Eva Colberg's Adventures in Madagascar: Introduction to the country and conservation

On August 12, Eva Colberg left the Polly Hill Arboretum and Martha's Vineyard for her next big adventure: a three-and-a-half-month-long study abroad in Madagascar. At 2 AM on August 28, she touched down in the country best known for its vanilla and curious prosimians (who like to Move It, Move It) for an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

She sent her friends and family exciting accounts of her activities while she was there and I was so touched by her experience that I wondered if she would mind sharing it on here. Her reply was yes and so we've arranged to release the updates in a four-part series, which starts with this post. 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.


~~~

Salama from Madagascar

Eva Colberg

September 20, 2014

Dear all,

Wifi is a rare commodity in Madagascar, but finally I have the chance to show you a bit of my semester!

​For orientation, we started out in the capital, Antananarivo (Tana), taking a few days to see the highlights of the city. In addition to the typical historical walk of Haut-Ville, the former quarter of the rich and royal, and a trip to Tsimbazaza, the national zoo and botanical gardens, we also happened to be there at the same time as the falala (locusts). The sky would grow a hazy reddish brown color every evening from the thickness of the swarms. 

After Tana, we flew south to Fort Dauphin, the easygoing beach town that has been our home base for the month. Our classroom is on a hill at the tip of the peninsula, reachable only by walking across the beach.

We really are learning, though. Everything ties back to the effects of the QMM/Rio Tinto ilmenite (titanium dioxide, the reason fridges and toothpaste are blindingly white) mining project on the people and environment of the region. It has led us everywhere, from speaking with local people displaced by the mine to seeing the mine's property and efforts towards environmental remediation, as well as showing us the places that succeeded in deterring the company and the places that might still become mining land.

We visited Evatraha, a fishing village that was almost the site of a QMM-built port, but local fishermen had enough support to turn down the offer and maintain their capturing waters.

This photo shows the edge of a re-created swamp, one of QMM's more successful revegetation endeavors. Littoral forest revegetation plots from the same year looked significantly less healthy.

QMM wouldn't let my program visit the actual mine this year due to increased safety regulations, but they took us to see their restoration projects and seed bank instead.

We spent a few days at Sainte Luce, camping and learning botanical field methods. My group was lucky enough to find this orchid (pictured above; and of course, Kew would have a field guide; and win for Orchidaceae: it has the most species of any family in Madagascar. -Amanda W.) in our transect.

My Malagasy host family took me to a family funeral, a surprisingly large affair involving lots of food preparation, zebu slaughtering, and carrying of the body to the tomb in the forest. All the women, myself included, wore lamba hoany, the traditional multifunctional and colorful cloth wrap. Most of my communication with the family has been in French, although I am slowly learning Malagasy as well. Thus it isn't complete French immersion, but it's still incredibly helpful.

Up next, after a day-long taxi-brousse ride (my one complaint; outside the QMM-funded pavement of Fort Dauphin, roads here are dusty and riddled with potholes, and driving over them is miserable) we will be spending one week in a rural community in the Faux Cap region, where the people remain far more conservative and traditional than anywhere else we've seen so far. 

Thank you/merci/misaotra,

Eva

Nepenthes madagascariensis, Madagascar's own pitcher plant, growing abundantly on the side of the road.