Lemurs

Lemurs are such a stereotype of this country, especially since that movie. But let's be honest, there's a good reason for that! I went to Lemur's Park near Antananarivo with some friends recently--it's basically a humane zoo that has a few dozen (very cute) lemurs, many confiscated from the illegal lemur pet industry (who wouldn't survive in the wild). You can get very close to the lemurs without stressing them out, since they're so used to humans--the upshot being that even my low end camera can get some good shots!

Project!

One (or rather, five) of my well improvement projects are online! Hopefully more to come, since I'm aiming to build three as well as improve these five.

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/626

Daraina

I went to another volunteer's site last week to check out an ecotourism project that she was doing, and had a hilariously interesting time while I was there (hilarious if you're used to Madagascar, I suppose). The only transportation to the town was in the back of a pickup, and we ended up walking several times because the road was so bad that even the high-clearance 4x4 was bottoming out with the extra weight (and with or without the people weight, it spent a good part of the trip fishtailing in mud). The kicker is, the town I was visiting is located on the ONLY ROAD OUT OF MY REGION. The road is so bad that is sometimes takes 20 hours to cover 150 kilometers (about 100 miles). And that's why my site is a fly site. The next day, we went out to the reserve the volunteer works with, and came back to a truck with a flat tire and no battery. And the jack was broken. Solution? Have six people sit on a branch resting on an overturned rice mortar and lift the truck up while a guy changes the tire (and fiddles around under the truck, and hope that the branch doesn't snap). Then create a new circuit for the battery by pulling nails out of a nearby park bench and pounding them into the car battery. That same day, someone in the nearby town brought the researchers at the NGO a young dwarf lemur that someone had picked up in the forest. It was wary of its surrounding for a few minutes, then started to jump in the laps of everyone sitting around the table, walk over our computers, bite our thumbs, eat bananas, and eventually jumped down one of the researcher's pants. He yelped and ran out of the room to drop his pants in peace. More evidence that lemurs had a different evolutionary path than a lot of the world's animals--no ingrained fear of humans. The lemur's fate is uncertain because it would be very difficult to identify his family group, without which he won't survive in the wild. Anyway, here are some pictures!

Anjangoveratra Index

Most of these are guesses rather that actual statistics:

There are, depending on the census you consult, 20,000 to 30,000 people in my commune.

The average family has six children; a number of families have up to fifteen children.

49% to 58% of the commune population is children under 18, again depending on which source you consult.

Over 80% of people will or did drop out of school before 6^th grade. Many (most) heads of family only have an elementary school education.

Only about 4% of children continue to high school. About 80% of those are male.

Female students drop out of school because of pregnancy as young as 13.

Classes have a range of ages in every classroom because of kids being held back or missing years if they cen't pay school fees; there are often 7 year olds sitting next to 15 year olds, 14 year olds sitting next to 22 year olds, all in the same classroom.

Elementary school classes often have over 100 students per teacher.

High school classes often only have about 50-60 students per teacher.

Because there aren’t enough classrooms for all the students, classrooms are in use from 6 am to 6 pm. Students are booted off school grounds to wander for at least part of each day.

High school teachers are paid about $50 per month. Middle school teachers are paid about $30 per month. Elementary school, even less.

There is no high school in my commune. High school students must live in a nearby city.

Elementary school teachers usually have graduated from middle school. Middle school teachers have usually graduated from high school.

There are, to the best of my knowledge, only three people in the commune who went to college—me, my counterpart at the MBG, and the doctor.

There is one doctor for the 20-30,000 people in the commune.

Over 60% of adults are missing teeth. That’s a very low estimate.

The most common diseases in my area are malaria, diarrhea, and upper respiratory infections (from cooking over an open fire).

The syphilis rate in Madagascar is about 40%.

The HIV rate is about 1%, mostly transmitted from French sex tourists. The HIV/AIDS rate is set to spike in a few years if condom usage rates don’t change.

90-99% of the people in the commune are rice farmers. Some also have day jobs as teachers or community police.