Dan and the Plan

Though I would like to continue with my description of Ranomafana, much has happened this week so that will need to wait. First I must begin with a short description of what my work here involves. Although technically I am an employee of the US government, many volunteers are partnered with Non-government Organizations. These “partner organizations” ideally will help a volunteer get started with development work and provide community contacts and structure to the volunteer. My friend Ashley’s partner organization sometimes takes her on hikes and she often tags along on development projects.
My situation is different. My partner organization is SAF/FJKM, a Malagasy environment group that works all over the country. SAF owns my house, SAF owns the tree nursery, SAF started the Arboretum in Ranomafana, SAF employs Rodrigue. In an unofficial capacity I too work for SAF. The man in charge of the tree nursery and the founder of the Arboretum is Dan. Dan lives in Antananarivo, but lived in Ranomafana for some 20 years before he came to work for SAF. Everyone in town knows Dan, when I meet people on the street, all I need to say is that I work with Dan and their eyes grow wide and they nod knowingly. Dan is my main contact at SAF and funding for projects and maintenance of the tree nursery is funneled through him.
I knew Dan was a big deal but I was totally and completely unprepared for what happened. Last week I wrote about the changes caused by cyclone Hubert. This week we had Cyclone Dan. My preparations for Dan’s arrival seem frivolous in retrospect. I spent most of last weekend digging up a garden next to my house and was thinking that we could talk about some vegetables or rainforest plants I could grow there. Dan was due to arrive in the late morning on Tuesday. Sara, another volunteer partnered with SAF was due to come with him. At 4:45PM Dan’s brown Toyota ground to an exhausted halt in front of my house. Dan, Sara and two Malagasy SAF employees piled out of the vehicle. We exchanged hellos and decided to go down the road to have “a quick look at the Arboretum.” Two hours later I returned home 15 minutes late for dinner.
The next morning I went on a short hike with Sara and by the time we made it the Arboretum Dan had mustered a workforce of 80 Malagasy to do weeding, trail-building, and other chores for the day. Dan was going a mile a minute trying to install 50 some new signs that he had brought down from Antananarivo and was coming up with new ideas for the Arboretum and the tree nursery. At lunch we sat down and Dan gave me his vision for the tree nursery’s future as well as enough stuff to do to keep me busy well into the next decade. Here is a run-down of what we talked about:
1.The Big Project: Dan is going to write a grant to get money from somewhere to start a major fruit orchard project in the 8 Communes (Communes are about the size of an American township) surrounding Ranomafana National Park. The grant would help to fund the Tree Nursery and hire a new Malagasy employee. In the target communes, this ‘new guy’ and I would locate 100 motivated farmers and 10 motivated group leaders. The group leaders would receive extensive training from us in Ranomafana and would be responsible for overseeing 10 of the farmers in their area. Using money from the grant we would give each farmer 20 different species of trees from the nursery and each group leader 30 trees. Thus, the little tree nursery behind my house is going to be responsible for producing approximately 2300 high quality trees sometime before December (is the goal). This includes some 800 grafted trees, of which there are currently 37.
2. Expand the Nursery: Dan is hoping to return in May to double the size of the tree nursery to accommodate all these new trees. He also hopes to use this expansion to begin selling finished trees to people passing along on Route Nationale 25.
3. Build a Trellis: Build a structure for climbing fruit vines like passion fruit to grow on in the Arboretum
4. Develop an Understory in the Arboretum: Currently the Arboretum has lots of interesting trees, but the ground looks a little shabby and is essentially a bunch of weed and grasses. I am to collect seeds from bushes and shrubs in the forest to develop them in the Arboretum to make the Arboretum more appealing to foreign tourists.
5. Work on “The List”: Dan gave me an annotated ‘wish list’ of 65 tree species that are around the Park, but not yet in the Arboretum. Most are very rare and quite remote. Find these trees and plant them in the Arboretum
6. Trip to Tana April 4-13: A new orchard is being planted near Tana and Dan wants me to see it and be able to apply what I learned to the Big Project so next week I’m going up NORTH!
7. Locate and collect samples of rare plants: There is lots of cool stuff around here. For example the only Climbing Palm in the world grows only in a patch of forest about 30 kilometers down the road. There is also a rare palm called PALMAE Dypsis interruptor that is also in this patch. There has been only one documented sighting of this plant. Also hike to Vatovavy
8. Start a co-operative project with my friend Ashley: My only neighboring PCV and I are hoping to collaborate on an education project to bring grafting and quality fruit to a poor area of Madagascar.
I hope you can see how after this meeting, my original plan to ‘start planting my garden next month’ seems like small potatoes. This is lots of work and it’s honestly super ambitious, but I hope I’m up to the challenge. Some of this stuff like the tree collecting isn’t critical, but I would still like to try. Add to this that Dan is leaving the country in June for a year so his availability a resource is limited. No more will Dan be able to come down and cram two weeks of work into two days every few months. We spent most of the rest of that day hammering this plan out. Not surprisingly I was late for dinner again.
Next week I will be on the road in Fianarantsoa and Antananarivo so I don’t know when I can post, but for now I have trees to graft.

