Week 1 - Introduction to Life in Andavadoaka

Apologies in the delay for the next installment...the creative juices have not been flowing, even a little but I gave it a shot!

So as I may or may not have mentioned – we worked on a 6 day week. 5 days of diving and 1 day off – because according to some bizarre rules, you’re not allowed to dive every day. This is important when you understand that each week culminated in large quantities of food, rum and fuzzy memories, but that I’ll get to later.

A quick explanation on Andavadoaka – this is a little village on the South West coast of Madagascar. Madagascar has, and I stand to be corrected, 18 tribes that make up this country. We were in the Vezo tribe region. The Vezo people live off the sea – which is the reason for the presence of Blue Ventures. Through the years, destructive fishing practices have been employed and thus the destruction of the reef has been immense. There are less fish available to sustain the growing numbers and the people are feeling this decline. You will very rarely see turtles and sharks as these are fished for food. Blue Ventures have endeavoured to teach the people of Andavadoaka as well as the fishermen in the surrounding villages, sustainable fishing practices and this has been largely successful. This project has resulted in the birth of “Velondriake” which means “To live with sea”. This consists of 40 villages along the coast – 20 north of Andavadoaka and 20 South. We were there to survey the rehabilitation of the reef and see whether the work and teaching that Blue Ventures have put in, has had any impact.

In our first week, we had a fair amount of orientation to go through and of course our science training. As is customary in Andavadoaka, we were required to meet the Villagers elders “Nahodas” and introduce ourselves, request if we may stay in the village and await their blessing. As is also customary in Madagascar, every tradition is overseen by rum – white or black. I now find myself partial to this particular spirit to my own detriment. Before we made our way to Dadas, the local Epibar (what better place for a cultural meeting of importance), we had a crash course in Malagasy as we were required to introduce ourselves in Malagasy and say a little about ourselves. Armed with varying linguistic abilities, we made our way down to the village of Andavadoaka, all of us tingling with anticipation (fear?). We had to wait outside until all the Nahodas were seated in the little bar. We, the Vazaha (white people), then made our way in and the rest of the village watched the proceedings from outside. A speech from Bic our Malagasy Dive Manager was followed by each of our great speeches. This was followed by a long-winded speech from the President – he accepted us staying in the village, thanked us for the work we were participating in and blessed us. His speech was followed by the rest of the Nahodas. Once Bic had translated for us, we each had to pour our drinks and finish them. We all got up to shake the hands with the Nahodas and the meeting then culminated in a dance to Malagasy music – white people can’t dance... especially to this music, we do not have enough joints. Once this task was completed we made our way up for dinner: Beans with rice and fish (BWRAF for you divers), which we soon grew to love or rather accept.

Let me get into the science before I go in further. We were there as volunteers to complete surveys on the near shore sites as well as those sites further out. These surveys included the determination of the amount of soft coral versus hard coral (Benthic) on a reef by P.I.T.s; the presence of indicator invertebrates as well as the abundance of fish indicator species. We therefore had to learn 150 fish species, coral categories and indicator invertebrates. Once we had learnt these, we had to do out of water tests and once we had passed those, then we did in-water tests. Once we had satisfactorily passed, we could do science diving – which was incredibly intense and exciting. In our first week we learnt our corals, passed all our tests and began practicing P.I.T.s – when you could do 3 speed P.I.T.s in a buddy pair...you were ready for some Benthic Science diving. The feeling that once you have received the nod is equivalent to the feeling you get when you know you’re about to be involved in something important. Little did the BV staff know that they had a volunteer group that could give MENSA a run – we learnt pretty darn quickly.

