I may have mentioned before that the village of Andavadoaka does not have any sanitation and that the main spot for toilet visits tends to be the spiny forest. In fact, one volunteer on an earlier expedition (hi Ellie) said that she went for a walk in the spiny forest one day and came across a man doing a poo (was he actually doing it while you walked past him?) while reading a magazine or similar!
Most of the children however don't bother with the forest and just poo on the beach instead. There are many many many children in Andava. Consequently, there is much poo on the beach. Doesn't sound like paradise any more really does it, when you put it like that?
Justin and I walked up to a beach north of the village the other week and had to dodge all the poo. Some volunteers counted..... When they were out the other week.
So... Where am I going with this? Well, last week Andavadoaka was visited by the deputy environment minister of Madagascar in order to present the village with the Equator Prize trophy which it won with Blue Ventures last year for developing community run protected areas.
Although the village won last year, it's taken ages and ages (because this is madagascar of course) for the prize-giving to take place and for the VIPs to come and make it down here. In fact, most of us doubted that it would ever happen.
The night before the prestigious event took place, the village had a meeting and got together to clean up the rubbish from the sandy passageways/streets and the poo from the beach. A guard was even placed on the beach apparently to stop people from going down and pooing on it.
So... The big event took place on Saturday just outside the primary school. The
women's association sung the dignatories in, and there were many speeches.
Club Alo Alo - the environmental club that Blue Ventures run with some of the children of the village - sang their song and the women's association performed. Half the village, lots of the Blue Ventures staff, and (as usual) hundreds of children watched in the mid-day heat. The dignatories were presented with gifts from the village - a model pirogue, a carved baobab tree, some blue ventures Velondriake t-shirts (no photo of the minister wearing one I'm afraid Richard) and four huge stinky dried fish (I know they were stinky because I made the mistake of standing next to them while they were drying and nearly fell over from the strength of the smell).
After this, for the Important People there were cocktails (coca cola, beer, rum or fizzy orange) and some schmoozing. I was one of the few women in the room.
Schmoozing in English is okay, I quite enjoy it most of the time, but schmoozing in french is just a bit beyond my capabitilities I think. And then it was all over. The dignatories, Important People and Army guys all drove off in their 4x4s for a slap up meal at Coco Beach (as far as slap up meals are possible at Coco Beach) and then drove off sometime in the afternoon.
What else has occupied me this week? Well, we had some poor visiblity days last week, but things have improved substantially again and we're back in the water so I've really enjoyed doing some fish point-outs and tests with some volunteers. We all watched a film (in two stages) called Kontroll - set in the Budapest underground system - which I'd really recommend and we had a fantastic 'cross-dressing' party where everyone dressed as someone else (of the opposite sex) from the expedition. As always with these things, the men dressing as women were much, much more entertaining. Kyle (tall, 19 year old Californian) came as me and painted some tattoos on his belly and arms. :) most fun.
Justin and I have started to do some yoga together in the mornings :) and we had quite a scare on Saturday evening as one volunteer went swimming at dusk and did not come back with his buddy, but carried on swimming on his own. We had to get the boats out to search for him as night fell pretty quickly and I had nightmare visions of pulling a half-dead volunteer out of the water.
He was absolutely fine, had not got into trouble at all, and just wilfully ignored common sense, his buddy asking him to swim back, and other people warning him that it would be dark soon and was just all-round arrogant and stupid. Thankfully, I didn't have to tackle that one alone as Al, our wonderful new dive manager, joined me in dealing with the aftermath, the debriefing and disciplining of the volunteer.
Oh... And I wrote my first song! It's a very very cheesy folky ballad, but I figure that as it's the first song I've ever written from scratch, I can afford to be at least a little bit cheesy. Have not played it to anyone other than Justin as yet.
And as for the poo on the beach? Well, I'm sorry to report that it seems that the beach was far too long and far too big for one guard to tackle alone. Say no more.
Tuesday 29 April 2008
Wednesday 23 April 2008
Manuana
It's been another busy week here in Andava. I don't get it. The general attitude to work here in Madagascar is pretty laid back and 'manuana'.
