Travels Gasy Style

July 27

I am back in Tulear for a brief visit. I found out a couple of days ago that our guy collecting data from the international octopus exporter quit his job. I jumped on the 4x4 going to Tulear today (luckily another project had arranged it) to get the data he’s been collecting (information on octopus catch by geographic zone). Dany, a master’s student at the local university, had agreed to meet me Sunday night to brief me on his work and pass along his data before he heads out early in the morning on a research vessel. He didn’t show up, call, or text. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, but aside from being rude (we left Andavadoaka at 6 am to be here on time), it is unprofessional and unwise. He has been paid by BV for the data collection and he had hoped to get a scholarship for further study. Not a very good idea to abscond with the data (or stand me up)…

I have had good results in my interviews so far. At the end of the day, it all comes down to the strength of informal networks. There is a character here with a lot of power who has little personal incentive to share crucial information with me. But I met his cousin in Tana, we bonded during the ex-pat Sunday run. When I ran into him here, I said hello from his cousin, and all doors flew opened. I do not think I would have gotten the data I did from him if it weren’t for the crazy 9-mile trek I did 20 hours after getting off of a 39-hour flight.

Tulear means access to hot showers, red wine, The New York Times online, and good food. Amazing what a month’s fast can do for my appetite and other epicurean pleasures. Before leaving town tomorrow, we plan on going veggie shopping. I am going to use Georgi and Bic’s kitchen to cook a dinner. I miss cooking and especially eating crunchy things! All crunch comes from the cookies I buy at the local “supermarket” (and all flavor from the spices I add). I plan on buying kilos of carrots tomorrow to get my crunch fix. Even more than taste, I miss textured food. I think I could survive on bland food if it had texture. Maybe not, and I hope never to undertake that particular experiment.

Tomorrow we head back to Andavadoaka with Haj, my research assistant. Then on August 9th, Tom arrives in Madagascar! I am heading to Tana to meet him and to conduct some interviews there. Most of the time will be spent setting up the next project, hopefully getting Tom some funding, and exploring Tana. My plans to get to Tana the day Tom arrives could be foiled by many things: (1) no taxi brousse from Andavadoaka to Morombe (a town with an airport 2 hours north of the research station); (2) a broken zebu-drawn cart blocking the road or some such nonsense; (3) our taxi brousse breaks down along the way or decides to randomly stop at a village because the driver’s cousin lives there and is having a party; (4) no plane is in Morombe; (5) the plane that is promisingly in Morombe doesn’t leave for some unknown reason (this flight is cancelled over 50% of the time); (6) no connecting flight out of Morondave (unknown cancellation rate); (7) the unknown surprises in store… Tom and I have Plan A (miracle plan = everything works), Plan B (I arrive 2 days later = Probability of two flights cancelled=(.5*.5)=.25 so better odds!), and Plan C (I never make it to Tana at all). And I will just laugh the whole way no matter what happens.

Some primary data at last!

A very cool story of this community-managed marine reserve is emerging from documents, people, and the ocean. I spent the first 10 days here interviewing Blue Ventures staff, scanning datasets, and reading a heap of internal reports to understand better how the marine protected are has come to be and what has actually happened on-the-ground. Al Harris, a Brit, fell in love with Madagascar during his travels here in early 2000s, and connected with a professor at the local university in Tulear. The professor had a star student, Daniel, who was doing his Master's thesis on octopus. Because he also had to work full-time, Daniel's analysis was progressing slowly, until 2004 or so when Blue Ventures, the NGO that Al founded in the meantime, supported his studies. Daniel's work showed that local octopus harvests could be increased if the fishers restrained efforts for key months of the creatures' development. Daniel's local connections (he is from Tulear) and ceaseless efforts focused on the the village of Andavadoaka. In 2004-2005, the village closed one of its main reef flats for 7 months. Sure enough, opening day recorded stellar harvests. Since then, more villages (24 more) joined the effort, designating areas and periods for closure, and self-enforcing the harvest bans. There are still kinks in the system, for sure -- for example, sometimes villages open their reefs early, causing all fishers in the area to descend on the reef, dissipating quickly any gains that the local village might have seen.

