Eva Colberg's Adventures in Madagascar: ISP and Reflections

Here's the last installment of Eva's updates. Everything below is Eva's own words. I hope you enjoy!

Check out Eva's Instagram for more photos of Madagascar and her other adventures:


If you would like to contact her, feel free to email her here.
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Final Mada Update

Eva Colberg

December 19, 2014

It still doesn’t quite seem real; my semester in Madagascar is over, and I’ve now been in Alaska for five days. It doesn't seem so much like reverse culture shock as it does simply figuring out how to live in this country without wasting or forgetting what I've learned and experienced overseas. 

The majority of November was dedicated to my independent study project (ISP). It began with a solitary taxi-brousse ride to a town on the northeastern coast to finally meet my ISP advisor, a botanist for Missouri Botanical Garden. After another, shorter taxi-brousse ride and then a three-hour boat trip up the river to my base village of Manjato, he spent two days of preliminary fieldwork with me. Then he departed, leaving me with my own devices.

Francine (my cook), Edrissia (her step-daughter), and Theresis (Francine's husband and one of my guides) preparing cloves to be dried.

I had two guides and a cook who barely knew any French and certainly not any English between the three of them, making charades and Malagasy the main options for conveying my research methods, daily needs, and basic interactions. Between the language barrier, exhausting days traipsing through the hilly swamps and littoral forests, and minimal contact with the outside world, my ISP was the most mentally, physically, and emotionally challenging portion of my trip.

A lone mature individual of Ravenea krociana, one of my target species.

Triumphantly, though, it paid off. My Malagasy improved greatly, I mastered balancing on one-log bridges, and most exciting of all, I documented the populations of four threatened, endemic palm species, one of which had only been known to exist in two other locations prior to my study. Additionally, my village was incredibly welcoming to me. I had a first-hand view of the intricacies of community-based forest management, and every day of field work was an adventure full of new surprises, from chameleons to rare and bizarre plants. 

After writing up my findings, I reunited with my group in Tulear, on the west coast, for our final presentations, exams, and re-entry sessions. As we made our way back up to the capital, we snorkeled in Ifaty with the NGO ReefDoctor, camped in the canyon of Isalo National Park, hiked to the top of the Tsaranoro Valley near Andringitra National Park, and received parting blessings from the fanahy (spirits) on top of the sacred mountain Andatabo.

The sandstone formations of Isalo National Park.

Ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) in the Tsaranoro Valley.

According to the fanahy, I will return to Madagascar, but I already knew that in my heart. On my last night in Manjato, my cook gave me a sprouting potato to plant in her backyard. It felt powerfully symbolic, as if I was leaving a little part of me to grow in Madagascar and give back to it in some way, a small gift of gratitude for all that it has given me.

Sacred cave with offerings as we await our blessings from the fanahy.

Eva Colberg's Adventures in Madagascar: Lemurs and Sambatra

Here is part three of Eva's updates. Everything below is Eva's own words. I hope you enjoy!

Check out Eva's Instagram for more photos of Madagascar and her other adventures:


If you would like to contact her, feel free to email her here.
~~~

Mada Update 3

November 2, 2014

Today I parted ways with all my teachers and fellow students, embarking on a solitary journey to the northeast of the country, where I will be working with the Missouri Botanical Garden to conduct research on the abundance and distribution of several endangered palm species. I am both nervous and incredibly excited, but I should first bring you up to date with the rest of my trip.

Back when we were still stationed in Manakara, we took a few days out to Kianjavato, where the Madagascar Biodiversity Partnership has a research station. Their headline projects all involve lemurs, as nine species of lemur live in the forest there (two of which are endangered: the black-and-white-ruffed lemur, Varecia variegata, and the greater bamboo lemur, Prolemur simus). Since this was our lemur ecology unit, we spent our time out in the field learning behavior, population, and habitat-monitoring techniques, and thus also got to witness the fantastic creatures in their natural state. They are really quite funny to watch; they make pig-like noises to each other, leap about the canopy at daredevil heights, and get in spats with each other over jackfruit.

Greater Bamboo Lemur, Prolemur simus

Black-and-White-Ruffed Lemur, Varecia variegata

Aye-aye

One of the lemur research programs there is focused on aye-ayes, and we were lucky enough to attend the release of an aye-aye that they had just attached a tracking device to. Aye-ayes fall on the side of the more bizarre lemurs, with their ridiculously long fingers and wide, round eyes.

We spent our last week together in Mananjary, witnessing and even participating in some of the festivities of the Sambatra (Here's a Peace Corps Volunteer's Impression -Amanda W.). Sambatra, which means happiness, is a cultural event that happens every seven years. It involves many parades, processions, singing, dancing, and rituals, and culminates in the circumcision of all the young boys in the participating clans.

Most importantly for the Antambahoaka of this region, the circumcision represents the boys finally being recognized as male, and thus gaining a place in their society (most boys are actually now circumcised at birth, so the ceremony is just the official acceptance of their boyhood). It is interesting to see how globalization is affecting the tradition, though. Crowds now gather around every event with cameras, tablets, and video recorders in hand; there are some foreigners, but the majority are simply Malagasy from other regions. We spoke with one of the clan leaders, and he expressed concern about the Malagasy media’s portrayal of the event as betraying the traditional purpose. Nonetheless, it is fantastic to watch when scores of women dance across the beach in colorfully striped lamba-hoany carrying reeds for mat weaving back to their tranobe (Tranobe is the "palace" of the clan; the king holds meetings and important events within this single-roomed building. Literally translated it means big house. -Eva C.).

Eva Colberg's Adventures in Madagascar: Appreciation in Manakara

Here is part two of Eva's updates. Everything below is Eva's own words. I hope you enjoy!

Check out Eva's Instagram for more photos of Madagascar and her other adventures:


If you would like to contact her, feel free to email her here.

