Madagascar | August 2017

sepiareverb

sepiareverb

genius and moron
Local time
7:37 AM
Joined
Feb 7, 2007
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Just back from Madagascar, two weeks there with my nearly 80 year old father. We started in Tana, and after a few days trip into Ranomafana Park worked our way down to Tulear. I brought two M9 bodies with 28/2, 35/2 and 50/2 lenses, the Ricoh GR and an Olympus TG-4. Lots of time on the road, and lots of images to still edit. Some quickly processed files from the first few cards:










 
Thanks for the "slide show", Bob... Interesting to see views of this less-visited land!
 
Beautiful series...the Colour palatte is Wonderfully rich and soft on the Eye
#3 is my favorite

The harsh conditions make one Sad
The vibrancy of Color, Sky, & Light give one fortitude
 
Strangely it did not seem harsh everywhere at all Helen. There were beggars in the larger cities, but as a whole they seemed less desperate and in better health than the NYC homeless of the mid 80s. Substinence farming can certainly be hard - especially in the south where it is drier - but the vegetables on display in the markets were lovely. The meat was not refrigerated, but was certainly all fresh, and chicken was available "on the hoof" everywhere. I spoke for a while with a Chicagoan there with the Peace Corps, he has been in country for 18 months, and lives in a stick/thatch hut a 3 hour canoe ride from the nearest ox cart path, a full day from a road. He said he has never been healthier, he eats fresh food every day, including fish moments from the sea. But, there certainly are plenty of people eating rice and some few vegetables 90% of the time, and I saw plenty of kids who looked sick. Winter everywhere does bring illness. The cities surely were the harshest places.

I would love to return for a longer time Hogarth, feel like I only got a taste of the place.
 
To me some of the Living conditions seemed hard...
a hard life for some... makes me Sad
Sorry I commented ...

(not trying to be critical of the enviornment)
 
Thanks oftheherd. The intensity of color was surprising to me, but a welcome subject!

I don't want to make it sound like the people there have an easy life by any means. We saw scant evidence of machinery of any kind. Most agriculture is done by hand, including turning over the soil in vast acres of fields with small shovels. Planting is all done by hand. We saw two tractors the entire time, one appeared broken, one hauling a trailer full of people.

The Peace Corps guy was certainly helped by his two and a half decades of nutrition before landing in his village. My dad and I both got sick, we benefited from the antibiotics we carried. For most, indoor air pollution is a real problem, with asthma commonplace. The motorized vehicles have little to no attenuation of tailpipe emissions, the smell on the roads in the larger towns reminded me of my childhood in Newark NJ. Some strides are being made with regard to access to healthcare for those in rural areas, drones are being used to deliver samples for testing, and return medicines. More access to water would certainly help vast numbers of people.
 
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