Mora mora

After leaving the comfort and, essentially, luxury of the Ivato hotel in Tana I caught my flight to Tulear. Much easier said than done as they got the gates mixed up so that the one saying Fort Dauphin was actually the gate for Tulear and vice versa. If it wasn't for a very nice South African guy who managed to spot the error and inform me, then there would have been a very uncomfortable 70 hour taxi brousse ride ahead of me back to Tulear..

Once arriving there I was picked up by a taxi and taken straight to the Reef Doctor site. The drive was around an hour or so and cost 60,000 Ar which is about £15, which may seem cheap though it turned out that he had not only charged me for the journey but also charged Reef Doctor so there was a lot of angry shouting in malagasy down the phone to him the next day.

After I arrived I had a quick dinner of rice and lentils, a dish I would soon become very accustomed to, and then was shown to where I would be staying for the next 3 months which consisted of a large hut split into 4 sections using curtains. Each section has a bed and shelving apart from one which was the entrance and living area. We had a small bonfire that night to wave off a volunteer who was leaving the next day which was a great chance to get to know everyone.


The next day was filled with a lot of forms and signatures just so I was able to start diving the next day. Later I got a chance to help out on one of the projects in which they were giving solar ovens to the local villagers allowing them to save money on charcoal. They rent them out to the villagers at a low price (much lower than purchasing charcoal every day) and this stops them just taking advantage of schemes such as this and ensures that the people will take more care of the ovens them selves.

On Friday I did my refresher dives with the dive officer, Dean. Dean is a great member of the team who will always be happy to answer any questions regarding diving no matter how stupid you think they are. He has a great sense of humour and really connects very well with the volunteers and the staff equally.




Saturday was my first experience of a taxi brousse and though I had read numerous blog posts about peoples experiences in them it really wasn't anything like experiencing it first hand. One of the other volunteers described it the best as being, "a simulation of what it would be like if you were a battery chicken". They basically consist of a small pick up truck with a canopy over the trailer part and some benches on either side. Comfortably you could probably fit 14 people in one, 7 on either side. When we got to Tulear there were 28 to 30 people in the brousse. So certainly cosy... The reason for the trip was to collect the essentials I needed due to my lost baggage including clothes, toiletries, suncream etc. Emma, who is pretty much the mum of the camp, was very helpful with the clothes shopping due to having a much better eye for style than myself while also being able to speak fluent Malagasy and so was able to haggle down to get the best prices. This was much to the annoyance of the store owners who were shocked my this foreigner, or Vazha, who was able to get the prices of a Vezo (local fishing people).

The next week was filled with doing the dives need for the PADI Advanced Open Water. While also doing a few science dives which mainly consisted of ID-ing the various fish species, coral and invertebrates. All of which we are tested on before we can begin to partake in the surveying. The science dives are conducted by Val who is the current science intern. She is a great laugh and really makes the early mornings not as painful as they may well have been.


So that's my week in general, other than that I have been going to nautilus, a small hotel about a mile away with Internet, with the excuse of sorting out what's happening with my luggage, when actually its to have one of their delicious zebu steaks served by waiters wearing uniforms that seemed to have been designed by the same people who made the costumes for Rainbow... I have also taken part in a number of volley ball games, of which my terrible hand eye co-ordination has been little if no help, as well as continuously attempting to write this blog to little avail though at last I have succeeded! Well, unless I end up reading through this and then deleting it all again...

Pictures in order are the front of the Reef Doctor Site looking up from the beach, a pirogue which are the local fishing boats used by the Vezo people and the restraunt of Nautilus.

Trail by Fire/ Tom Luck Strikes Again

Written - 07/08/2012

So here I am. In one piece.. At least..
As I lie on my bed in the Ivato hotel, looking back on the journey, it doesn't seem that I have been travelling for almost 20 odd hours and though my journey has yet another leg to it tomorrow I do really feel like I have arrived. Though not without a few issues along the way...

The most recent of these occurred today as I arrived in Johannesburg to discover that my bag had failed to do the same. I spent around half an hour describing what my bag looks like to a woman who seemed more interested in what her lunch would look like, and being routinely offered high fives by a large African airport attendant who then declared, "Welcome to South Africa my friend!"
"Thanks but I'm only staying for a few hours, I'm travelling out to Madagascar." At which point he would walk off looking glum.

