems with the house died or something, and the building is still going about its business, bothering no one. We slept there after a show Saturday night actually, because it was too late to get a taxi back to Itaosy. Anyway, our new house is in fact a villa, and we have a toilet with a toilet seat, and a real shower (still no hot water) and a SINK with a faucet and a mirror, so I'm totally content. And the windows have glass so the house can actually be sealed against the elements when winter comes. Soon.

Things were pretty quiet for the first month I was here. Mika and I went on a bunch of really early morning hikes, because you only have to go a short way from our house to be in the middle of rice paddies and farmland here, and there are some great views because it's really hilly. Then we would go to town to run errands, or walk out to the main road to buy fruit or home-made yogurt or use the internet. Mika was working pretty intensely on finishing their next album so I got some books from the Peace Corps house and spent a lot of time sitting in the garden (enclosed, grassy, peace and quiet in Tana, wow!) reading and clandestinely eating way too much of the candy that I brought from the US to give to people.

The view of Tana ville from one of our hikes.

IMika on a country path

About two weeks ago we finally got out of Tana and went to Tamatave and Foul Pointe for a week. Going to the east coast of Madagascar makes you think that everyone who lives in Tana is a total sucker. It is so green and lush, and there's mountains and the ocean and fresh fish and tropical fruits and clean air and it's just amazing. It would have been a total recharge for me if I hadn't gotten super carsick on the way there and thrown up in the brousse to Tamatave (which is super hilly and windy and I hadn't been in a taxibrousse for 4 months so ok) AND in the 4x4 going to Foul Pointe (which is a completely straight road parallel to the coast so there's no explaining it) and then felt dizzy for the whole time we were there. But I got to eat my favorite foods: ravitoto with coconut and ananambo (moringa). Unfortunately lychee season was already over when I got to Mada. There were still lychee chinois, which are way more interesting to look at but unfortunately they just taste like grapes.

Mika multitasking

Me with our voan-dalana: oranges and lychees from Brikaville

The day after we got back from Tamatave Mika played a cabaret at this super ritzy vazaha bar near the Peace Corps house and I summoned all of my mental faculties in order to speak French to our friend Steve's girlfriend during the whole concert, ending up highly concerned about how I'm going to communicate with anyone when I'm in France in June and my French comes out Malagasy. Steve made a killing that night doing fake tattoos on people with glue and glitter. He did mine free as an advertisement, because my insanely pale skin really made it stand out so all the vazaha kids and vazaha girlfriends were asking about it.
We spent the night at the house in Antanimena and left the next morning for a concert in Antsirabe, 4 hours south of Tana. Below see the banderole with hand-painted pictures of Mika and Davis.

The concert organizer's kids, styling with a juice-mustache.

Ninah and Davis

The concert ended at about 2 in the morning when the power went out, and didn't come back for about 45 minutes, during which time everybody left because despite being a really big hotel it didn't have a generator or even candles so we all just had to move around in the dark until the power finally came back on. We got to sleep from 3am to 5am, when we had to get back in the van to drive 24 hours straight to Nosy Be.

I did a lot of sleeping on the way there, because I hadn't gotten any real sleep in two nights, and also because our driver was trying to break the sound barrier and the road was of the curvy and mountainous persuasion (but Mom, it was Loulou's own personal van and there were seatbelts!). But, as usual in Madagascar, it was devastatingly gorgeous terrain so I spent a lot of time with my head out the window like a golden retriever, feeling like I might have the best life ever.
We got to Ankify at 5am and caught the slow ferry to Nosy Be because we were with Loulou's car.

Mika: "Jayne, you're missing the sunrise over the mangrove swamps..."

Got to Chez Loulou (Andilana Beach Nosy Be) around 8, ocean swimming, unable to sleep because the Salegy music had already started at full blast, rice and fish, sunbathing, giant puppets, Mika & Davis, (already 2 hours in the internet cafe, no time for complete sentences anymore), pictures:



Ninah had to catch a flight back to Germany the next night, so after a few hours of sleep that night we got up at 6 to take the boat back to the mainland and then another bajillion hours of taxibrousse back to Tana. I don't think I've ever gone 5 nights without sleep before. My eyes stopped working in sync; it was totally bizarre. I was like those toads whose eyes can go in whatever direction, independent of each other.


Finally I leave you with this picture, of me with one of the avocados that grows in Mika's brother's family's garden. I already knew that Malagasy avocados get huge, but all the ones I'd tried before were super watery. Well, this one was just like a California avocado. But the size of my head.



Veloma, amin'ny manaraka indray.