Fast-forward 5 years. Yesterday was the spring tide, the ocean receded very far, exposing the reef flats (shallow areas with coral rubble). We could walk out a couple of miles from the hotel, remaining in less than a meter of water. All the village women walked out with their long, metal-tipped spears to hunt for octopus - I spent the morning wandering with them. Not a scene for the squeamish - the occasional octopus is speared, stabbed multiple times, turned inside out, and skewered on a rope or stick to carry. Today I snorkeled to try to identify burrows, but had absolutely no luck. The villagers look for holes with rubble (crabs, shells, etc.) piled at the opening -- a sign on meals. The area just offshore is open all year round -- it is not a reserve. The octopus from the non-reserve were quite small: less than a kilo (those less than 300 grams will not be purchased by the syndicate -- by the way, I have a feeling that the octopus the BV team was served last night consisted of those that couldn't be sold, in other words, the small ones that in theory we also want to protect!). Next month the reserves will open. They have been closed for 3 months. It will be interesting to see the opening day -- and to see the data: are the octopus markedly bigger?

This evening the community is holding a major meeting to decide the penalty for a thief. I just walked past, and there were easily 75 people sitting in a half-circle on the beach listening to the village president. Yesterday, someone stole octopus from the reserve. Andavadoaka is the first village to establish reserves, and their pride is wounded that one of them harvested illegally. One of their own stole from the other villagers. The perpetrator is known, but this is the first time that the village has to enact a penalty. The "dina" (or local law) dictates how much the thief has to pay, but the community now has to enforce it. The situation is not easy: as a rule, the Vezo despise conflict. Furthermore, the tradition has been that the sea belongs to everyone, so it is against local custom to restrict anyone's use. I'm looking forward to hearing the results of the meeting...update: they fined him 50% of the penalty -- $25 plus what he caught.

I have been keeping busy gathering some data. I spent the beginning of this week in the far south of the MPA. The direct costs/benefits along the supply chain are quite simple: the fishers get a steady per kilo price for an octopus and have no costs to speak of. A sous-collector stands on the beach during low tides, weighs the catches, and pays the fishers. She gets a commission and also has no costs to speak of. A regional employee of the exporting syndicate provides the boats, ice, trucks to get the octopus to the factory (and either fronts the costs or it is paid by the company. Then the syndicate's factory prepares the octopus for shipment abroad. I've started gathering data at the bottom: I interviewed a bunch of fishers and sous-collectors in the south of the MPA and here in Andavadoaka. I spoke with two key informants who are employees of the syndicates. In a couple of weeks, I will speak with the owner of the syndicate. The social monitoring team is doing a small field survey for me, interviewing community members about their impressions of the reserves. It makes me happy to have some information that is new. Maybe I will have something to put on the poster I will present in Reunion next month!

Life is generally pretty relaxed. I can only get so stressed out when pretty much everything is out of my control. Folks do not seem in too much of a rush to do anything, and so I do what I can, but when the electricity isn't on (as it wasn't this morning), I do as others do: sit with a book and relax. Actually, I also went out snorkeling looking for octopus dens -- what I found was a sea snake about a foot from my face. Did I mention that I am actually really scared of the ocean?!? Seriously, between the spiny sea urchins, snakes, cone snails, sea-cucumbers-disguised-as-sea-snakes, tides, wind, sharks, giant undersea creatures coming to get me... I'm facing my fears little by little every day, but I really, really like that there is nearly nothing terrestrial that can hurt you here. No poisonous snakes, only some mean centipedes and a couple of icky spiders. And the goat that stole my orange croc today (I got it back when he decided it tasted bad). Oh! And I saw humpback whales from my hut this morning -- a nice treat on Oma's birthday :)

Happy birthdays Oma en Eline!

Life in Andavadoaka

How do I describe the view from my hut? 180 degree view of turquoise water, I see the far side of the small bay about 2 miles away due south, to the west, out into the Mozambique Channel, there is a coral island about a km out to sea, and about 5 km away a large, inhabited island constitutes my westward horizon. The high tide line is about 15 feet in front of my rickety
-- though perfectly wonderful -- hut. The hut itself has wooden walls and roof, with a thatched-roof veranda on 3 sides. It's quite idyllic. Throughout the day, boats of Vezo fishermen (and boys) troll the little bay and sea in their pirogues (dug-out canoes), some with sails, others powered by paddles. Some of the narrow boats have 5 people in them. The boats have
outriggers to stabilize them and provide a place to sit or climb aboard. I wish the snobby East coast sailing crowd would come see this -- some of the sails on these boats look like torn, recovered feed bags stitched together a bit (they probably are just a step above that), and yet can they MOVE!! No winches, no block and tackle, just teeth, strong arms, and a lifetime on the
sea. Indeed, to be Vezo is not an ethnicity or a heritage, but a present way of life: if you know how to live with the sea, you can be Vezo.

