Week 12:
Handing off the Baton

August 9, 2019

This has been our last week at KAFS! It is so sad, but at the same time, I really miss my dogs and my mom. This week Evan and I mostly sat back and watched Sam do the work, he is very enthusiastic, he is doing very well. Because Sam speaks some Malagasy, many people who know little to no English are wanting Sam to teach an English class for them. The regular English class is primarily composed of fluent English speaking people, and that makes the less advanced people self-conscious and uncomfortable. This week we did surveys on Monday and Tuesday; both were at Vatuvavy and the surrounding area.

It has been really cool talking with the other new volunteers. Dana has already finished her Ph.D. in lemur genetics! Dana has thus far not done any fieldwork in Madagascar, though, so she is very excited to see lemurs in the wild.

We found Tyrian and his group on Tuesday! This is a huge deal because Tyrian has not been seen for almost a year, his radio collar has run out of batteries. The whole group is not yet habituated, that is, they are not used to humans following them around. As soon as one individual in the group spots us, they sound an alarm, and they all take off into the trees. They can move through the trees faster than we could ever hope to run after them on the ground, even if it was flat.

I had been looking forward to Nadia cooking for my last week here. However, Nadia and Christina are both at a nutrition class in Ranomafanna, and they will not be back until noon on Sunday. We leave first thing on Sunday. It will be a long drive back to Tana. I hope I don’t get car sick because I am out of the motion sickness medicine!

After being sick last week, it was really great to get back into the field and see the guides again before leaving. Delphian has been on vacation since the week before last, and I said goodbye to him then. But now I have to say goodbye to everyone else.

My last few Follows went really well, we followed Juno and her baby one day. Juno’s baby came really close to me and sat eating bamboo for a bit while his mom slept. It is typical for the lemurs to be settling down for a midday/afternoon nap when the 6-hour Follow ends.

Last Sunday we went to a waterfall and got to go swimming. It was a beautiful location, it was a 3-kilometer hike from the road to get there. I got a bad sunburn even though I applied sunscreen often. This was a safe spot to swim in because it was close to the origin point of the river, and there were no villages nearby that could dump there waste into the river. It was a great last weekend, and we got to spend time with the reforestation guys that I had not seen for a while.