Not a Creature was Stirring, Not Even a Lemur

Sitting here on Christmas Eve, it occurs to me that Christmas will for me be forever linked to northern climes. Christmas in the Dominican Republic a few years ago was odd, but spending it with family made it seem a bit more like home. Now I am going to be spending the most significant holiday of the year with a group of people that I will most likely never see again. The sense of community is understandably stilted, especially for me as I have been here the least amount of time and will be leaving the soonest. And, to make it even more surreal, there is a chance of sunburn on the beach instead of the annual frostbite that attends marathon hockey games in subzero temperatures.

Eventually you start taking steps away from the family hearth, but it is difficult to imagine what each step will result in. Sometimes the step is forced through circumstance, while other times it is carefully analyzed as closely as possible before being taken. This step, the first Christmas away from home, was willfully taken, so I hope this doesn’t come across as some sort of forlorn monologue from Madagascar. It was worth it to come, to have this experience, but with each moment spent doing one thing, you miss the opportunity to involve yourself somewhere else. The opportunity cost of scuba diving in Madagascar is difficult to calculate, especially since the other opportunity isn’t just Christmas in Fort McMurray - everywhere that I am not is what I'm missing. There are a myriad of places and experiences that I cannot indulge in because I am here, but it’s difficult to miss what you don’t know, so instead I am keenly missing home.

Have a Merry Christmas – I will too, plus a deep tan.

Now an Advanced Diver

It has been a while that I have updated this, a week in fact, and the reason is that our new generator – four days in operation – failed last Sunday evening. We only got a new one last afternoon, what with the problems of shipping and finding a suitable one. I won’t regale you with what happened; suffice to say that everything that could go wrong did. Which made for another mora mora week here at Reef Doctor. I am now an Advanced Open Water diver, which means that now I can start doing a bit more of the classroom work, working on coral and fish identification.

On Monday I did some book work and did land navigation with a compass, practicing the routes that I would be doing in the water for the Navigation dive. As I think I mentioned before, Advanced is basically a series of five dives, each one with a specific purpose in skill development. Anyway, I didn’t get into the water as a diver, and instead just did some swimming in the ocean. The water is usually a little choppy from 10 in the morning until 6 in the evening, meaning that best time to get out is either in the morning or in the evening – or else you end up swallowing a good portion of surf.

We got out onto the water for diving on Tuesday, doing two dives, both of them in the morning. Since we were out around 6 the water was like glass – a great way to start the day, moving across the water as the sun comes up over the spiny desert. The first dive was a Deep dive, and we went down to about 25 meters. The second one was the Navigation dive, and I swam squares and triangles to show that I knew how a compass worked. These were the two required dives, with the rest being my own choice.

We headed out early on Wednesday as well, managing to get our two dives in before lunch. The first was a Multilevel dive, where you have to plan the dive through different depths and times. This allows for a longer dive as otherwise you have to assume your maximum depth throughout the entirety of the dive. Since the deeper you are the more nitrogen your body accumulates, doing a multilevel means that you get to stay under longer. The second was a Photography dive. The visibility wasn’t great, but I did get a couple of good shots. There are waterproof plastic housings that are designed for digital cameras, and this is what I used. It’s basically just point and shoot, but the complication is that you have to hang motionless in the water as you do it. These means that you have to fine-tune your buoyancy, breathing shallowly so that you don’t keep on rising and falling given on the amount of air in your lungs. As you could probably guess, buoyancy is the number one skill in diving, and if you don’t have that under control it makes things pretty difficult, for picture taking as well as general swimming.

After the four dives there was only one more to go. This one was a Drift dive, meaning that we would drop into a current and then drift for however far our air lasted – or until our dive time was up. The boat followed along behind us, picking us up where we surfaced. We dropped into the south pass channel in the interior, and then drifted out the channel into the exterior. There were four of us in all, those being Johnny and myself as well as Tom and Caroline. This was the first drift dive that they have done here, so I was lucky that I was one of the four. Tom and Caroline were chosen as the other team as they headed back to the U.K. on Friday. We were thinking that the water would be moving us pretty quickly, but it was basically at a swift walking pace. There were many things to see, especially since we covered so much more ground that we would have on a normal dive. When we first dropped into the water, we were floating and organizing when Tom looked down and saw that we were over a huge school of barracuda. There were about 30-40 of these 2-3 foot fish swimming slowly beneath of us, but we didn’t get the chance to descend through the school as they were gone before we could deflate. Everyone but me saw a shoal of rays, which was too bad, but in all it was by far the most interesting dive I have done to date. It also ended up being the deepest as we were at 30 meters at one point in the dive.

On Friday, as a newly Advance diver I went out with Viv where we did a benthic point-out, which is basically a veteran surveyor going out with a newbie and showing them the types of coral on the reef. We had a remora follow us the whole way, jumping from first me then to Viv and then back again, which was pretty neat. A remora is a small fish with a sucker on its head that attach themselves to bigger fish, usually sharks, and then hitch along for the ride in the hope of getting a better chance at some food.

That was my week of diving, and on Saturday I was aiming to get out and do some surfing. Pepin, one of the Malagasy here who speaks English, has been out on the waves since he was nine years old, and he was going to take me out for some time on the breakers on the reef. He showed up this morning after an all-day absence yesterday, as he had been drinking on Friday and decided he wasn’t up to surfing on Saturday. A bit of a flake, but he did say that we would head out next weekend, which hopefully happens as it will be my last weekend here. It’s hard to believe how quickly the time has passed here, but I guess that’s how it goes with most things: looking forward, time always seems longer than when you look at the same span from over your shoulder.

Open Water to Advanced

Now that I am an Open Water Diver, I am starting out on the Advanced certification. Open Water is basically just four dives to make sure you can swim and breathe from a regulator – the very basics. If you don’t progress from this, then every time you go to dive you have to be supervised by someone with a higher certification, and you cannot descend to a depth greater than 18 meters. The next level after Open Water is Advanced, followed by Rescue, Divemaster and finally Instructor. The Advanced certification involves five different dives, each of them intended to increase skills and proficiency in the water. It is a bit personalized in that you get to pick which five you would like to do, choosing from options like night and drift dives, underwater photography, boat dives (which each of our dives here is), deep dive (down to 30 meters) and others. Claire is the one who taught my Open Water course, and now she has gone home, so the new Instructor, Johnny, will be bringing me out for the Advanced portion.

