Week one - Sainte Luce
Hello again. After my mammoth journey to the Sainte Luce reserve in Fort Dauphin (no sleep from when I got up at 5.15am on Monday in Rwanda to arriving here at 4pm) I was not the most receptive to my new surroundings. 35 hours, three plane journeys, four car rides (one 4 hours on the bumpiest road they could find for me) and an hour pirogue crossing a river put the film Planes, Trains and Automobiles to shame.
Including me there are four volunteers here, three women (me, Alix 33 US and Valeria 33 Italy/Switzerland) and one male teenager (Rom 18 Israel). Poor Rom stuck here with all women!
Once I had had some sleep the reserve looked like the most beautiful place in the world. We have a ‘bungalow’ each which are bijou, but can get two single beds in at a push if there had been more of us (I’m glad there wasn’t). They are not airtight so the wind whips through them when you are in bed and surprisingly it gets very cold here at night so I have a blanket to keep me warm. We have guests in the bungalows every night, spiders, mozzies, cockroaches, moths, wasps (non-stinging variety) and all manner of bugs that I don’t know the name of but we do have mozzie nets to keep everything out while we sleep.
Stew said that I would hate the place for the first few days and then fall in love with it and he wasn’t wrong!
Saint Luce is a 25 hectare piece of land which has five species of lemur (one day and four night species) and an abundance of wildlife, geckos, chameleons, non-poisonous snakes, scorpions, birds, civets, the most fantastic spiders (again all non-poisonous apart from the black widow), millipedes and all the bugs in every shape and colour that you could wish for (oh and the odd rat…).
This land borders the shore line in the South West of Madagascar and when we went on our orientation walk we discovered the beach, which is a 10 minute walk away, of miles and miles of white sand and azure sea with absolutely no-one on it - it looks like paradise! Walking on the beach is not a bad way to spend your lunch hour….. The only down side of the beach is that it is very windy, but it does keep the temperature down.
This reserve is protected as it was purchased by an Australian guy who bought it to ensure it wouldn’t be sold to other bidders for mining land. Brett (the owner) worked for an NGO in Madagascar for years and it is now his home so buying the land was a no brainer for him. The land opposite the reserve is not protected and the Malagasy government has sold the land to the Chinese to mine for ilmenite. This was originally sold to a subsidiary of Rio Tinto who was committed to achieving a net positive impact of biodiversity but not the Chinese. The Chinese rip up the rainforest when mining as they do not care about what is on the top of the land and different species of animals are becoming extinct (the Malagasy government are also wrong for selling it to the Chinese). The area next to Sainte Luce for example has an extremely rare black striped gecko that the teams are trying to move before mining starts in 2020. Ilmenite is used for whitening things, for example toothpaste wouldn’t look white unless this was added, the same for sunscreen in countries like China where they think to be tanned is a sign of poverty so they put whitening agents in their sunscreen. Again consumerism in the West is destroying the natural beauty of the world and the rainforests that we desperately need to balance global warming. We saw the same thing in Borneo where hectares of palm oil trees were planted after ripping up rainforest and the orangutans have very little space to live or they are killed in the process of destroying the rainforest.
There is also a problem with illegal logging here which has been happening for decades with a market for ebony and rosewood trees for furniture (especially in the west).
Admittedly the Malagasy people had done quite a lot of destruction before the miners and loggers had ever got here, but that was for sustenance farming and had little environmental knowledge of what they were doing when practising ‘Tavy’ which is the slash and burn technique of clearing rainforest. Poverty in Madagascar is extreme and the governments over the years corrupt therefore any way the people can make a living they will.
The people that work at Sainte Luce are Solo and Tahina the groundsmen, Sanna the cook (they only come here when the volunteers are here). There are always two guards that look after the reserve all year round - there are four guards in total that work two weeks here and spend two weeks at home (apart from when they have annual leave).
The days usually start at 6.30am (although I am usually awake around 5.30am as the lemurs like the berries in the tree opposite my bungalow so I get up and watch them have their breakfast) when we go for our lemur counting walks through the forest. We come back for breakfast at 8am and start work around 8.30 - 9am. Work continues through to just before noon when we stop for lunch and then starts again at 2.30pm through to 5pm. We rota the shower as having a cold shower at 6pm, just as the sun is starting to set, if a tad chilly. Dinner is usually 6.30pm and we are generally going back to our bungalows at 8.00pm (if we can stay awake that long) to read/update diaries and will be asleep by 9.00pm - so rock ‘n’ roll!