Finally, I filled out a form noting my final point of destination and supposedly my bag should be waiting for me in Toliara tomorrow, so fingers crossed and mind doubtful!

After that it was onto the plane to Madagascar where I arrived today at 14:55 local time. I must say the guides that Reef Doctor sent me could not have described the walk to the Bureau de Change more perfectly. Taxi drivers attack you from every angle desperate for your fare, luckily I had a taxi pre-booked through the hotel so I was able to fend them off quite swiftly with a mere point to the driver holding a card with my name spelt wrong on it.

After changing some money and attempting to get a phone, though giving up due to the line length and impatient look on my taxi drivers face, we headed out into the bright light of Madagascar. Immediately small children, maybe 5 or 6 years old, appeared with hands out begging for money. One was particularly relentless even after numerous attempts and declining in my best French he only stopped asking once he could no longer keep up with the little renault we were chugging along in.

It was a short drive to the hotel where I paid for the taxi for which I made a rather embarrassing attempt at haggling (though I guess that comes with getting used to how much the usual price for things are), paid for my room, was informed of the internet being broken as well as the phone (probably broken since they opened the hotel) and retired for the day with the plan to sleep through to tomorrow morning. Photos of my room and view out my window are below.






Though I have only seen very little of Madagascar so far, this area is very much how I had imagined it to look. The area is very poor with the houses having small wooden balcony extensions stitched on like a weird extra limb looking as though they would fall apart as soon as a leaf landed on them. There is sand and dust everywhere and the roads seem to be pretty much a free for all. Even so, everyone I have met so far has been really friendly and chatty, the taxi driver who spoke about as much English as I did French managed to hold up a conversation the whole trip to the hotel, mainly about how much he loved his car but he was a great character to first come into contact with in a very much distant land.

I think French is going to be my next big hurdle here, forcing my self to use it more and also becoming more adept at it. I certainly found my limited dialect to be quite a barrier today just checking into the hotel, and hope that I can pick it up sooner rather than later, besides I am getting sick of saying "mon Francis c'est terrible!" Also I am pretty sure it's wrong..

Location:Antananarivo, Madagascar

So it begins...

The Hobbit, Les Miserables, James Bond: Skyfall, the final season of Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones season 3.

If you are a film and television buff like me, then you will understand that the decision to spend 9 months out in Madagascar with an NGO called Reef Doctor was not one that I merely wanted to do for the experience of spending 9 months somewhere nice and hot (though that certainly may have been an incentive). For as much as I can recite the majority of the Lord of the Rings films, with a little help from Adam & Cameron, my heart truly lies in conservation and the protection of species that are most at risk from the impacts of humans.

This is no more apparent than in marine habitats, especially coral reefs which are struggling to cope with attacks from all angles whether they be climate change, over fishing or high quantities of tourists.

Coral reefs occupy less than 0.1% of the worlds oceans surface yet they are able to support and provide home for 25% of all known marine species. This alone is a phenomenal statistic for an ecosystem. It is why I am so shocked about the fact that so many reef systems are near collapsing or already have done due to the impacts caused by humans.

And so I have been lead to Reef Doctor. The organisation was recommended to me by one of my lecturers and I couldn't pass on the chance to fulfill my goal of becoming a marine conservationist. With less than three weeks before I leave for Madagascar I thought I would post a prelude to this blog to hopefully introduce future readers to what it will be about. If you are just looking at it long after it was originally created I hope I have managed to stick to my aim of what I wanted it to be.

My hope is that I have been able to show the work that goes into protecting a reef system such as the ones found in the bay of Ranobe in Ifaty. I want to be able to do this in a way that brings across the enjoyment of such a career for any future conservationists, while at the same time giving readers an idea of the efforts such an NGO have to go through to help preserve such a unique ecosystem. Of course, in time, things on this blog may change. I have very little experience in marine conservation and so I hope to pass on my thoughts and opinions about what I learn within this fantastic organisation.

So the bag is packed, the kit lists are ticked off and, though I have still yet to see my visa application completed, I am already starting to miss Greggs bakery..

Bring it on Madagascar!