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!

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.