Category: Madagascar
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When Madagascar played host to NASA
If you drive down the highway about 32 km southwest of Antananarivo, you may be surprised to see a giant white satellite dish next to some abandoned buildings not far from the road. This is a relic of the American space program in the 1960s and 1970s. Here’s an excerpt about it from NASA’s book,…
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DJI Mavic Pro: First Flight! (Antananarivo, Madagascar)
Finally, it has arrived! Back in mid-October, I heard that DJI, the company that manufactured the first drone I owned, was releasing a small, foldable drone with an integrated camera. In other words, one that would allow me to carry something besides just a drone on my back when we go hiking in Madagascar! I figured…
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Madagascar: Solar Eclipse at the Pangalanes Canal
I got an email from somebody at some point, soon after we arrived in Madagascar: there was to be a full solar eclipse, and we were invited to stay at the “Bush Camp” on the Pangalanes Canal, wherever that was. I did some digging and found out that there is a series of lakes and…
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The strangest animal you’ve (probably) never seen!
Meet the bizarre, but wonderful aye-aye. It’s an odd nocturnal lemur with a kind of creepily long middle finger and a bizarre, wild and wide-eyed expression. We were lucky enough to see a few of these in the wild and thought we’d share them with you. By the way, did you know lemurs are primates?…
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Barefoot in the Malagasy Jungle: the Making of Onja’s Crowdfunding Video (part 3)
In the third and and final installment in this series I have written about a trip we took out to a remote village in Madagascar, to help film a crowdfunding video for a great cause, Onja. In this post I share (with the help of Anne’s photos) our impressions of life in the 700-person village…
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Barefoot in the Malagasy Jungle: the Making of Onja’s Crowdfunding Video (part 2)
This is part two in a series. Part one can be viewed here. So as I noted yesterday, after our long trek into the countryside, the first order of business was to meet with the President of Andovolalina, the village we were staying in, to explain what we were up to and get his blessing.…
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Barefoot in the Malagasy Jungle: the Making of Onja’s Crowdfunding Video (part 1)
It started back in July when I got an interesting item in my “Google Alerts” for Madagascar. A small NGO was looking for a filmmaker and a social media manager to support their project in eastern Madagascar. I quickly fired off an email doing my best to convince “Sam” that this project was tailor-made for…
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Madagascar: Visiting the Tsingy de Bemaraha (Part 2)
This post is a continuation of my previous post, where I described out trip from Antananarivo to Morondava, and then north across two rivers and to the “petit tsingy” and a boat ride through the Manamobolo Gorge and the caves that border it. In this post, I will share our experience in the “grand tsingy”…
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Madagascar: Visiting the Tsingy de Bemaraha (Part 1)
Travel and Leisure has listed Madagascar as one of its 50 places to visit in 2017. Since we’re talking about a country that would stretch from New York City to the tip of Florida, I’ll help narrow things down a bit. Despite the hassle of getting there, the Tsingy the Bemaraha National Park is one…
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Madagascar’s Majestic Baobabs
I’ve been pretty quiet here on the blog – we have been hard at work on some crowdfunding initiatives, and in between, I have been editing some of the video footage I shot on our trip to Madagascar’s west coast. Way back in August! That’s when we took a trip that most foreigners who spend…
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Anjezika: Antananarivo’s “Waterworld”
This is Anjezika. Once a vibrant fishing and rice-growing village, it has gradually been encircled and choked off by the surrounding city of Antananarivo, Madagascar. Now, nobody grows anymore rice here. A few small fish can be collected from the stagnant water that separates small squares of low-lying land where the people have built their…
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Merry-Go-Round, Madagascar Style
In retrospect, the kids somehow look terrified. But they were having a great time, I assure you!
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Heartbreaking
As in many parts of the world, when you drive around urban areas of Madagascar, people will tap on your window asking for money. Frequently these are little people. There are many theories about how to respond – sometimes the kids are exploited by adults and sent out to beg, often carrying babies – and…
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Children of the Street: Ankorondrano
A group of about a dozen kids gathers on a small patch of green with a few benches and trees. Basically a large roundabout. Imagine an oblong Dupont Circle, except Starbucks is 3,000 miles away. The sound of traffic is constant. Two young volunteers lug a bag of supplies to a cement bench and quietly…
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Children of the Street: Ambohijatovo
In this third installment on a project Anne and I are involved in, we assist “Zanaky Ny Lalana”(Children of the Street) at yet another location. This week we went to Ambohijatovo, one of the ten locations where Malagasy volunteers for “Teach for Madagascar” currently hold sessions. Teach for Madagascar is a program whereby Malagasy volunteers provide literacy and…
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Love Your Neighbor
Truth be told, we didn’t ask to come to Madagascar just for the lemurs – although they’re a pretty nice bonus. A big reason we came here because we want to try and make a difference, somewhere, in someone’s lives; to have a purpose. But Saturday was a pretty tough day. We started the day…
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Children of the Street: Ampefiloha
Last week I posted about a new project Anne and I are involved in – assisting the NGO “Teach for Madagascar” via a group of street photographers called “Zanaky Ny Lalana” (Children of the Street). This week we went to another of the ten locations where Malagasy volunteers teach children who don’t have access to other…
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Children of the Street: Anjezika
“Zanaky Ny Lalana” is a group of street photographers that was brought together about a half year ago with the goal of highlighting the challenges faced by some of Madagascar’s most vulnerable inhabitants. I don’t exactly have much in the way of street photography credentials, but we were fortunate in that the group’s founder has allowed us…
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Travels in Madagascar: in and around Ampefy
Ampefy is a little town about 100km west of Antananarivo, in a landscape dominated by volcanic landforms – many of the surrounding hills have the telltale conical shape of dormant volcanoes. There are a few hotels in town, but we opted for an AirBnB (yes, even in Madagascar!) lakeside lodge that went for around $22…
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Scenes from a Moving Car: Antananarivo Commute
When I first got to Antananarivo I would stare out the window during the commute to work, and started taking pictures with my iPhone through the window of the shuttle. The water in the rice paddies has dried up significantly (but not all), and much of the effort has shifted to digging up the mud,…
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Getting Lost in Antananarivo, Just a Mile from Home
Less than a mile from our home is a lake that functions as a water catchment area during the rainy season, but also offers a running trail, a place for young lovers to escape, a livelihood for a small informal community, and maybe a bit of photography. We took a walk there late one recent…
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Madagascar’s Saha Forest Camp: An Eco-sperience! Part 2.
As the title suggests, this is a continuation of my previous post, wherein I describe Saha Forest Camp and its surroundings…in case an orientation is needed! We’re not serious hikers. But our local guide had done a good job so far guiding us through the rain forest, and we had nothing planned, so we decided…
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Madagascar’s Saha Forest Camp: an Eco-sperience! Part 1.
A couple of hours north of Antananarivo, at the end of a rutted, slick red clay road that meanders for about 10 kilometers eastward from the town of Anjozorobe, where the winding rice paddies finally end in a jumble of primary forest, Saha Forest Camp is perched on a hillside. We arrived at a clearing…
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Madagascar’s Mantadia National Park: the Lemurs
Normally when we go on a trip somewhere, we end up with 6-10 really good photos worth sharing, which give an overall impression of the experience. But I have been stalling on this post because the number of close-up lemur photos we got is pretty overwhelming. So I’m just going to post a bunch of…
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First Photowalk in Tana
We’ve had a few weeks to settle into the groove here in Antananarivo (pronounce “tananarive” but more frequently shortened to “tana”) and so we figured it was high time we got out and about with our cameras. There is so much going on, and so many fascinating street scenes to photograph here – but we…