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.

© 2010, Madafan.com: Discover Madagascar. This post was originally posted/or syndicated from http://www.madafan.com

(cc) Garry- www.visionandimagination.com

I once asked Madafan readers about making Madagascar a destination for extreme sports, not only have I found answers from my internet-wanderings and from the discussions I had with few of them, but one exciting experience is soon going to happen in the south region of Madagascar. In that previous article, I was mentioning the Camel trophy raid that happened in Madagascar 30 years ago, this time some four wheel drive passionates are going to ride from Morondava to Taolagnaro via off-beaten track.

From July 31st to august 18th, the participants of the 4WD raid will fly from Antananarivo to Morondava, drive to Taolagnaro, then fly back to Antananarivo. They will drive a Toyota HDJ80 for 1800km, 80% off-road.

As soon as the first day of the trip, they will discover the now-famous “allée des baobabs” in Morondava, then they will head-up to the Tsingy de Bemaraha. Along the way, they will cross rivers (Tsiribihina, Kabatomena, Mangoky). Once they are tired, they will rest in Andavadoaka fine beach, . In fact, participants will either sleep in nice hotels ( salary bay) or under tents … Sounds to be a trip full of contrasts.

You can find detailed descriptions of the circuit here [in French though]

IMHO, this is a great illustration of how one can address the fact that Madagascar lacks infrastructure in order to develop its tourism. The price of the circuit ain’t cheap (3800 € for two persons + 1500€ of caution+ airfare + personal expenses + 300€ of fuel), but anyway, Madagascar is already an expensive destination

I just hope the organising team will practice responsible tourism so as not to screw everything on their way, nor scare people. I have asked for more informations from the organising team and hope we’ll have more to share with Madafan readers later on.

In the meantime, enjoy your vacations …

© 2010, Madafan.com: Discover Madagascar. This post was originally posted/or syndicated from http://www.madafan.com

© 2010, Madafan.com: Discover Madagascar. This post was originally posted/or syndicated from http://www.madafan.com

© 2010, Madafan.com: Discover Madagascar. This post was originally posted/or syndicated from http://www.madafan.com

So, here is my list of  ressources:

- on the internet:

* you’ve seen me writing on my blog (www.madafan.com) about our goals. I know my blog ain’t read by lot of madagascar-tourism players, but it is redistributed to different places…

* on twitter (by the time I wrote this article, I have around 700 twitter followers who know I’m mostly tweeting about madagascar)- so I made my request for help on preparing this holiday with a link to my blog’s entry…I’ve got a follow-up with  AsistenTravel who is still working on preparing an offer,

* on facebook (where I have around 400 friends): except for some status updates, I sent some private messages to some friends I know who have been to the places I want to go to…

* direct e-mail contact:I e-mailed some regional tourism office. It has delivered mitigated results, some players respond in less than 48 hours, but I’ve got lot of “mail delivery return” as the e-mail address I received are not working anymore. I can’t believe such basic mistakes still happen, guys, it only costs you less than 10usd/year to have a google-apps-powered (gmail-like) e-mail address that you can keep almost forever even though you’re changing your internet service provider… Less than 10USD/YEAR… Come on guys, you can do it, it’s half of a taxi-ride from Nosy Be’s airport to downtown…

* internet research: I was trying to browse the internet so as to check which place has nice reviews- but since most reviews are made by international tourists, most of them refer to places that do not necessarily fit my needs (and constraints)

© 2010, Madafan.com: Discover Madagascar. This post was originally posted/or syndicated from http://www.madafan.com

EarthDay turns 40 today, April 22nd 2010, that’s older than me but this year is the first time I really took the time to consider this day as a special one – there’s no shame admitting it …

And if you are one of those people who want to do something special this day but either think we don’t have the time (you know, we all get busy doing things we/or others consider as important),or don’t know exactly what to do (hey, we can’t all be experts on conservation matters…) then, at least one thing’s for sure, you  have time to click (otherwise you won’t be reading this post, huh?)… You probably have a facebook or a twitter account ….Which means you’re good to go for what I’m going to ask you to do now.

So here is a tip for you:from today up to June 22th 2010 , you can contribute to making the Vakanala project a winner of this ebay-sponsored tournament called … humanitycalls. Here is the description:

“Welcome to the eBay Fundraising Tournament For The Environment

The tournament cash pool has been seeded with $50,000 from eBay in support of environmental issues, such as climate change, conservation, renewable energy and pollution.

The top 30 nonprofits, as voted by YOU, will share in the tournament’s final cash pool – which will grow thanks to YOUR outreach efforts and donations!

