Madagascar

I'm now in Madagascar; a dream come true. I don't really have any preconceived ideas except that it will be different and I will see things I've never seen before.

Arriving in Antananarivo (Tana), the capital,  I stayed in Ivato, near the airport, as I was flying down to the south east early the next morning. I had to venture out to dinner, a 15 minute walk accompanied by the hotel guard to show me the way. We threaded our way through narrow streets busy with people and lined with small wooden houses, many doubling as shop fronts. The people are an intriguing mix of Africa and Asia (their forebearers coming from Indonesia/Malaysia 1000s of years ago.  When I walked into the restaurant I could have been in France... the decor, the menu, the bar. The meal was delicious accompanied by a tropical downpour thundering down on the roof and windows reminding me where I was. I didn't know that, due to a power shortage, electricity is switched off between 7-9pm, (and 9-11am), every day. Now I had to negotiate, in total darkness, streets that had turned into rivers, competing for the dry ground with a lot of other people. Fortunately at a particularly tricky section my friendly guard found me and by the weak light from his 'phone we completed the journey.

My destination the following day was Taolagnaro, previously known as Fort Dauphin. I stayed in a lovely bungalow looking out over the Indian Ocean with stunning sunset views from the garden sofa and from the bar 2 doors down! 

I had my orientation for the project and also had a chance to wander around the town. 

The market:

Oyster sellers:

Fort Dauphin is famous for the oldest building in Madagascar, a 1504 fort, and lobster, most of which is exported. Pirouges, dug out canoes, litter the beaches and they use them with sail and paddle to fish but without outriggers which looks pretty unstable to me.

Next stop Sainte Luce Reserve...

Moving on Up

I flew via Nairobi to Antananarivo (Tana) in Madagascar and was spoilt with this wonderful view of Mounts Kilimanjaro and Meru.

Then I had my first views of Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world. Although, now I've experienced the state of the roads, it can feel like the largest island in the world!

Lack of sleep, rather than presence of alcohol, is responsible for the odd angle! 

Brief visit to Bagamoyo

I need to be close to Dar for my flight to Madagascar but don't want to be in the city and so have come to Bagamoyo for a couple of nights. It's on the coast, 70kms north of Dar, which puts it a 2 hour drive to the airport at silly o'clock when I'm travelling but a 4 hour journey in Dar's notorious rush hour traffic.

For four short years, 125 years ago, Bagamoyo was the capital of German East Africa and before that it was an important coastal town for trade. With this in mind it's not surprising that many of the sights are now fairly crumbly.

The German boma - administrative building:

The German customs house:

The most exciting and lively part of Bagamoyo today is the beachfront fish market preparing and selling the day's with neighbouring stalls selling delicious deep fried fish and the dhows, sails billowing, in the background out at sea.

As the town's importance has waned so too has the wealth of the people and there are warnings to take care of your possessions. However, I found it friendly and welcoming. I chatted to the men playing the ubiquitous chequers game and then discussed world politics, the royal family and fishing with other interesting characters I met!

Kichangani

In Kichangani, (and Tanzania as a whole), most people farm some land. If you're a resident you're entitled to buy up to 5 hectares from the village council. In some villages I was told that each family were given a set number of hectares. Otherwise livelihoods are made by keeping shop, running market stalls, teaching, weavering, driving piki-piki taxis and chefing at food stalls. Here are some of my memories of the people and places in the village. 

Rice and beans - 5 different varieties! 

Onions, tomatoes and aubergines - to mix it up a bit 

Pounding.... beans

Weaving the local reeds

Piki-piki taxi loading up in the centre of the village 

Delicious fried banana snacks

Always a fast and furious, competitive draughts game going on with the men 

Farewell Kichangani

I am really sad to be leaving Kichangani and the friendly people who have made me so welcome.  Also it's a bit of a wrench to leave the project when there's still more that can be done.

My home was on the edge of the village, about a 10 minute walk to the centre where there was electricity to charge torches and phones. Pretty much everyone was calling me, "Deb-oR-ah", by the time I left,  particularly the women and the children. Walking in took longer as I stopped to chat, bump knuckles or shake hands. If I wasn't called by my name it was Mamma, Sister, Teacher, Mister and even Grandmother on one inauspicious day!

