Ranomafana national park!

So I finally decided to do a bit of travelling at the weekend! Probably not the best idea to go when Madagascar was in the middle of a cyclone... but I wasn't going to let that stop me!

I decided to visit Ranomafana national park which is about an hour and a half to two hours drive north east from where I am in Fianarantsoa. The park is a rainforest that's home to 12 species of lemur, 2 of which are some of the rarest in the world. After waking up at 6 in the morning, I set off from my house around 7ish to walk to the taxi-brousse station (most tourists who go to Ranomafana use a private car organised through a tour operator but to save some money I decided to use public transport). As I got to the taxi-brousse station so many guys tried to grab me to get me to go on their taxi-brousse, they were all shouting various locations at me but after me having to repeat numerous times to people that I wanted to go to Ranomafana not Tulear (500km away on the west coast, also where the cyclone had just hit so not sure why I would have wanted to go there...) I found myself buying a return ticket to  Ranomafana after bargaining on the price a little. So after the guy who sold me the ticket telling me that my taxi-brousse was ready to leave, he took me to a taxi-brousse that only had 2 other people on it (they seat 14)... I'm used to how public transport works here now though so I knew it was just a matter of waiting until it filled up. Ended up waiting just over an hour for it to fill up (not without having a guy come up to me, kiss my hand, then tell me he loves me... ) and then we left with about 21 of us squashed into a 14 seater... at one point there were 7 of us sharing the front 3 seats!

The journey was ok though, despite the insane winds from the cyclone, and the scenery as we went from the highlands to the hills being covered in rainforest was amazing! After about an hour and a half of driving, I got dropped off at the park entrace around 11am to be meet by a group of guides who all spoke english (thank god!) I arranged a 3-4 hour trek into the forest and for a 2 hour night walk later that evening, and after checking out  hostel 50m down the road and deciding it would be fine to sleep there (10,000 Ar / night which is the equivalent of £3!!) me and my guide, Emile, set off on the trek!

The walking was pretty hard going, despite the occasional massive gust of wind, the weather was absolutely boiling and the trek involved lots of scrambling up steep hills covered in trees, but it was fine and I wasn't complaining. In the first hour of walking we managed to see a number on different chameleons and lizards (one really tiny chameleon which the guide didn't even see, it was me that pointed it out!), some funny looking lizards and even a snake, which after Emile reassuring me a few times that it was completely harmless, I got to hold! (I'm not gonna lie, even though I knew it was harmless and it really wasn't that big, and the fact that I've held snakes before, I did keep freaking out everytime it turned its head towards me...)

We carried on walking for what felt like ages though in the search of lemurs with no luck whatsoever, despite Emile mimicking the 'lost' call in an attempt to get any lemurs to respond... until we bumped into another of the guides in the forest who said that some researchers had spotted a couple of lemurs just over the hill! So we set off at a really fast pace and had to leave the path to fight away through the forest down a really steep hill, where we found another guide and an American researcher who were staring up into the trees. I tried looking and with Emile's guidance I eventually saw my first lemur! To begin with I could only really see a fuzzy outline and 2 green eyes starting back at me, but after waiting around for a bit, the 2 red-bellied lemurs that we had found started jumping through the tree in search for food! It was so so amazing to see and I was surprised at how big they were!

After watching them for a while, me and Emile continued in the search for some more, and after stopping at a viewing point where there was the most amazing view of the rainforest and the landscape we continued further downhill to the bamboo forests to search for the rare Greater bamboo and Golden bamboo lemurs. We must have been walking for only 15 minutes when we heard a noise behind us in response to Emile's 'lost' call, so turning around quickly I suddenly saw a tiny brownish/grey lemur sitting on a tree branch only 2m away from me! Another lemur then came jumping through the trees and I got to experience being just 1m away from two greater bamboo lemurs which are really rare and the 2 that I found are the only ones left in the entire park!

