#seedmadagascar

Back in June I travelled to the opposite end of the country to work with Operation Wallacea, an environmental research and expeditions organisation, on their research site in a village called Mariarano. Along for the ride were Steve, who coordinates our Project Oratsimba and works on the OpWall database; Sam, Executive Conservation Programme Coordinator and general all-around animal expert; and Ryan, one of our past research assistants who came as a herpetology (reptile and amphibian) specialist. Every summer OpWall bring around 50 university students and many more school children to the field site, where they carry out practical conservation monitoring to add to a long-term database.

Before Mariarano I hadn’t even looked around Madagascar’s capital, let alone explored the north of the country, so I was excited for the new experiences that this 6-week field season would bring. To say that I wasn’t disappointed would be a massive understatement! The forests and wetlands around Mariarano are host to an absolutely dizzying range of wildlife, and on our very first casual wander out of the camp we spotted chameleons, kingfishers and snakes in the light of our torches as sportive lemurs screamed from the trees and flying fox bats soared above our heads. As a slightly-lapsed zoologist and IT guy I usually feel quite superfluous on these expeditions as my identification skills are quite lacking, so I was very pleased to spot a tiny gecko with a tail like a dragon clinging onto a leaf. Uroplatus ebenaui – exciting!

My role on the expedition was to run a pilot replacing paper datasheets on surveys with smartphones. There’s some great reasons for going paperless: saving trees; reducing mistakes in transcription; reducing data entry time to virtually nothing; and the ability to take GPS coordinates directly on-device, among many others. I was working with Open Data Kit, or ODK, a fantastic suite of open-source data collection tools developed at the University of Washington which allows you to easily collect data using smartphones or web browsers. The setup required a bit of reengineering as it expected to have an internet connection to upload collected data – not ideal when you can’t even get phone signal! I set up a local network and exported data in the form of CSV files, which can easily be imported into the main long-term database. This year’s pilot ran with 15 phones on four surveys, namely lemur and herpetology routes, bird point counts and opportunistic surveys. It was a great success and next year I hope to have every survey taken on a phone or tablet, across all three camps.

15 smartphones...and a whole lot of charging cables!

Once the system was up and running smoothly I found myself with some free time on my hands, so I took a couple of forest plot survey groups out, put together a basic photography lecture to familiarise the students with their shiny new cameras and typed in a vast number of datasheets! I also visited the other two camps at Matsedroy and Antafiameva: the former with five beautiful lakes and a huge array of wetland birds and crocodiles; and the latter hosting hundreds of flying foxes and a pair of Madagascar fish eagles, plus their baby! Every day came with new experiences (fish samosas definitely count, right?) and it was incredible how the north just feels like a different country compared to my usual surroundings down in the south easy. Madagascar truly does earn the nickname of “the eighth continent”.

It was fantastic working with Operation Wallacea and we all appreciated the opportunity to share knowledge between our two organisations, providing expertise in species identification and receiving ideas for our own Conservation Programme in Sainte Luce, as well as generating income for our Stitch women’s association and the association in Mariarano (more on that later). Bring on next year!

The camp at Sainte Luce is luxurious, with tables and benches in the Long House, solar powered lighting, concrete shower block and flat pitches to place our tents! Whilst tempting to spend a lot of time relaxing in the hammock, we were able to get involved with the interesting conservation surveying that ACP conducts throughout the year. These include stream and transect mapping, lemur behaviour and nutrition surveys, and bat surveys, to name just a few. The local guides are fantastic at spotting the wildlife from a distance, including the tiny pygmy chameleon, geckos that hide in the leaves of the Pandanus plant and brown lemurs. Night walks showed us the Microcebus mouse lemur, tree boa and paradise fly catcher asleep on branches. Matt then had us planting seeds in his nursery to help the Moringa sustainable livelihoods project, and we attended the lively conservation club sessions with the children, who are currently learning about the importance of sustainable farming of lobsters.

We were also able to get involved with the sustainable livelihood projects within the local community. Project Oratsimba works with local fishermen to introduce sustainable fishing techniques to tackle the decreasing lobster population. We joined Christin, our local lobster monitor at 6am on the beach to monitor the number of boats leaving to fish and wait for their return to record and measure the lobsters that had been caught. An early start, but rewarded with incredible sunrises, mofo and coffee in the village and of course, lying on the beach!

Sainte Luce is also home to Stitch, the womens’ embroidery organisation providing their households with an additional income from the beautiful creations they make. Below are some of the wonderful items for sale. Check out http://stitchsainteluce.org for more!

There was also time to discover the most idyllic beach at S17 via a pirogue ride across the lake with Solo. Beautiful clear waters and white sand and all to ourselves. Paradise.