I’ve been out on six dives so far, and I have to confess that at first it wasn’t the fantastic experience that I imagined it to be. The incredible profusion of life and the experience of weightlessness are great, but before my sixth dive I didn’t see it as something that I would be that interested in pursuing after my time here in Madagascar. However, now after my sixth dive, I have a completely different perspective. For my sixth dive we headed out to a dive site known as Coral Garden, inside the reef just north of the south pass. It was the deepest dive that I had been on, and we dropped meter after meter in the water, our bubbles sparkling towards the surface. The topography of the area is fantastic, with massive irregular columns of coral reaching nearly to the surface, with wide sandy channels snaking their way in between them. There were four of us on the dive and for the first ten minutes or so we kicked against the tide channeling between the columns, moving a foot for every six feet of effort. I still don’t know enough of the words for what I am looking at, but we did get to see a humphead wrasse, a gigantic fish that I spotted swimming above us. There were a dozen sea snakes waving like flexible green pencils out of the sand floor and of course the anemones and fish that I have seen on all of my previous dives. On our way back to the boat I swam through a school of fish, and spun around as I kicked, watching the fish split, circle and close the gap that they had allowed for me to pass. The visibility was the best that I had experienced as well, and we were able to see a good 35-40 ft, which made the dive that much more enjoyable. All in all, I am now looking forward to my next dive.

This dive was Friday afternoon, and after that we headed in for a fund-raising party in Tulear. We were incredible lucky, and got into the back of a Mitsubishi pick-up only minutes after walking away from Reef Doctor. Seven of us sat in the back of the truck, and it was much more comfortable than my ride in the taxi-brousse the previous weekend. After the party, I headed back to the hotel, and then Johnny came in an hour after me. He had foolishly decided to walk back, and after having too many drinks, he made an easy target. That is to say, he was mugged. Five guys jumped him on his way back to the hotel, rifling through his pockets while he drunkenly and ineffectually swung at them. He is money was in a zippered pocket which they missed, but they did make off with his cell phone. Johnny figured he deserved what he got for his stupidity, as the rule is to never walk anywhere after dark in Tulear – especially alone, and especially inebriated.

Our trip back on Saturday did not go as smoothly as trip into Tulear, and we (Johnny, Anne, me) waited for over two hours in the sun at the taxi-brousse station, trying to hitch a ride in a quatre-quatre. We finally got one, and when I made it back to Reef Doctor it was none too soon. Let me just say that my stomach problems have yet to subside.

Supper was pizza in Mangily, which seems to be a weekend ritual here, though the two hour round-trip walk makes it barely worth it. Stomach problems slowed me on the way back, but hopefully some immodium with curtail what has unfortunately turned into a daily problem.

There you have the lengthy description of my last few December days in Madagascar. It really doesn’t feel like December at all, and aside from some Bing Crosby on the plane over to Tana, I have had nothing to really remind me of coming Christmas. Still, I am counting down the days until I put my feet up in my hammock on the 25th and sip some holiday cider that Mom gave me to take along for that express purpose.

A Volunteer's Perspective on Reef Doctor

While I don’t have extensive experience with the workings of NGOs (non-government organizations), I think that most would operate a little more smoothly than Reef Doctor. The people here are paid 100 pounds a month (about 200 dollars) and right now wages are behind for everyone. Finances are tight all around actually, and this month rent was late, as well as only half of what was owed. They are waiting on grants from the World Wildlife Federation, as well as from the director, Rod Stein-Rostaing, and until those arrive, they are literally living from hand to mouth. The day-to-day operations, like having enough fuel for the boat, and enough fuel for the generator, seem to be no one’s responsibility, and dives have been cancelled as a result of not enough fuel – or not enough dive tanks. As you already know, the back-up generator failed a couple of days ago, but since it was the back-up, you might think that they would have gotten a main generator before that one failed. But they didn’t.

The cook is in the enviable position of living on site, and since she knows she cannot be fired, she puts little effort into preparing the meals. There was so much theft when she was given money to buy food, with people consistently getting too little to eat, that now the practice is to give her one day’s supply of food at the beginning of each day. She still steals a lot, which is obvious even to me, for when we get fish, we get twice as many heads as tails. She and her family eat the tail ends (the choice portions) and serve the remainder to us. As I mentioned before, the director and a few others have taken to eating their breakfasts separately and on their own dime, but that still leaves suckers like me choking down rice gruel for breakfast.

The programs that they have in place in the Bay of Ranobe are various, and all have been thought up by the Reef Doctor staff. They are implemented through a fisherman’s association, but there seems to be little investment by the actual community at large. There are no fishing zones, and while they are guarded during the day and marked with buoys, there is still covert fishing done at night. The most successful conservation ideas are ones that can be demonstrated to the indigent community as useful, and since the slow growth of coral does not put food on the table, convincing the villagers seems to be an uphill battle. The villages do see a return in the way of dive fees for recovering sites that are becoming popular with divers, but this money still does not make up for the lost revenue of the fisherman, instead going to general community projects.

The volunteer program here is really quite self-directed, as in there is no plan or set of expectations for what a volunteer is expected to do and learn, which can be disconcerting in your first few days here. Still, of all the volunteers I’ve spoken to, all have enjoyed their experiences here and have learned a lot. And I am too actually, even if the above gives another impression.