However, Blue Ventures staff seem to work pretty much every waking hour, and seem to fit a tremendous amount of work in one form or another into the week. For us, diving is work, eating is work (we sit and eat with the volunteers), and pretty much everything else in between is work too.
We've got a new initiative though, which is to separate staff and volunteers for Sunday lunch. We had our first 'staff lunch' yesterday and it was quite a treat just to sit with staff and hang out and eat together. We might instigate a staff dinner as well once a week, and Richard (the big cheese) is also encouraging us to take time out and eat on our own when we need a break from volunteers and work. It's a good idea.
Talking of 'time out', I had my first proper full night off since Valentine's Day last Saturday. Justin and I went to Laguna Blu along with about 9 other people and we had a lovely meal together and lots and lots of wine. We stayed up chatting and being silly until 2am and it was the first time in a long time that I've managed to completely switch off from anything to do with work and just hang out with people as People instead of me as a member of staff (well, the boss) and them as volunteers... .. It was great!
I had to tell some of the the volunteers off last week for breaking curfew, and for almost the first time since I got here, actually 'punished' them too - by making them miss dives and do additional 'boat marshal' duties. I'm not much of the punishing type really, but I think in this case, it really was necessary. Thankfully, no punishments needed this week though.
We've done more diving - and the visibility has improved markedly. I did a double dive with Justin as my buddy and we measured table corals. It was absolutely beautiful and probably one of the most magical (two) dives I've done here. It just felt really lovely to actually share a lovely dive with Justin.
We saw an electric ray (quite a small sting ray) and lots of fish, and of course, many many table corals. I've also given lots of fish point-outs to volunteers (no one has passed their fish tests yet).
Fruit in the village this week: baby bananas and some citrus fruit that
looks like a lemon, but is segmented inside and tastes like a cross between a grapefruit, a lemon/lime and a mandarin. Mandagrapelemons? Or limeone fruits? That's it for this week. Short and sweet. :) unlike the mandagrapelimes, which are still quite sour.
However, Blue Ventures staff seem to work pretty much every waking hour, and seem to fit a tremendous amount of work in one form or another into the week. For us, diving is work, eating is work (we sit and eat with the volunteers), and pretty much everything else in between is work too.
We've got a new initiative though, which is to separate staff and volunteers for Sunday lunch. We had our first 'staff lunch' yesterday and it was quite a treat just to sit with staff and hang out and eat together. We might instigate a staff dinner as well once a week, and Richard (the big cheese) is also encouraging us to take time out and eat on our own when we need a break from volunteers and work. It's a good idea.
Talking of 'time out', I had my first proper full night off since Valentine's Day last Saturday. Justin and I went to Laguna Blu along with about 9 other people and we had a lovely meal together and lots and lots of wine. We stayed up chatting and being silly until 2am and it was the first time in a long time that I've managed to completely switch off from anything to do with work and just hang out with people as People instead of me as a member of staff (well, the boss) and them as volunteers... .. It was great!
I had to tell some of the the volunteers off last week for breaking curfew, and for almost the first time since I got here, actually 'punished' them too - by making them miss dives and do additional 'boat marshal' duties. I'm not much of the punishing type really, but I think in this case, it really was necessary. Thankfully, no punishments needed this week though.
We've done more diving - and the visibility has improved markedly. I did a double dive with Justin as my buddy and we measured table corals. It was absolutely beautiful and probably one of the most magical (two) dives I've done here. It just felt really lovely to actually share a lovely dive with Justin.
We saw an electric ray (quite a small sting ray) and lots of fish, and of course, many many table corals. I've also given lots of fish point-outs to volunteers (no one has passed their fish tests yet).
Fruit in the village this week: baby bananas and some citrus fruit that
looks like a lemon, but is segmented inside and tastes like a cross between a grapefruit, a lemon/lime and a mandarin. Mandagrapelemons? Or limeone fruits? That's it for this week. Short and sweet. :) unlike the mandagrapelimes, which are still quite sour.
Tuesday 15 April 2008
Week 28
Since I last wrote, we've had a full diving week, two party nights and two days off. I've read two books, done four dives and taken a zebu cart ride to another village.
