Photos. Finally!

A friendly Camelion. I love how they are not scared at all. They will climb all over you.

Els at the water pump. We were super happy to actaully have water right there rather than walk ten minutes across the Sahara for it like in Mandromondromata. We didn't care that it was brown and that we had to filter it to get the sulfer smell out.

Making a fire so I can cook some noodles instead of lentils for dinner.

The eating area at St. Luce.

Our local grocery store.

The village by our camp in St. Luce.

Launching the Peroge.

Crossing the lake by Peroge.

A moody sky in S17.

The Pioneers. From the left: Nina, Rich (bet you figured that one out), Els, Cathrine, Heather, Rachel.

Some of the amazing coastline in St. Luce.

The lagoon where we dined on Oysters and fish in S17. Paradise!

The beach at S17. We swear this is where the shipwreck in Madagascar the movie was.

One of the women from the village of St. Luce helping us water the newly planted trees.

Travelling by Camion. Everything, inlcuding the kitchen sink.

These are the cement block molds that we used to make over 500 blocks. Here we are cleaning the tools of cement so we can go on our lunch break.

Lunch break in Fort Dauphin. Ahhh bliss!

The daily walk to work. This is a super long beach called shipwreck beach. They say that all the shipwrecks are actually Indonesian insurance scams from the last 10 years or so. You can see the black dots just off the water that are the rusted wrecks.

The at Lanirano, our Fort Dauphin Camp. Here is Lumba bringing the coffee jugs for breakfast

A Hissing Cockroch, I've actually seen bigger ones since this pic, and yes they do hiss.

Bannana sellers along our walk to work.