Mora, mora (Slowly, slowly)

So, the reason that I haven’t been able to post any updates over the last few days is because of some technical problems here at Reef Doctor – that being no electricity. The generator failed, and then the back-up generator failed, and so we have been without water, power and of course the internet. In brief, after the going-away party for Shawn , the outgoing director, and Rebecca and Eileen, both volunteers, I headed into Tulear on Saturday morning with Rebecca. She bused up to Atananarivo, and I got some more ariary from the bank and bought another internet card. The plan was to head back Saturday evening, but we got in late after waiting for 2 ½ hours for a taxi-brousse, so I decided to head back on Sunday with Johnny, who was just finishing up in his vacation, and met Rebecca and me in Tulear.

On Sunday morning I began to experience the typical sickness that most people get after a while in this country, problems with both ends as it were, and limped behind Johnny Sunday afternoon as he got us a quatre-quatre that took us back to Reef Doctor in 40 minutes – much faster than the 2 hour taxi-brousse ride. On the way into Tulear, Rebecca and I and crammed ourselves into a taxi-brousse, and as I had been sitting in the cab on the way to Ifaty, this was quite the experience. We were two of sixteen adults in the back of this single-cab mazda pick-up, along with five kids. I couldn’t sit up straight as the roof to the height suitable for the average Malagasy, and I couldn’t rest my feet on the floor as it was layered in forty pound bags of rice. Anyway, a 4x4 is a significantly nicer way to travel in Madagascar – even if your fellow passengers aren’t familiar with the practice of bathing and the deaf driver is in sole control of the radio and loves Celine Dion. I managed not to throw up for the duration of the ride, and then sat in the bathroom here at Reef Doctor for the remainder of the afternoon, until I summoned the strength to drag my feet through the sand to the volunteer hut at five and go to bed.

I stayed in bed all of Monday, and then got up and had a bite for supper and then headed back to bed. It wasn’t really that much of a wasted day as, aside from there being no generator, there was no fuel for the boat, so there was no diving (a more comprehensive description of the rampant ineptitude here at Reef Doctor to follow). So, that was my Monday.

Yesterday was more successful, and I headed out on my last Open Water dive in the afternoon. I have now completed all the skills, including the 200 meter ocean swim which I did this afternoon, and will be starting Advanced Dive training shortly. As for today’s activities, I went out for my first morning dive just after eight o’clock. My stomach wasn’t cooperating again, and it was difficult to stifle my gag reflex as I choked down a few spoonfuls of rice gruel for breakfast. This concoction is over-cooked rice, cooked to point of becoming sludge, and it tastes just like it sounds – terrible. I made it back for lunch though, and had beans and rice – another common combination here in Madagascar, which though tiresome is much better than gruel. My descriptions of food are not indicative of general Malagasy fare, as the cook here at Reef Doctor comes with the rental of the property. Hence, she takes her position for granted, knowing full well that while the staff might like to get rid of her, they can’t. Breakfasts have become so reviled in fact that a couple of guys have started bringing in their own food and cooking breakfast for themselves. It is ironic that the director, in charge of organizing meals (and supposedly monitoring quality) is so hemmed in by the rental politics that he has started making himself an omelet in the morning.

Under the Water

Dec 4: I did my first open water dive yesterday, descending to 5.5 meters over a coral reef. I and my instructor were down for 45 minutes, and saw a variety of sea life. The time passed so quickly, and we were back on the surface in no time at all. I had to do two Confined Water dives before this, so-called as they are usually done in swimming pools. I of course did them in the ocean, which aside from the somewhat limited visibility and the salty water, is exactly the same as it would have been in a pool. The skills portion involved clearing my mask underwater, emergency breathing from another regulator as well as achieving neutral buoyancy. In all, things have gone well, and I am on track to finish up the Open Water course by Friday. I had a bit of congestion in my sinuses, which hurt a bit, but after ascending and then descending again more slowly, I was able to deal with it. Claire swam slowly about, with her arms folded neatly in front of her, just using her fins to propel herself through the water. It took a while to achieve that ease, and for the first fifteen minutes or so I spent most of my attention on staying level in the water. I had to use my hands to do this, sculling with my right and then my left, and was at some points almost straight up and down in the water with my face to the floor, at other times all the way over on one side or the other. After I cinched up my weight belt – it had slid up onto my stomach when I was upside down – things went much more smoothly, but the comfort that Claire exhibits underwater will be a while in coming.

This morning, yesterday’s congestion caught up with me, and I woke up with a full-on head cold. I slept for another couple of hours after breakfast, and then was feeling back to normal for lunch. Regardless of my condition and whether or not I can dive, there is not enough air in the tanks anyway, so I will write my final exam this afternoon and then do the last few dives on Friday to complete the Open Water certification.

Ifaty, only a five minute walk away from Reef Doctor, was the scene of some seldom-seen Malagasy violence last night. The bar that I went to with everyone on my first night here to see off another volunteer had a fight in it last night. Jose’s, as it is called, is one of two bars in the village, and the word “bar” grossly exaggerates what you might expect. It is a little shack, with about half a dozen rough-hewn tables and chairs, with a thirteen-inch television on one wall showing the same Bob Marley concert over and over. This is the place to be, as the other bar’s only claim to the name is that they serve beer. Anyway, last night, around nine o’clock, there were half-a-dozen gunshots, and this morning at breakfast we learned that a few bottles had been broken over a few heads, and that one Malagasy had been shot in the shoulder. Everyone here is pretty relaxed about it, and I feel safe in my little hut made of reeds. This may be an unreasonable sense of safety, as the walls wouldn’t stop a fist, let alone a bullet, but we have a security guard who walks about all night, which is a good deterrent for anyone looking to come onto the property at night.

Nights in Madagascar

The last few days can be encapsulated in one line – “Lazy living on the beach.” My responsibilities are minimal most of the time, but on Sunday nothing much happens at all, and on Monday, there was a halt to any work scheduled, as it was a festival day. What this involved was three ceremonies along Ranobe Bay commemorating the establishment of a number of no-take zones within the bay. These zones will be allowed to grow back for six months to allow the octopi population to rebound, which will help the commercial fishermen, as well as to create more spots for tourists interested in scuba diving. I went with the group headed to Mangily, where I was looking forward to the zebu being slaughtered. Whenever something of importance happens in a village, a cow (zebu being the Malagasy name) is killed and the meat divvied up among the villagers. We missed this action, only getting there in time to see the skin being scraped of any remaining meat as the little kids played with the tail. This had happened in the morning, and as the speeches were in Malagasy and French and not scheduled until later in the afternoon, I headed back to Reef Doctor in the heat of day, right after lunch. It was low tide, which made it a nice walk, but the heat made snorkelling in the afternoon all the more enjoyable.

