Good bye Madagascar

As most of you already know, in the meanwhile our adventure in Madagascar has come to an end. It was a great experience to live on this beautiful island, not always easy but definitively impressive and insightful. As an endpoint to our months in Mada, we’ve had the chance to do a marvelous trip to the south together with three friends from Spain and Switzerland.

You are welcome to have a look at the pictures below…

http://www.fotoseventos.es/Mada/album/

If they make you want to go there – what we really recommend – please let us know! We are quite confident that we ourselves will be back on the island some day since there is so much more to be seen and experienced!
With that we close this blog for now – we will let you know in case it will be continued sometimes somewhere!
Bisous!!--

Diego Díaz & Maja Rüegg

Vazaha !! and Easter break trip to Manakara

Vazaha: Lo que en España es el clásico giri o yankee, es decir, es como nos llaman a los europeos blancos aquí en Madagascar

Salut Vaza !! bonjour vaza !! It’s the “nick name” of all Europeans.
O yes, I here it so many times a day!! They look exited when they see ONE OF US… It is like if we were born in another world or something like that.
Being white is a symbol of being rich :( that is why we are living in a kind of micro cosmos between all the vazas (Europeans) and the high class Malagasy in Fianaratsoa;
Anyways, people are very kind in general and quite respectful with foreigners but they have this horrible habit of spiting on the floor and sometimes it is annoying when they are trying to catch our attention.
…

4 hours driving to the east, we arrived to Manakara, a little town washed by the Indian Ocean.
We stayed in a really nice bungalow placed right at the beach, so the waves’ melody helped us falling into sleep every night :)
The second day we made an excursion with a canoe around the “Canal Pangales” which is parallel to the sea. There are lot of little village around it and we were invited to have lunch in one of them (grilled fish and rice).


Something interesting is that these people decorate their houses with shark jaws (in this part of the sea there are a lot of them) so it was a little bit scary the first time we decided to have a bath in the wild beach surrounded by coconuts and palm trees ;)
While boating through the canal the sailors were singing a nice Malagasy coral music and suddenly we have the chance to see the kingfisher working on his daily routine between the reeds and the savage avocados. It was a little hard to take a picture of it but we made it!!

Deux mondes sur une même planète

Ces jours je suis à Tana, la capitale, pour des réunions de boulot et j'en profite pour avoir un peu d'accès au monde moderne, par exemple du wifi pour écrire une entrée de blog depuis ma chambre d'hôtel ;-) Ce soir, un peu par hasard, je suis tombée sur une inauguration d'un festival international de courts métrages. C'était une belle opportunité d'assister à un type d'événement culturel qu'on ne voit jamais à Fianar, d’autant plus car j'ai eu la chance de voir deux films exceptionnels : L'un s'appelle "Madagascar, carnet de voyage" et l'autre "Logorama". Les deux sont des dessins animés et je vous les recommande vivement! D'ailleurs "Logorama" vient de gagner l'oscar des courts métrages 2010.

http://www.bastiendubois.com/mada/

http://www.logorama-themovie.com/

C'est surtout la combinaison des deux films qui m'a beaucoup interpellé. "Logorama" est une caricature rigolo mais aussi perturbante de la vie dans les pays riches: Toutes les grandes marques ont leur apparition et la reconnaissance instantanée des logos démontre clairement à quel point notre vie est dominée par les choses matérielles. "Carnet de voyage" par contre est une illustration de la vie quotidienne et simple de la plupart des gens sur la grande île. Pas de McDo, pas de Starbucks nulle part. On se demande qu'est-ce qui est meilleur... Je ne veux surtout pas idéaliser la pauvreté; la réponse se trouve probablement - comme presque toujours - quelque part au milieu. Mais ce qui est sûr c’est que l'expérience de vivre ici permet de se rendre compte des diverses conditions de vie dans ce monde et ce qui sont les préoccupations réelles des êtres humains.

