It’s the vanilla harvest season and everything is much more expensive than it was only a couple of weeks before–but the good news is that more things are available to buy, Rachel says. This morning a little girl came by her house with a basket of huge shrimp from the bay–’as long as your hand’. They were not inexpensive, but Rachel decided to buy 5 of them. Her neighbor was nearby, curious to see how many Rachel had decided to buy (as always, very interested in money matters) and kindly offered to help Rachel prepare the shrimp for cooking. She showed Rachel how to take off the exoskeleton head to tail, leaving the eyes, brain, and legs on the body of the shrimp, then cutting along the back to remove the digestive tract. When the neighbor wasn’t looking, Rachel cut off the head parts and fed them to another neighbor’s scrawny kitten. When dredged in a bit of cornmeal and fried in oil, the shrimp were very tasty!

Rachel bought some macaroni at the market and made mac and cheese with the Trader Joe’s cheese powder. Also yummy, she said. Tasted like home. She enjoyed the chocolate tea (also from TJ’s) with a bit of sweetened condensed milk.

She gave one of the TJ’s balloons to the little boy who lives near her. He blew it up and carefully tied it with a piece of plant fiber to play with, then untied it each time and so managed to make it last for three days! [see photo of him playing with balloon when it gets posted]

Someone is planning to start a private Sixieme (first class of Middle School) in the village. It will not cost much, though there will be a small fee. The government schools are only half-day, since there are too many children so the schools have to do double duty. The person who is planning to open the little school asked Rachel whether she would be willing to teach an ecology class when she is in the village. She would be delighted, though she warned him that she will be away on transects and such from time to time so can’t be counted on as a staff member.

Rachel saw what might have been a leopard or panther chameleon in the wetlands behind her house today. It had rainbow colors and white spots [Teresa googled but is not sure which one it may have been]. It appeared to be keeping a close eye on Rachel, but suddenly it shot out its tongue, caught, and devoured a grasshopper. The other eye must have been on the prey!

When Rachel has finished looking at the pages of magazines that we send her, she lets the kids look at them. They come to her house to ask for ‘boky vaovao’ (new books) and by the time they have finished with the pages, there is little left of them. But the kids have a really good time looking [see photo when posted].

Day 1: Met at Aisha’s in M. for corasol juice, pineapple, and left-over spice (birthday) cake at 6 this morning. Bought some last minute supplies, was tracked down by R, my village counterpart, at the departure dock and talked through funding details for the V. community center’s new outhouse and corrugated tin roof grant money from the US Ambassador’s Self Help Fund. In his funding request, R included a last-minute claim for 10 ducks and 12 chickens (or some such numbers). I had no advance knowledge that the library and meeting space needed ducks and chickens, but I trust R knows what he is doing and so gave my blessing to the request—which he didn’t need but had asked for anyway.

The boat left M around 7:30 and it took about 2 hours to reach A, where I got out and trudged through the mud to a PC friend’s village to drop off a goodie bag of water filter screws, mail from M, and a birthday card I had made for her. Then we hustled through her village back to the river bank and the boat headed for Mar., where we met the two WCS animateurs and our own field team of Malagasy porters, cooks, and tree specialists, for the 11-day transect ahead of us.

Started off hiking to the riverbank where we planned to catch a ‘lakana’ (dugout canoe) to take us and our gear across to the opposite bank. I trudged through the riverbank mud (thoroughly trampled by zebu every day, so that it is really a thick sludge of mud, cow poop, and river water), wearing jelly shoes borrowed from S. That’s what all the Gasy (the word the Malagasy use for themselves) wear. Hiking boots are useless in mud up to your ankles or shins! After losing the jelly sandals twice in the suction of the mud, I opted to go barefoot and fared much better. The feeling of muck squeezing through your toes is actually kind of fun.

When we reached the riverbank where the canoe should have been, it was gone! We sat around on the bank for a while with our gear, then the porters started taking off their pants and shorts. Some of them had underwear; others had shirts just long enough to cover the necessary. Packs held up above their heads, one by one, they waded into the river. Phil took out his old Canon for a photo of this train of bare-bottomed and US/UK flag print underwear sporting Gasy men, wading across the river with our supplies.