The biggest excitement came when I was out diving on Thursday morning as, on the way to the dive site, we spotted a small pod of dolphins. There were only 8 of them, including a tiny baby and they were relatively close to the boat. We stopped the engine and were all excited and watched them swim past. It's the first time I've seen dolphins out here and the first time that Bic, our Malagasy divemaster, has seen them in over a year. He was the most excited one amongst us.
Another highlight this week has been leading two dives in order to start collecting data for my own research project. I'm going to be taking table coral measurements on all of our regular divesites. As table corals grow at a similar rate, it will be able to tell us about the age of some of these reefs, and which ones of them were likely to have withstood the coral bleaching of 1998 and 2001, which are resilient and which are recovering. It's a relatively straightforward one to get data for and as there isn't any data about table corals on these reefs, anything we get will be new.
So, we went to one of our relatively healthy reefs and we did two dives on there trying to measure as many table corals as possible, without measuring any of them twice. It's not as easy as you might think. I hope to be able to gather as much data as possible in the next two expeditions and be able to do some data analysis before I leave in August, but we'll see whether that's too ambitious or not. Clearly, I'm not actually a marine biologist so there's also much reading to be done before I'm in a position to actually know what any of the data is likely to mean.
Richard (MD of Blue Ventures) is out here at the moment and both of us went to see the Mayor of Befandefa on Wednesday. Befandefa is the administrative centre of the 'commune' (region of villages) that Andavadoaka belongs to and the mayor had asked to see someone from Blue Ventures to talk to us.
So, on Wednesday morning, Richard, Gildas (to translate) and I took the only method of transport available to go down to Befandefa. As the village is not directly on the coast, we couldn't take a pirogue there, and as there are no buses and very few cars, the only method of transport that was available was a zebu cart. Zebus, in case I haven't mentioned them before, are the cows of Madagascar. They are prized as currency, meat and also work bloody hard pulling carts along in rural areas such as this one. They have weird humps on their backs, a bit like camels, but I don't know exactly what they're for (the humps that is, I know what the zebus are for).
Anyway, so, the zebu pull the cart along, much like horses and carriages. Only, the cart is just a tiny wooden box on wheels with no comforts at all. However, as Vivienne (the woman from the village who collects all of our clothes to distribute amongst the village to wash for us) was hitching a ride with us, she had lent us a mattress. So, there were four of us on the back of this tiny wooden cart.
As I've mentioned before, you can't be in a hurry if you're travelling in Madagascar. At least pirogues can reach quite a speed if the wind is in the right direction. Zebu carts, on the other hand, can only go as fast as a zebu can go. Which apparently, according to this journey is about 10 kilometres an hour. As Befandefa is 15 kilometres south of Andavadoaka, it took us just over an hour and a half through the spectacular spiny forest, past baobabs and salt-pans. It wasn't a particularly peaceful or relaxing journey as the cart is quite squeaky, and the 'road' pretty bumpy. The zebus also make lots of ploppy noises whenever they poo. And they seemed to poo an awful lot during a 90 minute journey. Luckily, I just about managed to escape getting covered in zebu poo flying out of their bottoms.
However, the most noisy thing about the journey is the zebu cart driver whose job it is to get these leisurely cows to move at something approaching an enthusiastic pace. To do this, (look away now vegetarians and animal lovers) he has a ring on the middle finger of each hand, which has a spike on the underneath for pressing down on the poor animals' necks. There is also a whip, and if all this abuse doesn't convince the animals to keep
moving or to hurry up, he hurls insults at them too. The most common insult on this journey was apparently "dead pig" or "dead mother", but mostly "dead pig". I don't know much about the zebu's culture and their relation to pigs, but going by their galloping reaction to the hissing of "dead pig" by the zebu driver, they don't like them much.
We got to Befandefa at 10am, and then, as our meeting was at 10am Malagasy time, we hung around in the shade for just over an hour before the mayor was ready to see us.