p.s. 1st mail from the US arrived today at my current address! Sent March 15! Thanks Al & Judy!

MAIL CALL!!!

As of Wednesday, Michael has received most of the mail and packages that were sent to the Niger and the Antananarivo addresses. There are probably a few still out there, but for those who are wondering, here is what he excitedly opened today:
Pkgs:
Aunt M-sent Dec. 9- contents are currently being enjoyed!
Dan/Diana/Al/Judy-sent Dec. 9
Letters:
Jenny R-sent ??
Al & Judy-sent Feb 9
Erica-sent Feb 10

So far he has not received any mail that was sent to Ranomafana from the US, but we expect that will start to happen soon....it's been 5 weeks since he got that address. There is still no mail arriving from Ranomafana either! A lesson in patience, I guess!

Ranomafana and Avocadoes

Coinciding with last week’s flood of rain came an unprecedented flood of another kind entirely: a flood of avocadoes. In the small orchard behind our peppenaire there are four sizable avocadoes trees that are heavy laden with fruit, and last week they began shedding their bounty. It started slowly, Rodrigue’s wife stopped by with three that she had found fallen from the trees and I quickly set to work making some fresh guacamole. Now we have more avocadoes than we know what to do with. Last Saturday I went out in the orchard in the morning and returned with 35 of them, and that does not include the ones that had broken open on rocks or been skewered by the bamboo fence surrounding the yard. What three adults, a third grader and a toddler can possibly do with a shopping cart full of avocadoes is beyond me. At the moment we are trying to stem the tide by devouring them like children with serious self control issues. I eat four a day in a homemade guacamole that I eat with a small pile of tortillias I make on my skillet. Usually I run out of flour for the torts and end up eating the guacamole out of a bowl with a spoon. Rodrigue’s fam has been pulling their weight too, eating them for breakfast and lunch with their obligatory rice but to be honest we are still loosing ground to the tide of avocadoes. Last Sunday Rodrigue’s wife took four grapefruit sized ones into the market and managed to sell the lot of them for a measly five cents, so I was thinking about introducing the Malagasy to avocado wiffleball to help get rid of some of these things. If you have any other ideas I’m open to suggestions.
Not much else has happened in the past few days. I brought Rodrigue’s family a jar of strawberry jam back from Fianarantsoa as a thank you for watching Sharbaraz while I was out, instructing them to use it as a spread for breads and biscuits. To my horror they consumed to whole thing in a day, mixing it in with tsako (essentially corn porridge) and of course using it to flavour avocadoes.
I thought I would include a short description of the city of Ranomafana for you all considering I have written sparingly little about my new home. Ranomafana is located about an hour east of Fianarantsoa and is the first major town on Route Nationale 25. This major highway bisects the town and actually passes a few meters from my front door. Normally I would not been very keen on living next to a major thoroughfare, but traffic on the road is surprisingly sparce, especially considering that it is the only passable road that serves four major cities on the east coast.
Taking the road East from Fianar, the first thing you come to is the forest. About twenty minutes outside of Fianar, the grassy plains and rice fields disappear and suddenly you are descending into a lush forested valley next to a rushing, cascading river. After about 30 minutes twisting and turning down the road you reach the park entrance, a rather unassuming stop on the right side of the road. After the park come the hotels which hug the sides of the valley sporting spectacular view of the lush valley below. 10 kilometers down the mountain from the park entrance you pass the last hotel and enter the Commune of Ranomafana. Ranomafana is a sizeable little burg with a few multi-story buildings, Gasy restaurants and hotelys, as well as a nice Sunday Market. It sits high up in the valley and everywhere you are surrounded by mountains topped with rainforest and accented by waterfalls. Most of Ranomafana is located on the North bank of the river, but the baths, the president’s villa (yes the president has a house here), as well as some Gasy homes are located on the South side. Thankfully a new bridge was cobbled together yesterday so one no longer needs a canoe to visit the other bank.