Saving S17

Our last week of work in Fort Dauphin was almost a holiday. We’d ran out of compost for shit packing and made over 500 cement blocks for building the primary school latrine. Our workload lull was well timed however, because Hurricane Ivan hit the north of Madagascar in the beginning of the week. By Wednesday the after effects of heavy rain and wind had traveled down the coastal mountains to Fort Dauphin. A steady torrential rain turned dirt roads to deep mud lagoons, flooded many lakeside huts and at 4am Friday morning cancelled our departure to St. Luce.
Luckily I’d found alternative accommodation because when I returned early Friday morning my tent was floating in two inches of water – Lake Jenn! In fact much of the campsite was 6 or more inches under water. The rain stopped later that morning and the pioneers enjoyed a stolen weekend that surprisingly turned into brilliant sunshine.
***
Travelling by camion in Madagascar is a unique and bone jarring experience. The word camion is actually just ‘truck’ in French but, the meaning is much more in Madagascar.
Our camion arrived six hours late due to mechanical difficulties, this is a more often than not occurrence because the 1950s engines are in constant need of TLC. The camion is a huge 10 ton diesel flatbed truck. The floor boards are wooden and often worn to the point where you can see the rocks rushing by beneath you. The ceiling is made of arched metal bars and covered with dilapidated canvas tarps. Madagascar roads are dirt and sand, full of pot holes that could swallow a small car and huge gullies worn by past downpours. The camion strains and lurches while it’s occupants (2000 trees, 10 bags of beans, 100 gallons of water and everything else we need – including the kitchen sink) are tossed about inside. After 3 hours and 6 deep river crossings we arrived in St. Luce, slightly bruised, covered in diesel fumes but happy to be there all the same.
Azafady has been working in St. Luce for many years and there is another, larger tree nursery there. The camp had a proper covered eating area, a separate kitchen, a well, concreted bucket shower stalls, and some secluded tenting areas. Bush luxery! The food situation was also much improved from Mandromandromata because we were only 3km from the ocean. Local fisherman came past the camp regularly to inquire if we wanted to buy fresh fish, crab or lobster. Enough crab for one person was about 400 Ariary (30 cents) and Romaine, our chef, cooked it beautifully. There were guava trees right in the camp and we were able to regularly buy oranges (well call them greens because they are). I can’t tell you how happy I was to discover fresh fruit after the lack of it last bush trip.
The main project in St. Luce was to plant a wind break of trees in an area that has been given to Azafady by the communtiy for a reforestation project. Two English masters students, Katie and Veronique, are working with Azafady to plan and implement the reforestation. This can be complicated work because property and usage rights are confusing and can appear arbitrary to the vahaza. Additionaly the trees species planted need to be carefully considered because some like Eucalyptus are extremely invasive and suck the soil of what little nutrients is left but, fast growing species need to be planted to save what little is left of native, littoral forest (only found in Madagascar, grows in sandy soil a short distance from the coast and is the only home to many endangered species)
Every morning at 6:30 we walked 3 km to the tree planting site (I swear I have never walked so much in my life as these last few months). We spent the morning laying out long strings with 1m markers to evenly space the trees. At first we questioned the need for this (I know my tree planting friends are apt at eyeing it) but when 60 locals with shovels arrived to dig in the afternoon we realized they were necessary. The afternoons were manic and fantastically rewarding. The men eagerly dug while the women carefully carried baskets of trees to the appropriate lines and placed them in the ground. I enjoyed unspoken interaction where a women and I shared my leatherman to cut the plastic bag around the tree, or a teenage boy conceded to my request of ranu (water), and repeatedly filled my watering can from the river, even though it is a woman’s job.
In six days the community and the pioneers planted 4500 trees! 1/3 of these species are endemic and another third of them were a species called Moringa. This fruit-bearing tree has been used in many other areas and is renowned for its medicinal and nutritional properties and is fast growing. The last third was Acacia and Eucalyptus. We planted these trees with a tinge of regret, hoping that another species can be used in the short future. They are very fast growing and in ten years can be used for firewood instead of the protected forested that is quickly diminishing.
Some of my favorite work in St. Luce was community mapping. Azafady asked us to conduct short interviews with members of the community to discover their opinion of the work Azafady has done. People welcomed us into their basic one-room homes and answered our difficult questions to the best of their ability. They always mentioned that they hoped the trees would be used by the next generation and that they had noticed the changes and loss of native forest. I was pleased to be so welcomed and that they were able to think to the future rather than only of the very pressing need to collect firewood to cook their daily meal of cassava. I was also shocked to see that 6-10 people lived in a hut the size of my tiny bedroom and saddened to see that many children were malnourished and severely asthmatic from the indoor fires. And this in a community that Azafady has been working in for years already.
It wasn’t all work in St. Luce. The beaches were absolutely stunning and the protected forests (romantically named S8, S9 and S17) were dense and thrilling. We enjoyed many beautiful walks and pirogue rides (small wooden hollowed out boat), and dined on the beach with fresh fish, oranges and other fruit from the trees. One of my favorite days was spent sitting on the edge of a gorgeous calm lagoon, looking down a disappearing stretch of wild surf beach were the jungle touched the sand (we decided this is the beach that the Zebra and the Lion were shipwrecked on in the movie). There we dined on fish and fresh oysters that we garnished with lemons from the trees, Ahh heaven!. I’ve also seen wild lemurs, bright green camelions and spiders as big as my hand in a web I would get stuck in!
I have much much more to tell you, but there is a sunny beach waiting for me and the internet connection is soooo slooow. Thank you for reading and more importantly thank you for caring. I love you guys! xo

The Pioneer Ladies ready for a night out at Gina's. See it wasn't all grime and work!

***okay I was planning on loading way more photos - but it won't work anymore - and now it just looks like I was paryting the whole time...grrr***

Check back for more pics next week when I get to South Africa.

Feels like luxury!