Waiting around is an important part of Malagasy life. Time, is most definitely NOT money in this country. Everything is preceeded by a lot of waiting around for no other purpose it seems than just waiting. It breeds a kind of patience that I don't think we're used to back home. Even after a few weeks here, our volunteers still constantly ask "what's going
on? What are we waiting FOR?" when things start late. I've got used to it now and am pretty impervious to it and rarely get annoyed. It's just nice to have time to chill out I always think!
Anyway, the meeting was 2 hours long, seemed to be extremely verbose, when really, all the mayor wanted us to do was to pay a tax for our volunteers, some money towards paying the gendarmes to patrol in the villages and to teach him (and people from other villages other than Andavadoaka) some English. Afterwards, we had lunch with Madame Angeline (whose children are named, Angela, Angelina, Angeles and some other variation of her name!) who is a secretary to the mayor. She cooked us chille con carne with tinned corned beef (I didn't eat that), lentils and rice which was served with fresh cucumber and tomato salad. We washed it all down with rice water which is hot water from the rice pan, after the rice has been burnt on the bottom. It's surprisingly delicious. We followed it with a fresh watermelon (grown in Befandefa itself).
Madame Angeline's home was tiny - there was just about enough room for five of us sat on the floor and her doorway was so small, even I had to bend down to walk through. She had a double bed, a table, three wooden chairs and lots and lots of photos on her wall. It's the first time I've actually eaten in a Malagasy house. I keep thinking about how little space I have in our one-room bungalow at Coco Beach compared to my house in Manchester, and yet even here, Justin and I still have three times the space of Madame Angeline.
Anyway, after that, it was back onto the cart for our bumpy, noisy and very smelly journey home.
So, that's been my week. The only thing I'm missing out right now is the less positive stuff about how this evening, I have to go off and tell some more volunteers off for breaking the curfew. There are a lot of rules here, and unfortunately, it's my job to enforce them all with both volunteers and staff. Mostly, they abide by them, it's true, but telling people off, disciplining them and punishing them is still necessary (especially when it relates to drunken behaviour and breaking curfews) and my least favourite part of the job. We're pretty laid back most of the time, but apparently that doesn't prevent people from misbehaving. Perhaps we could learn some lessons in discipline from the zebu cart driver. I wonder how much those spiky rings cost......
The biggest excitement came when I was out diving on Thursday morning as, on the way to the dive site, we spotted a small pod of dolphins. There were only 8 of them, including a tiny baby and they were relatively close to the boat. We stopped the engine and were all excited and watched them swim past. It's the first time I've seen dolphins out here and the first time that Bic, our Malagasy divemaster, has seen them in over a year. He was the most excited one amongst us.
Another highlight this week has been leading two dives in order to start collecting data for my own research project. I'm going to be taking table coral measurements on all of our regular divesites. As table corals grow at a similar rate, it will be able to tell us about the age of some of these reefs, and which ones of them were likely to have withstood the coral bleaching of 1998 and 2001, which are resilient and which are recovering. It's a relatively straightforward one to get data for and as there isn't any data about table corals on these reefs, anything we get will be new.
So, we went to one of our relatively healthy reefs and we did two dives on there trying to measure as many table corals as possible, without measuring any of them twice. It's not as easy as you might think. I hope to be able to gather as much data as possible in the next two expeditions and be able to do some data analysis before I leave in August, but we'll see whether that's too ambitious or not. Clearly, I'm not actually a marine biologist so there's also much reading to be done before I'm in a position to actually know what any of the data is likely to mean.
Richard (MD of Blue Ventures) is out here at the moment and both of us went to see the Mayor of Befandefa on Wednesday. Befandefa is the administrative centre of the 'commune' (region of villages) that Andavadoaka belongs to and the mayor had asked to see someone from Blue Ventures to talk to us.
So, on Wednesday morning, Richard, Gildas (to translate) and I took the only method of transport available to go down to Befandefa. As the village is not directly on the coast, we couldn't take a pirogue there, and as there are no buses and very few cars, the only method of transport that was available was a zebu cart. Zebus, in case I haven't mentioned them before, are the cows of Madagascar. They are prized as currency, meat and also work bloody hard pulling carts along in rural areas such as this one. They have weird humps on their backs, a bit like camels, but I don't know exactly what they're for (the humps that is, I know what the zebus are for).
