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Trip Start Jun 24, 2009 Previous
Entry Trip End Oct 01, 2009

  Sainte Luce, Toliara, Madagascar
Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Or should the title read:  How slow can a computer be and still be classed as useful?

Hi All,

It has taken me 10 minutes just to get to this point on the blog which may go some way to explaining the lack of entries.  Internet cafe's in Africa have slow computers and slow internet which make blogging quite difficult it's also especially difficult as there are many places without electricity let alone computers!

I think I have to condense my last 4 weeks to enable me to catch up and keep this blog current, don't worry I'll write you all a nice book when I return giving all the details that have been missed.

After spending a couple of days with the Pioneer Volunteers in Lanirano the Lemur Venturers' jumped into a Cambion (an old truck with seats and a rusty roof) for the 40 mile drive to Sainte Luce.  40 miles doesn't sound a long way but when the transport is ready to fall to pieces (there were holes in the floor and the rust from the roof rained down on our heads constantly) and the roads would be classed as, well I don't know what they would be classed as back home.  They were dry mud with rocks, 3ft trenches, streams branches, sand and only could be called roads as they weren't fields, forest or marshes!  Sainte Luce is the collective name for 4 small villages near the coast.  They make their living from fishing and weaving, the nearest market is 3 hours away and every afternoon the fisherman run past our campsite with baskets of fish heading to market.  They have to get to market in time to sell their fish and then make the 3 hour journey (all is on foot both ways) back home in complete darkness over deep sand and rough terrain.

Our campsite is owned by Azafady and managed by a man called Sisoni, who also runs the tree nursery where trees are grown and prepared for reforestation.  There are only basic facilities such as "long drop toilets" which are just holes in the ground, it took me a couple of days to get my aim right and one of the girls dropped her camera in one within 30 mins of arriving!  We get water from the village well which Azafady built, the water comes out warm and stained brown by the iron in the soil. 

While in Sainte Luce we had to walk transects (lines across the forest) of each segment of remaining forest recording if we saw Lemurs, how far they were along the transect, how far from the transect and how high they were in the trees.  We had to do one in the morning, one in the afternoon and also one at night, this was repeated 3 or 4 times for each segment.  The transects didn't follow paths they required pushing through the forest and crossing marshes in side the forest.  We all got covered in scratches and spiderwebs!  Some of the segments required us to travel up river by dugout canoe and camp for a night, all were a couple of kilometers walk from wherever we were based and then ranged from 800m to 2300m in length so we typically walked more than 20k a day.  Most segments required us to cross marshes to get to the forest, some of these were quite wide and non had paths through, we had to wade and jump our way across (not good for George).  When we conducted a night walk it was always pitch black as there is no electricity of course so we had to rely on our head torches and our guides ability to remember the way to the forest.  Once in the forest we have to follow pieces of tape that are tied to the trees at intervals, just like Hansel and Grettel did with bread crumbs.  Quite often these bits of tape could be hard to see in the daylight, at night it was common to have to turned around and try and find the route again.

Our sleeping patterns changed to match the work we were doing and the hours of daylight.  We slept until dawn around 5.30-6am then (apart from when we had to conduct night transects) went to bed a couple of hours after dark which is at about 5pm (sleep at 7-7.30pm).  George and I are still finding it tough to stay out after 7.30am and I'm up around 7am every morning.

That's enough for today, hopefully more tomorrow

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