The walk into town 

Checking on the older children's homework progress 

My daily chaperones

Mangos, mangos everywhere

Fantastic that my trip has coincided with mango season... almost as if it were planned!

The many mango trees in Kichangani, actually all areas of Tanzania that I've visited, are laden with small mangos, often with a carpet of sweet, ripe fruit lying on the ground underneath:

The guys at camp would occasionally head out and gather a bucketful that we could all gorge on:

Alternatively, hang around the school children who are expert at harvesting them and happy to share:

Kiswahili

I've tried to learn Kiswahili to get by and have learnt enough to entertain the locals and occasionally fool them into thinking I know more than I do, which of course always backfires.

Greetings, among the first phrases to learn, are not straightforward. First of all you have to gauge the age and if they're older than you there's a specific etiquette. At the grand age of 50 I'm older than the majority of Africans but I still need to know the appropriate response!

Some of the words are tricky as they are so unfamiliar but others are easier, more familiar, although spelt differently:
- Kazi = work
- paalay = there

If in doubt it's worth adding an 'i' to the English word:
- ofisi = office
- basi = bus

My old favourite is a keeplefti, which is a roundabout and my new favourite is tangawizi, which is the word for ginger. (They have delicious gingerbeer called tangawizi.)

Although they have 'r' in a number of words they tend to get these confused with 'l', particularly when it's the first letter.... very Chinese! A, "Rion Loaring", doesn't carry quite the same urgency.

I've been introducing myself as Deborah which was a good call because it's a name they use, among the Christians anyway (Tanzania is 1/3 Christian, 1/3 Muslim and 1/3 other, tribal etc).  They pronounce it in a really delightful way, very musically, deb-oR-ah. Or, some of them pronounce it deb-oR-la!

The Final Field Trip

We have done some great camping and enormous walks over the last fortnight. We were mapping and photographing water holes. Whilst doing that we noticed an escalation of cattle being grazed in the area and so decided to repeat some earlier surveys to gather the data to prove it.

I wrote it all up in a report and I should hear in the next day or two if a court order has been granted to remove the cattle by force and make arrests - fingers crossed.

We camped at a super spot. Here's the team:

We arrived after rain and on the first evening, having pitched our tents, we walked the surrounding roads and found lots of interesting tracks left in the rain softened ground.

Water mongoose tracks:

African civet tracks:

Porcupine poo:

Hartebeest and hyena tracks crossing in opposite directions - at different time methinks:

We set up the camera traps and captured some great hyena shots, about 200m from camp! Also some up close photos of a curious civet.

It was a great spot and provided us with some stunning sunsets:

I brought my own tent out with me but have been envious of the tents the rest of the team use; they're so much cooler. However my tent came into its own when we had torrential overnight rain and, made for the British weather, it withstood the floodwaters while everyone else got very soggy. The cook gave up altogether and slept in the truck. The following morning lots of tent pegs were whittled and run offs dug! 

Hello Teacher!

Part of my brief here is to teach at the local schools, a day a week, but December is their long summer hols so I didn't start until January.  We decide on the subject and prepare the lesson plans which we try to make as interactive as possible to keep us all awake, particularly for afternoon lessons in the airless, sultry classrooms.

I've really enjoyed it although some of the classes have been more successful than others. The primary school children don't understand much English, and my Kiswahili is at pre pre-school level, so everything needs translating.

Kichangani primary school having survived 'Deforestation and Overgrazing':

The older secondary school classes are pretty fluent in English if you're careful about the vocab you use.

Kichangani secondary school's environmental club after a 'Wildlife management' lesson:

Morning break at Igota secondary school:

There are a couple of rules that all children need to follow:
1. Everyone must have short hair. This made life a little tricky for me as I identified a lot of the local girls by their amazing hairdos but they all vanished overnight on 5th January.
2. Everyone must bring to school a small hand broom for tidying the school grounds.

Kindergarten children with their brooms:

Even in the holiday working groups from the school children have to go and tidy up the school grounds:

Corporal punishment is alive and well in the schools. I saw a few beatings! There was a much more entertaining punishment when 2 classes who had failed tests had to jog up and down in the quad chanting, "We are stupid", to the delight of the younger children. The stupid ones are on the right below.