Anyway, so, the zebu pull the cart along, much like horses and carriages. Only, the cart is just a tiny wooden box on wheels with no comforts at all. However, as Vivienne (the woman from the village who collects all of our clothes to distribute amongst the village to wash for us) was hitching a ride with us, she had lent us a mattress. So, there were four of us on the back of this tiny wooden cart.
As I've mentioned before, you can't be in a hurry if you're travelling in Madagascar. At least pirogues can reach quite a speed if the wind is in the right direction. Zebu carts, on the other hand, can only go as fast as a zebu can go. Which apparently, according to this journey is about 10 kilometres an hour. As Befandefa is 15 kilometres south of Andavadoaka, it took us just over an hour and a half through the spectacular spiny forest, past baobabs and salt-pans. It wasn't a particularly peaceful or relaxing journey as the cart is quite squeaky, and the 'road' pretty bumpy. The zebus also make lots of ploppy noises whenever they poo. And they seemed to poo an awful lot during a 90 minute journey. Luckily, I just about managed to escape getting covered in zebu poo flying out of their bottoms.
However, the most noisy thing about the journey is the zebu cart driver whose job it is to get these leisurely cows to move at something approaching an enthusiastic pace. To do this, (look away now vegetarians and animal lovers) he has a ring on the middle finger of each hand, which has a spike on the underneath for pressing down on the poor animals' necks. There is also a whip, and if all this abuse doesn't convince the animals to keep
moving or to hurry up, he hurls insults at them too. The most common insult on this journey was apparently "dead pig" or "dead mother", but mostly "dead pig". I don't know much about the zebu's culture and their relation to pigs, but going by their galloping reaction to the hissing of "dead pig" by the zebu driver, they don't like them much.
We got to Befandefa at 10am, and then, as our meeting was at 10am Malagasy time, we hung around in the shade for just over an hour before the mayor was ready to see us.
Waiting around is an important part of Malagasy life. Time, is most definitely NOT money in this country. Everything is preceeded by a lot of waiting around for no other purpose it seems than just waiting. It breeds a kind of patience that I don't think we're used to back home. Even after a few weeks here, our volunteers still constantly ask "what's going
on? What are we waiting FOR?" when things start late. I've got used to it now and am pretty impervious to it and rarely get annoyed. It's just nice to have time to chill out I always think!
Anyway, the meeting was 2 hours long, seemed to be extremely verbose, when really, all the mayor wanted us to do was to pay a tax for our volunteers, some money towards paying the gendarmes to patrol in the villages and to teach him (and people from other villages other than Andavadoaka) some English. Afterwards, we had lunch with Madame Angeline (whose children are named, Angela, Angelina, Angeles and some other variation of her name!) who is a secretary to the mayor. She cooked us chille con carne with tinned corned beef (I didn't eat that), lentils and rice which was served with fresh cucumber and tomato salad. We washed it all down with rice water which is hot water from the rice pan, after the rice has been burnt on the bottom. It's surprisingly delicious. We followed it with a fresh watermelon (grown in Befandefa itself).
Madame Angeline's home was tiny - there was just about enough room for five of us sat on the floor and her doorway was so small, even I had to bend down to walk through. She had a double bed, a table, three wooden chairs and lots and lots of photos on her wall. It's the first time I've actually eaten in a Malagasy house. I keep thinking about how little space I have in our one-room bungalow at Coco Beach compared to my house in Manchester, and yet even here, Justin and I still have three times the space of Madame Angeline.
Anyway, after that, it was back onto the cart for our bumpy, noisy and very smelly journey home.
So, that's been my week. The only thing I'm missing out right now is the less positive stuff about how this evening, I have to go off and tell some more volunteers off for breaking the curfew. There are a lot of rules here, and unfortunately, it's my job to enforce them all with both volunteers and staff. Mostly, they abide by them, it's true, but telling people off, disciplining them and punishing them is still necessary (especially when it relates to drunken behaviour and breaking curfews) and my least favourite part of the job. We're pretty laid back most of the time, but apparently that doesn't prevent people from misbehaving. Perhaps we could learn some lessons in discipline from the zebu cart driver. I wonder how much those spiky rings cost......