Fantastic! We’ve just been told that we can have our Saturday morning shift of shitpacking (jamming compost into plastic seedling bags) to recover from a late and debaucherous night of drinking and dancing at Gina’s (the local club). We were quite prepared to work on less than 2 hours sleep, no one complained, but Heather could see we were struggling and we have been working like oxen the last week.
We are working on building the cement blocks for another latrine, this time for a primary school that currently has no toilet. We alternate block-making shifts with teaching English at the Azafady classroom and the local high school, and shit-packing in preparation for two weeks of tree planting the week after next.
The last week here in Fort Dauphin has been pure luxury compared to Mahamdromata. Lanirano, our campground, has running water, toilets, showers, lights, a big dinning table and is across the road from an Epi-bar (essentially a hole-in-the-wall corner store with cold beer etc.). The landscape is dotted with palms, hibiscus and orchids and a fantastic mountain and rock face tower behind our tents. The campsite is busy with people working in the gardens and students who attend sustainable livelihood classes in the schoolhouse. We also have a flock of geese, numerous chickens and their chicks and a pack of dogs. Two of the camp dogs regularly accompany us to work, Gremlin – a very racist and grumpy guard dog who loves the Vahaza, and Tiny – a funny looking creature with a normal sized head and about 2 inches of leg.
Every morning we walk the 3.5 km to work along with children singing their way to school, men transporting two massive baskets on a stick over their shoulders with loads of bananas, fish or cassava and other workers heading into town. Really the work has become very monotonous and our banter has become increasingly desperate. I now know my fellow pioneers as intimately as a know some of my oldest friends. We entertain ourselves with innuendo day, opera day and rap day etc. The highlight of our town stay is food and beach! We have been treating ourselves to local restaurants and the SMAR (supermarket) has become a daily trip. We are all concerned about the return of rice and beans with our return to the bush next Friday. For me the best part of working in town is the beach. Each lunch hour we head down to Ancuba surf club and lie on some very dilapidated beach chairs or play in the perfect surf. If the mood strikes us we wander into the bar and order a crepe au chocolate or a cassis fanta. Luxury!
We estimate that we walk over 10 km a day, Fort Dauphin is actually a town of 40,000 and quite spread out. Although I speak of the amenities we are enjoying, most people here live a very basic life. Most houses are constructed of traveller’s palms and the majority of cooking is done with coal that is sold in little piles on the roadside. Most of the roads are deep sand and are littered with decades of plastic garbage. Garbage is a huge issue here. The beach I referred to before has been used as a dumpsite for so long that although the actual sand is now litter free the steep cliffs of the beach are practically made of garbage. Wind and surf erode more and more of it and I suspect it goes many metres deep. Another issue is that the beaches are used as defecation sites. Few people have toilettes and the result is that many of Fort Dauphin's beautiful beaches are unusable. Even Gina’s doesn’t have a toilet and Azafady staff jokes that building one should be our next project.
We are starting to feel more and more comfortable manoeuvring around the city though. Rich and I now regularly eat fried bananas and samosas from the market. And our basic Malagash is creating many happy smiles and greetings in return.
I feel I’ve been a bit remiss at including some of the other key people in my life here in Madagascar and Fort Dauphin. Heather is our group co-ordinater. She’s the one that fields our daily gamut of questions, rubs our back when we get sick and communicates between us the Azafady office and the construction site. She was a Pioneer last year and fell in love with more than one aspect of the country. She’s only 23 and I’m impressed how she’s mastered the balance of leader and friend. We’ve nick named her She-Ra for her stamina in the cement mixing pit and overall. We also have three guides that work as language and cultural translators, brute strength on the site, moral boosters and endless variations of the above. Lumba, Claude and Tinihy have become our close friends and we enjoy their constantly smiling faces, careful guidance and years of knowledge in bridging the gap between the Vahaza and the Malagasy culture. Frequent catch phrases are “you can do it” (I will have to repeat the exact tone when I get home), “elefa” (come on- use when you are sitting on your ass and others are working), “it’s against my culture” (often an excuse to not do something). Other group phrases are “you look lovely” (used particularity when you are covered in cement, or lamenting on the state of your body), “thought hug” (accompanied by fingers to the temples).
Tonight we are treating ourselves to a night of even more luxury. Catherine, Elsbeth, Rich and I are renting a bungalow in town to crawl back to after Gina’s. We did it last weekend and beds, hot shower, mirror and location were enough to tempt us one last time. The cost is about $9 each half what the taxi ride home would cost each of us. Well worth it.

I'm sorry but I can't cope with loading photos. It just takes waaay to long. Next blog will be a photo essay. xo