When the crews from the three different sites finally arrived back in the evening, they were a tipsy boat load. It was Nicholas’ thirtieth, and his group had spent the time waiting to get picked up enjoying rum on the beach. The drinking continued into the night and I headed off to bed earlier than most. I was the first back to the volunteer shack, and being without a flashlight, was unable to work the combination lock on the door. Luckily a window was open, so I climbed in there instead, allowing the rest of my roommates to figure out what was going on later in the evening.

The night time is completely different here than the day, within a whole host of different creatures making their appearance. Walking on the path a good ways up off the beach, bats occasionally flit noiselessly into the view of your flashlight. You should keep the light trained at your feet, as the various hermit crabs trundling along can be easily stepped on. I have yet to see the small nocturnal snakes, no longer than twelve inches and thin as a pencil, but their tracks can be easily seen interlaced with those of the hermit crab in the morning light. Walking along the beach at low tide, the ghost crabs slip quickly into their holes at the sound of the feet approaching them. So-called because of their colouring, the ghost crabs may run for a few feet and then suddenly stop instead of heading for their hole, and you are hard pressed to pick them out. They blend well into the sand, and sometimes only by taking a few more steps can you get them to run off again and so be able to see where they where.

Today I did my first dive with Claire, one of two Divemasters here at Reef Doctor. It was basically just floating around in chest-deep water, practicing the variety of skills needed in deeper water. After I have completed the Open Water certification – which I hope to do by the end of the week – I will move on to Advanced Dive training. At the end of Open Water, I will be certified for 18 meters, and after Advanced, I will be allowed to descend to 30 meters. I aim to move things along as quickly as possible, as everyone here goes on holiday on the 25^th, and day-to-day operations do not resume until the 4^th of January. Therefore, I really only have three and a half weeks to get my certifications and secondarily, perhaps be of some use in doing some reef surveying. It looks as if I will be heading out on a vacation with Madagascar near the end of December, or I may hang about here with the skeleton crew for a few days. I have yet to finalize my plan, as I was originally under the impression that I would be able to continue diving through the Christmas holiday.

I realize that I have yet to introduce you to the crew here. They are definitely a motley assortment. There are three other volunteers excluding me, as one has already headed home. Two are Americans, with Julia having finished school and is now doing an internship here for a year, while Rebecca decided that a degree in nutrition wasn’t for her after two years and that Madagascar was a much better option. The third is Belgian, Eileen, and she actually has no true place of residence (an interesting story, as her parents live in the UAE) who is here to do some marine work before heading to a masters’ program in Australia. The director, Shawn, is a guy from the States who did a tour with Peace Corps here for two years before taking the position of director for a year. He leaves his post in two weeks, and is being replaced by Bryan, a guy with almost an identical background – he too is from the States and did two years with Peace Corps in Madagascar. The Divemasters are Claire, an Irish ex-pharmacist who decided that diving was more her style about fifteen years ago, and Johnny, a rough-and-ready Brit in his early thirties who is taking over for Claire, as she leaves her post at the same time as Shawn. There is a British couple, Tom and Caroline, who do tech work and science work respectively. Then there are the French, Nicholas, who is the Science Director, and Elise, whose job I have yet to figure out. Anne is the volunteer coordinator, and is also ex-Peace Corps. These are all the vahaza (vah-za) or foreigners. The English-speaking Malagasy are Pepin, who is now training to come on staff as a Divemaster after originally being a boat captain for Reef Doctor, and Christina, who met me at the airport and plans community development work. There are a few other Malagasy staff, but as we cannot communicate well, except for a smile and a greeting, I don’t know their names well enough to include them in this over-long description of Reef Doctor staff.

As you can see, a mix of ethnicities, languages and cultures, and it makes for interesting dinner times. While a conversation in going on to the left of you in French and another to your right in Malagasy, you have to concentrate to make out what the American and Belgian are telling you about spring tides from across the table. While I am the lone Canadian, and one would think a good target for jokes (it’s cold up there without guns and electricity, eh?), the French bear the brunt of the nationalistic joking. It seems to be the same the world over.

Description of Here

Unfortunately we don’t have enough bandwidth to get pictures online, but the tech guy here said he will compress some photos for me, so after that – when I don’t know – I will be able to start putting up pictures. Until then a description of the site here will hopefully suffice.

Reef Doctor sits on approximately 400 metres of shore only 30 ft off of high tide just north of the small coastal village of Ifaty. We are positioned on the southerly portion of Ranobe Bay which stretches for about 25 kilometres. The lagoon is protected by reefs, 8 kilometres being the furthest distance out. The water stays relatively calm within the bay, which makes for good diving. Only recently has the wind started picking up along with the start of summer, making morning dives necessary as the waves begin to churn up the sand in the afternoon. Experienced surfers hire the local fisherman to take them out to the waves breaking over the reefs, but Reef Doctor no longer allows their volunteers to head out into the waves. There was an incident in their first year here, and if I am to die, it will happen because of diving, not surfing.

Furthest south sits the volunteer hut, with a concrete floor and the walls and roof made up of woven reeds. It hasn’t rained since I’ve been here, but the roof is supposedly is need of some repairs, with the lifespan of a reed roof being about four years. Behind our hut further inshore are two outhouses, these being reed-enclosed cedar seats. The smell isn’t bad, but none of the girls use it as night because of the cockroaches. Sitting there at night, there is a rustling all around you as 1-3 inch cockroaches scuttle up and down the walls waiting for you to leave so they can go back to doing whatever cockroaches do.