Tuesday 8 April 2008
To blog or not to blog
The longer we are here for, the less there is to blog about. And yet, at the same time, there is always plenty going on. This week has seen the start of yet another expedition and it's been pretty full on, as ever.
I'm already liking this group of volunteers so far, which is good - they had a lot to live up to after the last two groups were so fab. But so far, they seem a very likeable and hard working bunch. Phew. The visibility is starting to improve and they're all keen and eager to start learning their benthic and fish.
We went out to the village today to meet with the women's association and yet again I sang and danced. Yesterday, while rehearsing on the beach with the women, I had children not only laughing at me, but POINTING and laughing. Thankfully, they also pointed and laughed at one of the older women when she danced, so at least I know that it's not just exclusive to me.
When people return from visiting foreign, usually poorer economies, you often hear them saying "well, they might be poor, but they smiled a lot more and seemed a lot happier than people do in the west" or something similar. Certainly, here amongst the Vezu, there is a hell of a lot of laughter.... Mainly at us, but not exclusively so! I think that it isn't necessarily that people in poorer countries laugh more, relative to their situation as much
as people in richer countries laugh a lot less relative to their situation.
I got three copies of Ethical Consumer magazine brought out to me with by my boss. Perusing them reminds me a lot of the global picture of climate change and about why I'm here in the first place. I came to work for Blue Ventures to try and make a positive impact directly on a community and an environment. I think that I've sort of managed that. Or at least, I'm helping a worthwhile project achieve its social and environmental goals. At the same time, I've also realised that while living here, though it was not my goal, I have radically changed my lifestyle and my carbon 'footprint' for this year for just living will be drastically reduced from what it would have been had I remained in Manchester. If you take aside my flights (and I'm going home for a brief period, so I know, that's pretty bad), I'm living a pretty low-impact lifestyle and although it's not necessarily easy, it's not really that much of a sacrifice either. We are pretty much doing most of the things that the low-carbon lifestyle gurus advise. Not buying much (hardly any at all) food with packaging, eating with the seasons, buying sustainably caught
fish, not using petrol-based transport (sailing pirogues mainly while travelling to nearby villages), not being major consumers (there's no proper shops. There's very little to buy), only buying locally (as far as we can walk to), avoiding products with palm oil, eating locally grown fruit and vegetables (there's very little actually grown locally. But most fruit and veg is at least grown in Madagascar). We do not have to heat our water (the
sun does that), and we only have 7 hours of electricity a day (admittedly from a petrol-powered generator). The boats that we dive off use petrol, and the food is cooked on wood fires, so there are downsides. But comparitively to life at home, it's the lowest impact living that I'm ever likely to experience. As I said before. It's not really a sacrifice. But the main reason that it's not so hard is that there are no choices and there are no temptations. I can't take a car instead of walking somewhere (or taking a sailing pirogue) because there are no cars. I can't buy clothes made from sweatshops because most of the clothes sold in the village are second hand anyway - or made by the women's association. I can't be tempted to buy fresh strawberries flown from another country because there is no fruit sold out of season or from another country. There's very little fruit. (on that subject, we're still getting a few apples and the village is also occasionally selling some sorts of mandarins which taste like a crossbetween an orange and a grapefruit). Anyway, I can't say that it's been too much of a hardship when I haven't had to turn down other options or make any decisions about these choices. Perhaps then, the hardest thing about living in our opulent west, is not the living of a low-carbon lifestyle, it's having to give up things, when there are things to give up. There's nothing to give up here. It's definitely the abundance of choices that makes it all so much harder back home. Perhaps enforcing low-carbon lifestyles on people by reducing their choices will make them happier in the end after all. And be better for the planet. And then maybe we'll start to laugh a lot more too?
Oh, I'd also like to add that this week, I've had the interesting experience of trying to explain a 'swimming pool' to one of the Malagasies. It's funny, because you only realise that many of the things you take for granted, sound absolutely ridiculous when taken completely out of context. If you live right by the sea and live off the sea all your life, then the idea of a big building in which there is a big pool of water just for people to swim in for fun, just sounds really strange....