It is with sadness that our time as Pioneers has come to an end. Whilst here, we celebrated with a proper bush party with music from the locals, and finished off with the inaugural Annual Camp Olympics between Pioneer and ACP teams.  For the last two weeks, Callum and the guides had been feeding up the turkeys, who were sacrificed to provide us with an extremely tasty final camp dinner.

Through Project Malio, SEED Madagascar helps to alleviate poverty through promotion of good hygiene practices and improved sanitation, enabling people to have fewer days lost from work or school due to sickness. One initiative is to provide public and domestic latrines in the different fokotany (districts) of Fort Dauphin. However, the biggest challenge is around changing cultural beliefs and behaviour. Despite toilets being available, often these are not used, with people preferring to use the beaches for open defecation.

A newly built public toilet in Fort Dauphin

Our first task was to assess how successful the Malio radio campaigns have been in town through questionnaires to locals within three fokotany. We sat with individuals and families either on their verandas, at their small shopfronts, or were invited into their homes. All took the time to answer our questions and had the patience for us to try and ask the questions in Malagasy! Luckily, our guides Yvon and Aime came to our aid to get the questions across properly when our accents and pronunciation could not be understood. I think they appreciated our attempts though?! The results were mixed for how successful the message is being delivered via radio. Not many households own their own radio; however, several people had heard the Malio commercials whilst passing by radios in the street or at other’s houses. The encouraging finding was that, from the households questioned, the majority could identify and relay the Malio WASH messages and health campaign, either through mass mobilisations in the community, signboards or the work of the Malio Community Liaison Officers in their fokotany.

A SEED domestic latrine

During the week, we visited households that have benefited from a SEED domestic latrine, whereby they have committed through partial payment and help in erecting the latrine to using and maintaining their toilets. Often, one latrine is used by several households. We then conducted maintenance assessments and usage surveys of the SEED-built public latrine block at Shipwreck Bay. Sitting on the hill opposite, it was good to see people coming to use the toilet and then wash their hands afterwards. During 1-hour periods, we recorded 10-15 people using the latrines. According to the guardian, approximately 140 people on average use the toilets each day. The sad realisation however is that during this time, we witnessed several people walk straight past the latrines onto the beach to take a poo. It is suspected also that latrine use would also be higher if they could open for a full 24 hours. At the moment, they are open from 6am – 6pm, which is too late for the fisherman (that make up the majority of households in the area) to be able to use the toilets and so open defecation continues. In fact, we hope the data from our surveys showing use throughout the day and therefore perhaps an indication that usage would increase if opened all hours, can be used to support the campaign for a night guard to be employed by the local community to enable to latrines to stay open.

One of the most fun Malio initiatives is the education sessions and mass mobilisations held in the primary schools, spreading the message of good hygiene practices through songs, quizzes and puppet shows. At the same time, we Pioneers would build tippy taps outside the school latrines, to provide the kids with a means to wash their hands after going to the loo. We take it for granted washing our hands from a tap, but that is not possible here. Tippy taps are bottles of water tied onto a wooden pole frame with string that have holes in their bottle caps that allow the water to flow out in a measured way when tipped upside down. Soap made from zebu fat is also nailed to the frame hanging on string. Once we had erected these, volunteers from the children were asked to come and demonstrate how to wash their hands; washing up past the wrists and under their fingernails. Did you know you are supposed to wash your hands for 15-20 seconds?  

The team showing off their tippy taps and Malio t-shirts!

The children are always excited to see us and would swarm around us as we built the tippy taps. At the same time, Lea would lead the children in songs about hand washing and by the end of the four education sessions, we were able to sing the handwashing song in Malagasy: “zaza manasha tanana” – children wash your hands.

The mass mobilisations are a really effective way to educate the children. They love to see the large puppets up on stage, who tell a story about how you get sick if you don’t wash your hands. There is then a quiz held about why it’s important to wash hands and when you should do so, and all were able to answer that it’s to help kill the microbes and prevent you being sick and that you should wash your hands before preparing or eating food and after going to the toilet. Alongside the importance of the message, it was also good fun and lovely to interact with so many smiling and laughing kids. We even got to use the microphone at the mass mobilisation to teach them the “heads, shoulders, knees and toes” song, which we had learned in Malagasy (to the surprise of our Malio team). This got a lot of laughs when we sang “pokopoko sy ratsatamboky” (knees and toes) – a lot to get your mouth around when you sing it quickly!

It wasn't all project work for the week and we were able to join the interns for volleyball on the beach, have a group meal out at Bernard’s restaurant and help celebrate Jess and Ben’s birthdays at a J and B themed fancy dress party!

By the end of our 10 days, thanks to Callum’s great idea, we had somehow become owners of two turkeys, who would be accompanying us up on the camion to Sainte Luce where we were heading next. They’ve been named Bernard and Matthew after that famous poultry company. They will feature more in our next blog…

To find out more about SEED’s volunteering opportunities in Madagascar, visit our website: http://madagascar.co.uk/get-involved