The trip to Andavadoaka took the 7 hours promised. We had the Blue Ventures 4x4, so it was luxurious but slow going. I didn't mind at all, as I got to absorb the sights of the spiny forest, coastline, and villages we passed. And I take back my previous statement about baobabs being disappointing. On the coast, in the midst of the dry, spiny forest, they are surreal. They
grow into bizarre contortions resembling something out of a sci-fi book. Sadly, none of them have leaves. It seems that while the trees are sacred, the leaves are not. There are little holes along the side of each of the trees, often with pegs in them, forming a kind of ladder. As soon as the leaves emerge, someone climbs us, chops them off, and feeds them to the Zebu (cattle). It makes for a very sad-looking baobab, with its spindly fingers outstretched towards the sky. So far in Madagascar, I have seen some wonderful endemic birdlife -- I kept thinking how great it would be to have Sea along! We saw a couple of long-tailed ground rollers (I think), a huge
owl (in the car headlights), some crested drongos (perhaps), lots of little things that I can't identify, black-and-white crows, a dozen pheasants, and a few falcons and kites (that gather at the edge of burning fields to swoop down on all the animals fleeing the blaze).

We arrived at Coco Beach in Andavadoaka in time for dinner; everyone was sitting at the table. (Blue Ventures has taken over an old beach hotel, a few minutes walk from the center of town. Andavadoaka itself has about 1500 inhabitants, in tightly-packed reed huts along the beach. I'll describe it more thoroughly once I've explored some more -- both times I have been in
the village, it has been dark.) There are 14 volunteers, mainly from the UK and mainly college-age or just out of college. These volunteers sign on for a 6-week scientific diving holiday. Its an amazing deal: learn to dive, learn to do transects and surveys, memorize an amazing amount of biological information, analyze some data, teach village school children English, take
side trips, sit by beach fires at night, ... My fellow staff (about 15 or so) also seem lovely. Three research scientists (Sophie, Chiara, and Amanda) lead the volunteer dives, then we have an expedition director (Nick) and a community manager (Shawn), there is a family planner (Maggie), and a sea-cucumber aquaculturist (Georgi), all of whom are from Europe or the US.
A large Malagasy staff is also based here: Daniel (an octopus expert), Bienvenue and her team (social impact monitoring), Gildas (social marketing) and a few others. Eventually Haj and Dani (Master's students at the University in Tulear) will also come to help me do fieldwork. There is also a kitchen/hotel staff. And I'm still learning all the names and roles...

Adjusting to life here has not been all that hard. The temperature is ideal (about 75 - 80 during the day and significantly cooler at night), and there are few bugs (so far not a single mosquito!). Electricity is on from 9:30 - 12:30 and again from 3:30 - 9 so it really isn't an issue. (Although I did have to fix the socket in my room which was hanging precariously from the wall, and which only gave juice if I jammed the plug into it and held it. Not exactly useful, since this is also the time I am supposed to be working.) We download emails twice a week (Monday and Thursday). I have yet to determine if I am going to freak out about that. I have plenty of resources on my laptop and in an enormous binder I brought with me to inform my work, but the lack of immediate access to "the literature" or quick advice might, well, either make me more self-sufficient or kill me. There is running water in my hut (shower only (temperature depends on time of day, in other words, was the water in the pipe warmed by the sun or not?), and a
flush toilet is about 50 meters away). The height of luxury, really! Food is made for us 3 times a day (I could get used to this!), the coffee isn't bad, and the rice-beans-and-small-amount-of-veggie meals for lunch and dinner are nutritious. Plus, there is cold beer. I mean, what more could you want?? (OK, so after 3 months of rice and beans, where the variety is sprinkling on
the chipotle or curry that I brought with me, I bet I will KILL for a super-salad!)

Right now I am sitting in the shade of my veranda with my laptop, listening to the lapping of small waves as the tide comes back in. I am still perplexed about my research design. After reading reports and plowing through spreadsheets all morning, I think there is quite a lot of data
scattered about, so I've been trying to get that in order. Different people have various bits and pieces of what I need -- some are still here, some have moved on. I met with Daniel, who knows the project inside and out, for the first time yesterday afternoon. The partial cost-benefit analysis
(looking at just the direct use of the octopus) is going to require a survey of fishermen, because we need information about their costs in order to understand their profits. I also learned that there is a very powerful middleman in Andavadoaka, who also owns the supermarket in town, whom I need to consider as part of the supply chain.

