Duke student, Brandon Semel’s adventure continues:
Entry 9: Crocs and Blocks 22 July 2011
Now that all of the Earthwatch volunteers are here and set up in their tents, it’s time to get started on the projects. While some teams go off to check trap lines for fosas caught the previous night, my group has elected to go off to do something far more dangerous. The local people have long held the belief that having boats on Lac Ravelobe is fady, or taboo. However, the demand for fish from the lake had become just too great, and young entrepreneurs overlooked the traditions passed down from their ancestors. One of the boats used in the new fishing enterprise contained a seed from a water hyacinth (not native to Madagascar), and in just five years the once beautiful, open lake has become a floating mass of the invasive plant. A pair of critically endangered fish eagles nests on the lake’s shore, one of possibly only ten pairs left on the entire planet. This bird requires fish to survive. The fish can’t survive in the hyacinth infested waters, and no fish means no fish eagles. Though seemingly unrelated to fosas, the fish eagle is a charismatic species that birders from around the world come to see. The money they spend locally ultimately goes to the park and is an essential funding source for protecting fosa habitat. We need to clear that lake; so much for the project briefing warning us to stay away from the water! Pulling the hyacinths from the water is tiring, difficult work, and some clumps of the weed contain spiders and snakes, sending the Malagasy scurrying from the bank. But that’s not what I’m worried about. Behind me a sign clearly reads in French (Madagascar was once a French colony), “Attention! Les crocodiles!” For the most part, Madagascar is void of deadly animals. No lions, tigers, bears, venomous snakes… The Nile crocodile is the one exception to that rule. Yikes! As we throw the soggy plant mass on shore, hungry zebus (the large-horned, large-humped cattle) find a tasty new treat. Hopefully some highly effective use of the hyacinths can be found and introduced to the villagers to give them an incentive to continue harvesting this weed. Use of the dried material in the clay rocketstoves that we are constructing (more efficient stoves that demand less firewood and thus reduce the need to cut down forests) is a possibility, but we are open to suggestions! After a tense and tiring morning, followed by the traditional plate of rice for lunch, I move on to brick laying at a school being built by Friends of Madagascar, a US-based Non-Government Organization (NGO) founded by a former Earthwatcher whose mission it is to save the environment through educating children. Of course, the townspeople are excited to see this project underway, and with the help of locals, we begin laying the brick and concrete foundation of conservation education in the villages surrounding the park, and the future of Madagascar. Children come running up smiling, carrying buckets of water to make the mortar, and yelling, “Bonjour, vazaha!” at the top of their lungs.
It seems funny to be so brazenly called out as a foreigner, something that our own culture tells us is fady, but it’s just another day in the life in Madagascar, and heck, laying bricks with kids sure beats staring down the throat of a giant croc!