Further north and further inland lies the eating hall wherever everyone gathers during the week for breakfast at 7, lunch at 12 and supper at 7. Those are supposedly the times aimed for by the cook, but meals can be as late as ½ an hour, which bothers no one as we don’t show up on time ourselves. In front of the dining hall are two shower stalls – just reed enclosures with concrete floors – by the well. You can shower as often as you like, but more than one bucket at a time is frowned upon. The water out of the well is slightly saline, but the only choice if you don’t want to go to bed with a slight film of salt covering your body. This is not a concern for us though, as most people consider a swim a day in the ocean as being the height of cleanliness.

Lining the shore are the staff huts, five in all. Made of reeds with concrete floors, they house everyone except for the director, who has a room in the main house. Further north up the shore sits the main house where there is power and internet, but only when the batteries have enough juice. With there being only one internet cord, being on the net is something that people line up for, usually after supper. The main house, as well as the dining hall, have plaster walls, but also have reed roofs. There is a kitchen and a bathroom with a shower and a toilet, with the kitchen being used on the weekends when the cook isn’t working. The bathroom toilet is used during the day by those who don’t want to walk all the way to the outhouse. Nobody does.

That is the extent of our area, with shrubs and smaller trees interspersed throughout and a main sand path connecting each of the buildings. I got a video of it all when I flew up yesterday, so I might be able to post a section of that. You will probably just have to use your imagination.

A Blane? A Ploat? A Flying Boat

November 28: Had breakfast with all the staff that hadn’t left at 6 to dive, and then helped out with chores around the house. For volunteers, our duty is ... sweeping. So, that means it takes me approximately five minutes to get my chores done. After that I started studying my Dive Manual in earnest, doing the first two chapters and the corresponding tests. Went snorkelling again this afternoon, and the water was warm to the point where it makes the plus 35 C air seem cold. It’s like swimming around in a cool hot tub, and most of the time I just spent floating while looking down at the ocean floor.

November 29: Quite an eventful Saturday. A group of us headed north to Mankili, about an hour walk north of Ifaty. Our main objective was the spiny forest park, and though we started out at 7:30, the sun was soon beating down on us. Being along the ocean means that on most days, humidity sits at about 90%, and today was no different. We finally made it to the park, paid our entry fee and started out with our guide on about a half-hour walk. The baobabs were the main attraction, with the largest - all seven of us hand-in-hand could just embrace it – being 1,400 years old. We also saw some tortoises, a variety of lizards, a snake and a few different birds. Unfortunately our guide didn’t speak English fluently, so he was unable to give the names of the creatures. The Reef Doctor group couldn’t provide me with names, as their interest in all things biological lies in the sea, so I will have to peruse the guide books here and make my own identifications.

After the spiny forest we headed out to lunch, and the plan for the afternoon was just to laze around the beach until supper at a little Italian pizzeria on the beach. While the rest were sun tanning, Tom and I headed out to see a flying boat. It is a small zodiac with a hang-glider mounted to it and an ultralight engine (42 horses) mounted on the back. I decided it was worth the 72 USD for a 20 minute flight, so I headed up into the air around 4:30. I was a couple of kilos over the allowable weight, but the pilot, a Frenchman, said that if we didn’t get out of the water we could just turn around and come back. This was all relayed to me by one of the Reef Doctor staff who speaks French, as the pilot’s English is nearly as bad as my French.

We took off and headed south, about 3 kilometres off the shore, eventually reaching 320 metres. I got to see the reef and the no-take zones (places where fishing is not allowed) and then had a good overhead view of Reef Doctor. My seat was well above the gunnels of the zodiac, with the only thing holding me in being the cord that ran from my headphones to the pilot’s. It was a great way to see a bit of the bay and get an idea of how arid the inland is in this part of the country.

Had pizza in the evening and then headed back at low tide to our huts, walking along the wide expanse of beach as our flashlights caused the ghost crabs to flit back into their holes and wait for us to pass by.

Pictures are forthcoming, and if things work well today – few people are around so I can sit on the internet for a little longer today – I should be able to get a couple up.

Up to Speed on Madagascar

November 25: Got into Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, and paid for my visa and headed towards my connecting flight to Tulear via Fort Dauphin. When I went to grab my bag, I was surrounded by five Malagasy airport attendants who picked up the bag and guided me thirty feet towards the check-in counter. In the process, one of them asked for my passport and ticket, which I showed him, and when we reached the counter he demanded 10 USD – significantly higher than the average Malagasy daily wage. I demanded my passport, which he begrudgingly gave to me, and then gave him five bucks and told him that his help hadn’t been needed in the first place. One of them wouldn’t leave, so I eventually gave him a buck. So, all in all, they were the mostly costly porters that I have ever paid. Then, when I was in line waiting to confirm my ticket to Tulear, a Malagasy woman shoved herself in front of me and pulled her less-rude husband along with her to my space at the next available counter. Not a good introduction to the Malagasy as a people.

When I got into Tulear, now out of the plains of central Madagascar and near the ocean, stepping off the plane was my introduction to the most humid conditions I have ever experienced. Walking here is almost akin to wading, and I sweat continually and profusely.

I was met at the airport by a diminutive Malagasy woman who introduced herself as Christina, one of the Reef Doctor staff. The people here are an interesting mix of facial features and shades but are generally short in stature, with the men being on average around 5’7’’ and the women just over five feet. The island was originally settled by Indians and Asians, landing on the eastern shores of the island. Later (and no, I don’t have exact dates for you – Internet is a luxury so you will have to Wikipedia on your own) Africans landed on the western shore, and Madagascar has since become a melting pot of ethnicities.

Christina checked me into my hotel and then showed me around the town of Tulear and I got some ariary, the Madagascar currency (1500 AR is approximately 1 CDN – interesting note: One of only two non-decimal currency systems in the world. Again, if interested in the other, wikipedia) and then went out for pizza (topped with boiled eggs) and beer at a local outdoor restaurant. French is spoken by the educated in the bigger centres, though in the villages Malagasy is almost solely spoken, the dialect depending upon the region of the country. My uni-lingualism is again an impediment, and even more so than in Ethiopia, with everyone expecting me to be able to speak French.