At the deepest point, the water was up to their waists and the current was manageable, so Phil, A (woman ‘animateur’ with WCS, also Malagasy), and I proceeded to hike up our shorts and step into the cold, flowing water, our packs raised so as not to trail in the dark river behind us. As we waded carefully across to the opposite bank, I thought about the zebu we saw being herded across the river to Mar. by a man in a dugout canoe. All that was visible of the huge, humpbacked beasts, above the water’s surface, were their horned faces. I had never seen cattle swim before, especially these massive African ones, but they did amazingly well—sticking together, a little team of faces above the water, wet horns glistening and noses spouting water with each breath. They made me think of our Pooka [Russian spaniel] swimming along side our canoe in New Hampshire, making the same little breathing noises through her wet nose, eyes fixed determinedly on the water in front of her.

As soon as we were across, we proceeded to cut through rice fields to reach a village nestled at the foot of the mountains near our first transect point. The village was home to one of our team members, and we were invited to stop and rest at his home for a few minutes. Banana leaves were laid out on his little veranda and a long line of rice spread, steaming, on the leaves, a few stray pieces of boiled chicken on top. We all made spoons out of strips of banana leaf. The fresh rice tasted heavenly after the hike. Very kind of him and his wife to feed the team as we passed through. The Betsimisaraka are such wonderful people!

A few hours of hiking up and down mountainsides, the men in front hacking paths out of the vegetation with their machetes, and we reached a site to camp. As we started to put up our tents, it started to rain—hard! Bags and tents got soaked. It was a damp night of sliding downhill in my sleep because the spot where we had found a water source and made camp was on a mountain slope.

Dinner, also to be breakfast, was rice with a sauce of dried fish and the occasional lentil swimming in the salty fishy broth. It was good to have something hot to fill my stomach, though. Am learning to tolerate the taste of sun-dried fish—kind of like fish-jerky strips on bones in the sauce. I daresay I will like it by day 12 of this transect mission.

While Rachel was off in the rain forest it poured in the village and the water level rose. Sandy soil and wetlands right behind her house so can’t really reinforce or deepen the kabinety (toilet/hole in the ground with enclosure). Not a big problem right now, fortunately.

A taxi going around the pooled water on the road in front of her house hit her front fence and her wild orange tree (inedible oranges, but a tree never the less where trees precious) was completely knocked down. She came back to find the “giant tree” down in her front yard. Her neighbors came over immediately upon her return to say that they will be very happy to cut the tree up and haul it away (for firewood). She is glad that that will save a forest tree, but sad that she has lost her tree.

A mouse got into her rice while she was away. Sad; especially disturbing to her neighbor (an unmarried lady of a certain age) to whom rice is ‘more valuable than gold’.

A boy came by with pieces of freshly slaughtered pork (skin, fat, and some meat) on a string somehow attached to the front of his bicycle. People have money now because it’s the vanilla harvest season, so those who have an animal to spare are slaughtering it for sale. First time there has been meat to buy in the village. Rachel bought a piece of the pork and gave the skin to the neighbor lady. She said the skin looked like human skin—same color and with sparse hairs on it Only the second time she’s eaten meat in the village. (The first time was on Malagasy Independence Day when folks have meat to celebrate.) She does have meat when she goes to town, and she has fresh fish from the Bay in the village sometimes.

She went to the neighbor who makes ‘mofogasy‘ (bread made out of homemade rice flour) that looks something like British crumpets and got the first four of the day today to have with some cherry butter she got in a package from home. Mofogasy are cooked on a fire in a pan with four round holes, sort of like a muffin tin, but no oven (we think) just on the top of the fire in a brazier.

She started getting “The Week” directly so we don’t need to mail our copy anymore. Everyone in town (i.e. the other Americans she sees when she goes to the big town) likes to read it.

Rachel met a couple of accountants (women) from Price Waterhouse who are there, looking at pumps that have been installed in some villages along the coast–in Rachel’s village for one. The pumps are built by a sort of non-profit that is in fact For Profit (so as to avoid the hampering restrictions on NGOs, apparently) but does development work like an NGO; called “Bushproof” (we think she said. Maybe Price Waterhouse is auditing how the money is being spent?) The women interviewed Rachel on how pump is used/received in her community. Also asked what other investments could be made to help provide fresh water; Rachel was able to suggest a contact in a town in the highland as well (Fianarantsoa).

Rachel says that she is very grateful for the pump in her village which gives her decent water to drink and cook with. She told Teresa that the water forms a skin on the top when left to stand a while in a bucket, but is much better than the water that comes from the well that is also used—and was the only fresh water source before the pump was put in. She has been in other villages where they have to walk a mile or so to get water to drink.