And I’m out of time, more next week

Mike

The Mail List

This is a blog addition written by 'mom' to communicate information to those of you who are writing or sending packages to Michael and wondering, "Does it ever get there?" The answer is "no" in the eyes of a monarch butterfly whose lifespan is only 2 months long, but there is hope for us humans who tend to survive a bit longer than monarch butterflies, so please keep the communication headed to Madagascar...he loves hearing from everyone! He also has some great expectations for this week...the forestry expert he reports to is coming from Tana and, hopefully, delivering all the mail and packages that have been collected for him in the past 4 months...including items that originally went to Niger and have since been delivered to Madagascar. In other words, he gets to celebrate his birthday a month early with, hopefully, lots of great communication and letters!! I will update this after I talk to him midweek, but, to date here are the 4 pieces of mail that HAVE arrived as of this past week.
Ms. N's class from PA--sent Jan 15
The K family---sent Jan 19 (loved the hand written notes from each of the boys!)
Mom & Dad--sent Jan 23
Bro--sent Jan 30
He says that he has sent several letters this direction as well, but none of them have arrived yet. There is another batch going out in the next week or so that are being transported to the US and then sent...those will likely arrive the fastest!
Meanwhile, stay posted to the blog for the weekly updates!

Hubert

This is a waterfall in Ranomafana

On Wednesday evening, tropical storm Hubert ambled ashore just north of Mananjary. Though Hubert did not have the powerful winds that would classify it as a cyclone, it had immense volumes of rain built up and proceeded to dump it all over Eastern Madagascar. Peace Corps Security had been warning me for days that something was coming and that I should refrain from travel so Sharbaraz and I batted down the hatches and hoped for the best. The storm hit Ranomafana just as I was going to bed on Wednesday night. The rain was unreal. I laid in my bed unable to sleep all night because the sound of the rain hitting my tin roof was loud enough to do serious ear drum damage. It was like trying to sleep with a gas lawnmower in bed next to you. The rain brought by Hubert wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t already been raining here for six days prior. As I mentioned in my previous post, Mananjary was already partially underwater last Saturday and the rain had not stopped since. On Friday the rain had finally ceased a people emerged from their homes to inspect the damage.
Ranomafana actually didn’t fair too badly. Years ago there was a cyclone that flooded the highway and ripped the large pedestrian bridge over the river down. It sits in a jumbled heap of twisted metal between the Station Thermal and the hot baths. To compensate, the Malagasy build a ramshackle wooden bridge with logs and boards that wove its way through the wreckage, sitting just a few feet above the water. On Friday that new bridge was a thing of the past and Ranomafana’s connection to the other side of the river was severed save by means of a canoe. This has left my counterpart Ratsabotsy stranded in his home on the far shore until something is done to fix the bridge. Down the road to Mananjary things were much worse. The highway was covered or destroyed altogether by landslides and over 38000 people have been left homeless nationwide. Mananjary itself is a mess, five people died in the storm and a significant portion of the homes in the city were destroyed. My co-worker Ashley was stranded at her post and had to hike 7k just to reach a place where she could catch a bus.
