This post is running for the World Blogger Contest for the Madagascar destination. I wish I had a more accurate topic to categorize it into, but the closest ones are probably “ecotourism”, “Art, crafts & shopping”, or “culture”.

The point for this post is to report how this rosewood issue is addressed by local population- by local, I mean Malagasy, and especially those living in the cities bordering the parks where those rosewood are found. A close attention is paid to buying rosewood products.

For those who are not aware, Madagascar, an island in the indian ocean is one of the richest biodiversity hot-spot in the world. People usually refer to this island with a lot of superlatives (great, wonderful, must-see …), and Madafan sometimes adopts this style when pushing people to come and visit this country, my country. However, I’ll go a different way this time and will take a different perspective with regard to dealing with this catastrophic rosewood trafficking that has been going on in the north part of the island.

I usually assimilate trafficking to some kind of mysterious/undercover/anti-gang-like activities. So when I recently travelled to Antalaha, probably the most-populated city in the borders of the rosewood national parks, I was expecting a lot of suspicion from my local peers if I ever tried to discuss about it. How totally wrong I was.

Market day is happening on tuesdays and thursdays in Antalaha. You usually find there clothes and household furnitures, not to mention vanilla beans (for those who don’t know it yet, Madagascar holds around 70% of the natural vanilla bean world market, and the Sava region where Antalaha is located is THE base for the main exporters- a kilo of prepared vanilla bean was priced 10USD when I was there- at least I could buy some to bring as a voan-dàlana to my wife, buying rosewood products is a total NO-GO)

Some rosewood products

Based on my a-priori beliefs, the best I expected for when going to the market was to find out some indications to look for some rosewood products at the market. I wasn’t prepared to find out that local people buy and sell sculptures made of rosewood- without any fear- they don’t even hide from doing it. First shock.

When it comes down to price, I couldn’t believe it, it’s a total mess.Most of the items I found was cheaper than similar products made of plastic.Second shock.

Consider the products on the right:

- the rosewood-made THB beer bottle is sold around 1.5 USD (that’s damn cheap, an actual 75cl THB beer is around 1 USD in this part of the island).Most of the pub/bar in Antalaha proudly have at least one of those “rosewood-crafted decoration bottles” displayed along with the usual alcohol they are selling,

- the lamp is sold around 7 USD. My hotel room had this kind of lamp – and I didn’t even stay in a luxury hotel  since it costed 9USD/night.

- If I can remember it well, the flower-pot in the middle was priced around 5USD. A shame.

Those are announced price without even bargaining, and God knows Malagasy people bargain a lot.

yet another set of rosewood products

Now, to give you a better idea of the volume of items sold, let’s take a look at the following picture illustrating stocks of rosewood-made products ready-to-be sold at the market. This only shows what was available when we went to one crafter house- as an aside note, we could easily visit three crafter’s carpentry in one day. There are probably hundreds of people in this sculpting-rosewood market;  market in Antalaha happens twice a week, moreover, I’m almost sure some no-conscience people will try to “export” those rosewood products to some other cities in Madagascar in order to sell them at higher prices – you can guess the results. Although it may be peanuts, financially speaking, compared to the estimated 460 000USD/day market of illegal exporting of raw rosewood, I’m concerned about the fact that this rosewood thing is not considered illegal, nor is it considered as a bad thing by local people. Most of the people who I’ve talked to even said that, since vanilla export prices has catastrophically declined from almost 200USD/kilo to 15USD/kilo, local people found it more interesting to exploit rosewood than vanilla in this north region of Madagascar. Even worse,  Malagasy buy those rosewood thing by arguing one of the following:

- later on, they would be able to show to their child/grandchild how a rosewood product looks like, since they already expect this precious wood to disappear, so it’s as if they’re investing into something that will scarcely be available, though will become a lot more expensive years later,

-  there is this feeling whereby Malagasy people thinks: since this rosewood is massively exported to china, why don’t we take our slice of the pie

Since Madafan is about inviting people to come to Madagascar, you may be tempted to think that this post is yet another one targeting this same goal. DON’T GET ME WRONG – that’s not the purpose of this post. I only wanted to tell the rosewood story from my own point of view, not from the popular environmentalist angle (there’s nothing wrong with it BTW, I even endorse it). If you’re planning to come to Madagascar because you want your slice of the pie from this rosewood catastrophe, do us a favor, stay where you are, don’t you even think about it. I know, it’s a bit naive, but we can’t also close our eyes to those things that are happening now. I just hope anyone trying to mitigate/eradicate this rosewood issue in Madagascar don’t forget to consider the fact that local people (at least a big proportion) do not consider it as a bad thing, which is a shame.

Now if you want a broader view of this issue, Globalvoices has written a concise summary about the undercover investigations about this rosewood trafficking. A must-read.

Now, you may wonder about the connection with a travel blog contest, well, people usually blog about the good things they experience during their travel so as to invite other traveler to visit the same place, this post does the opposite: it’s a kind of “What NOT to do while you are in Madagascar” since I expect this contest to be popular enough to raise awareness on this topic. Don’t be deceived though, I have another post which showcases nice culinary experiences you can have in Madagascar coming out soon.

In the meantime, here are some photos that you can freely use for illustrating rosewood topics.

No need for high-tech tools All those woods on the soil are rosewood

Rosewood-colored soil Even the dust turns rosewood-bloody-coloured

almost the only tool for rosewood crafters the only mechanical tool used for producing basic designs

Rosewood turned gold Sometimes the rosewood is combined with other wood for designing other lamps

ready-to-market rosewood products

rosewood products Some rosewood products