Adventurings in Madagascar

Bonjour mes copains!

Well it's the big news everyone's talking about and it's true.. I'm doing my dissertation in Madagascar this summer! It's been a while in the pipeline but confirmed as of a month-ish ago. I was kind of dreading the thought of spending my whole summer in front of a computer doing desktop literature reviews, and I figured my opportunities for travelling will largely diminish once (if) I get a job. I was actually looking into the trip when I happened to start reading a book I got for Christmas called 'Pink Boots and a Machete' about a female national geographic explorer. One of her first expeditions happened to be to Madagascar and it sounded amazing and I basically wanted to be her. So I decided I would be her (kind of).

So let's have a funtastic factual fiesta bullet points about this awesome country...

• It is in fact a real place and not actually a figment of DreamWorks imagination
• It is the world's fourth biggest island
• Almost all it's population live in poverty
• Around 90% of all plant and animal species in the country are endemic (i.e. not found anywhere else in the world)
• Because it is so rich in biodiversity it has been referred to as "the eighth continent"
• It's in Africa (which, let's be clear, is a continent and NOT A COUNTRY. ha.)

So far, the main stress was the matter of flights, which finally got booked up a few weeks ago. I'm going with STA Travel, flying from Heathrow to Antananarivo (capital of Madagascar) via Nairobi with Kenya Airways. Then I'm staying a night or two in the capital before flying to Fort Dauphin in the South, from which I will be driven 4 hours through the rainforest to where I'm mainly going to be researching, Ifotaka in the spiny forest region (although I'll be travelling around 3 main villages during my 6 weeks). Pretty exciting, huh! I won't be on my own when I get there though - I'm doing it with an organisation called Operation Wallacea, so there will be a group of us students as well as researchers who are already out there.

Fort Dauphin Beach

Vaccs were the next thing to sort. Those recommended were Hep A, Tetanus, and Typhoid. I already had Typhoid so I just had the other two, one in each arm, at my local health centre. Rabies and Hep C were the other options. However, rabies wasn't nec because I'll always be at least 24 hours from medical help (and a vaccination doesn't prevent it anyways, it just increases the time you have before you start frothing away). Hep C was an option in case I had any Malagasy sexy affairs (unlikely) or had to have an operation out there. But it required 3 injections, each at £30 so I think I'll just take care not to burst my spleen or anything. Malaria requires popping pills everyday and either having horrible side effects and chundering everywhere (cheap option pills) or splashing the cash (pricey option pills), so I decided not to be such a cheap skate on that one.

Potential reconstruction of me with rabies

Equipment wise there's not much left to buy, maybe just some adventurous style clothing. I went to Go Outdoors and got some biodegradable soap and a new platypus water carrier (I dug out my old one from DoE and it had turned an unusual blackish green colour). They only suggested bringing a water bottle, but I'm terrible at keeping myself hydrated at the best of times, so I thought having the handy little hamster-style drinking tube at my shoulder might help this. Plus it totally puts the fun back into drinking.

The final prep work is to brush up on my French - Madagascar used to be a French colony so that's what they all speak. So far I have learnt how to say "the father is in the sitting room reading the newspaper", I'm fully convinced this will be a very useful phrase.

The Spiny Forest

So what am I actually DOING?

Potentially I will be doing more than just prancing around with pretty lemurs. OK, so I'm basically researching the effectiveness of projects such as REDD+ (google it!) which aim to create a win-win situation for development and conservation efforts. So in the example of REDD+, local communities are compensated for conserving forests (rather than clearing them for timber/slash and burn) by companies who want to offset their carbon emissions. This works because deforestation and degradation release the carbon stored in trees, so preventing this reduces emissions. So in a simplified, ideal world, the impoverished people win through compensation (in the form of money or other things) and the environment wins because there are loads of trees left to hug - happy days! Obviously we do not live in a simple or ideal world so the happiness level of these days cannot be guaranteed - which is why I am out there helping research some of the less simple and ideal factors e.g. how dependent the local communities are on their natural resources, if the compensation is going to the right people etc. Well that's pretty much that in a nutshell, but the ideas still a bit of a work in progress and I'm still getting my head around all the issues sooo don't quote me on anything just yet.

Mouse lemur says :P

But anyway, I'm not off till mid June so there's still time! I'm hoping to do some blogging out there but internet will be pretty scarce so don't get your hopes up just yet! Lol. Anyway just a wee update for the time being. 

Much Love!

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