November 26: Christina met me at my hotel at 8AM and we headed out to get my passport copied and officially signed, and did some shopping in the market. When we went to the government office for the passport work, we travelled in a rickshaw, what they call a pous-pous, and while the seat barely fit the two of us, it was an interesting experience, for me if not for the operator, who would have been used to lighter passengers.

After the errands, we loaded up our luggage on a taxi-brousse and then waited for an hour for the little Mazda to fill to three times its carrying capacity. We had gotten there early enough to reserve the coveted front seat, which we shared with the driver, while the rest of the fifteen or so passengers sat in the box, facing one another as they sat on two long bench seats – as long as bench seats could be in the back of a single-cab Mazda. It terms of distance, the road was 27 kms, and in terms of time, it was just under 2 hours. We stopped twice, once to pump up a tire, and the second time to change it. During the second stop, I saw a little boy, probably three years old, beating on a chameleon in the middle of the road with the stick. His sister got him to stop, and it drunkenly waddled under the truck and climbed onto a drooping leaf spring. In a couple of seconds I could see it changing colour, and then the driver got his own stick, knocked it off and flicked it fifty feet into the bush. Chameleons are apparently not well respected.

When we finally got into the village of Ifaty, and then into the Reef Doctor main house, I was laconically greeted by Shawn, the director of the program – who didn’t give his name – and told to head to the volunteer hut as it is currently siesta, and nothing was happening then anyway. Apparently every weekday from 12 noon to 2:30 is siesta, with the weekends just being one long siesta. This does not make for very efficient working conditions, but it does make for a relaxing “work” week.

I walked into the volunteer hut – about 35 feet long and 15 feet wide – and was greeted by four college-aged women who apparently are my roommates. My bed is off in the corner, but aside from mosquito netting, there is really no privacy to speak of. They are leaving over the next few weeks, with the first leaving tomorrow, and then I will have the hut to myself.

Anne, the volunteer coordinator, escorted me into the village where I signed President Bruno’s logbook. Every village, no matter how small, has a president who oversees all of what goes on in the village. Bruno likes to keep tabs on those around his village, and as Reef Doctor staff and volunteers live within the general vicinity of the village, everyone new person must go and pay their respects and sign their name and enter their contact information into his logbook.

Since one of the volunteers left the next day, most of the staff went out for drinks and dancing at a tiny little bar in Ifaty, about a twenty minute walk from the main house. It seemed like a late night, but when I headed back, it was about 10:30, and then the real party animals stumbled back around 11. Morning comes early around here, with the boat heading out at 6 in the morning to catch enough calm water for a couple of dives.

November 27: Got up at 7 and headed up to the dining hall. It was remarkably quiet, as the majority of people were obviously nursing hangovers. No one has yet to give me any directions or shown me a schedule of what I can expect in the coming weeks, but that is in part because I am here during a time of transition. The director and the dive master are both leaving, with their replacements here already and trying to get into the swing of things. I headed off snorkelling by myself and say about a half-a-dozen different types of fish, some eels and a starfish. The snorkelling is supposed to be terrible here due to intensive over-fishing (hence Reef Doctor) so I am really looking forward to going to see some of the reserved no-fishing zones which are supposed to me incredible.

After lunch I decided I would give the siesta a shot and ended up sleeping for over four hours. I’ve had a bit of a fever since my time in the Johannesburg airport, as well as the flu and indigestion, so it was good to get some more rest. I woke up and headed up to the main house where I started the review of my Open Water Dive Manual. The plan is that I will be diving Tuesday of next week, so I am to have the book work done by then.

The food is fairly simple fare, with lots of rice and potatoes, but there is no question of quantity. There is also a lot of fruit, like pineapples, mangoes, papayas, bananas, plums and peaches, all fresh and all significantly more succulent than in any Canadian supermarket.

You are now up to speed, and I will hopefully be posting near-daily updates. While I still feel that the majority of blogging is nothing but socially-acceptable navel-gazing, I hope this is interesting - and that I will be able to make it interesting - for those who drop in from time to time. Feel free to leave a comment, or drop me an email.

The Rest of Ethiopia

November 19: Went to the Nech Sar game park – south of the two rift valley lakes (if you google Lake Chomo we were on the south side of that. The drive was over the most awful roads of the trip yet, with it taking three hours to cover under 30 kilometres. We saw some zebras and some ibex, but other than that there weren’t any animals around. There have been some disagreements in regards to park management, and currently there is no management in place. There used to be giraffes, lions and other typical big game, but they have been hunted and driven out of the country into Kenya, which has a robust wildlife management program. After that drive, which was about six hours on the road, we headed up to H’Ossa, and the roads that on the way down were fairly rough were smooth in comparison on the way north.

November 20: We headed south again, retracing our path to go and a look at a coffee plantation. The security was quite tight, and after a lengthy conversation we were allowed onto the fenced farm, but were not allowed any pictures. The reason for their wariness is due to the big coffee dealer – like Nabob – who have used intimidation to halt the progress of Farm Cooperatives like the one that we saw. Instead of driving all the way back to Addis, we stopped in Nazaret where Aklilu has an old friend who owns a hotel. Tseguay, the hotel owner, started with five bucks in Vancouver at the age of 28 and after eight years of driving cab, had saved up enough to move back to Ethiopia and build a 48-room hotel.

November 21: Joline, Peg and I got up at 6AM and headed out with Tseguay and a friend of his to a natural hot springs about 30 minutes away. The Olympic sized swimming pool is about 28 degrees Celsius, and it was refreshing to just soak in it while Tseguay and his friend swam laps. There were a bunch of monkey around, and would come within a few feet of you if you pretended to have something in your hand. After the swim we headed back to the hotel and headed back to Addis. A British group had arrived, all Hope sponsors, and we had dinner with them at british-themed restaurant called The Cottage. Before dinner we had time to explore the city a bit, and we made some stops at two Coptic Churches. The first one we left quickly as there was a drunk woman who accosted us and started screaming. One of her fellow worshippers approached her and she turned and spat on him, which made us decide that it probably not worth of effort to reason with her. We also stopped by Kaldi’s Coffee, named after the Ethiopian shepherd boy who discovered coffee after his goats ate some beans and started acting strangely. It was modelled on Starbuck, everything from the look and colour to the recessed halogen lighting.

