12th December: Chris de Burgh and the fowl

I am woken at 5 am by Chris De Burgh squelching Lady in Red from a badly tuned radio. Yep, I'm back in Fort Dauphin. The town smells of poo. Human poo. I did, however, get to eat veggie burger and chips, but have now woken to stomach cramps, probably due to the exotic food. I also seem to have given away my flea powder prematurely as I am covered in bites this morning. 

As I'm having a good scratch to the less than good music I suddenly realise what happened to all the duff albums which had been lurking at the bottom of every Woolworths’ bargain bin for the last 20 years. When they went bust, each and every one of them was sent to a Malagasy radio station.

......And suddenly it's quiet. The Malagasy do have taste and have turned it off.

.......And suddenly it's not quiet; the demented cockerel is doing his best Chris De Burgh impression. I think I prefer it to the original.

13th December : Meet the pink parker

The grumpy taxi driver delivered us to the 67 Hectare Nahampoana reserve. Fortunately, due to language barriers, he was forced to take out his bad mood on the chocolate coloured puddles rather than us. We are greeted by a lanky gentleman who turns out to be our guide. He is wearing a girl's pink parker coat, complete with furry hood. I tried to hide my incredulous look as the sweat poured down my face. I enjoyed the reserve, it was more like a big botanical garden with lemurs and crocs and some interesting non-native plants than a conventional nature reserve. Defeated in my attempts to photograph the shy bamboo lemurs, I was happy to watch a group of ring tailed lemurs munching on the lychees. I must also confess to have been very impressed with the rather colourful crab spider.

rainforest blues

8^th December

It hasn't stopped raining for 4 days.

9^th December

5 days. When should I make a start on the ark?

10^th december

6 days and I'm officially right out of dry clean clothes.

7th december soggy sock hat trick

Three days of rain. Three pairs of wet socks. All pairs of socks dripping wet. Duh. Wet boots too. The longhouse smells and so do several of the individuals in it. I don't have the heart to tell them, 'you need to paddle through the mud to the well, get a bucket of brown water and then stand in the pouring rain in the al-fresco showers and cleanse yourself.' I am also running out of clean dry clothes. Dirty and dry is more comfortable than clean and damp. Despite the omnipresent damp I am a happy lemur as I found phalsuma antanosy, the critically endangered gecko, on a pandanas this morning. It coyly posed for photos in the shiny dripping forest.

If it doesn't stop raining soon, I'll be expecting Noah.

6th December: Empower embezzle

I asked the obvious question, why don't we just teach the villagers so they can then teach each other and become independent of us turning up and help being something that is done to them. It turns out that when committees have been set up to generate community income (e.g. weavers, agriculture etc.) When it has been handed over to the community to run the leaders have repeatedly disappeared with the funds and the whole thing has collapsed. I make a few inexperienced suggestions but I really know very little about everyday Malagasy thinking.

apologies to the snails

Full of salty stew I grab my herp stick and begin the hour walk to transect 3 as it is getting dark. A few minutes in and the storm breaks, lightning reflects off of the shiny wet leaves of the jungle as the rain lashes down. I have a rain jacket but before long even my underwear is wet and I know my boots won't be dry by tomorrow. Deeper we go, sliding over wet logs as twigs and leaves slap and flick into our wet faces. A huge dragonfly lands on my lips drawn by the light of my head torch and I pick a fallen spider off my chin. On we go and my torch battery weakens, I can hardly see my feet. After an hour and 10 minutes we reach the transect and begin our herp search. I see mating stick insects, a venomous centipede, pretty snails of various shapes and sizes, but amphibians? Nada. The diversity of spiders is uncomfortably impressive. Soaked, after 30 minutes and a few frogs, found by the others, we give up trying to write in the wet night on wet paper and 'mody' (home) is declared. The walk back seems much faster but how do you dry anything inside a tiny tent not even big enough to sit up properly in? The pile of wet clothes stays outside, but even just my wet body makes the whole thing feel damp. I fall asleep with the rain still pelting down.

fantasy food

I slip easily into another fantasy food daydream involving cheese, fresh vegetables and herbs. I miss my full fridge. A wave of guilt breaks my trance as I know that in just over a fortnight I will be back in my clean kitchen, with its smooth worktops and full, rat-free cupboards. I look into the shadow of a wobbly, leaning hut. A ragged mat covers the floor and smoke seeps through the walls. If I had to stay here forever and live like this, how would I feel? I'm having trouble facing the same bland food for just a few weeks and I'm living it up compared with the locals. I normally enjoy food and it's hard to imagine eating unpleasant, unappetising things just because you need the energy and then maybe still feeling hungry, or not getting all the nutrients you need.

