St. Luce

We take the camion to St. Luce in the morning of Sunday, the third of February. I talk to Sarah and Forest, a British conservation specialist. There is a new ACP volunteer, Emma. She is having a year off from university. After sandwiches, we have a small tour in the rain. There are two small stores in the nearest hamlet. A mining company built a cement hospital. Next to the hospital, there is a cement building for the chef cartier that is built by QMM. There is rice and there are beans for dinner.

Pioneer tent space

Breakfast is the same as what we had in Andramanaka: dough balls, banana bread, and sweet rice. We walk through three hamlets on the way to the beach. The one nearest the water was founded in the 1600's. The main professions of St. Luce are mat making and fishing. We transport some dypsis saplings to the forest after lunch. We exchange secret santa gifts. Everyone except Ruth likes the dress I got her. Jo got me a violet long sleeve shirt that features bears having a pillow fight. We stuff ourselves with spaghetti. 

Center of Azafady camp in St Luce

In the morning, we work on a lesson plan. We decide to cover malaria because locals recently received mosquito nets and they are being used as fishing nets. People do not want me to read questions to the class. In the afternoon, we clear a path at the boundary of the new campsite. I bother some wasps and I earned four stings on my legs as they flew up my shorts. Lou and I lose a close game of Euchre to Declan and Aven. After dinner, Ruth and I read some of the book, Emma, by Jane Austen. In the chapter we read, Emma influences the decision of Harriet Smith regarding a marriage proposal from Mr. Martin.

 Aime giving one of the last Malagasy lessons

In the morning, we continue clearing the path. My right elbow hurts when it is closer to the shovel head. I use a machete. I buy fish for lunch. Some is fried, some is boiled. I do not eat any beans. We teach in the afternoon. The school is made of concrete. Rio Tinto paid for the materials. A small band sings songs to start the lesson. The voices of the children are of a high pitch. It is a loud noise. The experience was invigorating. There was a short quiz. Then we told a story about the contraction of malaria. We gave the kids stickers for correct answers on a quiz. After the lesson, everyone went outside to play a game. Kids tried to run past others acting as mosquitoes to get under a mosquito net. We got peanuts at camp. Then we returned to the school to play soccer. We got smashed. A kid was adamant that I try a backflip in the  sand. I was tempted but I was too scared.

 Give this guy a tip for guarding the bathroom

I ran into the difficulty of having wet clean clothes. How am I to dry them while it is raining? If I do not hang them, will they not begin to smell? It rained all day today. I played cards with Louis and others all day. I missed out on rice for breakfast, had roasted peanuts at ten, noodles for lunch and we had zebu for dinner. I wove a bracelet out of reeds in a class taught by the family of Madame Jacqueline, to whom I taught English yesterday afternoon. We covered comparatives and superlatives. We taught a class on lobster fishing in the morning of the tenth. I acted as a villager in a play depicting the benefits of leaving pregnant lobsters and baby lobsters in the water. 

 Showers

We planted six hundred dypsis in s8, a forest fragment forty minutes walk from the camp over the course of two short workdays on Thursday and Friday. Aline was stung by a scorpion. Claude cut the tail off of the offender and used its remaining poison to draw out what was in Aline. The work was done in two half days of work. We celebrated on Friday afternoon with the COBA committe of Malagache forest protectors that helped us.

 Tree Nursery in St Luce

On Monday the eleventh we planted 1300 eucalyptus trees. The idea is to take pressure off the natural forests. Locals who rely on timber will be able to cut down the fast growing non native species instead of destroying the last littoral forests here. There is a Malagache team called Miaro with us. After planting, Claude shows me some basic Kung Fu. I talk to Ally over spaghetti dinner. She has a lot of experience saving ecosystems. We finish planting the 1600 baby trees on Tuesday morning. Declan, Delphine, and I stay at camp in the afternoon while others go to the beach we visited on the day after we arrived. I begin to worry about what I am going to do to stay here. I practice keboa, a crouching stance. I am pretty sore. I eat pineapple shortly after finishing dinner. Do not eat pineapple shortly after finishing a meal. Ruth tells me about her boyfriend. His parents both taught in the school he attended.