November 22: Headed out to Muna, an Ethiopian coffee house, where the four us enjoyed macchiatos and some pastries. I’m beginning to enjoy coffee, but with generous doses of sugar, and as Ethiopian coffee is considered to rank among the best in the world, I don’t see maintaining the habit in North America. We headed to the Ethiopian Museum of Anthropology where I was looking forward to seeing Lucy, one of the earliest humanoid skeletons. Unfortunately, she is currently on loan to a museum in Maryland, but there were other things of interest. It was interesting for the first 30 minutes or so, but after that we were looking at the door. In the afternoon we headed to the Mercado – I think I already mentioned that this is the largest outdoor market in Africa. We didn’t see all of it, and spent most of our time haggling with the merchants. As soon as they see ferenge (foreigners) prices go up 800-1000%. I got two pairs of shorts – one I tried on, and the other the woman said was the same size. She was eager to add to the sale, and when I tried on the second pair back at the hotel, it turned out they were about 6 inches too small at the waist. Oh well – both prices combined were still relatively cheap compared to the price for one pair of short back home.

November 23: The Great Ethiopian Run was today, and the gun went at 9AM. There were over 40,000 people registered, and with thousands more joining along the way, there ended up being and estimated 50,000 runners. I started with Peg and Joline but quickly lost them in the first few hundred meters. I positioned myself in the middle of the crush of people, and we hopped/walked the first kilometre en masse. I was a head taller than most of those around me and would regularly turn back to see the mass of people behind me – stretching back further than I could see. I never saw the beginning of the crowd except for the first 30 seconds, as those at the front, who must have been waiting there for over an hour to hold their coveted positions, sprinted off. I don’t know how the shoulder-to-shoulder national guards marking the start line stepped out of the way fast enough when the horn sounded, but I didn’t hear of anyone being hurt. I met up with Peg and Joline at about the 3 km mark, and we ran the rest of the way together. We ended up finishing in about an hour and fifteen, and with the number of people on the course it would have been harder to have done it any faster even if we wanted to.

After lunch at the hotel we headed out to the football stadium (soccer – we are not in North America) and paid the exorbitant price of 30 birr ( about 3 bucks ) to sit in the elite seats – padded chairs and shade. Some of the group elected to pay 3 birr to sit on the concrete steps in the sun, but eventually most of them upgraded their tickets and came to sit with us. We got our seats with about 20 minutes to go in the opening match, and then the main event started. It was Coffee vs. The Police – assumedly their sponsors – and the game, while played on a lousy field, was entertaining to watch. Part of the entertainment was the clear delineation in fan loyalty – some parts of the stands were standing room onl y, while other parts had lots of space available. These packed areas would erupt with singing and shouting as they all got to their feet when their team had a scoring opportunity or made strong defensive play.

In the evening, Peg, Ken and I hired a taxi and bombed around the city looking for a coffee ceremony. None was to be found, but one positive was that Yared, our driver, didn’t end his shift until seven the next morning (1 Ethiopian time) so I asked him to meet me outside the hotel at 6:30 AM to take me to the airport.

November 24: I head down to the curb outside the hotel at 6:30 AM and the doorman ushers me over to one of the four cabs waiting. He tosses my bag into the back seat, but before I get in I ask the driver the price of the fare to the airport. It’s 100 birr according to him, and I know he is cheating me, as Yared said he would do it for 60 birr – Yared is also probably cheating me, but just not as much. I shake my head at him, grab my bag out of the back seat to the sound of the doorman’s protestations and find Yared’s cab a couple of cars back. He brings me to the airport, and I pay him his 60 birr and head into the airport. I’ll skip the long and tedious serious of flight and layovers, and pick up a day later on the evening of the 25^th.

Johannesburg, SA

A wealth of information coming at you real quick from South Africa and an eighteen hour layover. Spent the last week and a bit in Ethiopia, and here is all that in a day-by-day run down. My apologies to whoever looked at this and wondered whether or not I was even interested in communicating - Madagascar should be more successful in terms of internet access.

Oh, another thing - I have a bunch of pics, but this cafe doesn't allow USB access, so that will have to wait until Tulear.

November 14: Met my HOPE group and we bonded in the Frankfurt airport after a 9 1/2 hour flight. I sat beside Joline, a teacher from Calgary who raised over $25,000 for HOPE. She has two kids with her husband Rod, and teaches Grade 6 at Calgary Christian. I sat beside her on the flight, though we met before when she picked me out as I was reading "The Irresistible Revolution" - good book by the way, I recommend it. The other two guys were from Abbotsford - Ken and Randall (nickname: Peg) - and they have been the driving force behind the Run for Water there that raised $100,000 in its inaugral year. Ken is working for CLAC as BC's Provincial Director and Peg hosts and co-produces a television show and pastors a church called Nexus. These three are in their thirties, so I felt like the young'un. We became good friends over the week and a bit - that's what happens when you spend hours on end in a Land Cruiser.

Okay, so same day we get into Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia and check into Hotel Ethiopia - the premier place to be in the 60s, and still high society in Addis.

November 15: Ethiopia is different from the rest of the world in a couple of interesting ways. It is the only country never to be colonized in Africa - the Italians gave it a shot in the 1800s but failed - and it runs on a different clock compared to the rest of the world. They count the birth of Christ as seven years later than everyone else, so they just celebrated their millenium recently (seven years behind us). As well, they count time differently - The day starts at 6 AM, and they count forward from there. For example, if you want to meet someone at 3 PM, that would be 9 Ethiopian time.

