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