Week 5:
Preparing for a Party

June 23, 2019

This week was a 6 day work week because today, Sunday, June 23, 2019, is the 10th anniversary of the founding of KAFS! There is a big party tonight that will likely spill over into Monday morning. Monday is a day off.

There was a detailed plan of what each of us was to do each day. Monday, Jonathan and I went into the forest and helped collect seeds, mostly voapaka and shandramy seeds. It was really cool to go into the rainforest and see the habitat we are working to cultivate. Some of the trees were so huge!

I did, however, get a leech while seed collecting. There are tiny terrestrial leeches that are hard to detect unless you feel them with your hand, and someone sees it on you. Leeches have a numbing agent in their saliva that prevents the host from feeling the bite. The leeches feed on the clotting agent in blood, so leech bites will bleed for quite a long time after the leech has detached. I got one on my lower back under my shirt and the waistband of my pants, so no one saw it on me. I never saw it either, only the large bloodstain on my pants and shirt after we left the forest.

As we were leaving the forest, one of the guides found some wild sugar cane and cut some down for everyone to snack on. Sugar cane is delicious! The fibers are too tough to eat, so you bite off chunks of the inside and suck the sugar liquid from them. I am not practiced at eating sugarcane, so the guides were laughing and showing me the proper way to break off the outside “skin” to get to the sugary inside.

Tuesday, I worked with Nelson and cut up branches for us in making compost. Nelson explained to me the process they follow to make their compost. First, they gather the green leaf material (the branches I cut up), then over the top of that in the compost pits, they layer dried rice stems and let it sit for 50 days watering it every day (unless it rains). At 50 days, they mix the compost and repeat the watering and waiting 50 more days. Every 50 days, the compost is mixed, and every day that it does not rain, the compost gets watered. After 5 months, the compost is ready to be used. Wednesday, we each went to a different planting site.

Thursday, I was to go to a forest species planting event, but I woke up not feeling well and stayed at KAFS instead. Carol helped move seedlings, and Jonathan did a big nursery check. Friday, Carol and I were supposed to go to the same planting site, but I was still feeling under the weather, so she went alone, and Jonathan went to another location.

There has been a kind of cold circulating through the camp with symptoms of sore throat, nausea, and headache. I suspect that is what I had. I spent most of the time I was ill sleeping in my hammock on the KAFS building balcony, while there I watched the day geckos fighting over the Ravenala flowers!

Saturday was a workday because Monday next week will be off. I felt back to normal, so Carol and I went with Nelson as planned and cut up branches for composting. Jonathan was ill, he did not sleep well, and had symptoms of body aches and a headache. We told Jonathan to stay at KAFS, but he said sitting would not make him feel better. However, we should have said going out seed collecting would make him feel worse, which it did, and in the afternoon, he went to the clinic and got a pain shot and some antibiotics.

Hopefully, he will feel better soon because this coming week, we have only 1 work day (Tuesday) because Wednesday is Madagascar Independence Day, so there will be a big celebration in town, and we have the following Thursday and Friday off. We are taking advantage of the long weekend and going to Ranomafana National Park! I am so excited! Thursday cannot come soon enough.