Salama!

I am now back in Sambava. Our last visit to town was short, but pretty eventful. We spent a total of three days down here, five if you count travel days to and from Marojejy. Although most of that time was spent learning how to work the vocalization equipment, we also got some time to ourselves.

The vocalization equipment isn't too hard to master, but it does require some practice. We spent about four hours testing our skills on the seven new puppies at Erik's hotel on the beach. They were only one day old and the first sounds of life are fascinating. We downloaded them onto the computer and looked at all kinds of audio-techno-mumbo-jumbo.

The new puppies at Erik's hotel

 We also saw a herd of about fifty zebu, basically Malagasy cattle, crossing the river to the town. Erik came running into the Internet place here one afternoon and all he said to us was, "Come quick, I've been waiting for this moment for three years!" We promptly paid our bill and hopped into a waiting cab. It was an amazing site as we pulled up to the beach. A handful of men in canoes were responsible for driving all the zebu across the water. We took plenty of pictures, especially since Erik told us the BBC crew had spent weeks trying to get the shot, and never did.

Zebu crossing

We also went out with Bob and Jean, the older Peace Corps volunteers living in Sambava. Although hitting the town with an older couple may not seem like a party, Bob and Jean can certainly keep up. In fact, I was the one trying to keep up with them. We went out for pizza as well, a decrepit old building with little more than "Pizzeria" written on the side. However, I kid you not when I say this  was some of the best pizza I have ever had. I'm not sure if this is because it was actually tasty or if I'm so deprived of American staples that anything even resembling pizza is heavenly. I suspect the latter though.

Since I'm writing about food anyway, Emily and I have fallen in love with the ice cream at our hotel. As I mentioned before, our hotel has one of the best restaurants in town. This ice cream though is just out of this world. Again, I'm not sure if its really good or I just haven't had ice cream in over two months. One thing is for sure, I'll be getting that caramel flavor tonight. One more story about food though before I get to the forest. We spent our last night in Sambava devouring the ripest, sweetest, and most delicious pineapple. We didn't have a good knife, but we stood on Emily's porch cutting it with a little pocket knife I packed just in case. I think it tasted better because we had to work so hard to eat it. The juice was everywhere though. We even invited the watchman at the hotel to come join us. He did, along with another hotel employee. Winning friends with pineapple. I'm done writing about food now.

Back to the forest. It took us a couple extra hours to get back up to Marojejy this time around. Saed, the same goat entrepreneur from last week's post, brought us to the park office where we normally start our seven mile hike. Unfortunately, his taxi broke down a few miles outside of Sambava. He fixed it himself in about fifteen minutes, only to get a flat tire about ten miles down the road. Rough start. We finally reached the park office, paid porters, and started our hike around ten in the morning. Turns out, it is hard on your body to hike down only to come back up three days later. Let's just say we took our time. We also visited Babazy's family as we walked through Mandena, the last village before the park entrance. Babazy is doing well, he has a new job building a sustainable charcoal factory next to the public library. When I say factory though, I mean its a small shack where they will teach villagers to use resources more efficiently. He told us that it only took two weeks to build. He walked with us for the first couple miles, catching up a bit. He was delighted to learn the new vocabulary words "duck," "goose," and "puppy" as we walked along the now familiar trek.

Babazy and me

Nothing new to report from the forest though. We've really expanded our project, and spent all four days GPS-ing intergroup encounter locations, continuing our scent marking research, recording vocalizations, and collecting fecals. While up there though, I started having the weirdest hallucinations in the early morning from the malaria medication. I might have to switch medications pretty soon, I'll miss the vivid dreams though. But these hallucinations are bad news bears. One morning I woke up at four only to see a mongoose eating my toothpaste. I woke up Emily and she said that there was no mongoose there. I've also seen giant cricket/spiders that glow in the dark, and was confused one morning when I watched the duct tape on my wall turn into a TV screen. Woah. I'm sure I'll keep you updated on this too.