I slightly alarm myself with my preoccupation with all things edible. I try to put it down to some kind of survival instinct but the reality is I'm obsessed with food.  It's the one thing that would stop me staying here for a whole year. I shouldn't admit to it, it should be something far more noble, like how much I would miss friends and family. I'm ashamed to say that the thought of rice every meal from that shabby pot, that would be the real test.

5th December: Wine and wages

After a month of rice for almost every meal (OK we did have spaghetti once a week with a few strands of onion and a vague hint of tomato) I am finally looking at paradise on a plate. A veggie pizza, complete with real veg and black olives. Not only that, but a glass or two of red wine. A sense of inner peace descends upon me and I feast. We drink more wine. The bill comes to more than we expect (over a £10 each) and a shy guilt ripples through the group as we realise that each half-carafe of wine has cost us the equivalent of more than 2 days local wages. Ashamed of my decadence I quietly admit to myself that I would still have ordered and drunk it, had I realised the price in advance.

1st december: lemur alarm

4.30am and I think I hear gunshot, visions of bandits fill my mind before I shift a little further out of my deep sleep and figure that thunder is more likely. Then it dawns on me that the cacophony is the product of a troupe of early rising lemurs, playing on the tin roof of my 'chalet' I'm at the famous reserve, Berenty, a bit of luxury tourism and I've had far too short a night's sleep in my first real bed for over a month. I get up to watch the sifaka dancing in the early morning light and the ring tailed and red-fronted brown lemurs jumping with their babies through the trees.

Barking

simple sketchy looking tables line the road as well pass through the spiny forest between Berenty and Ft Dauphin. Bark and twigs for sale. Boil them up and you get a cure for aches and pains or a natural Viagra. Important to get them the right way round if treating and ailing granddad I feel.

25th november: photogenic malnutrition

beyond the shy and not-so-shy smiles, beyond the wrong-size, filthy ragged shorts, beyond the dirt stained faces and rough bare feet, beyond the cute curiosity and snotty noses, beyond the photogenic biodegradable simplicity of the village crouches the quiet nagging reality of malnutrition. I notice the distended bellies, flies settling unswatted on the weak and the sick. We carry out our questionnaire and between our vasah-centered questions pour the real issues; can we give them a job? How can they repair their houses if they can't take wood from the forest? If they can't slash and burn the forest they are forced to farm barren land – how will they feed their families? The huts are hot, dusty and smoky. They have barely any possessions and the flies are continually landing on my lips and eyes, eager for moisture. I sit there, recording answers, maybe to make myself feel a little useful. My mind slowly spins in hot, midday circles, because the answers I want aren't there. There are too many people to support with the tiny fragments of forest remaining, yet their livelihood depends on the forest. What is the answer? Reforestation takes away crop growing areas. The mining company, Rio Tinto, are probably going to destroy it all anyway, mining ilmanite so we can have all our whites white. It contains the additive (titanium dioxide) that they put in things like toothpaste to make it more attractive. I'll settle for grey toothpaste and keep the more attractive forests thank you.

Impractical

The trouble with being white is that I really show the dirt.

25th november: long drop surfing

It's bad enough balancing on a wobbly long-drop toilet sober, but have a few rum and sprites and it becomes a very risky business. Let's just say, I'm glad I only had a small bottle of rum and I'm glad I shared it.

22nd november: sex change

How different would the world be if people changed colour when they had sex, a bit like chameleons? Well, that was my first thought as I grabbed the camera and snapped a bit of reptile porn. It was slightly concerning, the way the female was being grasped and held down. She was bright red, whilst the male was all multi-coloured and proud. Her other suitor was turning a spurned shade of brown in the tree next door. They were 'engaged' for quite a while, one of her eyes looking up in what appeared to be boredom but I shouldn't be anthropomorphising, finally she wiggled free. The eggs have a gestation period of nice months. I have a train of thought which goes along the lines of; wouldn't it be much easier if humans laid eggs so we could pop them in the airing cupboard for nine months and our young hatch being able to feed themselves? I think maybe I've been in the bush too long and eaten too much rice already.

21st november: parasite city

It's official, I'm infested. Sharing a tent with hungry fleas and mosquitoes doesn't make for a restful night's sleep, so, this morning, I took everything out of the tent, shook out and washed what I could and then threw in some flea powder before asking Hoobee to dig out the new pareshy from my toe. I'm feeling better already.

