78th day, Toliara – Friendship and money

Will you buy a concert ticket at a cost of 5,000 Ariary (ca. 2 €) for someone you have only met 3 times before? Probably, if you feel like seeing the concert as well. Will you give your brand new Lowa hiking boots to one of the pousse-pousse pullers who are always lingering in front of your hotel, because he asks you to, (rightfully) claiming that his own shoes are crap for his heavily walking-reliant job? Surely not.

But what about the shades of grey between these black and white cases? How much does relative material richness oblige? Where does friendship start? And how much one-sided dependence is good for it? How much of your little finger should you give to ease your conscience, and what will you reply if the whole hand is asked a bit later?

75th day, St. Augustin – village cinema

At the end of a day full of misunderstandings, when the taxi brousse left at 1, rather than 10 in the morning, and we ended up in St. Augustin rather than in Sarodrano, all that really isn’t a problem at all. We met Marcel, who is our friend now, in the way that people, especially those earning their living in tourism, become your friends within half an hour here. He takes us to the village cinema: A tiny enclosure with a reed fence. A black-and-white TV on a chair displays some martial arts film, the loud speaker on the chair next to it emits squeaking sounds. About 20 people sit on wooden benches or on the dirt as we sneak in. After a few minutes, I lift my head and prefer the spectacle of a million-stars-sky to that on the screen.

65th day, Toliara - Team Panda

It's the last day of the national basketball championship here in Toliara. Again, we are there to show our photo exhibition about the aerial surveillance project. It's early in the afternoon, still a few hours to go until the final, but a handful of people have already taken seats in the gym. Toliara's women's handicap team will play the opening match of the day. But there is a small problem: the ladies only have jerseys in one colour! It's hard to know what to do, and the president of the basketball league, in his desperation, asks if we can't spear a few WWF t-shirts. After a short phone call to ask permission from the logo police, we hand over a set of t-shirts for half of the team, and the Panda wheelchair team is off to its match!

64th day, Toliara - Bridges and other people's shoes

Of course most of the people that start talking to you in the streets do so because they want money or your phone number. But it's worth the effort bypassing that first barrier every now and then. Once you have either bought that bracelet/bag of oranges/bottle of baobab honey/mentioned your boyfriend (or, even better, husband), or else made clear that you are not interested, I find most malagasies to be open for a chat. If you even dig out a couple words of malagasy (and it's always the same 5 words that you will need, so there is no excuse for not remembering them after a few weeks), chances are your counterpart's perception of you will change from somebody who merely has "money" written all over his white body, to an actual person.

While there are days when I am tired of all the whistles and "Bonjour madame"s, I am very aware that they are due to the fact that I really am unimaginably rich as compared to 90% of the people here. While I would not want to swich with, for example, a pousse-pousse (rickshaw) puller for even a day, not trying to shake them off like irritating inscets allows me to build tiny bridges over this huge gap between our worlds, at least on one or the other occasion.

57th day, Toliara - Little favours

Sometimes the impact of your actions is indirect.

We have an exhibition of large posters with photos, telling the story of “hatsake” (slash-and-burn deforestation), its destructive consequences and WWF’s work with the aerial surveillance. Toliara is the site of the national basketball championship for a week, and we showed the exhibition outside of the gym. As the people came to watch the games, not to be educated about nature conservation, and as they were not allowed to leave the gym during the breaks without paying again upon re-entry, we had a rather limited audience.

However, the championship is being organized by the court of Toliara. Cooperating with them (and sponsoring the sound system for the championship) is also in the hope that, next time we deliver a case of someone who has burned the forest to the police, the court will make an effort to make sure the person gets punished – which, so far, has rarely ever happened, even though it means simply applying the law, which makes “hatsake” illegal anywhere in Madagascar. But in a country where the entire government is “interim” and non-elected, and corruption is the shaping force of all politics, little favours count more than papers and law books.

About the Aerial Surveillance of Protected Areas project