Mangrove trees. Picture by Brooker

We begin work on a fence around the camp and a newly acquired adjacent property. We have worked two days now. It is slow progress and we do not have enough material. I am eager to finish. If the weather is nice tomorrow, we will go to the beach in S17. I told Claude that I want to spend a year in Madagascar to farm rice. I went on the lemur night walk tonight. It rained and we saw no lemurs. The forest was nice. Naidi, an ACP long termer, showed us how to play the card game, animal snap, upon our return.

We worked on the campsite on Friday, the fifteenth of February. We are putting a fence pole every meter. After lunch, we saw some embroidery from Stitch St. Luce. I offered to buy a belt at a price lower than was listed. Lou, Declan, and I listened to Kanye and Hov while we worked a short shift in the afternoon. Two new ACP volunteers arrived today. Faye is from Brighton and James is from Australia. We have fish, garlic fried cassava balls, french fries, and carrot salad for our feast. I talk to Emma after dinner. She wants to volunteer while traveling. Lou and I play Aven and Declan in Euchre. I go to sleep instead of sitting around a bonfire.

 This is how it looks walking around the camp in St Luce

On Saturday we go to a beach in the the littoral forest reserve S17. I avoid the sun while reading the book, Blindness, by Jose Saramago. Ruth tells me that people gossip about us. A porter brings us beans and rice for lunch. Despite the journey, it is still hot. I debate whether to try a backflip off a ledge of sand. The bush party is in the evening. I talk to Louis about my feelings for Ruth. Fenoy encourages me to go to the dance. I watch for a while before joining. I dance with many young local girls and I dance with three older girls. I drink a bit afterwards. Aline says she will send us chocolate from Switzerland.

On Sunday, we are invited to a wedding. We decide to work in the morning despite the party last night. We work for less than two hours before lunch. Aven is the only Pioneer that goes to the wedding. On Sunday night, we eat zebu. I read a chapter of the book Emma with Ruth. We talk about how to approach the group. 

On Monday morning, I get up early. I read one chapter of the book Blindness. I do some laundry. I meditate for twenty five minutes. In the morning, I go on a village tour with Naidi, one of the ACP staff, the community correspondent: Silvestre, and a local guide: Romaine. We go to the house of Madame Jacqueline, a weaver. It is in the town where our campsite is located: Ambandraky. We visit a healing Shaman in the next town east. She is a young woman who is possessed by the spirit of someone who died young. We ate cassava in Manafiafy in the house of our guide Romaine. He is over seventy years old and he still fishes. I ate a lot of cassava. There was a great lunch of fish, beans, and rice waiting for me when I return.

 Madame Jacqueline with her family in her house; Nadie is front and center

We have the afternoon off from work. I read. We have banoffee pie for desert. It starts raining. We play cards. It rains all night. We are scheduled to leave in the morning. The camion cannot make the journey because the bridge is flooded. It rains all night. We are scheduled to leave in the morning. The camion cannot pass. Tsina, the Pioneer coordinator hires a better camion and gets permission for it to use the Rio Tinto road. They agree on the condition that we disembark at the perimeter of their facility and walk through the premises. We leave at one o'clock in extreme heat. By half four, we are waiting for a security guard to let us onto the mining road. We drive to the factory. It is a massive campus of green buildings and industrial machines. Dozens of white pick up trucks are parked outside. While we walk by, employees are boarding buses. Vegetable and sardine sandwiches are promptly available on our return to Lanirano. 

We are to work on SandPlats for the sanitation project in Ft. Dauphin for 6 of the next ten days. One day, we are going to celebrate freedom from open defecation in a town Azafady has influenced. We have the rest of the days off of work. We are going to Beandry to make a community map our last placement.

Sorry for typos. Help me edit by letting me know what needs improvement.