For the indirect benefits and costs, I still hope to gather some primary data. The team that does the social surveys may also be prepared to implement some of my household interviews/surveys. I read in a report that the community is tired of being endlessly interviewed about the same things, and, perhaps understandably but still problematically, has come to expect payment for participating in the research. Hopefully she can help me figure out the way to get the information we need either from existing data or, if need be, how we should go about gathering new data (and hopefully I will soon figure out what data I need! AHHH!). This morning, I talked with Bienvenue for 2 hours. She is currently planning a survey, so I am going to add in some questions. From talking with her, it seems that the community is not all too pleased about these NTZs. In fact, she said most of them call the NTZs "vazaha" = of the foreigners. Not a good sign at all, and all the more reason to carefully talk about the distribution of any net benefits.

In any case, today I hope to have an email from Pieter with some advice on research design. I am still completely overwhelmed by it all, but I hope things will start to fall in place as I start playing with data and set out some discrete, concrete first steps. (By the way, a GORGEOUS pirogue in its prime is passing by - with green-yellow-red colorful new paint and a spotless matching sail.) I hope that once I have a good idea of my path, I will be able to take a bit more time to enjoy the surroundings. This morning, I went for a snorkel/swim, and last night I spent an hour or so
with the volunteers and staff in the village, but there is so much to see! And every evening, I give an English lesson to some of the Malagasy staff (and they teach me some words). In all, the hours of work are punctuated by good times.

I have reached my last day with internet for the foreseeable future. The thought of the absence of any technical support, combined my lack of solid research design, sent me into a tizzy last night. I sat despondent on the steps outside my hotel room, Skyping with Tom, in tears. Pieter, a mentor at the University of Amsterdam who has done many a study like this, helped me think through some of the research design aspects yesterday afternoon. During our conversation, I realized a number of things: (i) that my original scope was way too large; (ii) that my experience doing this type of valuation work is way to thin; (iii) that I should freak out.

After the short meltdown, Tom’s pep talk, and a night’s sleep, I spent today writing up what I hope is a reasonable research plan. It is much narrower in scope than what I had originally set out to accomplish, but it answers the question that needs answering right now: Are these octopus no-take zones a narrowly efficient (e.g., direct benefits outweigh direct costs) solution to the over-harvesting problem? The first hypothesis to test is: NTZs have a positive effect on the income of the harvesters, middlemen, and distributors. Focusing on the direct costs is only part of the benefits and costs, of course, and the least interesting economically. That said, these NTZ are already being replicated all over the SW (through an African Development Bank Project being implemented with WWF) and we have no empirical evidence that they don’t increase poverty or inequities. So I have prioritized trying to prove/falsify this hypothesis first. Hopefully the biologists have been carefully collecting data (before and after the NTZs, in areas with and without NTZs) because those data, along with net revenue data that I will collect, will be the basis of my analysis.

It might be that the net market benefit seems to justify the NTZ. Still, I need to ensure that there aren’t non-market costs that the approach ignores. On the other hand, it may be that the NTZs actually cost more than they generate. But that, too doesn’t necessarily mean that they are not efficient. I need to also include the “softer” benefits. So the second priority is to determine the indirect costs and benefits of the NTZs on the communities. (I focus on the communities because I think they are the ones who will bear most of the costs and benefits – to be confirmed during interviews.) For the short-term, I am going to present these data in non-monetary terms. This is where Pieter really pushed me technically: in order to get reliable values for the “softer” benefits of NTZs, we need to do what is called a choice experiment. Designing and analyzing these experiments is, for now, beyond what I think I can accomplish without technical support. I am disappointed that I cannot monetize these impacts because I worry that leaving them as descriptive will mean they are ignored in policy. I would also like to learn the new tool.

The final priority is to quantify the additional revenue generated by tourism of the NTZ. In many studies, the tourism benefit of marine protected areas ends up being quite significant. Here, though, the marginal benefit of protecting these small areas of disturbed reef flat is likely very small. I am going to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations to confirm this hunch, but the effort required to poll tourists is likely not well spent.

So what does my approach leave out? A lot. In terms of the “provisioning” benefits of these NTZ, I won’t have results about spill-over effects to other fisheries, marine products or biodiversity, I won’t include “regulating” benefits of the reef (wave energy dissipation, resilience to change), and I won’t have monetary expressions for the increased beauty, women’s employment, educational and scientific value, or community cohesiveness. The thing is that I have to see this initial study as a pilot. Luckily I have the coming 2 years to expand the valuations (and the time to work out more of the research design ahead of time – something that was impossible this time because I had no knowledge of the situation on-the-ground.)

