19-days In Madagascar

 

            Things have gotten tremendously excited here over the past week. I saw a variety of lemurs, a lot of them with infants.  Spring has defiantly sprung in Madagascar. It’s weird to think that the trees are just starting to change into fall colors at home, and here things are just beginning to bud and bloom. I am enjoying the warmer weather though. The entire week has been absolutely beautiful, not a drop of rain, strange because we are in a rain forest. Everyone that has been here for a long duration of time, like Dr. Patricia Wright, the founder of this program and the national park we are currently inhabiting, keeps telling us how spoiled we are. I can’t complain. On the note of Patricia Wright, she is wonderful. As one of my classmates put it, she is the perfect combination of great wisdom and childlike enthusiasm. 

            This week we went on several intense hikes through the thick of the forest. The guides here are beasts, to say the least. Practically dragging our out-of-shape American Asses up and through trees and forest undergrowth, over streams and through the mud. Its’ been wonderful, I am sore and going to come home with buns of steel.

            We had quite the fiesta on Saturday night. It was a post-test celebration. Because we just finished our first class, the test was intense. Conveniently downtown Ranomafana was having a tourism celebration, which seemed more like a study abroad meets the Malagasy people of Ranomafan. I love how so many countries adopt popular American music, which was popular during my 6^th grade dance and probably came off of a Now 5 CD. It was swell. We danced until the sun looked as though it was coming to say hello. The only unfortunate thing about living in a tent is that it is completely impossible to sleep in. Once the sun begins to heat up it is like living in an oven. By 9.A.M it felt like I was Ace Ventura, being birthed out of a mechanical hippo, horrible feeling when you’re a bit hung-over.

            Now we have just begun our Biodiversity course. It’s a week long with lectures all day everyday. BORING. I think solely because we have the rain forest behind us beckoning us to come and explore. It’s ok though, I can’t complain, I’d rather take a 3-credit class for one week in Madagascar as opposed to a four month long class at home. J

            Speaking of home. I miss everyone. It’s strange though. I feel as though I am completely detached from that reality. That home is such a distant memory. I am living in a different world. Every time I listen to my Ipod I feel strange, it feels almost unnatural to be doing so. Even when I get the opportunity to go downtown and utilize the Internet I feel almost compelled to decline. I guess its because missing home only alters this experience in my mind. Why miss home when you’re in one of the most unique places in the world? So I suppose I don’t really miss, but really, I think that everyone should have the opportunity to see this colorful world.

            

Salama

Ranomafana

 

 

After 10 hours of nauseating-windy roads, we arrived in Ranamofanda National Park. The ride here, though it was nauseating, it was extremely beautiful and enlightening. I must say that Madagascar at first glance was not what I was expecting. I was expecting lush foliage in warm-moist-environment, you know, stereotypical rainforest situation. But it was none of that, at least at the start of this trip (Antananoriva) and still even now, in the rain forest. It is lush and filled with foliage but it’s still not the viviparous greens and nearly florescent colors I had imagined. Though I am not disappointed at all, just trying to take in this new vision.

            The 10- hour drive south through the mountainous roads that look like they were straight out of a mazda commercial “zoom zoom zoom” conveyed a great deal about the lifestyles of these people. The houses are primarily constructed from clay, red-earth matter and the complexity of their designed went from a clay-type house found in southern California to primitive shanty houses, with grain and straw roof tops. It was interesting to see the move from the “big city” Tana, with a high concentration of people and more complex housing, to the simplicity of the countryside.

            Unfortunately once we reached the most beautiful point of this trip, our new home for the next three months, a plague invaded our team. More then half of the people came down with one illness or another, including my self. Nausea, diarrhea, fevers, chills, vomit, you name all of the things you do not want to acquire while on vacation, especially in Madagascar, someone got it. I’d like to add, that feeling like you are going to vomit at any quick movement, makes living in a tent on top of a mountain in which you have a 10 min vertical hike pretty undesirable. As well as not being able to accompany the 15 or so people that saw not one, not two but four species of lemur on the first hike into the forest. a bit upsetting. But what will be will be.

