The second half of November

So I arrived in Mananara at 2:30 in the morning. I had texted my friend Sunny and she said that she was getting a double room at this hotel called Chez Roger. I had absolutley no idea where to find it however. I wandered the streets with my oversized backpack, waking up every angry dog in the town. I would have been super easy to track, just follow the sound of ferocious dog barks, and you can find Jeff, senselessly wandering the streets of Mananara. Someone gave me a tip that the hotel was buy the post office. Eventually someone woke up to see why their dogs were so pissed, but of course they didnt speak french. "Iza Chez Roger?" (where is chez roger?) I said in my limited Malagasy. They said a bunch of words that I didnt understand and made some crazy hand motions in nearly every direction. I decided to head in the direction that the they were pointing in more frequently. Somehow I stumbled upon the hotel, rang the bell, and was greated by Roger in his boxers. He lead me to the room where Sunny and I stayed up till 3:30am catching up since she was leaving at 6:00am to go study vanilla farming in some village. It was a crazy experience.
The next day, after sleeping in, running on the beach, and taking a swim, I headed over to the national park service office. I told them that I was interested in studying carbon and that I had heard a rumor that they might be interested in a student studying carbon finance. They explained that they were interested in exploring their potential for recieving carbon finance but they, tragically had no idea what that meant, or how they would go about doing that. Perfect. That is exactly what I had been studying for the past three weeks. They got really excited, telling me that they would totally support me in a project looking at their potential to recieve carbon funding. Awesome, I guess following your gut really can lead to great things
The next morning they had a staff wide meeting and I proposed my project, they loved it and hooked me up with a computer to do satelite maping data, a bunch of information on the history of deforestation, and two already paid for guides / research assistants. The conservation director even made me a batch of lichie jam.
Before I left I saw that the group Tsiliva was comming to Mananra when I was going to be in the feild. That is the same group that came to Fort Dauphan when I was there, the one where I made friends with one of the dancers/members named Julio. I texted him, saying that it looked like I would just miss him. Then he called me saying that he was styaing at chez roger, asking where I was. I looked over and realized that he was standing on the other side of the porch. What a coincidence. He introduced me to his brother Tsiliva, who is the leader of the group and an extreemly popular muscian here. He sings tropical malagasy pop songs and his music videos are always playing on the occasional TV that I find. We all ended up getting dinner, it turns out that he is a really nice guy, they are independent and all about the music, not the money.
The next morning the drove me out to a village outside of the park. I stayed with the same family that Marta was staying with to do her lemur study. It was really good to see her and catch up as to how ISP was going. She hadent really seen that many lemurs and had been going on rediculous hikes in the jungle looking for them but was having fun anyway. Although I asked three times if my guide was going to be different than marta’s and each time the answer was yes, my guide, was infact the same as hers. Because of this I scaled back the amount of time that I was there so I didnt take her guide more than once.
In the feild I made a 20m radius plot and then recorded the diameter and name of nearly every tree in the plot. The procedure is a lot more complecated than that but essentially I measured 500 trees, and nearly 100 different species. I had tons of fun tromping around in the rain forest. I also got to interview a bunch of people in the village.
I hiked back with all my stuff to Mananara to process the results, it was a 25km hike on a road along the coast. I leaft at 4:00 so that I could see the sunrise over the Ocean, it was incredible.
Highlights of my time in Mananara include seeing a wild leaf tailed gecko in my plot, the sunrise, swimming in a super warm amazingly beautiful tropical bay, eating obscene amounts of lichies and hanging out with Tsiliva.
Then Sunny and I flew to Tamatave, figuring that the $100 flight was worth two days of my life. I already had the sweet taxi brouse adventure and driving to Tamatave is twice as long. In Tamatave we were waiting for our Taxi Brouse on nice roads to Tana so we had some down time. We hung out in Tamatave, rented bikes, toured the city, and I went swimming. It turns out that Julio and Tsiliva were in Tamatave as well so I got dinner with them again. I have never been friends with a famous person before (no offense if any of you think you are famous), it is kind of fun.
The ride back to tana was much better than my last taxi brouse, I still didnt have any leg room, and the woman next to me was vomiting all the way, but atleast I had head room and the road was good. It only took 8 hours which felt like nothing, then at 2:30 in the morning in Tana, I knew right where to go and took a taki to my host.
Now I am chilling in Tana, living with my super awesome host family, writing my paper, making french toast for my family, and going to meet Julio’s wife and new baby tomorrow. By the end of the week I will be done with all of my school work until next January. That is pretty exciting.
Thats all from Mada, Jaf (how the malagasy say and write my name)