When my 5 ½ year old granddaughter, Pilar learned that I would be traveling to Madagascar, she made it her personal mission to make sure that I was well versed in lemur facts. She got most of her knowledge from a wonderful online series by the Wild Kratt brothers. I now know that all lemurs are endangered because of habitat destruction due to deforestation. According to wildmadagascar.org, "there are nearly 60 "taxa" of lemurs (species, sub-species, and populations from 33 species across five families and 14 genera) ranging in size from the 25-gram pygmy mouse lemur to the indri." According to Pilar, not all of these adorable furry creatures are benign. Some of the tiny ones crawl into holes in logs and curl up in a ball exposing sharp spikes when frightened. Pilar's advice, " never stick your hand into a hole in a log in Madagascar!
When I heard from Op Smile that they needed a pediatrician for the Madagascar mission, I soon realized that I knew very little about the island nation. Below is a summary based on information from a variety of online sources, as in, I am not presenting this as "truth."
Madagascar is the fourth largest island after Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo. Due to its isolation, most of it's mammals and plants and half of its birds exist nowhere else on the the planet. People began to arrive between 350 BC and AD 550 in outrigger canoes from Borneo, and beginning around AD 1000, first Bantu and then other tribal people from east Africa made the journey over the water to the island. There are about 18 ethnic subgroups on Madagascar of which the Merina is the largest. There were shifting political alliances until the early 19th century when they were united under the Kingdom of Madagascar by a series of Merina nobles. In 1897, the monarchy collapsed, the Malagasy were absorbed into the French colonial empire. In 1960, the country became independent, and since then, there have been four major constitutional periods or republics. Since 1992 there has been a Constitutional Democracy in place. Hery Rajaonarimampianina has been President since 2014. The island continues to have strong ties with France as well as economic and cultural links with French-speaking West Africa. An interesting side note is that Lutheran missionaries from Norway came to Madagascar in 1868 and established a hospital for people with leprosy in what is now Antsirabe. There were approximately 900 leprosy patients at the time who previously had not had a place to live or receive care.
The population of Madagascar is around 22 million, and the World Bank has estimated that 92% of Malagasy live on less than $2 per day. Poverty and the competition for agricultural land have put pressure on the island's dwindling forests, home to much of Madagascar's unique wildlife and key to its emerging tourist industry. Ecotourism, vanilla, cloves, coffee, lichees, shrimp, gems, particularly sapphires, and chromite are the main industries. Most Malagasies practice a mix of traditional religions and Christianity.
Well, that's about the extent of my knowledge. I leave for Madagascar on September 13th and will pick up the blog again once I'm there. I'll send links for photos as well once I get that figured out.
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