12th December: Chris de Burgh and the fowl

I am woken at 5 am by Chris De Burgh squelching Lady in Red from a badly tuned radio. Yep, I'm back in Fort Dauphin. The town smells of poo. Human poo. I did, however, get to eat veggie burger and chips, but have now woken to stomach cramps, probably due to the exotic food. I also seem to have given away my flea powder prematurely as I am covered in bites this morning. 

As I'm having a good scratch to the less than good music I suddenly realise what happened to all the duff albums which had been lurking at the bottom of every Woolworths’ bargain bin for the last 20 years. When they went bust, each and every one of them was sent to a Malagasy radio station.

......And suddenly it's quiet. The Malagasy do have taste and have turned it off.

.......And suddenly it's not quiet; the demented cockerel is doing his best Chris De Burgh impression. I think I prefer it to the original.

13th December : Meet the pink parker

The grumpy taxi driver delivered us to the 67 Hectare Nahampoana reserve. Fortunately, due to language barriers, he was forced to take out his bad mood on the chocolate coloured puddles rather than us. We are greeted by a lanky gentleman who turns out to be our guide. He is wearing a girl's pink parker coat, complete with furry hood. I tried to hide my incredulous look as the sweat poured down my face. I enjoyed the reserve, it was more like a big botanical garden with lemurs and crocs and some interesting non-native plants than a conventional nature reserve. Defeated in my attempts to photograph the shy bamboo lemurs, I was happy to watch a group of ring tailed lemurs munching on the lychees. I must also confess to have been very impressed with the rather colourful crab spider.

rainforest blues

8^th December

It hasn't stopped raining for 4 days.

9^th December

5 days. When should I make a start on the ark?

10^th december

6 days and I'm officially right out of dry clean clothes.

7th december soggy sock hat trick

Three days of rain. Three pairs of wet socks. All pairs of socks dripping wet. Duh. Wet boots too. The longhouse smells and so do several of the individuals in it. I don't have the heart to tell them, 'you need to paddle through the mud to the well, get a bucket of brown water and then stand in the pouring rain in the al-fresco showers and cleanse yourself.' I am also running out of clean dry clothes. Dirty and dry is more comfortable than clean and damp. Despite the omnipresent damp I am a happy lemur as I found phalsuma antanosy, the critically endangered gecko, on a pandanas this morning. It coyly posed for photos in the shiny dripping forest.

If it doesn't stop raining soon, I'll be expecting Noah.

6th December: Empower embezzle

I asked the obvious question, why don't we just teach the villagers so they can then teach each other and become independent of us turning up and help being something that is done to them. It turns out that when committees have been set up to generate community income (e.g. weavers, agriculture etc.) When it has been handed over to the community to run the leaders have repeatedly disappeared with the funds and the whole thing has collapsed. I make a few inexperienced suggestions but I really know very little about everyday Malagasy thinking.

apologies to the snails

Full of salty stew I grab my herp stick and begin the hour walk to transect 3 as it is getting dark. A few minutes in and the storm breaks, lightning reflects off of the shiny wet leaves of the jungle as the rain lashes down. I have a rain jacket but before long even my underwear is wet and I know my boots won't be dry by tomorrow. Deeper we go, sliding over wet logs as twigs and leaves slap and flick into our wet faces. A huge dragonfly lands on my lips drawn by the light of my head torch and I pick a fallen spider off my chin. On we go and my torch battery weakens, I can hardly see my feet. After an hour and 10 minutes we reach the transect and begin our herp search. I see mating stick insects, a venomous centipede, pretty snails of various shapes and sizes, but amphibians? Nada. The diversity of spiders is uncomfortably impressive. Soaked, after 30 minutes and a few frogs, found by the others, we give up trying to write in the wet night on wet paper and 'mody' (home) is declared. The walk back seems much faster but how do you dry anything inside a tiny tent not even big enough to sit up properly in? The pile of wet clothes stays outside, but even just my wet body makes the whole thing feel damp. I fall asleep with the rain still pelting down.

fantasy food

I slip easily into another fantasy food daydream involving cheese, fresh vegetables and herbs. I miss my full fridge. A wave of guilt breaks my trance as I know that in just over a fortnight I will be back in my clean kitchen, with its smooth worktops and full, rat-free cupboards. I look into the shadow of a wobbly, leaning hut. A ragged mat covers the floor and smoke seeps through the walls. If I had to stay here forever and live like this, how would I feel? I'm having trouble facing the same bland food for just a few weeks and I'm living it up compared with the locals. I normally enjoy food and it's hard to imagine eating unpleasant, unappetising things just because you need the energy and then maybe still feeling hungry, or not getting all the nutrients you need.

I slightly alarm myself with my preoccupation with all things edible. I try to put it down to some kind of survival instinct but the reality is I'm obsessed with food.  It's the one thing that would stop me staying here for a whole year. I shouldn't admit to it, it should be something far more noble, like how much I would miss friends and family. I'm ashamed to say that the thought of rice every meal from that shabby pot, that would be the real test.