The first night I was here I went to shower and forgot to shake out my clothes (schoolgirl error) and was bitten/stung by and ant/wasp. As it is fairly dark I couldn’t see what animal had done the deed so I hot footed it to the guide just in case it was a black widow bite (I’m such a drama queen!) I have never felt pain like it and it lasted 18 hours, it was a lesson learnt the hard way…...
When I first started to do the activities I worried about the fact that my nails always had dirt in them, the soles of my feet were never clean and I was always covered in sand, it doesn’t take long to not to see it anymore. Even if you go into the sea to swim, by the time you are cross the reserve to camp you are back to square one! Mozzies are a pain in the backside, they are around day and night in the forest so I am a sitting target once my spray is washed off by the sea or we are on lemur watch. At least they aren’t the high pitched whiny version, they just attack silently.
Activities for the first week have been:
1)
Including me there are four volunteers here, three women (me, Alix 33 US and Valeria 33 Italy/Switzerland) and one male teenager (Rom 18 Israel). Poor Rom stuck here with all women!
Once I had had some sleep the reserve looked like the most beautiful place in the world. We have a ‘bungalow’ each which are bijou, but can get two single beds in at a push if there had been more of us (I’m glad there wasn’t). They are not airtight so the wind whips through them when you are in bed and surprisingly it gets very cold here at night so I have a blanket to keep me warm. We have guests in the bungalows every night, spiders, mozzies, cockroaches, moths, wasps (non-stinging variety) and all manner of bugs that I don’t know the name of but we do have mozzie nets to keep everything out while we sleep.
Stew said that I would hate the place for the first few days and then fall in love with it and he wasn’t wrong!
Saint Luce is a 25 hectare piece of land which has five species of lemur (one day and four night species) and an abundance of wildlife, geckos, chameleons, non-poisonous snakes, scorpions, birds, civets, the most fantastic spiders (again all non-poisonous apart from the black widow), millipedes and all the bugs in every shape and colour that you could wish for (oh and the odd rat…).
This land borders the shore line in the South West of Madagascar and when we went on our orientation walk we discovered the beach, which is a 10 minute walk away, of miles and miles of white sand and azure sea with absolutely no-one on it - it looks like paradise! Walking on the beach is not a bad way to spend your lunch hour….. The only down side of the beach is that it is very windy, but it does keep the temperature down.
This reserve is protected as it was purchased by an Australian guy who bought it to ensure it wouldn’t be sold to other bidders for mining land. Brett (the owner) worked for an NGO in Madagascar for years and it is now his home so buying the land was a no brainer for him. The land opposite the reserve is not protected and the Malagasy government has sold the land to the Chinese to mine for ilmenite. This was originally sold to a subsidiary of Rio Tinto who was committed to achieving a net positive impact of biodiversity but not the Chinese. The Chinese rip up the rainforest when mining as they do not care about what is on the top of the land and different species of animals are becoming extinct (the Malagasy government are also wrong for selling it to the Chinese). The area next to Sainte Luce for example has an extremely rare black striped gecko that the teams are trying to move before mining starts in 2020. Ilmenite is used for whitening things, for example toothpaste wouldn’t look white unless this was added, the same for sunscreen in countries like China where they think to be tanned is a sign of poverty so they put whitening agents in their sunscreen. Again consumerism in the West is destroying the natural beauty of the world and the rainforests that we desperately need to balance global warming. We saw the same thing in Borneo where hectares of palm oil trees were planted after ripping up rainforest and the orangutans have very little space to live or they are killed in the process of destroying the rainforest.
There is also a problem with illegal logging here which has been happening for decades with a market for ebony and rosewood trees for furniture (especially in the west).
Admittedly the Malagasy people had done quite a lot of destruction before the miners and loggers had ever got here, but that was for sustenance farming and had little environmental knowledge of what they were doing when practising ‘Tavy’ which is the slash and burn technique of clearing rainforest. Poverty in Madagascar is extreme and the governments over the years corrupt therefore any way the people can make a living they will.
The people that work at Sainte Luce are Solo and Tahina the groundsmen, Sanna the cook (they only come here when the volunteers are here). There are always two guards that look after the reserve all year round - there are four guards in total that work two weeks here and spend two weeks at home (apart from when they have annual leave).
The days usually start at 6.30am (although I am usually awake around 5.30am as the lemurs like the berries in the tree opposite my bungalow so I get up and watch them have their breakfast) when we go for our lemur counting walks through the forest. We come back for breakfast at 8am and start work around 8.30 - 9am. Work continues through to just before noon when we stop for lunch and then starts again at 2.30pm through to 5pm. We rota the shower as having a cold shower at 6pm, just as the sun is starting to set, if a tad chilly. Dinner is usually 6.30pm and we are generally going back to our bungalows at 8.00pm (if we can stay awake that long) to read/update diaries and will be asleep by 9.00pm - so rock ‘n’ roll!