But who cares about the project, right? How is Tulear?!? I think the best description I heard so far likened it to a city in the US or Europe 200 year ago. It is where all the people living in rural areas come to go to market, buy supplies, visit, drink, and get news. The city has about 300 thousand inhabitants, but the center of town extends across just 4 blocks square. There I found the market, hardware stores, groceries, street vendors, restaurants, hotels, an internet café, and just about everything I could need. Of course, the 200-year-old reference also refers to its infrastructure: open ditches with trash and wastewater, un-refrigerated meat market (gag), dirt roads, and rickety buildings. Small "shops" or "restaurants" line all the city streets and roads. These are little more than shanties selling whatever they can: eggs, fried dough, baguettes, found objects, pieces of wood, salvaged metal. Its pretty amazing.

A great feature of the town are the pousse-pousse (human-drawn rickshaws). The men who run them are amazing. They literally balance their bodies between the two long arms of the cart, elbows up in the air, and run. Everyone takes them around town. They are amazingly agile, weaving and bobbing the long arms through cattle, bikes, trucks, camions, pedestrians, children playing. Supposedly many Vaza (foreigners) have ethical scruples about them, but not me! This is a way to make good money (a trip across town costs about $1.50), with relatively little up-front capital investment, no operating costs aside from flip-flop replacements (= the brakes), little occupational hazard, and no environmental pollution. In fact, I think we should have more of these in US cities!

There are some good-ish restaurants. I’ve sought out salads because I have been told its rice and beans for the next month. I also bought a bunch of fruit in the market. WAY more than I can ever eat, but the woman selling them was so darling (having me try all the fruits) that I bought $2 worth (see photo). I also bought a little bottle of bleach that I used to soak the fruit (it is sold to treat water; and is highly subsidized – costs 200 Ariary or 8 cents.). I’ll share the spoils in the truck tomorrow as we bounce 8 hours towards Andavadoaka off-road.

Do I want to live here when we return? Probably not. I’m not sure how we will decide where to live, but I hope most of our time will be spent OUT of cities, near the marine resources we are studying. Of course, urban stresses on the marine environment are incredibly significant (sewage, trash, stormwater laden with oils). In fact, I heard a rumor that the petroleum logistics company (owned by Shell, Total, 2 other oil companies and the Malagasy government) simply open up the drains once a month to clean out the lines and sludge accumulated at the bottom of the enormous diesel tanks they have onshore. This, right next to “Le gran recife de Tulear” – the threatened and beautiful coral reef that is the source of food, tourism dollars, cultural pride, and coastal protection. A good story for my friendly local BBC reporter, don’t you think?

I will post again soon, but no more photos until I am back in Tulear in over a month. Lots of love to everyone. Remember, you can email me at personals@blueventures.org in the coming month.

The drive from Tana to Tulear

We arrived in Tulear yesterday evening, having left Tana at noon Sunday. Before heading out of Tana, I ran 12 km departing from “Le Panoramique”, a soulless housing development with wonderful views of the city built for ex-pats and (maybe?) wealthy Malagasies. It didn’t look even 20% occupied, which added to the air of a college dorm complex during summer break. This week, I wasn’t the slowest and my body didn’t feel nearly as heavy or lungs as bursting as last week. Perhaps a week at altitude has helped my fitness. Maybe I will keep up the running regime.

Our 1000-kilometer epic drive from Tana to Tulear brought with it wonderful vistas and glimpses of rural Malagasy life. Departing Tana, we immediately entered the “Haute Plateau”, rich agricultural land dotted with red clay houses. The contrasting color of the houses against the green landscape is stunningly beautiful. Life is hard on the Haute Plateau. Black smoke from the indoor cooking fires billows from windows of the houses; I can only imagine the health impacts. We shared the road with endless pedestrians, zibus (cows), bicyclists, taxi-brousses (larger inter-city vans), carts, dogs, pigs, and other fixtures of rural life. The sound of the constant horn tooting is still echoing in my head. I bristled a bit at honking our way across the countryside (because we have a car we have right-of-way?), but maybe I have to accept the horn as a warning device to folks living within inches of the roadway not to be distracted at the moment we are passing by.

We passed through dozens of small villages. Along the roadside in every town, women and children sit beside tarps spread on the ground displaying items for sale: clementines, papayas, tomatoes, recycled plastic containers, old flip-flops, 2nd hand clothes, meat, rice (which you can buy by the ½ cup or so), beans, baguettes, very sweet cowboy coffee, fried dough balls called bokoboko (pronounced boo-ko-boo-ko) and a sort of thick rice cakes called mokary (moo-ka-ree). More formal stores (with some sort of physical structure around them) sell colorful cloth, plastic household items, and anything else you can imagine. We stopped to have coffee and fried dough for breakfast. I was a bit concerned that I might get an upset stomach, but I needn’t have worried. Frying things seems to kill everything.

