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.
~~~

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: 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.