That evening I went on a 2 hour night walk with Emile and a french family that was also staying at my hostel and we managed to see lots of chameleons and frogs (one of the chameleons was only 2cm long!!) And also a mouse lemur (the one from the film that's really small and annoys king Julien) which was so so cute!

The next day I hitchhiked halfway down the road to Ranomafana village and then walked the rest of the way to have a swim in the natural pool fed by the spings that the village is named after... the weather was lovely and sunny and the pool was so nice and warm, an amazing way to relax and enjoy my morning!

I then got a lift back up to my hostel (which the lovely Emile helped arrange for me) to have lunch and then wait for my taxi-brousse back to Fianar which was meant to pick me up at 1... After waiting at the edge of the road for 2 hours the taxi-brousse FINALLY turned up! The journey back was fine until we got to about 10km from Fianar and the driver started telling me that I had to pay 5,000 for the journey, despite the fact that I'd already paid for my return journey the day before... I had a ticket and everything but the driver was refusing to believe me saying it was 'clandestine' and clearly ranting about me to the other passengers in Malagasy. I refused to pay though and told him to take me to the man who had sold me the ticket, who we found when we arrived in Fianar which ended in the two of them having a shouting match in Malagasy and me getting a taxi home!

Work wise, I'm now really involved with the Treemad campaign and after a skype meeting with the director of Feedback I was told that everyone back in the UK are waiting for me to complete my work so that the website can get up and running and the campaign can be launched! It's a lot of pressure but it's amazing that they're trusting me with this much responsibility!

Taking a break from the Treemad work though, yesterday I was able to travel to some villages to the East of Fianar to survey them for the possibility of building wells there to provide the villages with safe drinking water. The area has no road access so there was a lot of walking involved but it was an amazing way to really see the challenges faced by people who live in the villages here and how different life is compared to in the town, which is only 30km away! In every village that we visited people must walk down steep, slippery hills to water sources near the rice fields in order to collect water which they then must carry all the way back up the hill- I was out of breath just walking back up so I can't imagine how difficult it must be when carrying 10l of water with you! Each village aswell had more children than adults, the majority of which looked under 5 years, really hitting home the problems that Madagascar has with its growing population...

Rain, rain, rain

I now know what rainy season is actually like... Today is the first day since Sunday where it hasn't been raining non-stop!

I've had such an interesting week though despite the rain! On Monday I travelled south to a village called Ambohomasima which is in one of the most beautiful locations I have ever been to... I was travelling down with Josephine who I work with who manages Feedback's projects of a women's cooperative and youth centre in the village. We were travelling down with a couple from France (Ludo and Coco) who were interested in seeing the projects and doing some trekking in the area. Both were really nice and gave me a chance to properly practice my French (48 hours with no English whatsoever!) The drive down was through the mountains and the scenery is just amazing. It took us around an hour and a half to make it south to the town of Ambalavao (really pretty town situated in the middle of the mountains!) with a stop on the way by the police- I'd stupidly forgotten to take my passport with me so when we got stopped by the police for a random check I had to pay 20,000 Ariary (around 7 quid) to bribe them to let me through! A bit of an inconvienience but it was my own fault, we made sure to avoid the police after that by going off road when we saw that a police stop point was coming up!

Once we got to Ambalavao we had to go East along a dirt road to get to Ambohomasima, which was another amazing drive through the scenery just a lot more bumpy... Ambohomasima is a little village at the end of the road right next to one of the largest rainforest corridors in Madagascar and it's absolutely beautiful. We arrived on the market day which means everyone is drinking Tokagash (Madagascan rum) which is way stronger than anything we have in England- it costs 2000 Ariary for a litre (just under one pound!!!) so when we went for a walk through the town we were surrounded by drunken men everywhere who kept speaking to us in Malagasy despite us not being able to understand a word!