19th November: on the beaten path

After 2 hours walking through the forest looking for brown collared lemurs for our behavioural study we pop out on the road. There they are, just five minutes from camp. I have a suspicion that all primates are evil and that they did it on purpose. We got to watch a mother and baby foraging, feeding and grooming as the ants climbed up my legs.

20th November: The wood for the trees

Armed with our questionnaires we split into threes with an interpreter/guide and walked into the village for a Saturday morning of cold (chance would be a fine thing - it was hot and sweaty) calling. Only feeling slightly like a door to door salesperson or JW, we approached the first house and were invited in. On a reed mat sat a young guy smiling with a snotty grinning infant on his lap. His wife greeted us with 'salama' from behind a mosquito net. She had just given birth. We asked our questions and his animated replies were full of praise for Azafady's education programme, well building and forest protection. We left boosted, which was a good thing as the rest of the morning left us with a more mixed impression; The wells and English teaching were welcomed and appreciated but the forest protection was seen by many as something forced on them externally and a cause of difficulties. They wanted wood for building and repairs and couldn't get it. They also couldn't sell the wood from the forests to buy other things they needed. We had no answer to that, I'm not even sure if there is one.

Housekeeping

I would like a small hoover to clean every last grain of sand out of my tent and suck up each miserable biting flea. Unfortunately I think this is about as likely as a domino’s pizza delivery.

I used to live to eat, now I eat to live.

Curly green frondy things

Dipsus Bacario Phoenix – another (probably incorrectly spelt) endangered palm. Off we go, into the forest to find them, tie a nice labelled ribbon round them, mark them on the GPS, and then record their height and the canopy cover. Sounds great, apart from the fact that to find them involves pushing through dense jungle, armed with thorny sticks and garrotting vines. Ants fall from the trees, crawl into my armpits and bite (sometimes they get down the front/back of my trousers, even less pleasant. Huge horse flies buzz around looking for a landing site and mosquitoes home in on the tiniest bit of exposed skin. Sweat drips off of me and to cap it all there are uncountable spiders' webs to walk in to. I'm not arachnophobia but I don’t think anyone likes continually wiping spider silk from across their face and neck. (Who knows where the spiders themselves end up?) We are lucky and we find at least 30 of the rare palms, back on the path the thorns and spiders are forgotten.

18th November: Coup de toes

After breakfast, in a by-the-way voice, Sheila tells us that there is a coup taking place in the capital Antananarivo. Following questions it appears that the coup has only been 'slightly violent' a discussion as to the definition of slight violence ensues. Suggestions range from a bit of angry pointing to a couple of deaths (that, as it was pointed out, would not seem slight to those involved) Someone decides that an email should be sent home to let our people know we are alright but then it might alarm those who haven't heard. It turns out that it is front page of the BBC website so keeping quiet about it seems unlikely. Within minutes, worries of distant political unrest are ousted by more pressing matters; infected toes. The pareshy (burrowing sand fleas-tunga penetrans) have been carrying out an incapacitating campaign – three volunteers grounded and munching antibiotics with infected feet (toe puss has been banned from the dinner table – we do still have standards even though they are not very high) I've been cleaning my feet religiously, praying into my bucket of swamp water as I scrub them with daily soapifiction.

Rat chocolate dilemmas

The gnaw marks are obvious; both ends of the toblerone obliterated and the sections in between probably melted and reformed a dozen times. A discussion ensues about the possibility of extracting a small section of edible chocolate from the relatively intact mid-part. The diseases which are carried by rodents are also mentioned. Several minutes of thought later, the anonymous present to Sheila is cut and consumed. It smells and tastes just like a toblerone should.

Giraffe necked weevil envy

Invertebrates rock, especially when you can't see them in real life without actually coming to Madagascar. Giraffes? I can see then up the road in Marwell zoo. Giraffe necked weevils on the other hand...

The prized insect poses patiently for photos and we return to camp making the other volunteers exceedingly jealous. Strangely enough, weirdo weevils seem to trump the 4 woolly lemurs who gently watched us from a couple of trees.

15th November: Brown things in Brown trees

I am cursing the great evolutionary survival tactic, camouflage and wishing lemurs were florescent orange, when Andreas spots a brown collared lemur in the tree I have just walked past and stared straight at. Undeterred by my humiliating lack of observational skills I get out the GPS and our lemur behaviour tracking begins. On closer inspections there are at least 4 adults in the group and two are females with young clinging to their backs. The babies take a sneaky peek at us from the safety of their mothers’ fur. Lemur behaviour studies aren't that easy, it's often a case of resting, resting, resting, sleeping, sleeping etc. then suddenly they become active and they are off, swinging from tree to tree with far more agility and speed than us clumsy humans on the ground can match as we push through the orb spider webs and saw-toothed pandanas in a comical attempt to keep pace.