I'm already liking this group of volunteers so far, which is good - they had a lot to live up to after the last two groups were so fab. But so far, they seem a very likeable and hard working bunch. Phew. The visibility is starting to improve and they're all keen and eager to start learning their benthic and fish.
We went out to the village today to meet with the women's association and yet again I sang and danced. Yesterday, while rehearsing on the beach with the women, I had children not only laughing at me, but POINTING and laughing. Thankfully, they also pointed and laughed at one of the older women when she danced, so at least I know that it's not just exclusive to me.
When people return from visiting foreign, usually poorer economies, you often hear them saying "well, they might be poor, but they smiled a lot more and seemed a lot happier than people do in the west" or something similar. Certainly, here amongst the Vezu, there is a hell of a lot of laughter.... Mainly at us, but not exclusively so! I think that it isn't necessarily that people in poorer countries laugh more, relative to their situation as much
as people in richer countries laugh a lot less relative to their situation.
I got three copies of Ethical Consumer magazine brought out to me with by my boss. Perusing them reminds me a lot of the global picture of climate change and about why I'm here in the first place. I came to work for Blue Ventures to try and make a positive impact directly on a community and an environment. I think that I've sort of managed that. Or at least, I'm helping a worthwhile project achieve its social and environmental goals. At the same time, I've also realised that while living here, though it was not my goal, I have radically changed my lifestyle and my carbon 'footprint' for this year for just living will be drastically reduced from what it would have been had I remained in Manchester. If you take aside my flights (and I'm going home for a brief period, so I know, that's pretty bad), I'm living a pretty low-impact lifestyle and although it's not necessarily easy, it's not really that much of a sacrifice either. We are pretty much doing most of the things that the low-carbon lifestyle gurus advise. Not buying much (hardly any at all) food with packaging, eating with the seasons, buying sustainably caught
fish, not using petrol-based transport (sailing pirogues mainly while travelling to nearby villages), not being major consumers (there's no proper shops. There's very little to buy), only buying locally (as far as we can walk to), avoiding products with palm oil, eating locally grown fruit and vegetables (there's very little actually grown locally. But most fruit and veg is at least grown in Madagascar). We do not have to heat our water (the
sun does that), and we only have 7 hours of electricity a day (admittedly from a petrol-powered generator). The boats that we dive off use petrol, and the food is cooked on wood fires, so there are downsides. But comparitively to life at home, it's the lowest impact living that I'm ever likely to experience. As I said before. It's not really a sacrifice. But the main reason that it's not so hard is that there are no choices and there are no temptations. I can't take a car instead of walking somewhere (or taking a sailing pirogue) because there are no cars. I can't buy clothes made from sweatshops because most of the clothes sold in the village are second hand anyway - or made by the women's association. I can't be tempted to buy fresh strawberries flown from another country because there is no fruit sold out of season or from another country. There's very little fruit. (on that subject, we're still getting a few apples and the village is also occasionally selling some sorts of mandarins which taste like a crossbetween an orange and a grapefruit). Anyway, I can't say that it's been too much of a hardship when I haven't had to turn down other options or make any decisions about these choices. Perhaps then, the hardest thing about living in our opulent west, is not the living of a low-carbon lifestyle, it's having to give up things, when there are things to give up. There's nothing to give up here. It's definitely the abundance of choices that makes it all so much harder back home. Perhaps enforcing low-carbon lifestyles on people by reducing their choices will make them happier in the end after all. And be better for the planet. And then maybe we'll start to laugh a lot more too?
Oh, I'd also like to add that this week, I've had the interesting experience of trying to explain a 'swimming pool' to one of the Malagasies. It's funny, because you only realise that many of the things you take for granted, sound absolutely ridiculous when taken completely out of context. If you live right by the sea and live off the sea all your life, then the idea of a big building in which there is a big pool of water just for people to swim in for fun, just sounds really strange....
Tuesday 1 April 2008
A quiet week
Well, this week hasn't given me all that much to write about. I wasn't well enough to dive on the last few diving days of the expedition (one can't dive if one is congested due to the inability to equalise the ears on descent) and since the volunteers left in the early hours of the morning on the 28th March, it's been lovely, relaxed and quiet. They were a great group and I got on well with many of them, but nonetheless it's still nice to have some peace for a while before it starts all over again on Tuesday.