In the afternoon we visited the women's cooperative where they make crafts to sell to tourists, the youth centre which was set up by Feedback with the help of volunteers from Southampton university, the local health centre, the new secondary school, and an eco-tourism project that organises treks in the surrounding countryside. Unfortunately it was raining so much that Ludo and Coco couldn't do the trekking they wanted but we had a lovely meal in the evening cooked for us by the women's cooperative. The next day Josephine was meant to be interviewing people for the role of youth advisors however there were not enough applicants for this to be possible so after Josephine had finished having a meeting with the women's cooperative we headed back to Fianar with a short stopover to explore Ambalavao and fortunately no police on the way back!

Wednesday I was off again to a different village further North where there was meant to be an inauguration ceremony for a well that Feedback had built there. After leaving the office around 8.30 am we didn't actually leave Fianar until around 10 because of different hold ups, but as everyone kept saying we were on 'Malagasy time' haha. The village itself isn't far outside of Fianar but there is no paved road so with the rain it took us around an hour to get there. After getting to the village however it turned out that some people who were meant to have turned up hadn't so the ceremony wasn't going to happen after all... we were told to stick around though as they had already slaughtered a Zebu cow for us to have at lunch. With everything running behing schedule though we didn't eat until around 3ish and didn't end up leaving the village until 5! And not before I'd been shown the carcass of the cow that we'd just eaten (Jess you would have been repulsed aha) and one of the village elders (who was insanely drunk) had come up to me around 20 times speaking to me in a mixture of English, French and Malagasy telling me that he wanted me to marry his son who is studying economics in Tana...

As we were leaving all the kids from the village (I've never seen so many kids compared to adults, made me really understand how 50% of Madagascar's population is under 18...) were chasing after the cars and trying to climb on aha It had been raining non-stop all day though so the road coming back was awful, thank god we had a 4x4! I found it really fun though and we made it back fine so all was good!

In the evening I met up with Ludo, Coco, Sam and Abel (my boss and her husband) for dinner in Fianar before Ludo and Coco went off travelling to the coast. It was a really nice evening and found out that Ludo and Coco are planning to walk from France to Asia after their Madagascan adventure! Pretty cool but I could never do it!

Have spent today and yesterday back in the office catching up on work and trying to move forward with the Treemad project even though the internet at the moment really doesn't want me to be able to get any work done!

Cyclone!

Been here just over two weeks now and have experienced my first cyclone! Not fully as it was worse further north and to the east, but I still got to experience the insane wind and rain! Sadly my visit to a project had to be cancelled as the roads would have been too bad, but its hopefully being rescheduled for this friday!

I spent most of the week working on ideas for the new Treemad fundraising campaign, whilst also looking at the original feedback madagascar website and seeing what needs to be updated and what can be improved on. I've also been working on ways to integrate the reporting process for the team and project managers out here so that information for donors/funding proposals/website information/treemad updates can all be collected and stored in the same place to make things a lot simpler and easier- having worked on that I am now doing research into the different projects in order to fill up this database with all the relevant information.

I have also been hearing rumours that I will be going to visit one of feedback's projects in a couple of weeks time for an opening ceremony which the prime minister will be attending!  This should be an interesting experience aha

Was introduced to some more english speakers at the weekend through a group set up by the american peace corps out here called 'tea and talk'- it was set up so that malagasy people who want to improve their english can come and speak with other malagasy people and native english speakers, and they meet up twice a week. The main members are now trying to turn the group into an association so that they can get funding for english teaching projects for the community around Fianarantsoa.

It was Jamie's last weekend before going home so we had a party for him at feedback on friday night and then saturday night we went to karaoke with some of the feedback staff and also people from tea and talk and I got to have my first experience of clubbing madagascan style! Weirdly it reminded me a lot of lola los... it was a fun night though apart from getting home to realise the front gate had been locked, but i left it up to Jamie to climb over!

Weather seems to be so much better this week (saw the sky at night for the first time without any clouds and it is insanee how many stars you can see!!) And hopefully it'l hold out til friday so I can visit one of the projects!!!