As I wrote last week, I needed to make another trip into Mananjary to compensate for last weekends failed attempt at using the bank. Not surprisingly, after the storm Mananjary was a no go. Therefore Ashley and I got approval from our APCD to go to Fianarantsoa and bank there on Monday. Fianarantsoa is my new favourite city in Madagascar, it has an uncanny beauty that I have not seen in any other city I have visited. Ever. It sits in a valley surrounded by green grassy hills reminiscent of what you would expect in Ireland. The city itself is a complex network of charming villas that were likely constructed during the colonial period. Everything is within walking distance and best of all Peace Corps owns a transit house that we were welcomed to use. The transit house is located right downtown in a beautiful white colonial building. It has soaring ceilings, a kitchen, bath, hot water, computer, library, oven, and anything else you could possibly ask for. Our original plan was to stay one night but we ended up staying two. When I wasn’t taking a hot shower or watching Across the Universe on the DVD player I was shopping in a real supermarket and also making visits to the offices of two large NGO’s in the region. It was an awesome three days.
This was not all that great a week for Sharbaraz. While she has learned HOW to use the litter box, she is still facing some challenges with consistency. This problem was highlighted on Monday night when she decided that it would be too much work to walk all the way to the other room and opted to make use of my laundry hamper. For this she received three quick flicks on the bottom and promptly lost privileges to my sleeping quarters. Her banishment was short lived, but the next evening I noticed she was getting sick. Whatever ailment she had rendered her weak and nearly unable to walk. At about 2AM on Tuesday I awoke to noise in the other room and found Sharbaraz valiantly dragging herself across the floor in a determined quest to get to the litter box. I was touched, proud, but also very concerned for her health. I scooped her up and carried her the rest of the way. She remained ill for almost two days. She was very cold so I brought her to Rodrigue’s so she could sit next to the cooking fire, however, she tried to walk around it and burnt her paw on a hot coal. She has since recovered from her sickness, but her right paw is still a little tender.
I also received my first bit of mail at site this week, and was at first disappointed to find that it was only a package from the med office in Tana. It contained two things: a new package of cypro- the antibiotic equivalent of the hydrogen bomb, and two sticks of something called “peaceful sleep” Its made by a company in South Africa, probably by elves using pixie dust and unicorn horns this stuff is that amazing. You put it on before you go to bed and it keeps the fleas off you while you sleep. It is now one of my most prized possessions and if you’re reading this Dr. A my legs thank you.

Mananjary

I realize that last time I ran out of time before I got to the fleas portion of my post so I’ll start there this week. Yes I have fleas. In America, admitting that you have this skin parasite is equated with bad personal hygiene or lazy pet care. Not so in Madagascar. Here maintaining a flea free household is like trying to go waterskiing without getting wet. Everything has them, I assume this includes the rats which still inhabit my walls and I can usually find one each morning on Sharbaraz. Not only are these things as common as tourists on the Eiffel Tower, they are also next to impossible to kill. As soon as you find them they run away faster than a speeding train or jump over tall buildings in a single bound. I wonder if there is any kryptonite available in Madagascar.

The most notable casualty of my flea infestation are my legs. I don’t know what it is about this country but it does not agree with my legs. Between the fleas leeches biting flies and mosquitoes, my lower appendages have been transformed into a minefield of sores, bites, and strange bumps that I itch involuntarily causing them to break open. No amount of medical cream seems to help. Honestly someone needs to combine insect repellent, SPF 30, triple antibiotic, and hydrocortisone cream into a single tube and sell it to tourists as they deplane in Antananrivo. You could call it Crème de Malagas, it would make millions.