~~~

Mada Update #2

Eva Colberg

October 16, 2014

Akory aby! (That's the Antemoro greeting in Manakara, my current location)

Bear with me (or just look at the photos), as this is fairly long.

This is the landscape of southern Madagascar; with spiny thickets and tombs galore.

Most of us agreed that Faux Cap was one of the most challenging experiences; we were divided into pairs to stay in small villages within the same commune, each with a Malagasy student from our partner school as translator. I was extremely lucky to have a good translator, minimal fleabites and no illnesses during my stay, as well as a wise host mother who could sense when we were uncomfortable and then found ways to alleviate it. Fortunately, I enjoy singing and dancing and eating sweet potatoes, because we did a lot of that. Sure, we had time to practice rural appraisal methods and learn about the food security of the area, but over the course of the week I also ate the fruit of the raketa cactus, took bucket showers under the sky behind a wall of sisal (Sisal is a spiky plant commonly found in but not endemic to the landscape of Southern Madagascar. Agave sisalana is commercially grown (more so in the past, but still a bit today) in Madagascar for its tough fibers, which an be used for twine and carpets among other things. - Eva), crowded into a one-room house with 20 other people, planted corn, and spent at least an hour every night dancing with the entire village in the traditional Atandrôy style.

Our Faux Cap host family tressed my hair in their traditional style and we all danced together for the farewell celebration.

After a week that was far too short back in Fort Dauphin, it was time to say goodbye to our host families and move north.

I never realized how privileged we are to have seatbelts, personal space, and paved roads in the States, but despite the absence of those three qualities I am now a master of finding comfort in a camion-brousse. 

We spent the past week camping in front of la StationOcéanographique de Vangaindrano, where we studied coastal ecology and natural resource use within the surrounding community. I thus now have a much better understanding of rice farming, which is widely practiced in this region. Most of the people we talked to were poorer farmers who only own a few fields, and thus can’t let anything fallow for rejuvenation and better future growth.  It seems like a vicious cycle where only those who are already well off can afford the more efficient techniques, but they manage to survive.

On the road after Vangaindrano, we had two forest walks: one at Mahabo, a community-managed multiple-use littoral forest (Missouri Botanical Garden's work in littoral forests -Amanda W.), where I found another orchid in bloom (pictured left); and the other through a low-altitude rainforest populated with palms, mangroves (Conservations efforts -Amanda W.), and epiphytes. Ducking under vines and adventitious roots makes any hike feel more adventurous, especially when you also find chameleons and snakes and bright red millipedes!

I’m currently writing this from Manakara, in my host family’s house. They don’t have Internet or a flushing toilet, and nobody has their own room, but they do have a large house, electricity, and running water, so they’re fairly well off in terms of Malagasy homes.  They’re also incredibly friendly and have emphasized the fact that this is a learning experience from the start; four of them speak French, but they all make an effort to teach me Malagasy and find traditional foods for me to try. This involves a lot of rice flour bread products, fresh fruit juices, and sugary treats.

We've also seen a fair amount of tragedy. My host sister took me to the beach, and right as we arrived a swarm of people was making its way from the water, surrounding the body of a young boy who had just been taken out to sea. They at first thought he was drowned, but he started breathing again. Because no doctors work on weekends, though, he still didn't make it, and ended up dying anyways. It is sometimes difficult to face all the depressing facts about poverty, inadequate governance, and the destruction of nature in Madagascar, but at the same time there is so much joy in all the people; everyone greets each other on the streets, and they are especially delighted when vazaha such as myself and my fellow students respond in not only Malagasy but their own dialect. Even when a Malagasy song is talking about a sad subject, it still unfolds in a cheerful key and tempo. Every day brings new happiness no matter what hardships happen.

Veloma!

Eva

Tiny chameleon!