            I’d like to add that it’s eleven days into this trip and yes I am still yet to see a lemur! I just may be the only one. But its ok I think I’m going to go out and look for microcebus (mouse lemur) adorable.  Or maybe even find an aye-aye, which seems to be very unlikely.  I’m not too worried about it. I am no longer sick, and my diagnosis, that I am allergic to the forest…Who would’ve thought that me being allergic to latex (condoms) would impact me in the rainforest? Oh rubber trees how I loath thee. It has been several days now and I haven’t taken a benadryl so I think I may just ignore that whole diagnosis. The forest is too beautiful to be allergic too. It seems all too ironic in some way.

           

           

            

Hollywood in Anatanarivo

Hollywood in Anatanarivo,

After 2 long days of being thrown into a new world with 30 strangers, being carted around like sardines and smelling a bit too much like them, this trip defiantly began as an adventure.

The first night was an icebreaker. Thrown into a room with our newly acquired friends to be. Girls paired in twos and boys in threes. I lucked out, I knew my roommate, well at least could call her an acquaintance. After walking up these frenchesque stairs toward the our temporary homes in Tana, to our surprise there was a single full-sized bed a “water closet” or I would call it a toilet closet and then an open shower that left a great deal of room for a peep show. The close quarters geared us for what was to come in the next three months.

In Tana our large group navigated through the bustling streets, filled with food peddlers and young children (the children are adorable here, filthy, but adorable). Not to mention dodging the mass of minivans and old English cars that fly through the streets. There are no traffic laws here, or at least none visible to me. And of course yielding for pedestrians is a far-fetched goal, just to keep you on your toes. This kind of made me wonder how a country that has probably relied on human transportation up until recently, I.E the wonderful invention of the foot, can completely disregard pedestrians once they got behind the wheel. Then again, the everyday technology that we take for granted, seems to reign high in all of the developing countries I’ve been to (China was the same deal except you also had to dodge the bike lane, which was far more terrifying).

I’m not a city person, so I can’t really say Tana has been my favorite part of this trip. I can say that Madagascar has a distinct smell of burning and B.O which is a strange combination. But I suppose not that strange due to the amount of slashing and burning that has devastated Madagascar and unfortunately continues to this day. The air seems to be permanently stained with soot, it has this gritty dusty feel to it. Like your trapped in your grandmother’s closet but replace the stench of mothballs with campfire.

We wondered around Tana for a day or so. We went to the zoo and saw all of the Lemurs we were going to study in the forest, in captivity. That was sad. We saw a fossa adorable little predator. We learned about the traveler’s tree, a palm that is endemic to Madagascar and a little periwinkle flower that is now used to treat and cure childhood leukemia (also endemic to Madagascar). Then we all piled into our European-style minivan, it looks like a box, and began to climb up the mountain to the King’s palace.

The palace was the main palace for the 2-meter tall king and his twelve wives, however only his favorite wife lived there, lucky gal. I must say that it had some spectacular views. Centered on the tallest mountain overlooking Tana. It felt like you were on top of the world. We learned, as we looked out on all of the green grassland and rice patties, with small patches of forest here and there, that all we looked upon was once, a continuous forest. Also sad. Can’t forget the mass of cell phone towers that seemed to be erecting on the tops of each of the surrounding mountains.

Some cool facts about the palace, besides the fact that the king was the size of a small-child.

The stairs were not made for people that were under 4 feet tall.

The walls were made from crushed stone and egg whites. They felt like concrete. And have held up for hundreds of years.

AND The king was a pimp.

Oh and the word for garbage can in Malagasy is Oscar. A reminder of Sesame Street for us all.

After our fieldtrip we set off home to our hotel. We drank some THB ( the only beer in Madagascar that strangely tastes like tin foil) went to sleep so we could wake up at 6 am to set off on our 10-hour car ride to Ranomafana National Park.