Thanks to all my family for the FANTASTIC Ipod! I listened to Sense and Sensibility the entire bush taxi ride over here, and even heard most of it over the blaring Malagasy music! “Samy mafoaka, eeeyo eeeyo, Tsy misy mitsoaka, eeeyo eeeyo”…remember, Sarah?

I made it to A [the banking town of her PCV friend who serves near Lake Alaotra] with the taxi brousse [inter-city public transport] only taking 9 1/2 hours!
Getting out of Tana was actually the worst part, just so many people left over from New Year’s. Off to PCV friend’s village this morning and then will spend time in the new Nat’l Park around Lac Alaotra and hopefully take some photos of the regionally endemic bamboo lemur, along with doing other photography with the camera Sarah brought over for me to use for the new Park guidebook.

The landscape here is bleak and very very red. Hillsides that were rainforested just 100 years ago are now completely barren and scarred from erosion. The only trees are eucalyptus and pine, both introduced “crop” trees for charcoal, which everyone cooks with here. The houses are red mud with dried grass-thatch roofs and little wood-shuttered windows. A thick layer of red dust or, now, mud cakes everything you see. Then again, I just went to the market and saw a wide range of fruits and vegetables I don’t have up in the rainforest and got very excited; bought 1/2 a kilo of plums and a bunch of grapes. This is an agricultural region where land is burned before planting, trees are burned to make highly energy-inefficient but light and transportable charcoal, and the marsh around the lake is burned to make room for yet more rice paddy space.

It’s heartbreaking to think what kind of biological diversity once existed in this region and how largely useless much of the abused landscape is today. VERY different from my corner of Madagascar and very important for me to see so that I appreciate what is left in my area.