My boss from London is out here and has been here since Friday. So far it's not been too bad and it's nice to have someone around to talk through some of the challenges and thornier issues. I suppose it's also nice not to be the only 'boss' around ! He's here for three weeks.
My main vao vao (Malagasy for news) this week is that we seem to have moved into Autumn in the last week. The air is much, much cooler and I'm wearing long trousers and long-sleeves at night now, and in the morning. The sun is still warm, but not as punishing as it has been, and the wind has picked up a lot too. Thus far, the weather is much more like it was when we arrived six months ago (six months!). Still sunny, of course though. I am a bit
worried that I have not brought enough warm clothes with me for the next two seasons.
The season change has been quite a marked one. Just like the movement from spring into rainy summer was. One day it didn't rain. The next day it did. And how. And now, one day it was hot and boiling. The next, the temperature was lower and it was pleasantly cool in the shade. I have not dived for over a week now, so I'll be interested to see if the sea
temperature or conditions has changed at all.
Monday 31st March.
Well, I have to report that the sea temperature has dropped by at least 2 or 3 degrees since I was last in the water! We dived this morning and it was 25 degrees and I was COLD in my 5mm full wet suit. Not sure what I'll do when it finally becomes winter. The daytime temperatures in the sun are pretty gorgeous though - like an English summer's day.
More exciting than my reports of the weather is the news that I saw a Napoleon wrasse on the dive today. These are very huge, majestic fish that are often quite curious too. This one was about 1.2metres long (and pretty fat). I always think that they're very mellow, very zen fish. They're sort of the buddhas of the sea. They never seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere and seem to have an aura of calmness about them. Okay, you could blame my perspective on nitrogen narcosis, but we were only at 12 metres, so it can't have been that. It's the biggest thing I've seen in the water since I've got here.
So, on that happy note, I'll sign off for this week. The volunteers - all 13 of them plus researchers - all arrive tomorrow, so I'm sure I'll have a lot more to report by this time next week.
My boss from London is out here and has been here since Friday. So far it's not been too bad and it's nice to have someone around to talk through some of the challenges and thornier issues. I suppose it's also nice not to be the only 'boss' around ! He's here for three weeks.
My main vao vao (Malagasy for news) this week is that we seem to have moved into Autumn in the last week. The air is much, much cooler and I'm wearing long trousers and long-sleeves at night now, and in the morning. The sun is still warm, but not as punishing as it has been, and the wind has picked up a lot too. Thus far, the weather is much more like it was when we arrived six months ago (six months!). Still sunny, of course though. I am a bit
worried that I have not brought enough warm clothes with me for the next two seasons.
The season change has been quite a marked one. Just like the movement from spring into rainy summer was. One day it didn't rain. The next day it did. And how. And now, one day it was hot and boiling. The next, the temperature was lower and it was pleasantly cool in the shade. I have not dived for over a week now, so I'll be interested to see if the sea
temperature or conditions has changed at all.
Monday 31st March.
Well, I have to report that the sea temperature has dropped by at least 2 or 3 degrees since I was last in the water! We dived this morning and it was 25 degrees and I was COLD in my 5mm full wet suit. Not sure what I'll do when it finally becomes winter. The daytime temperatures in the sun are pretty gorgeous though - like an English summer's day.
More exciting than my reports of the weather is the news that I saw a Napoleon wrasse on the dive today. These are very huge, majestic fish that are often quite curious too. This one was about 1.2metres long (and pretty fat). I always think that they're very mellow, very zen fish. They're sort of the buddhas of the sea. They never seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere and seem to have an aura of calmness about them. Okay, you could blame my perspective on nitrogen narcosis, but we were only at 12 metres, so it can't have been that. It's the biggest thing I've seen in the water since I've got here.
So, on that happy note, I'll sign off for this week. The volunteers - all 13 of them plus researchers - all arrive tomorrow, so I'm sure I'll have a lot more to report by this time next week.
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