We arrived after dark at Guest House Tsara in Fianar, a larger town on the edge of the rainforest. It is a lovely hotel with constantly hot, streaming showers (Al’s house had hot-alternating-with-cold, low-pressure showers). During daylight, the accidents-waiting-to-happen are visible and therefore somewhat avoidable, but nighttime driving was scary! Al had said, “We can’t drive at night – its too dangerous!” which I had interpreted as “There are nighttime bandits on the road!” In actuality, the danger is coming up suddenly on a cow-drawn cart or, worse, a child walking on the road. We were all relieved to arrive at the hotel and sit to a warm dinner of French-inspired food and Malagasy beer. The local beer is called “Three Horses Beer” (in English, oddly) and only comes in massive bottles about the size of a 40.

Unfortunately it was dark when we passed through the rainforest, so I don’t know what Malagasy rainforest looks like, yet. The following day we departed early and started descending from the Haute Plateau. We stopped at a private reserve called Anja run by a little village. Less than 50 meters from the car, ring-tailed lemurs greeted us from the trees. They were sunbathing, their arms tucked behind their heads, faces turned upwards, eating fruits, and chatting with one another. They are darling and very charismatic (no surprise that they are the symbol of the National Park Service). This group was unperturbed by our wandering amongst them. They lived in a small forest that extended back into crevasses between enormous granite boulders. For all you rock-climbers out there, this is unexplored, epic climbing territory! We went on a small hour-long hike that took us up to some wonderful vistas atop massive granite slabs deposited by some long-ago glaciers (I suppose). Our guide was a villager who had somehow learned quite a lot of English. As we drove out of the park, the entrepreneurial villagers were out in force to greet us (and accept our modest park fees). I was pleased to see this type of income-generating activity being fully run (if not conceived?) by local villagers.

The lemur-stop was our main out-of-car adventure for the day. We drove across hundreds of miles of landscape after that. The granite-dominated mountains gave way to prairie-like grasslands. Another landscape emerged that looks a lot like the American Southwest, with sandstone mesas and canyons. We dropped Tim (the brother of Tana-based friends of Al and Chris) at a national park called Isofy (unsure how to spell it). The treks in the park are rumored to be fantastic - you can float down the canyon rivers while watching lemurs jump from tree to tree, be massaged by waterfalls, and not see another person for days (aside from your guide and porter – mandatory for guests entering the park). Maybe Tom and I can get there this summer…or, if others visit next year (Cameron, this has your name all over it!). In fact, we passed at least a ½ dozen national parks on the drive, so there is lots to explore!

We left behind the mesa landscape and entered spiny desert forest, and I saw BAOBOBS! I had imagined them to be so incredibly fantastic (as in Dr. Seuss-like) that I was kind of disappointed. They are definitely cool, but they still look like trees. I’m not sure what I was expecting (the Lorax to peek out from behind one??). Speaking of the Lorax, the grassland was burning everywhere. Officially, it is against the law to burn the prairies, but the grass regrows faster (and the shoots are more nutritious for the cattle) after being burned, so there is no stopping it. The loss of vegetation causes erosion, the red clay is washed all the way to the coast where it smothers the coral reefs.

The other thing that changed when we left the rich agricultural land of the Haute Plateau are the houses – they changed from 2-story clay structures into lean-tos constructed of sticks and mud. Even though it might be hard to imagine, the level of poverty is worse than that suffered by the rice-patty farmers. Herding animals and subsistence agriculture doesn’t leave much expendable income for constructing your home. It is hard to imagine, but 100 Ariary (2500 Ariary = $1, so about 4 cents) makes a difference to people on the street here. I have a pocketful of 100- and 200-Ariary bills that I hand out to beggars. It is almost shameful, 4 cents. The fact that I don’t give more makes me cringe.

We arrived in Tulear last night. The city is very different than Tana (and WARM!). I’ll write tomorrow my impressions of this bicycle- and pousse-pousse (rickshaw)-dominated city. I posted photos of the trip on my Picasa Web Album.

Today I broke down and bought a pair of jeans in town. They are a most ridiculous model, with a waistband, belt loops, and pockets on the bell-bottoms, but they were inexpensive and, most important, will be warm. The moments when the sun shines it is beautiful out, but those are interrupted by dark rain clouds and cold wind that send me fleeing back into the colonial-era house with ludicrously thick walls and high ceilings whose windows don’t properly close. It seems somewhat incongruous to be eating papayas while wearing 4 layers, but so it goes. Only a couple more days of the cold, hopefully.

