Tuli, 23 October 2007
Madagascar Fort Dauphin

Lessons under the litchi-tree

Fort Dauphin

From 15th to 21st of October we left Tana to travel to Fort Dauphin, a beautiful city at the extreme southern edge of the Madagascar Island. This coastal city lies in a dry region of Madagascar. As there is not enough rainfall throughout the year, the South of Madagascar has food difficulties and is for a great part dependent on aid of different organisations, such as WFP. The main reason we travelled to Fort Dauphin was to attend the celebration of the UN week, and mainly World Food Day and World Poverty Day on respectively 16 and 17th of October.
Other UN Agencies such as FAO, UNICEF and ILO, as well as many NGOs such as CARE were present, to represent their organisation. We set up nice stand with posters, photos and flyers about WFP Madagascar to hand out to visitors (many kids) and answered questions when needed.

World Poverty Day

On World Poverty Day we visited different projects of UN Agencies. We started the day with a WFP project. At 08:00 am we reached the tiny village Esalo, to see children nicely lined up in front of the canteen. The project we visited was a so-called cantine scolaire: a canteen at school where children receive a nutritious breakfast and later in the day a warm lunch. It is proven that children with an empty stomach cannot concentrate well in school and children with a well-filled stomach perform better. Also, receiving meals in school is an incentive for parents to send their children to school instead of letting them work.

After that we were present at a ceremony to celebrate World Poverty Day in the village of Marambaro. Marambaro received aid from FAO and UNDP and the Ministry of Social Affaires to bring the poor village and region out of poverty.
Besides the ceremony, which included the beautiful national anthem, many speeches, music and dance, this village was also the place where I received my first marriage-proposal.

A descendant of the roi du village (king of the village) first asked me if Fabian was my husband. After answering negatively and laughing at him for the funny comment, he was serious about marrying me. Being a prince, even if just of a village of a couple of hundred people, he would have been a good catch. Unfortunately for him I am not ready yet to become a princess, I first want to finish my studies, work, travel and explore the world….

Lessons under the litchi-tree

After driving through an arid, difficult accessible area, we arrived at a beautiful piece of land, with palm-trees, lots of green and mountains at the back.
A big litchi-tree with a circle of tree trunks, functioning as school-benches, was one of the first things that caught my eye-sight. Ladies in colourful clothes, the so-called lambas, with children on their arms or backs were sitting under the tree, to receive alphabetization-classes;
how to read, how to cultivate, how to make litchi honey, so, in general, how to be self-supporting.

This project would have been difficult to access by a regular car. The road to the project was made by people who receive food aid from WFP, the so-called VCT (Vivres Contre Travail) or ‘Food for Work’ projects. People work a couple of hours a day, 5 days a week and receive a food ration for a week in exchange. The main goal of the ‘Food for Work’ projects is helping the entire community a step ahead in becoming self-supporting.

Exploring rural Madagascar

Once the UN activities ended, we decided to stay a couple of days longer in Fort Dauphin and surroundings to enjoy the area. Early morning we left our little wooden house without no running water and no electricity to visit the Parc National Andohahela. After a dusty 3 hours ride in a car smelling so strongly of gasoline that it seemed it would explode any minute, we arrived in a place which was a harsh contrast with the car: fresh air, baobabs, many types of lizards, birds, medicinal trees and plants curing inflammation, impotence, malaria, skin problems and diarrhoea and last but not least, beautiful natural blue-green lakes to cool down from the hot morning sun. During the journey back by car, we were accompanied by hundreds of cockroaches, which was everything but a pleasant drive back...

The two following days we spent in the villages of Evatra and Lokaro, two fishermen’s’ villages. We went there by piroque, a wooden canoe, which had place for four people; our guide, a muscleman who we called our human motor and the two of us. We rowed for three hours, passing through three lakes, through picturesque landscapes; deep blue sky, beautiful (water)plants, birds, ducks and so on. We stopped here and there at little ‘islands’ to rest a bit. We arrived in a very surreal village called Evatra, where people live of fishing. The whole village is sandy, does not have electricity and just one tiny shop. It just seemed like a movie-set. Little wooden houses on poles, children playing in the sand, zebu’s eating grass, people selling fish and manioc...
In this place it really seemed like the time stood still. Mobile phone? E-mail? WIFI? Shopping-mall? All things people here have never heard of.
We spent the night in a wooden hut at the edge of the lake at a fishermen’s family. They prepared us delicious fresh fish for lunch, after which we went for a hike and a swim in the sea. Next morning we were pampered with a great breakfast at the lake, to continue exploring the area. Through dunes, greenery, rocks, rice-fields, rainforest-type landscapes and sand, we reached two remote beaches with turquoise water and palm-trees and nobody but us.

Then unfortunately it was already time for the row-back to Fort-Dauphin; back to reality. After a tough 3-hours journey in the piroque, we arrived just in time before it started to rain!
The week in Fort Dauphin and especially the fishermen’s village has been one of the best experiences so far.

The kindness of the people, the happiness on their faces and the simplicity of their life, all of this has been indescribable. I never ate so much fish in my life and I have never felt so far away from the reality back home.
Apparently in some places in this big but also small world, time has really stopped and influence from the West has not all (yet) kicked in...

Finally, to end this long story, here is a weblink with pictures of my trip to the South. Enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/tuli.bansal/FortDaupinSouthMadagascar

Love from Tana! Tulika