We were planning on heading south before noon, but Peg had to wade through reams of red tape to get his video camera into the country. In the interim, Yonas, one of our drivers, took Joline, Ken and me throught the Mercado, the largest market in Africa. Understandable as Addis has a population of 5 million people. There are people all over the street, parting approximately twenty feet in front of your bumper as you travel at about 30 clicks through the congested streets. The pollution in Addis is thick at times, with the majority of vehicles belching black smoke to the extent that what they save in maintenance is probably lost in oil. The majority of the vehicles are little four-cyliner sedans - Russian made Ladas - and Toyota mini-buses, painted white on the top half and blue on the bottom half. These taxis are everywhere. The mini-buses are crewed by a driver and an operator, usually a younger boy, who leans out the window of the sliding door and yells out the destination.

Peg eventually got his camera - he is planning on doing a series of interviews for his television show - and we hit the road, getting into H'Owassa after night fall.

November 16: Having breakfast at the hotel, and who should show up but Haile Gabreselassie. We took pictures with him, and Peg got an interview. The group was excited to see the world-record marathoner, even more so given that all of them are all pretty serious runners - hence the Great Ethiopian Run on Sunday - but I'm getting to that. He is a national hero, and it was pretty neat how he took the time to come over and shake our hands and chat for a couple of minutes.

Left after that and headed down to Arba Minch, our base for the next three nights. A gorgeous hotel, sitting on the edge of the Rift Valley. Pictures are forthcoming, but try to imagine an acre of grass with detached groups of about eight rooms scattered around the compound. The restaurant looks east over the valley, with baboons running by the thirty foot stretch of eight foot windows.

Note: Roads in southern Ethiopia are completely different then a North American roadway. Really Justin? I know, I know, but let me lay it out: The roads are used by everybody and everything - herds of goats and cattle, for drying out crops, walking to the next village, donkey carts and little jeepneys - woefully under-powered scooters with covered tops carrying a half-a-dozen people - plus SUVs hell-bent on getting to their destination. Every decent vehicle is a Land Cruiser, either filled with tourists (usually retired Germans) or NGO workers. And, once we got into the mountains, the "road" was a rocky track, cut by erosion and impassable by all but a Land Cruiser. We did get stuck twice, and got ourselves out once, and the second time about twenty villages pulled us up and out.

We had to two Land Cruisers for our use, transporting eight of us including the drivers. The four non-Ethiopians, as well as Aklilu, a Canadian-Ethiopian from Langley, Berekat, Hope's southern director and a Hydro-engineer and our drivers who traded back and forth - Yonas, Philemon and Yonatan.

Novemver 17: Got up early - still hadn't adjusted to the time change - and caught the sunrise at about 6:30 as it came up over the other side of the Rift Valley. We headed out at 8 and it took 5 hours to cover the 40 kms to one of the villages that HOPE is working in. Our Land Cruiser had a few miles on it - 450,000 kms before the speedometer and odometer stopped working - and these roads are rough enough that tires are changed every three months.

We saw a capped well - different than a bore-hole - and the village that water was piped to. The pipe is 50 cm deep, 5 km long, and the villagers dig this in a week. A length of galvanized pipe is 18 ft and costs $50, and with projects ranging in scale up to 17 1/2 kilometers, that is where the majority of the cost is. The capping is also a cost, but not even comparable to a bore-hole. As well, HOPE's projects are all gravity fed, which eliminates the needs for pumps. The simple technology is maintained by the community, which looks after the water points (taps) and cleans out the aquifer ever 3 months.

Clean water in these communities accomplishes a number of things. Firstly, clean water creates healthier living conditions, as people are not drinking from rivers and standing water that is polluted by livestock and various bacteria. Secondly, it frees women. It is the responsibility for the young girls to collect water, and this keeps them from school. It also puts them in danger of rape, having to walk many hours away from their village. These underlying social benefits were new to me, but make sense when the water as well as all the saved hours of labour are taken into account.

In Edmonton

This is the first post of what will hopefully be a semi-regularly updated account of my travels to and in Africa.  For those of you who haven't heard anything about this, you are probably in the majority, as the pieces really only fell into place about a week ago.

I am traveling with a group of Hope International (hope-international.com) supporters and employees to Ethiopia for a ten-day tour of the work they are doing there.  We arrive on Friday in Addis Ababa, the capital, with groups flying out of Abbotsford and Calgary.  We will be doing a variety of things over the ten days, including seeing the work that Hope is doing, going on a safari and participating in the 10-km Great Ethiopian Run.  When the rest of the group flies back to Canada, I will be making my way to Madagascar via Johannesburg, South Africa for a six-week internship through Reef Doctor (reefdoctor.org).  This will include community work (such as basic first aid training) and data compilation in the Indian Ocean.  The first two weeks are pretty densely packed, with classroom time devoted to marine biology - which should be interesting given my glaring lack of knowledge in this area - and field work, which basically be numerous dives so that I can become PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) certified and get out in the Mozambique Channel to do data collection.

I have been interested in traveling with Hope on one of their trips to see some of the development work that they are doing for a while.  When I had last talked to Jet Takaoka, one of their development officers, a trip to Sudan in January of 2009 was the most likely time and place that I would be able to join them.  I talked to Jet at a fundraising dinner in Fort McMurray in mid-October, and he said that Sudan didn't look likely, and asked if I was interested in traveling to Ethiopia in November.  Thinking that this gave me a bit more time, I said yes, and then Jet finished laying it out - and the group was leaving in less than a month, not in 2009.  Everything fell into place, but given the price of the trip, I was looking for opportunities to stay overseas a little bit longer than ten days.  I had settled on touring Europe after the Ethiopia trip when I came across an opportunity in an email newsletter called GoAbroad.com.  This was the Madagascar internship, and that only came together in the last week or so.

I fly out of Calgary on Thursday, and land in Ethiopia after a connection in Frankfurt over a day later.  I still need to find a wetsuit.  If you are a 6'5'' diver, you apparently are expected to weigh no less than 215 lbs.  It is unlikely that I will gain 15 lbs before Thursday.  Hmm...