My work

Before getting into writing about nice weekend trips, I guess I could say a word about my work here in Madagascar. So I am working in a rural development project that is implemented by a Swiss NGO since the year 2000. Right now we are starting into the last phase of this project that aims to contribute to local and regional economic development in rural areas of Madagascar. My title is “Thematic Assistant on local economy and value chains”. I am supposed to support the team here in Fianarantsoa in strengthening the economic impacts of our collaboration with farmers’ organisations with the aim to increase their revenues and promote the private sector development in rural areas. The way this should be done is by supporting the functioning of the agricultural value chains so that the farmers can market their products better and get more money out of their work. The value chains we are looking at around here are quite diverse: honey (mostly eucalyptus tree flowers), fish (cultivated in fresh water), silk (both collection of cocoons and transformation), handicraft made from vegetable fibre (baskets, hats etc.), potatoes and beans.

My assignment consists roughly speaking of three parts: The idea is to first identify constraints in the value chains they are involved in; second, to propose solutions to these constraints; and third, to follow up on their implementation.

The first part of my assignment here was intended to take stock of where we are at with our farmers’ organisations. I made a lot of visits to their homes together with my colleagues and we tried to find out what has worked out in the last 3 years, what hasn’t and which should be the priorities for this last project phase. It was very interesting for me to see how these people live and work, and what their needs are. Since I knew very little about their production techniques, I discovered and learned a lot about things like how to construct beehives, catch fish in rice paddies, weave grass-like fibres to nice accessories and turn silk cocoons into cord. Unfortunately, I always needed translation by one of my colleagues since farmers very rarely speak French and my Malagasy is equally poor. The pictures may give some insight into these field visits.

With these impressions and notes from the field visits I then discussed possible project interventions first with the representatives of the farmers’ organisations themselves, and then with the other economists of the NGO that work in the capital. We came out with a bunch of recommendations that include actions like improving production techniques, establishing contracts with input providers, facilitating access of the farmers to microfinance, strengthening commercial relations between the producers and private sector companies.

Now the idea is to follow-up on these propositions and to support the farmers’ organisations in addressing the constraints in their value chains. Of course, my role won’t be to teach anything about farming – I don’t have a clue compared to these producers here! Instead, my tasks are more related to coordination: I will try to facilitate the linkages between the farmers and private companies (traders, buyers, providers of inputs such as fertilizer and small agricultural equipment...) and microfinance institutions. I will also watch out that we work together with other development projects in the region instead of doing the same stuff twice. Finally, I am also assisting in feeding into the monitoring and evaluation system of the NGO in order to measure the progress and impact of our work.
Ok, this was a bit of theory... In another post I am going to tell more about the challenges and what doesn’t work out as it should.

Fianarantsoa

I would like to share with you some impressions from the city we are living in here in Madagascar: Fianarantsoa or short Fianar. The city lies in the central highlands of the island, about 500km south of the capital Antananarivo, which makes a 7-10 hours drive (for details on the trip see Diego’s last post…). Fianarantsoa is somewhere between the second and the fourth biggest city of the country – given a national average of 3% annual population growth, these kinds of statistics are difficult to keep track of. Fact is that the ambiance is more of a village than a big city: People know each other, and as a foreigner, they especially know YOU. Two anecdotes:
1. During my first days in Fianar I lived in a hotel, but moved to a small furnished flat when I was fed up with it. Not surprising for me, however, I forgot something at the hotel. I hadn’t told the guy at the reception where I was going – none withstanding, some hours after my check-out he stood at the doorstep of my new flat... Apparently, he had phoned the taxi driver who had taken me there and who also knows the owner of that flat, and thus had the exact information on my whereabouts.
2. The first weekend after Diego’s arrival, we checked out one of the two swimming pools of the city. On Monday morning, one of my colleagues at work already knew where I had spent my Saturday afternoon – her son saw this one and only white couple at the pool place and they somehow figured out it was us.

