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Published: December 29th 2006
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So my Madagascar adventure begins here. What can I say but what a 3 months I have had. Though I have only seen a very small part of the country I love it. Madagascar is a real mix of Africa and Europe, the French influence is very obvious in places, but then in others it is just so like main land Africa, if somewhat more affluent. This I say having still only seen a very small part of the country, something I intend to rectify, but more on that later.
Where exactly was I? Well if you go to the most northern tip of the island and drop down the East coast a small way you’ll come across the Bay of Diego Saurez, well this was my play ground. Our camp, known as Manta Camp, was located in the Northwest(ish) corner of the bay, hopefully there is a satellite photo imbedded in this blog somewhere and you can see the camp. When I say the bay was my playground, it quite literally was, we travelled all over it during the course of our work, even spending a week on satellite camp on the gorgeous white sands of Ramena beach; also
shown on the satellite photo.
After arriving in Madagascar I stayed the night in Antananarivo, known as Tana. This resulted in probably the worse hangover of my time in country. Having bumped into a fellow traveller from Tanzania in Nairobi airport, we both decided to stay the night in a lovely small hotel in central Tana. The bar hosted a very entertaining pub singer and his Elvis repertoire; I have yet to decide if he was actually any good at singing, but he definitely had the moves and a good pout. Next morning, way to early considering how my head felt, I caught an internal flight to Antsiranana, which is more commonly known as Diego Saurez, and met up with my companions for the next 11 weeks; yet again I was to be with an eclectic mix of ages and personalities.
This time I had signed myself up for a marine conservation project. Our work was conducting biodiversity surveys over the whole of Diego Saurez Bay, with the aim that we could identify locations for Marine Protected Areas for the Madagascan government. So, for next 10 weeks I would be living on a beach and venturing out diving
as often as possible, well at least that was the plan. Little did I know that my first 4 weeks would largely be dedicated to learning about fish, coral, invertebrates and algae, and passing exams to prove that I could correctly identify about 200 different species. I have become a marine life geek, or is it spotter, and love it. So, once the exams were passed that was it, they let us loose in our diving/snorkeling kit to survey to our hearts content; sometimes doing up to 4 a day.
I won’t even really try to explain how a survey is conducted, just that we have 4 specialists per a dive and each has to record all that they see along the transec line. Not so hard when you're surveying coral or slow moving inverts, but when you have masses of fish to identify and count it often proves challenging! Our routine had us surveying 5 days a week, starting at 7 and ending once we were in and the data written up; a time consuming process in itself. On saturdays we got the chance to do fun dives, and then usually we went to a small village where
we taught English to the school kids. A highly entertaining process, as our Malagasy was non existent and our French not much better! Saturday was party night!!! Sunday was hangover day!!! Boy did I have some hangovers, 3 bottles of the local brew, Three Horse Beer; a great name I think as I’ve yet to see a horse in Africa, just blew my head off.
When not surveying we still had plenty to do: sediment sifting (as exciting as it sounds!), water chemical testing, preparing for the environmental awareness workshops we held for local fisherman and school kids, and generally keeping the camp running; I’ll talk more about the camp in my next blog entry.
Highlights of the trip are many, but some of my favourites were: swimming with Cecil the turtle that lives just off shore from the camp; he will swim so close you can touch him (but don’t!), seeing a Reef Ray that was so big I couldn’t see it! snorkelling with dolphins, doing my 100th dive (more on this in my next entry), getting up every day and remembering how beautiful the place was, the moment I realised that I was totally de stressed
and having the time of my life. What more could I want than for it to continue, so I’m going back, the company has taken me on as a Conservation Assistant, a step up from Research Assistant and I’m returning for at least another 3 months work and then I guess it’s wait and see…
Well that’s it for now, I will write more about camp life, the people, publish some scenic photos! and anything else I can think of in the next few days.
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lorna
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sounds cool