Anyway, I was excited to find two packages from my family waiting for me in my hotel room. It was like Christmas over here. Emily and I were so excited as we carefully opened each package. We now have enough spices to last us a lifetime. Bring on the beans and rice! The cards and pictures were especially endearing. Thank you!

We will be in Sambava until tomorrow, when we get on a plane to fly to Tana. In Tana we will meet Manitra, a master's student at the University of Antananarivo. He will be joining us for the remainder of our time here. We will then spend two days in Andasibe to see the indri (probably my favorite lemur/animal/organism ever, if you get a chance, youtube their "songs"). Then its back to Tana, Mauritius for four days, and back to Sambava on September 30th. I will hopefully get a chance to update you when we return here then. Veloma!

Akory e!

I am  currently back in Sambava for a couple days. Erik sent us a letter on the ninth saying he wanted us to come down early to work with the vocalization equipment and do some research. We are now expanding our project to include fecal collection. As glamorous as this sounds, its important because we plan on sending about thirty five samples to Cornell University to investigate any endoparasites. Before we finish collection in October though, we need to read up on some of the parasite literature in town.

I've experienced a lot since mid-August. As I mentioned before, we spent our last stay in Sambava entering data and shopping to resupply camp. I think I've finally mastered the exchange from Ariary to USD, and its amazing what you can buy here for so little money. Since pineapples are a staple in our diet, we spent the greater majority of shopping time scouring the town to buy as many as we could. We bought fifteen pineapples for the equivalent price of about five dollars. It was glorious.

We stayed in Sambava one extra day to do a special task for Erik. Every Sunday there is local boxing called "morengy" and everyone in town gets dressed up to watch. We went with Saed, a taxi driver and goat entrepreneur who helps us out from time to time. Erik wanted us to attend the fight in order to take pictures and videotape some matches. He also thought it would be good to take in a little bit of the culture.

Morengy

Morengy is almost nothing like American boxing, and as rough as the following description may sound, it was actually really fun. Around four in the afternoon Saed picked us up and brought us to what looked like any other street in Sambava. We walked down a side alley and payed 2,000 Ar (1 USD) to enter a large outdoor clearing where a crowd had started to gather. Over a loud speaker it sounded like a radio personality was heckling some of the audience members, but I wasn't sure because it was all in Malagasy. There is apparently no set schedule for the matches, and anyone can just jump into the ring, fists up and walking around, until someone accepts the challenge. There is a referee, usually an older man with a whistle, but he doesn't get involved too often. Once a match has been set up, the fighters dance around, throwing punches and kicking until someone is knocked to the ground. Most blows are missed in the fury, but when they do make contact it looks incredibly painful. This is probably a good time to mention that some of the Malagasy men here are literally just solid muscle. Anyway, if any of the fights are actually planned, its the last one, where the reigning champions from two towns will go head-to-head. The Sambava champion was taller than all the other fighters and he wore a black sweat suit. Its customary for the audience members to offer the fighters money as a tip if they put on a good show. The violence aside, all this combined makes it a really exciting experience.

The champion of Sambava, Joblahy Mangilatra

 We made the trek back up to Marojejy the following day and it only took us about six hours, four hours of walking. The guide who brought us was a local botanist who basically sprinted up the mountain. I was disappointed when we returned and had to replace Babazy with Gerlan, a more experienced guide who recently got back from a survey mission. As sad as I was to see Babazy go, we welcomed Gerlan and he picked up animal identification pretty quickly. Although Babazy was my best Malagasy friend in the forest, Gerlan and I have bonded as well. He is about thirty years old and has a new baby on the way, the due date is this week actually. Sometimes he starts walking the 11 km back to the village to visit his family after we work all day in the forest. He gets up at two in the morning to walk back (and I thought my commute to NYC was bad...). Gerlan also speaks English very well, and as with Babazy, I've developed a real passion for teaching him new words and phrases. Long days in the forest are spent going over vocabulary, usually in broken French when the words are too hard to mime. Our entire team now yells "LV is nomming" instead of "LV is feeding." Gerlan also really enjoys music and sometimes during the hours before dinner we will turn on the radio (being on top of a mountain, we get pretty good reception). Once in a blue moon the local radio station will play popular songs from the US that made it all the way here. I got a little nostalgic about college life while blasting "Starships" one night.

