FORT Dauphin

Azafady made the beginning quite a vacation. This is an adaptation period. We are given daily Malagache lessons. We walk around town a lot. It is a 45 minute walk to downtown Ft Dauphin from Lanirano, our camp. About three quarters of the way is paved. Chinese built the road in the last year. There is a big illminite mine in town. The resource is a black sand used in making both paint and paper white.

There was quite a long talk at the Azafady office today. We have a coordinator and three guides. We also have a cook, a driver, and a cleaner. Azafady has had great success in a rural village: the villagers took the initiative to build latrines. Since defacating in the open ceased, the profits from fruit sales increased because fruit that fell could be sold.

There is a plan to provide Ft Dauphin with 200 toilets over the next three years. One thing about this region is that the illminite is found in littoral forest. The excavation destroys the foreforeu.st. There is not much littoral forest now and there are plans for two more mines. Rio Tonto and IMM are involved.

Azafady has found that clay stoves reduce wood consumption by 70%. Doing so allows a household to spend more time generating income. Locals are taught beekeeping and embroidery as ways to money. There is a program for women to improve their business practices. A sex education program organizes community events and brings peer education into schools.

Aside from the stoves, I find there to be a few efforts in place to preserve the endangered species endemic to Madagascar: First, research areas the mine wants to destroy to find delicate situations that demand further study. Second, encourage growth of timber via tree nursery.

There are nine in the group. The are four guys. Five are 21 or younger. A different group of five are from the UK. We are getting ready to go to the bush. We leave the morning of the tenth of January.