Light-bulb status

It's a posh bar, we can tell; it has a dusty naked light bulb hanging from the old thatched roof. They don't have electricity though, so it's a curious thing.

Drinking water

Back at the well of assumptions the small grubby children smile and chat to me in Malagasy. The smallest leaps up to pump my water, she must be about 4 years old. Water slowly trickles from the well. The older girls push my bucket aside for a moment and, after scrubbing their hands by rubbing them against the concrete they drink the swampy water. The same water I was reluctant to wash even my dirty socks in. I realise that I'd been harbouring a final assumption, that the locals somehow miraculously acquired clear, filtered, non-smelly drinking water. The children wipe their hands and faces, fill my bucket and run off joking and smiling.

Lazy Sunday Mufu

I awoke just after 5am to find a suspicious number of new bites, mainly across my stomach. Do I have fleas? I'm not sure. It could have been a rogue mossie or 10. I am excited at the appearance of a coconut at breakfast and tuck in to it along with my banana mashed into my breakfast rice. Despite my stinking cold I slept better, relatively flat. A lazy morning watching a hen with her 10 brand new chicks wander between the tents, the flea-bag puppies crashed out under the trees and the local kids eyeing us curiously from the road and performing whenever they think they have an audience.

To enjoy or endure?

It only takes a minute to go from a childlike awe and wonder about all things nocturnal and Malagasy to just wanting to sleep and knowing that it's at least an hour's stumbling through spider filled dark jungle with a dimming head torch before I can crawl onto my therma-rest. Any negative thoughts were banished forever however by the appearance of the coolest leaf-tailed gecko ever. Even David Attenborough would have been jealous.

Moving house

I've moved my tent out of the ditch. I'm looking forward to a flat night's sleep – the first in a fortnight (that's two weeks to you Americans)

10th November: Splashing out on rum and cucumber

I feel guilty at having purchased the last and only green vegetable in the village (a small cucumber) but the smirk of amusement on the shopkeeper’s face as I took my change reassured me that the ‘vasah' had yet again provided a hot afternoon’s entertainment as well as income. More smirks followed me as I wondered back to the camp site, cucumber in one hand, rum in the other and the sun on my back.

13th November: Unimaginative ailments

If I’m going to be ill I’d rather it be something bizarre and tropical not a stinking cold. A burning throat under the burning sun and the sweat running in step with my nose just isn’t what I had in mind when I packed my medical kit. Fortunately Geoff comes to the rescue with a packet of lockets.

Latina

At lunchtime the longhouse day gecko jumps on to my leg and I think of it as phalsuma Lineata. I may yet get the hang of the classification.

Virgin snake catcher

After a morning of making and marking a new transect and an afternoon pounding lumps of clay into powder ready to build stoves it’s back in to the forest. Armed with my poke-it stick and a head torch we march an hour deep into the jungle for a nocturnal herp sweep. I’m quietly chuffed with myself when I’m the first the find and catch a frog but ashamed when the most advanced classification I can give it is ‘frog.’ Full identification takes a few minutes and some toe splaying for webbing observation. The frog just hops off unperturbed when we’ve finished. Several frogs and a couple of snakes later I find a snake and decide to have a go at catching it. I pick it up and try to convince myself that even if it does bite it won’t be that bad. The snake wraps itself around my arm, tastes the air and then does a very smelly snake-poo on my hand. This really does wonders at managing to cancel out the considerable sense of achievement I was feeling at having caught my first snake.

One hit wonder dirty dancing.

We’ve hired the local band for 30000 Ariary (about £10) and got the drinks in (rum 1700, 60p a bottle and coke 2400, 80p a bottle – mixers are such a rip off!) In the dim light of a wind-blown candle and a couple of head torches I can make out the home-made instruments behind the swiftly coordinated dancers. The second and third song sound very similar to the first, which is because they are the same. And the forth, identical in fact. The band proceeds to play the same song over and over again with sustained enthusiasm for the next couple of hours. Then they play 2 others which they have obviously been saving before continuing with their obvious favourite. We are all pulled up to dance barefoot in the dusty sand (there’s just a few stones to keep you awake) A huge hissing cockroach circles the flame, round and round, oblivious to the music and dancing, mesmerised. A couple of the local guys circle Erica and Emma in a similar way. I dance with the children who flash white toothed smiles under the stars and giggling ask me my name in Malagasy.

