Reminiscing before departure

It's the final days of the expedition, and i can't believe it has been 6 weeks, the time has passed so quickly. Mind you, we have done so much in that time, its amazing how we've fitted it all in. There has been fish monitoring, whale watching, school teaching, fish and benthic learning and science lectures. We've also done lots of diving and snorkelling, built a "base camp" for the new Eco Lodge, and people have some of their own projects such as building tank racks, preparing presentations and shark and turtle monitoring.

As I write, I'm sitting on my porch overlooking half moon beach while my feet slowly cook in the midday sun and a baby goat skitters about crying for it's mother. We have just had a lunch of rice, with goat stew, and will soon be heading down to the village for our final saturday English classes. Today we are going to have a fun class making christmas cards.

Apart from the diving and new (for me) science learning, doing activities with the children has been one of the most enjoyable parts of the expedition. In school it has been great to teach them a new language and see them have fun in our informal classes. Outside school we've worked with club "Alo Alo" to paint the club house walls with fish and maps of the world and Madagascar. Club Alo Alo is a conservation and environment club, run by Bic, who is our Malagasy research assistant and general superstar of BV. Last week when we went down to paint with them they sang us a song they'd written, it was so great. The fish and painting they did was brilliant too, I was really impressed by how involved they all wanted to be and how much they enjoyed themselves.
After the lesson this afternoon, I think i'll take a stroll back through the village and get some pictures of the people and places that have been our home for the last few weeks.

It's been a fantastic experience, and I'm so glad I came.

Sarah Perrin (Volunteer)