Nosy Be!

After much sitting around in Fort Dauphin waiting to be evacuated or have our ISPs repeatedly changed and shot down, myself and 4 other girls ended up coming to Nosy Be, the #1 tourist destination throughout Madagascar. The SIT office in Vermont decided that here and Fort Dauphin, or within 120km of either place, were the only places we were allowed for ISP, so that in case we needed to be evacuated we would be as close as possible to the program's base. Nosy Be is an island off the northwest coast of Madagascar - completely the other end of the country from For Dauphin. It's actually the Culture & Society program that got based here after Tana turned out tob e too dangerous - a couple students got caught in demonstrations during the midst of the massacres a hile back... Everyone's fine though. Just a little tear-gassed.

We all live on site at the CNRO, or Centre National de Recherches Océanohraphique. Chelsea, who's studying reef health, and I live in a quaint little jail cell-like room with no windows. We leave the doors open at night so that we only sweat out half of our body's water supply instead of all of it, which leads to me having 80,000 bug bites and very little rest each morning, despite smothering myself with DEET before going to bed and then again after 3 hours of scratching and swearing and still not falling asleep. I think they mentioned that they have extra mosquito nets...

Aside from that little issu, living at CNRO is wonderful. The view is absolutely gorgeous - lots of sailboats in the bay out in front, and you can see several more islands plus the mountains of mainland Madagascar in the distance. Last night we all got a Three Horses Beer and sat out on the pier while the sun set. Today a cyclone is helping cool things off, which is reeeeeally appreciated. Also we pay nothing for living there, and a small daily fee for someone to cook for us and wash our clothes. Pretty great. Taxis into Hellville (aka here at the cybercafé) are not cheap though.

I've got an ISP pretty much set up, studying the effects of artifical light pollution (from beachside hotels, nearby towns, etc) on the nesting success of sea turtles - greens and hawksbills - on Nosy Iranja and/or Nosy Sakatia. Exactly when, how, and for how long is still to be worked out... But we've gotten a "tsy misy problème" from the go-to people on both islands. That step is generally pretty easy around here, it's getting people to work out details that's always much trickier. None of us even knew what our projects were until a couple days after getting to Nosy Be, which was a little unsettling as our proposals had to be in before we left... I'm about to go write that after I finish with this.

I forgot to being my flash drive of pictures with me into town (it's about a 10 minute taxi ride on wonderfully paved road) - maybe next time.

Much love,
Karen