On Sunday afternoon (after another 10 km run. I’m a bit worried that my French ami’s patience will not extend to this Sunday as well and I will be lost in the rural outskirts of Tana!) we will jump in the truck and start the 1½ days drive to Tulear. Then the interactive part of my project begins. I’ve spent the week reading and talking with Al to get the context of the analysis I hope to complete this summer and designing the basic conceptual model of the research. Things are taking form. At least, I have the beginnings of a plan.

One of the first steps has been defining the ecological functions being protected by the octopus no-take zones. In Velondriake, these zones occur on shallow reef flats because the manner used to harvest octopus is spear-fishing. There is a natural depth limit that people can hunt. Ecosystems generally provide all sorts of services to humans that we do not pay for, but which improve our well-beings. The trick is to capture the extent of these non-marketed services in any analysis attempting to quantify the relative costs and benefits of protecting an ecosystem. For example, we know the closure is increasing harvest on opening day but does the lack of disturbance for 4 months also help the health of the reef generally, and thereby increase other fisheries and dissipate waves that otherwise would wash away the beach? Would the tourists come to the area to dive if the protected areas weren’t there? Women dominate the octopus fishery (because you don’t need to know how to sail, a traditionally male activity amongst the Vezo), so are the protected zones increasing opportunities for women? Has managing their resources increased the institutional capabilities and interaction of the Vezo communities?

Of course, there are flip sides to the management regime as well (hence the “cost” in cost-benefit analysis). Are there gluts in the market during the days the fishery reopens? What do the fisherpeople do during the 4 months “off”? Is there increased conflict within and between villages? Is there a dangerous race to catch fish on opening day, and does that encourage destructive fishing practices? How much does enforcement cost?

Given all these “impacts”, over the next week or two, I will work on defining the specific techniques I will use to assign monetary value to them. Economics offers some tools; there are advantages and disadvantages of each, so I am weighing these. As I go along, I am gathering data from numerous sources. I haven’t formally started interviews with my “key informants”, yet. I hope to next week, by which time I will need to have my interview guide gelled. This guide is basically a set of topics that I want to cover in my conversations with experts.

Luckily not every moment of every day has been behind the computer or book. Yesterday I took the Taxi Be downtown to do some errands. Taxi Be may mean “big taxi” in Malagasy, but it is basically a 9-person van-in-a-former-life-that-is-now-a-welded-box-with-holes-and-doors-that-do-not-shut into which 30 people cram. I am not kidding (in the photo, the blue van is a Taxi Be, and the tall house behind it is where I am staying). On the way back, it was raining a bit so everyone in town was taking public transportation. I had to ½ squat in the back so as not to hit my head as we careened over the cobblestone and pothole-infested streets (which were ice-slick from the first rain in months mixing with the grime), holding all my shopping bags, with no room to move. At least there is no way I could fall down! In town, I wandered the market and bought myself a hot water kettle for my room in Andavadoaka (for tea and hot water to wash), a thermos, and some curry powder (rice and beans every day need some variation). Today an Australian family from Perth who had been in Andavadoaka for 6 weeks stopped by the house. Liz, the mom, suggested bringing lots of chocolate, so that is now priority #1 on my shopping list for tomorrow’s downtown expedition. The photos show the variety of rices for sale in the market, and a view from one end of the market. By the way, in the last post, the photo that looks like a random shot of the sky has large black dots – the Golden Orb spiders!

I’m on my 10th cuppa today, drinking it with milk à la my British hosts. It’s too cold to dump all the tea in the nearby lake, so I won’t go that far, but tomorrow I promise to rebel and at least ask for it without milk.

Happy birthday a day late, Hardy!

Lots of love, K

Bustling city life

Even in Tana, it seems the internet is squirrelly. I’m lucky to get a ½ hour of so a day with connection. It’s kind of a managed withdrawal period, I suppose. I am glad that I downloaded a bunch of academic journal articles, manuals, reports, and such before coming; I only occasionally panic that I am missing the one that is most important. If that happens, I’ll get Al to hook up the satellite broadband (in the photo, that’s what he’s doing in the back yard).

Over the past couple of days, I have managed to accomplish a couple of important administrative tasks: I have a cell phone (my number is 261-(0)32.71.576.65) and a bank account. Because Blue Ventures Conservation works with a private bank, I managed to get this done within a ½ hour meeting – unheard of in post-French colonial bureaucracies. Getting the cell phone was easier than in the States – walk in, give them cash, walk out with phone. I tried to get my US phone unlocked by one of the street “debloqueage” vendors. Dozens of cars line the main Avenue de l’Independence, offering the illegal service. I handed my phone over to a man, who handed it to a man, who walked away with it. Gulp. I was asked if I could wait 5 or 6 minutes; after 90, I surmised that something wasn’t working. Despite being assured again and again “c’est près”, I insisted I had to leave. They brought my phone back and made some excuse about needing 5 or 6 hours -- that the connection wasn’t working. I have no idea what they were talking about, but it seemed plausible given my experiences that the connection, whatever one it may be, was not working.

