Atsika: Education, Conservation, & Cultural Preservation for the Ankarana

a new endeavor on the horizon….
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The connection that I have built with the Ankarana region of northwest Madagascar neither begins nor ends with me.

Before my arrival, the legend of Jao Ankarana (professor Andrew Walsh) was already a tall and lively tale around many-a cookfire.  “Now that white man can DANCE just like one of us!  He can recite proverbs like an elder!  He knows our history better than we do!”

Equally legendary, there was Mboty Ankarana (professor Lisa Gezon), a name that would spark knee-slaps of recognition, set faces a-smiling at the recollection of Mboty.  “You talk about strong!  That woman can carry water on her head for miles just like our women.  And tall!  Mwah!  She would sit and listen to our stories for hours, and now she knows us like we do.”

Once I started to learn to speak a bit of “teny Ankarana”, rumor started going around that I was their younger sister.  I tried to live up to the high bar they had set: I practiced carrying things on my head whenever my routes led me through the woods, until finally I was ready to walk through the village with my bag on my head — and I once walked all the way to Ambilobe and back using only my head to carry my things.  But I still can’t dance like Lisa, and I don’t hang out with the Ankarana royalty like Andrew.   : )

When I finally met Andrew and Lisa, it did sort of feel like family.  I grew to know them, I learned from them like a little sister should, and we soon began to plan collaborative projects together.

The most amazing of those collaborations — a study-abroad program designed by Andrew and his colleague Ian Colquhoun — involves the University of Western Ontario, the Universite du Nord in Antsiranana (Madagascar’s northern province), and our new community-managed natural area in the Ankarana.  Andrew, Ian, and a group of Canadian and Malagasy students stayed at our community-managed site for one week, helping to evaluate, improve, and support this innovative natural resource management and cultural preservation initiative.  Two students stayed on for an additional two months studying the local culture and ecology; one just defended her Master’s thesis about her research in the Ankarana.  The circle continues.

You can read more about that collaboration, now entering its fourth year, here.

By the time the study-abroad program happened, Julia had arrived in the Ankarana to replace me as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  I could not have asked for a more perfect person to join our chain of northern addicts.  Within hours, people were wondering if we were sisters.

Since my activities in the Ankarana were a bit more complex than usual, and since I had been there for four years, Peace Corps allowed Julia and I to overlap for three months before I left the north for good.  Our time together was fantastic.  Within days, she was digging into the social intricacies of the Ankarana community, and overwhelmed by its ecological beauty and cultural uniqueness.  I was so happy that she was there for such a critical stage in the growth of KOFAMA, the name of the local association I had founded to manage the natural area, and for the project with UWO.

And by the time Julia left, she was as thoroughly attached to the Ankarana as the rest of us:  Jao, Mboty, and Soariziky (my adoptive name, “good fortune”) was joined by Soameva (Julia, “blessed and beautiful”).

And now Julia is spearheading the creation of a non-profit organization that we’re calling Atsika, which means “we” or “us” in the Ankarana dialect.  This is a new initiative to bring us all together, to tie together our activities to support the Ankarana, and to allow us to continue to work to support conservation, education, and sustainable development in the region into the future.

We have a temporary website up at www.ankaranaeducationproject.org.  In the near future, we will be transferring content to www.atsika.org, and the Ankarana Education Project will feature the story of our ongoing Analasatrana community school project.  Completing the school and creating long-term sustainability for it will be a key initial activity for us at Atsika.

We look forward to your support as we move ahead!  The goal for 2011: get ourselves legally established as a non-profit association under US law.  Check back to this blog and to our new website for updates, or subscribe to the website to be notified of our progress.