Last Wednesday Rodrigue showed up at my door holding the stiff rain-soaked remains of my first cat. “Maty” (dead) he said and he went over by the leeche trees to bury it, apparently life in the woods did not suit it well. Sharbaraz on the other hand is doing splendid. She figured out how to use a litter tray and has become taken with dozing in the sunlight on the floor.
That’s all the feline news for the week, I know last time I promised I would talk about work. My main work in Madagascar centers around a tree nursery run by SAF/FJKM that is located immediately behind my house. My two Malagasy coworkers are Rodrigue, my neighbor, and Ratsabotsy, an older man whose knowledge about the area seems limitless. We grow two types of trees in our nursery, fruit trees and “hazoala” or native rainforest trees. The fruit trees are our main concern. SAF/FJKM brought over a collection of high quality fruit trees from America and planted them in the Ranomafana Arboretum. Our job is to replicate these trees using direct seeding and grafting and then hopefully sell them to local people who can in turn make a living selling high quality fruit. The nursery was only started in May of 2009 so we don’t have anything sold yet. We have however been grafting and filling plastic pots with cow manure. Fun
The other part of the nursery is the hazoala. In order to acquire the seeds/seedlings required to grow these trees, we need to collect them directly from the forest. I have been on two such trips so far and they are quite an ordeal. I was warned ahead of time that they would be tough and to watch out for leeches so I donned my sole long sleeve shirt, long pants, running shoes and heavy socks. When I met Ratsabotsy at the trailhead he was in shorts, a t-shirt, and was barefoot. In order to get into the forest without going through the park (we aren’t allowed to collect in the park for obvious reasons) we need to take non-traditional paths up the slopes of mountains to reach the primary forest. On the first day it took us two hours of hiking up what can only euphemistically be called a trail to reach the forest. Once there we abandon the trail and began bush whacking through the undergrowth looking for anything interesting, and boy did we find some interesting stuff. Besides seeing two boas, we saw an endangered species of bird, lots of strange looking bugs and even one lemur, I think it was a Golden Bamboo Lemur but I am not certain. Ratsabotsy listed off countless names of different trees and plants to me in Malagasy and I remembered none of them. We collected seeds to one of the worlds smallest palm trees, some berries that were robins-egg blue, and a few things that Ratsabotsy didn’t recognize. It was great. Ratsabotsy had a good time too because he was laughing at me most of the time. The trail was slippery so I fell on my butt four or five times descending hills and I would stop every 25 meters in a vain attempt to keep the leeches from finding my legs. He found this very funny. The leeches had a hard time penetrating his calloused feet but they certainly had a heyday with my legs. By the time I got back I had well over 30 leeches on each leg and there was blood in all my clothes. I didn’t realize how serious it was until I stood up to fast and, for the first time in my life, nearly blacked out. As I lay on my floor, still bleeding from my ankles and recovering from what was a five hour hike, Ratsabotsy showed up fresh as a daisy ready to plant up out findings
The next time I was more prepared and had my pants tucked into long tube socks (much to Ratsabotsy’s amusement) but some of the leeches managed to suck though my socks, but I think if I double layer the socks next time I should be able to keep them out. Oh and another thing about leech bites, they itch like crazy for a week.
In other news, I am trying to start a garden without much success. There is a place next to my house that I have been trying to dig up, but the soil is very rock and I keep digging up old chunks of Route Nationale 26 which evidently bisected my yard at some point. I also had the idea to build a small shelter in the nursery for us to work in which we finished this week. Despite all that’s been going on it has been kind of a hard week here. I found out there was a coup d’etat in Niger so while it is a good thing I left, I have no idea about the safety of my American and Nigerien friends who are still there. There was a death in the village yesterday and some of my Peace Corps friends are having trouble at their sites which makes me worry, but there is nothing I can do. I also have way too much free time so I read A LOT. I published a reading list below so you can keep up with what I’m reading.
Anyway, Miss you all

Mike