During the time I was sitting there, I met a lovely Malagasy woman who is 8 months pregnant and recently unemployed. She was a delightful conversational partner; I felt her distinct embarrassment when she asked if I needed any one to work for me; and if I might be able to spare some money. The economic situation here is, according to all accounts, rapidly deteriorating. For a very poor country, this means that many people will descend into absolute poverty, and those that were already there will suffer horribly. I sincerely hope the government gets itself sorted so money starts to flow again; not that foreign money is the means of keeping all these people afloat, but the jobs lost from the flight of capital and foreign-linked organizations and projects has ripple effects across the poorest. Chris, my BBC-correspondent host, just did a story for Radio Africa on the move of the African National Conference from Tana. The economic losses are steep: new hotels were built, infrastructure was improved, people were hired in anticipation of the influx of thousands of African delegates. All lost revenues.

Sunday night, I had dinner with Pierre, a former World Bank colleague of mine, and his family: Laure, Miriam, and Theo, at their home in the ex-pat ghetto (Ivandry). Theo is 9 and, perhaps as a product of having lived here in Madagascar for 3 formidable years of his life, is enamored of insects. He rattled off genus and species names of dozens just during the ice cream course, he pointed out that the errors in the labels of a set of framed butterflies his sister had gotten as a gift, and he alluded to his enormous photo library of discoveries. I thoroughly enjoyed the evening with them, and hope to see them again towards the end of my trip. Tom and Theo will get along smashingly. I also learned that there is no malaria up here in Tana (its too high), so I stopped taking my Malarone for now. I’ll save the pills (supposedly Malarone is “the best and most expensive” – everyone was quite impressed that I had it – go Kaiser!). I do have lovely red welts on my face from the bloodsuckers (my face is the only thing emerged from my blankets – it is SO COLD here. I am sitting at my computer in long underwear and a wool hat!)

(WARNING: ARACHNOPHOBIC ZOFIA AND ROLAND SKIP THIS PART!) The other day, I was sitting in the back yard in the sun, reading when I looked up into the fruit trees above me. I eeked when I saw the largest spiders I have ever seen. Since, I learned they are called Golden Orbs and that they do not bite. The guardian offered to pick one off its web for me to see, but I wasn’t quite yet ready for that. Supposedly, they can alter the color of their webs, and in the summer the entire sky between the trees in the yard is a dense fabric of their webs. I’m just not sure how I feel about that. If I manage to get photos uploaded, I’ll put one up of the spiders.

A couple of folks have asked me exactly what I’m here to do. Check out the website www.livewiththesea.org -- this is the marine protected area (MPA) I am studying. It has primarily been supported by Blue Ventures Conservation, the organization sponsoring my research. Over the past 6-or-so years, they have been monitoring the increased octopus harvests coming from short-term closures of certain reef flat fishing areas. My job is to demonstrate in economic terms the relative costs and benefits of this MPA. In other words, I need to put into monetary terms the direct use values (such as increased octopus harvests and spill-over effects into other fisheries), indirect use values (such as increased ecotourism revenue), and non-use values (such as community coherence coming from successfully organizing itself). I then need to compare those benefits to the costs: management costs are easy to compute. More difficult are costs such as community conflict, sanctions, etc. Today I hope to begin to cobble together the survey I will use to elicit these values from community members, leaders, and experts working in the area. This is the hardest part, really. I need to develop interview guides to get relevant information from the experts; academic interviewing is an art form (I just finished a great book on it – thank Hil! – called “Learning from strangers”). And I need to develop valuation instruments that will help me figure out all the various values. All morning, I’ve been plowing through academic articles to devise a good methodology. Unfortunately, most articles report very succinctly the methods, and what I need are the long-winded versions. Wish me luck!

Al and I leave for Tulear on Monday afternoon (goodbye sketchy internet! Hello no internet!). We are attending a workshop, then I will head to Andavadoaka (pronounced An-dah-vah-dock = Malagasy for “live with the sea”) to get into the real work. I’m beginning to freak out a little bit that I need to get these surveys and interview guides drafted, so that’s what I’m off to do now.

Malagasy word of the day: Velona (vay-lu-nah) = “Bless you”
Malagasy trick: dust/polish wood floors by skating around on an inverted ½ coconut shell

Lots of love to all, K