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!