Once a year, Blue Ventures invite the people of Andavadoaka up to the “Operation Centre” to see what they do. We are privileged to say that we could be involved in this special day. It started fairly early with the setting up of the projector to show ‘Voyage of the Vezo’ in Nosy Cao (our classroom). We also set up mock P.I.T.s and fish belts with Malagasy explanations. Safidy had set up a family planning stall and Zanga Matt had brought some sea cucumbers (more about this all later) for people to see. Naturally, the children from the village were the first up. We had Bic stationed by our dive gear rinsing barrels with tanks, regs and masks. The Malagasy kids are small enough to fit into the barrels, so we gave them masks and regs/octos and let them breath underwater...the LOVED it. The concept of a queue in Madagascar still has yet to be introduced but each kid in the mass around the barrels had a chance to experience the small delight of diving – even if it was warm turbid water. An announcement was made for the sandcastle competition taking place on the beach and a swarm of dirty, wet children rushed down to Half Moon Beach. After “judging” various turtles, hammerheads, blobs and castles we announced 4^th, 3^rd, 2^nd and 1^st – prizes were English books carefully selected on age and ability. After this rather difficult task, the kids were sent back up to Nosy Cao and were each given a sweetie – needless to say chaos ensued and some were brilliant enough to negotiate their way to the back of the queue (roughly termed) for a second treat. And now for the event that everyone had been waiting for: The Pirogue Race. Captains from villages near and far made their way down to Andavadoaka for this prestigious event. The race started at 3 pm from Andava beach. We, as Blue Ventures Volunteers, and vazaha were shared among the locals and put on a pirogue. The bigger lot of us were looked at rather disdainfully as we signified the loss of the race. Nick was told he was too big and nobody wanted him, but after much negotiating, he was placed on a pirogue with 3 children, the eldest who probably hadn’t even seen 15. I was with Patrick -who will always be known as my potential CK Model. He is beautiful and has the most engaging smile. After being on several pirogue trips with him – I now understand why he looks the way he does...he can paddle like a dream but his sailing isn’t so strong.  Reike – Roa – Telo (1, 2, 3 in Malagasy) and we’re off, all the way out to Nosy Fasy. This event was full of collisions (Thanks Charlie) and even a broken mast – Nick will forever be known as the vazaha who breaks pirogues. Kim came in first with the winning pirogue, I came in third to last and Nick came in stone cold last, being towed in by another pirogue – in fact, he was so last that we didn’t even wait for him on Andava beach, much to his disgust. This very exciting day was followed by a quiet evening, because the projector had exploded (thankfully) and the evening’s festivities couldn’t continue. All of us sun-kissed and windswept, made our way to supper – swooping on the wares like hungry animals, nothing like more beans and AWESOME rice. The rice is AWESOME because Nick endeavoured to say that every mealtime for 6 weeks – he did, even when the rice stopped being awesome.

And so party night arrives but before party night can be had – boat maintenance must occur. Boat maintenance involves removing our dive boats from the water (Tson tso and Madablu) and scrubbing them inside and out. This took place on Andava beach and was an EXTREMELY unpleasant experience. This owing to the fact that Andava beach is used as a local latrine for the children of Andavadoaka and you know that the grey sand you are picking up and standing in is a component of human faeces and other human waste material (including underwear) and of course the fish remains of last night’s dinner. And unfortunately for us, the wind was blowing in a direction that resulted in all the oceans seaweed (there was tons) being deposited on the beach – what a nice little incubator for all those unpleasant things. The boats, once cleaned, are then returned to the water and so with a sigh of relief, we run into our own private bah (Half Moon Beach) where the water is clean...and soak. After that...Party Night is upon us and so the preparations begin.

 Something that one must remember about Madagascar, is that everything...EVERYTHING revolves around rum. Slaughter a goat - don’t forget the rum; annoy the ancestors – placate with rum; its party night – lets drink LOTS of rum. So this was our first party night – as we were unaccustomed to this tradition we didn’t know what to expect. We arrive at the dinner table to see that all the staff had brought along their various vices. We had now learnt and from then forth, we brought our vices to the table and boy were there a lot of those. Our first party night was calm, all of us testing our boundaries and personal capacities for rum – these were to be pushed, to the extreme in some instances, but I shall not divulge that information...just yet. This rather tame (in comparison) evening culminated on Half moon Beach around a bonfire – with the Malagasy boys playing the guitar (until it broke, was repaired and then broke again) and trying to teach us songs. This party night, we had not discovered that Dadas delivered which was soon to be our downfall on subsequent party nights.

Although it was a tame night – all of us woke up feeling a little tender, donning sunglasses and litres of water we got ready for our trip to Nosy Hao. This is an island 1 km off of Coco Beach, 1 hour away by pirogue. Our pirogue captains stopped off a little reef where we could snorkel – what a beautiful reef! Goff (one of the Malagasy DMs) told us that this was his “brother’s secret reef”. We got stung by those invisible little jellyfish (I wanted to insert another word here but thought it inappropriate), everywhere and after tiring of that – we climbed out and beach on Nosy Hao. The pirogue sails were laid down underneath some trees where we all lay and relaxed, working on our hangovers and Charlie insisting for what wouldn’t be the last time – that we must keep her away from rum. All of us went for short walks around the island and were all told a little about the situation surrounding the locals on Nosy Hao. The island had been leased to a French businessman by the Malagasy government for a period of 99 years. He has started building a hotel on the island but unfortunately to the detriment of the local folk. He is paying locals 10 000 Ariary Ariary (R34.75) to move to the opposite end of the island or 35 000 Ar (R121.55) to move to the mainland. Some have moved, others haven’t – but it really is a sorry state of affairs. After we had had enough relaxing (if that is possible) we made our way back to Andavadoaka. This signalled the end of our first week with Blue Ventures – and what a fantastically busy and exciting week it was.