A lazy Sunday morning digging parasites out of my feet.

It seems there is weekly foot-checking ritual; first we estimate numbers of pareshy (burrowing sand fleas) for each volunteer based on their cleanliness, foot-vigilance and sandal vs. boot wearing preferences, then we each have a bucket of water and clean our blackened feet, checking for black dots beneath the skin. I find four and gratefully let Sheila dig out the first with my specially provided safety pin. I gauge out the rest myself; fortunately all of them are small and haven’t made an egg sack yet. Sarah has one that is about the size of a pea removed from behind her toe-nail. Throwing it on the fire to destroy it the whole camp site hears the pop as it explodes. That is just very gross I think whilst sitting by my bucket staring at my feet. This is a very different way to spend Sunday morning, but I’d quite like a croissant anyway.

6th November: The well of assumptions

All the money given to water aid and all those charities that tootle along to remote villages where the women walk hot dusty kilometres for stagnant water and build a well. We all assume, or am I wrong, that when the mission is complete, that beautiful, crystal clear water, clean water flows from the well. That frankly is bollocks. It may be that as you start to pump the smell of old farts fills the air and a dark tea like liquid starts to fill your dirty bucket. It’s then it hits you that pumping stagnant water in the village is infinitely better than walking several Km to the crocodile infested swamp for it.

No running water

No electricity

No tarmac

No street lights

No television

No fridge

No supermarket

Just a really damn good mobile phone signal

Neither the chicken or the egg

A wave of excitement ripples through the group – chicken for dinner. A second wave breaks as I say that I really don’t want my egg and I’d rather someone who appreciated it ate it. Eggs are fowl. Amid the Saturday night excitement I sit down to my bowl of rice, I cheer it up with a good pinch of pepper and a spoon of mustard. I’ve had rice for every meal since I’ve been here bar one. I don’t think I’ll ever hate rice I’m just developing a much deeper appreciation of the nice things that can go with it. Fortunately redemption arrives midway through my rogan josh fantasy in the form of banofee pie. Made from bananas, condensed milk (obviously) and some slightly stale biscuits in what appears to be the washing-up bowl, it tastes bloody sweet and bloody good. I wash it down with rum and sprite and I’m ready to party. Bush party.

5th November: swamp-dog smell in the air

I suppose it says a lot about me, the fact that I missed having a fridge before I missed running water. That was, until I ended up in the swamp whilst GPS tracking the perimeter of a forest fragment this afternoon. Everything smells of swamp and my boots are on the washing line meaning I must survive moss-grown in my flip flops. Unfortunately not even 100% DEET can cover up my swampy smell.

inadequate snake catcher

The rustling on the way back from the long drop turns out to be a rather attractive yellow snake. I announce my find to the others only to be asked why I haven’t bought it over. Well, unfortunately in my almost 40 years of existence I’ve never before had the need or necessary training. Apparently it is easy; you get a stick, hold it down behind the head then grab it firmly before it bites. I’ll try myself next time, but not on mainland Africa!

4th november : poke it with a stick

The walk to fragment S8 is beautiful; a red sandy track, morning light bringing out the contrast between the pitcher plants, palms and black-water swamps. The hazy mountains in the background. The pleasantly warm breeze kept me from overheating, everything perfect apart from a lack of lemurs, well our ability to find them at least. I’m happy anyway.

 In the afternoon I found myself a suitable stick and joined the ‘herp-sweep,’ prodding every nook, cranny and bit of leaf litter for reptiles and amphibians. We found a lot of frogs with long Latin names and a few snakes. When I get my head around all the Latin, I’ll let you know.

4th november: my on-going contempt for eggs

It was a long time between 12 and 7pm and I have worked up a scary appetite. Encouraged by the pinky-rice for breakfast and the beans and rice for lunch I am looking forward to a feed. Plain rice and a greasy mashed-up fried egg. No veg. No seasoning. I stoically mash the plain egg into the plain rice and start to eat. This is what I’m apparently going to get at least twice a week whenever the others have meat of fish. Coming straight from the airport to the bush pretty much I didn’t get the chance to buy any supplementary snacks so this is it. I find some soy sauce but it just makes it taste salty, I find some hot chili sauce and it becomes inedibly hot. I really wish I didn’t hate eggs so much!

In contrast the night walk is fantastic; more snakes, fat tailed dwarf lemurs and huge stick insects mating. My stomach is forgotten and I remember why I’m here.