The first night I was here I went to shower and forgot to shake out my clothes (schoolgirl error) and was bitten/stung by and ant/wasp. As it is fairly dark I couldn’t see what animal had done the deed so I hot footed it to the guide just in case it was a black widow bite (I’m such a drama queen!) I have never felt pain like it and it lasted 18 hours, it was a lesson learnt the hard way…...
When I first started to do the activities I worried about the fact that my nails always had dirt in them, the soles of my feet were never clean and I was always covered in sand, it doesn’t take long to not to see it anymore. Even if you go into the sea to swim, by the time you are cross the reserve to camp you are back to square one! Mozzies are a pain in the backside, they are around day and night in the forest so I am a sitting target once my spray is washed off by the sea or we are on lemur watch. At least they aren’t the high pitched whiny version, they just attack silently.
Activities for the first week have been:
1)
Digging up dirt and laying it out to dry
Taking the dry dirt and potting it into potting bags
Going into the forest finding seedlings and plating said seedlings into the potting bags
Planting trees in the forest from the seedlings that have matured (255 planted so far)
2)
Wading through the crocodile infested water to collect mangrove seeds
Transferring the mangrove seeds to another part of the same river which doesn’t have mangroves in it and planting the seeds
Collecting plastic rubbish from the river (there is so much around as the Malagasy either throw it or burn it, neither is good).
3)
Collecting plastic rubbish from the beach (see above)
4)
Counting lemurs on our morning, afternoon and evening walks (my favourite activity)
5)
Foraging in other forests for primary rainforest seedlings to bolster the endemic forest in the reserve
6)
Malagasy lessons
7)
Washing our own clothes in the crocodile infested river
8)
Washing up rota at dinner only (we have a cook who comes from 8am-4pm who does the rest)
Sunday is our only day off and we spend it washing clothes and walking on the beach/swimming in the sea and any other admin around the camp. Lala, the camp manager is very knowledgeable and really helpful when it comes to learning about Malagasy life.
Going into the forest finding seedlings and plating said seedlings into the potting bags
Planting trees in the forest from the seedlings that have matured (255 planted so far)
2)
Wading through the crocodile infested water to collect mangrove seeds
Transferring the mangrove seeds to another part of the same river which doesn’t have mangroves in it and planting the seeds
Collecting plastic rubbish from the river (there is so much around as the Malagasy either throw it or burn it, neither is good).
3)
Collecting plastic rubbish from the beach (see above)
4)
Counting lemurs on our morning, afternoon and evening walks (my favourite activity)
5)
Foraging in other forests for primary rainforest seedlings to bolster the endemic forest in the reserve
6)
Malagasy lessons
7)
Washing our own clothes in the crocodile infested river
8)
Washing up rota at dinner only (we have a cook who comes from 8am-4pm who does the rest)
Sunday is our only day off and we spend it washing clothes and walking on the beach/swimming in the sea and any other admin around the camp. Lala, the camp manager is very knowledgeable and really helpful when it comes to learning about Malagasy life.
Food is basic but really tasty - beans and rice or vegetables and rice for lunch and dinner and they even eat rice for breakfast but we are spared that so we have fruit and bread (made freshly at the reserve) with peanut butter and honey. I never ever thought that I would have peanut butter, banana and honey (together) on bread for breakfast but there is always a first! Protein, apart from the beans, is in short supply here so if I had my time again I would bring something to supplement this.
At night the lack of ambient light brings a whole new world alive, the stars are so beautiful and abundant. We are trying to learn what the constellations are. We sit watching shooting stars whizz across the sky and we can see Jupiter shining brightly above us.
All in all life is wonderful!
At night the lack of ambient light brings a whole new world alive, the stars are so beautiful and abundant. We are trying to learn what the constellations are. We sit watching shooting stars whizz across the sky and we can see Jupiter shining brightly above us.
All in all life is wonderful!
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| beach looking to the right |
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| and to the left |
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| collecting dirt |
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| meet the lemurs |
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| this one was a bit surprised to see me! |
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| pot packing |
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| bungalows on camp |
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| outside of my house |
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foraging for fruits |
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| collecting mangrove seeds |
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| inside my house |
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| sunrise in Madagascar |
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| rain forest ravaged by ire |
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| taxi to the camp |
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| fishermen risking their lives in the Indian ocean |
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| pitcher plants growing in the forest |
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| rare gecko which may become extinct through mining |
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| this is how we get around the river.... |
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| scorpions in the forest |
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