So after surviving the hours of travelling to make it to Fianarantsoa in Madasgascar on wednesday I could start my work for Feedback Madagascar. FBM is a scottish NGO working with a local partner NGO in Madagascar called Ny Tanintsika (where I am working) which works on implementing social and environmental development projects mainly along the rainforest corridor in central Madagascar.
After a meeting with Sam and a skype meeting with Jamie Spencer (the founder of Feedback Madagascar), my main work will be to research FBM's projects and collect information on them in order to update their website and provide information for their new campaign, Treemad. This will involve me visiting projects to get the most recent updates from them, which i cannot wait for! Alongside this I will be helping with funding proposals and teaching the staff English! - have done 2 lessons already and it is definitely testing my french skills to be able to make myself understood aha thank god the staff already have a pretty good knowledge of english! Other than the english lessons, I spent most of the week reading up on the different projects and doing background research for the new Treemad campaign, and am hoping to be going to visit one of the projects this Friday!
Outside of work, I met Jamie on Thursday, another british volunteer who I'm gonna living with for the next week or so! He's already been out here for 6 months so has been teaching me alot! (Like how to use the broken shower and cook food other than rice and vegetables!) He introduced me to a group of English speakers in Fianar on Friday- some american peace corps who've been here for almost 2 years and a group of English speaking Malagasy, and we all went to a couple of karaoke bars in town. You can get a bottle of Madagascan vodka out here for 4, 500 ariary, the equivalent of just over 1 quid! (Living the student dream aha) Ended up staying until 3 in the morning and managed to find my way home through the shortcut for the first time without having to ask Jamie where I was going!
Managed to speak to a lot of the Americans (and Jamie) about places that are good to visit in Madagascar and I'm now contemplating extending my time here after my placement so I can have the chance to visit some places- realising now just how big Madagascar is and the 6 days I have at the end of my placement definitely won't be enough time to see things! Still early days yet though!
Spent the rest of the weekend at Sam's house being fed and watching Jonny Depp films!
The workload has definitely increased this week and I've now been given a set list of things that I need to do for the Treemad campaign so looks like I'm gonna be pretty busy for the next 11 weeks!!!
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