As far as Fianar’s shopping options are concerned, it has been quite a change as well. Basically, people buy almost everything in street markets: fresh food, soon-to-be fresh food in form of living animals, second-hand clothes and shoes, household stuff, furniture, etc. Apart from the markets, there is one street with small shops that sell more or less the same non-food stuff than on markets but in a more orderly fashion – and without the option to bargain the final price. Finally, there is the one and only supermarket of the town: “Supermarket 3000” (formerly 2000). The good side of that shop is that you can find quite a lot of stuff including shower gel, which is rare because people normally use blocks of soap instead. The bad side is that most items are imported because Malagasy industry is practically non-existing (especially since the political troubles of last year – but that will be another post…). Hence, things are very expensive for local living standards. This elevated price level has not only caused us some embarrassing situations at the cash desk, where of course no credit card is accepted. Moreover, it has the consequence that only foreigners and upper class Malagasy can afford shopping at the supermarket. Therefore, each time you step out, a bunch of children and old people are begging you for money and following you quite a bit down the road. This always makes me feel a mix between bad consciousness and anger.

Here are some views on the city. It is nicely bedded in a hilly landscape with abundant vegetation. There are even rice fields within the city, namely right next to where we live now (red arrow).

From far away Fianar is quite a beauty. Not so much from closer though. The city population is quite poor and sometimes lives in really miserable conditions. At the same time crime does not seem to be very frequent. This said, it is not a particularly good idea to walk around for ages in the middle of the night, especially since street lightening is not very functional.

Fianar is divided into three parts: a lower part, where the – currently dysfunctional – train station is and where I work; a middle part that hosts the town hall and the banks; and an upper part which is the old town. We live between the lower and the middle part, which is a perfect location. It also offers me some much needed physical exercise going up and down and up and down the hills with my bike four times a day (people usually go home for lunch). The house we are living in is beautiful, security is good and neighbours are nice. And now the most important information: Our flat has a guestroom – so you should come and see it with your own eyes ;)

Llegada a Antananaribo y viaje a Fianarantsoa

Lo primero que me sorprendió es como un avión de 2 pisos con unos 1000 pasajeros podría aterrizar en medio de una pista rodeada de palmeras, arrozales, y con una "torre de control" de principios de siglo.

Mi avión continuaba su camino a La Reunión, una isla al Este de Madagascar que pertenece a los franceses y destino de la mayoría de los turistas que volaron conmigo...

La terminal de llegada es una sala donde hay una sola cinta para las maletas, un control de policía para mirar los pasaportes y la aduana... todo ello en una sala de unos 200 m2
En el control de pasaporte una de las policías me pidió que le diese dinero y le dije que NO, algo acojonado eso si, pero me dejo pasar igualmente aunque puso la típica cara de decepción que ponen los niños cuando no les compras lo que quieren.

Pasada la aduana me esperaba el chofer y unas 30 personas desesperadas por llevarte la maleta al coche o por que les dieses dinero; Durante el viaje hay muchos controles de policia, pero cuando viajas con un vehiculo de alguna ONG, no te suelen parar :)

El viaje desde Antanararibo a Fianarantsoa fue de 8 horas con unos paisajes increíbles y una carretera de serpiente que me recordaba al parque de atracciones de Madrid, claro que como solo hay una carretera asfaltada conducir por ella se parece mucho a jugar a un videojuego de plataformas donde tienes que...

EVITAR LOS PELIGROS !!

1.- Barrancos
2.- Niños corriendo
3.- Agricultores tirando de carros con las cosechas
4.- Ganaderos con zebus (bicho de la imagen)
5.- Gente en bici
6.- Taxis-Carretillas
7.- Busitos de la época del televisor en blanco y negro
8.- Camiones


... lo malo es que aki no hay vidas extras así que hay que tener confianza plena en el conductor, en mi caso, un malgache muy simpático al que le quedaba algún que otro diente y que conducía el 4x4 como un autentico piloto de rallies.

Fianarantsoa es la tercera ciudad mas grande del pais pero es como un pueblo construido un valle precioso...