This week I had quite the adventure trying to use the bank. There are no banks in Ranomafana, so if you recall I had set up an account in the coastal city of Mananjary and each month Peace Corps allows us to make a trip to our banking town without using vacation time. The plan was that I would catch an early Taxi Brousse out of Ranomafana, pick up Ashley, a fellow PCV along the way and get to Mananjary by 10. Then we would spend the day banking, eating out, and shopping before catching a taxi back and being home before dinner.

I made it to the taxi stop at 6AM on Saturday and proceeded to spend 2 and a half hours waiting for the first taxi in the pouring rain before a rickety white van pulled up and I was stashed into the back seat. Though Malagasy taxi-brousses do not have seat belts, interior upholstery, or water sealed windows they all have a small flat screen television that plays Malagasy music videos on full blast for the entire journey. By the time we picked up Ashley there were already 20 people in the taxi van with me and we would cram in two more before it was all over. It took four hours smashed in a corner with an elderly Malagasy man in a straw hat asleep on my shoulder to reach Mananjary. It was 1 PM if I wanted to be back by dinner I would need to be back in the taxi in less than an hour, and it was raining. Ashley and I quickly made the decision that we would be spending the night and that our first order of business would be lunch. After ravenously consuming a steak frite at the most expensive restaurant in town we asked the waitress for directions to the bank. She told us where to find it but told us that it was no use going there because it wouldn’t open until Monday.

Mananjary was a depressing sight. The steady rain we had been receiving has flooded parts of the city to the point where stagnant water sat in the marketplace and long boats were parked in the streets. News also reached me that there were multiple confirmed cases of Dengue fever in Mananjary in the past week. We stayed in the ‘white person’ part of town, so called because it contains the only structures built out of cement in the entire city. Half of these buildings are abandoned and there is at most a handful of foreigners that live there but no matter. The entire rest of the city is a collection of bamboo huts with leaf roofs. If a steady rain can flood the place, I would hate to see what would happen after a real cyclone. If a big enough ocean swell came with it there wouldn’t be 20 buildings left standing in this regional capital.

Ashley and I looked in our wallets and realized immediately that we did not have enough money to stay in town until Monday and it was already too late to catch a taxi. Desperately we called Ryan, a PCV from another stage stationed in town and he graciously allowed us to sleep on his floor for the night. The next morning we caught another taxi and I limped back to Ranomafana with less than 30 cents in my wallet and only a small jar of strawberry jam to show for the weekend. We are going to try again next Tuesday. Wish us luck.

Fleas and Food

Picture is of how laundry gets done here

I apologize for the short post this week, I had to write a monthly report to Peace Corps about what I have been doing here. If you would like to see a copy of it, send me or preferably the blog administrator (my mother) and e-mail and we can forward you a copy.

Well I've been here a month now, in sometimes it feels like it has been a few days, other times like I have been here a year already. I started to get into a routine that keeps me going. The first couple days in my house were, in retrospect, a little crazy. I had no furniture, little to do, and no idea how to take care of myself. Food was the main obstacle. For the first few days I biked into town and ate soup at a local hotely because my gas wasn't connected yet. Once that got taken care of I realized that my abilities in the kitchen were limited to say the least. For two weeks I at one of three dishes:

Mike's Menu

Pasta
Pasta noodles
one small tomato diced
one small onion diced
garlic clove diced
Thai hot sauce

Veggies
Half a zuccini
two tomatoes
hot pepper
some strange veggie I cant identify
carrot
onion
Chop everything up and cook in oil until it looks edible

Eggs and bread
2 eggs
bread
salt

breakfast everyday:
4 bananas

And I actually thought for a few days that I could get by on just that for two years. Eventually I caved and like any good American I subcontracted out the labor. Now I eat dinner each night with Rodrigue's family. Its a great deal because I get rice and something nutritious each night and I can work on my Malagasy with his wife and two young children. That is as long as you don't mind a few rocks in the rice and having peppered pig-intestines on Fridays.

Miss you all

Mike