The rest of the team is doing fine as well. Everybody has been given a nickname, including Seraphin who we affectionately call "Pumba" because he has identical teeth. My nickname is "vary fotsy" or white rice. I'll let your imagination run wild with all the possible reasons I was given that name.

We have had many tourists come through camp as well. For two days we had a group of fifteen Spanish people living with us, a time we now refer to as "the Spanish invasion." Joel, the peace corps volunteer, also came up with a group of students from Sambava. In an effort to promote environmental education, these students are sponsored by the Duke Lemur Center and given the unique opportunity to visit Marojejy and learn about its amazing wildlife. Many of these children would have never seen the park because, although entrance fees are only about fifty cents a day, many cannot afford the cost. We took them to see our habituated group of silkies, and the looks on their faces when they witnessed the sifakas moving effortlessly through the forest canopy proves that education is an important key to successful conservation.

The food is the same, good old rice and beans. However, I have made it my personal mission to try as many fruits here as possible, and I have developed quite a love for bananas and tangerines. As I said last time, the food here is actually really good, although one night I had to switch plates because I had gecko poop all over mine (#rainforestproblems).

The only thing that was really different this time around was all the rain. Things seem to never dry and you can see the moisture in the air at night. We probably only had a few sunny days the whole time we were up there. We had one day that was particularly long and challenging. It had been raining for about three days straight and it was down pouring on our hike up the mountain in the morning. We called for Nestor and Janvier, but there was no answer. As weird as this was, we continued upward another twenty minutes and tried to call them again. They answered back with one hoot, which means they had lost the animals. We hiked back down and began searching for them. When we finally found the group, they were separated, which we thought was odd. As we watched our focals, the group slowly started to assimilate again, except for MS who hadn't been seen all day. We spent any free time we had searching for her, especially since she is only about one year old and too young to start exploring the forest by herself. Given that the group had moved in the middle of the night and they were separated in the morning, we feared that they had been attacked and she had been killed by a fosa. Fosa are the largest predators in Madagascar. They are carnivorous and resemble big cats, although they are in a different family from felines. If you've never seen a fosa, google it immediately. A fosa can hunt on the ground, in the trees, during night, and during day, which makes it a very dangerous predator, especially for young lemurs like MS. Unfortunately, she was still missing when we got back to camp that day. We reluctantly started to make plans to go out on a special mission to find her remains so we could do a taphonomic study. Dinner was really somber that night, Janvier was almost in tears as we discussed what to do next. We decided that we would wait three days, and if she wasn't back by then, we would assume the worst and start searching for her body. The following day though, we heard her lost call (a vocalization similar to a cooing dove, although much louder) and by about noon she had found the others. That was a rough twenty-four hours though.

Mena Sako or MS

A fosa at the zoo in Tana

 On an unrelated and more personal note, I think my experiences here so far have really changed me. I've learned a lot from working closely with people who sacrifice so much and work so hard to support their families. I also have a lot of free time to just think. As exciting and full of adventure as the forest can be, it can also be very boring. Sometimes the group will be sleeping and all I can do is stand there and wait for the sifakas to wake up. During these times I often find myself thinking about family, friends, or what beans we are going to have for dinner as I stare off into some of the most majestic scenery I'm sure I will ever see. I relish in those long hours I get to spend just reflecting. I think I have found a new perspective on both my personal and professional life. Sometimes I feel like a modern Henry David Thoreau. I now understand that research, learning, teaching, and conservation all go hand-in-hand, and I plan on dedicating my life to these endeavors. I think people who knew me well before this experience will recognize how much I've grown when I come back in December. I like to think I've matured, without losing sight of who I am and what I'm passionate about.

Anyway, enough with the seriousness, you should expect another update when I come back down next week. At the end of September we fly to Mauritius for a little vacation to renew our visas. Mauritius is rumored to have some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, so I'm happy to be spending some time there. Until then though, veloma!