The vanilla harvest began on July 16th (maybe to give everyone a fair chance at harvesting and selling the green vanilla from their orchids, it apparently can’t be done before that day legally). This means that the people in the village now have money. They sell the vanilla in bunches (Rachel earlier said it looks like green bananas before it is dried) to middlemen. She says the drying is a long process where the pods are (if we understood correctly) blanched in hot water, then put in jars ? and dried in the sun for several days. Rachel smelled the wonderful vanilla perfume coming from a neighbor’s hut and assumed that woman must have kept and dried some. She went to the neighbor to ask to buy some vanilla pods and to the store where local rum made from sugar cane is sold. She cut up the vanilla and put it in rum to ferment.

Feel she’s really improved her Malagasy by doing the transect work. Wonderful to earn the respect of the team, she said. On the first transect, she was ‘along for the ride’ but on the second one she was in charge. Only 22 and without a degree in forestry, but she’s doing really professional field work. [Teresa would guess it’s partly because she has an overview that the Malagasy tree experts can’t have] She says they respect her in same way they respect the more experienced German leader before her. Every day was hard but rewarding.

Didn’t take her hiking boots on last transect because they hurt her feet too badly last time (feet were always wet inside them and got bad fungal infection. This time she tried her Tivas but that didn’t work, so she had to go back to camp to get her jelly shoes. Better traction but no arch support. Has to wear socks inside them. Now the two pairs of socks she had with her have irreparable holes in them. Only wears socks when on transect so she has enough. We’ll try to send her waterproof Birkenstocks for her to wear around village.

Rachel is off in the rainforest counting tree species again, this time as leader of the expedition. We talked to her on July 7th, shortly before she left for the 8-day trip. She had been out buying rice to feed the whole members of the expedition. She said she bought it by the kapoaka [empty condensed milk can used to measure rice, beans, and other dry stuff at the markets in Madagascar] so that she could spread the wealth around among a number of ladies selling rice at the market. I think she said she bought around 350 kapoaka for the 8-day trip. That will feed the guide(s?), porters, and cook, as well as Rachel and her Malagasy counterpart.

She told us that the Malagasy porters, guides, and cook are each paid the same daily wage. A portion of their pay is deducted to cover their food (the above-mentioned rice), which WCS supplies. Teresa remembers reading, in the late 60s, about such treks into uninhabited forest undertaken by French colonialists and described in The Great Red Island; never thought a daughter of ours would be leading one!

Rachel said that she would take a small book (The Ladies of Missalonghi) she received from us recently, along with some expendable magazines, since everything she takes along on the trek will be damaged or even ruined by the damp. She now has the rain cover for her day pack, at least, so she should be able to stay dryer this time. She may not wear her hiking boots in favor of sandals and socks since her feet suffered so from the damp on the last trip.

She had to take her locally purchased day pack to be repaired because it was damaged on the last trip into the rainforest. She asked for some carabiners (those metal clips that are like the ones mountain climbers use) to hold it together. We have sent some, but she has not received them yet. She also asked for ‘patches’ and we finally established that she wanted the kind she had in Girl Scouts, but she wants to use them to repair her clothes which are getting holes in them. She thinks those patches will be sturdier. We bought some in Williamsburg and sent them off.

After this trip, Rachel will go out only occasionally on such WCS treks, mainly to train others, apparently. She expects to undertake similar treks on her own (with a Malagasy team as described above) to visit the villages that are located in a 4-day distant part of the rainforest. She is supposed to be responsible for raising environmental awareness there, along with in her own village (which is more accessible as it is located near the coast.) These WCS treks will certainly prepare her for that part of her work.

We asked whether she thought that Peace Corps was okay with her doing so much work counting trees and tree species for the Wildlife Conservation Society, instead of spending time in her village. She said that PC works closely with WCS and is willing to accept the priorities of WCS.

She will be back in her village in about 10 days or so. Meanwhile, the association for environmental education [fikambanana is the Malagasy word for association] that she helped form while she was back will be meeting again. When she returns to her village, she mentioned that she is supposed to talk about HIV/AIDS to members of that association.

In one recent conversation Rachel mentioned having breakfast at the local hotel with two women tourists from the American Embassy who were visiting her banking town. She had yogurt and butter from Tana and it was heavenly, she said! First time she has had such delicacies in a long time.