”

You can support Vakanala NGO:

- either by voting

- or spreading the word about them running for this tournament

- or by donating (there’s a link for donating somewhere but I’ll only put one link in this post so that you have no choice but click this only link

Vakanala’s motto is “we’re planting trees for you”… Wanna make this earth day special? help this Malagasy NGO and vote for them so that they can have a slice of the $5000USD pie for planting trees in Madagascar … Here is the link  for voting

© 2010, Madafan.com: Discover Madagascar. This post was originally posted/or syndicated from http://www.madafan.com

(cc) OneGreatClick on Flickr

This year, I move toward a radical change in my professional career after June 2010, moreover I am celebrating 10 years of dating my wife (oh gosh, that’s been a long and lovely ride) we’ve decided to spend our vacation in Madagascar (as if we could afford spending a holiday outside of Madagascar , in a place where we’ve never been together.

© 2010, Madafan.com: Discover Madagascar. This post was originally posted/or syndicated from http://www.madafan.com

© 2010, Madafan.com: Discover Madagascar. This post was originally posted/or syndicated from http://www.madafan.com

David Grier

Frankly speaking, the first time I heard about the name of “David Grier”, it was a facebook (shame?) friend of mine who told me to become one of his fans, or friend him …. can’t even remember … I skipped the invite (so do I with all those funny- and not so funny- facebook invites that wants you to accept some blurry-not-even-understandable-by-the-developers-privacy-issues facebook application)… but anyway, this post is not about facebook privacy issues ….

Then I went on another online presence I have which is twitter and there comes up again this name from another online friend. I do admit I was not  scrutinizing twitter streams as I did before so, yes, I almost missed this one – the good thing is- you have other people looking out for you, then you only have to do some more research and then write a blog post … ain’t blog nice? lol)

So who is David Grier: he’s another South-african crazy man who have decided to do a challenge in Madagascar. Remember the story of Rian Manser who did a “around madagascar on kayak“? Well, maybe David Grier got inspired, since- instead of flying to Mada then kayaking, he decided to paddle from South Africa, then have adventures inside Madagascar and…paddle back to South africa… the adventure is still going on and you can follow him  on twitter

Talking about twitter, his twitter bio says he’s a chef … Is he doing this challenge in a quest for that rare spice that will add that “secret ingredient” to his recipe? I doubt it, but if he does that, then I won’t even ask for the bill if I were the one to eat at his table … It must be way beyond what I can afford …
So what the hell is he trying to achieve? Let me not try to interpret it as I may just screw his message. (that’s also a nice trick for not having to summarize what’s written on all of his multiple online presence)
On his facebook profile, his bio says:

Follow David’s progress on his latest Miles for Smiles initiative – a 5 month paddle, run and kite surf adventure to, across and back from Madagascar.

I already reported on what’s on his twitter bio, but you should definitely follow him on twitter as he regularly updates it (despite the challenging telecommunications issues that he surely faces, but hey- that’s proof that you still have connection even if you’re in the jungle in Madagascar …. well, at least in some parts of Madagascar)…It looks he’s uploading from his nokia phone- which is even better- no need to look for cybercafé and other internet spots…

Still on this telecommunication issue, my hats-off to David Grier as he can even upload some vids on his youtube channel ….Awesome (and a lot of patience too)… Well, in fact, it’s a channel to his “Madagascar challenge 2010″ AKA “Miles for smiles”

Guys, one post won’t cover it all, and despite my provoking title, I say it again: hats-off to David Grier for this phenomenal challenge…

So Madagascar-tourism-players, what about making Madagascar a destination for extreme-sports practitioners? Remember, we had our national Zoto who run across the country, now we have south africans challenging themselves;back to the eighties, we had the Camel Trophy 4×4 raid … there probably are other challenges that has already been done … Feel free to share them in the comments (or follow David Grier’s adventure)

© 2010, Madafan.com: Discover Madagascar. This post was originally posted/or syndicated from http://www.madafan.com

photo credit: joiseyshowaa

So a cruise will land in Taolagnaro on march 28th 2010, bringing 900 english-speaking tourists to this wonderful city of  Madagascar for 9 hours. The tourism ministry even held a special session to “motivate” tourism actors in this city so as to shine and give the best of them during this 9 hour stop… I can’t help but wonder: isn’t it what those actors are already supposed to do for any lambda tourist (whether their number is 900 or 1)?
Then english speakers and english teachers are encouraged to actively participate into this “event”. This is awkward. I frankly don’t know if I should be happy that people recognize the importance of speaking english, or if I should be concerned because those tourists and the local counterpart would have to communicate by way of writing on a piece of paper the price while bargaining (I had this kind of experience being on the tourist side while buying something in Hanoï few years ago, and while it was memorable in some way, it didn’t help much – even though the vendor kept on smiling). Nonetheless, the experience can be interesting for both sides

Despite all those sarcastic comments I have, I fully concur with the idea that each opportunity to shine should be seized given that tourism has suffered a lot this last year. By the way, I am wondering how does Friendly Planet go with their scheduled 2010 cruise to Madagascar that they asked for.

© 2010, Madafan.com: Discover Madagascar. This post was originally posted/or syndicated from http://www.madafan.com