Introduction

First working with WWF is a once in a lifetime opportunity that you will only gain to open your door to the immense global challenges that we continue to face. People in developing nations have been made to believe that help from the outside is always what creates the necessary change. I was in Madagascar courtesy of WWF International, WWF MWIOPO and other partners who aided in my travel the experience was worthwhile. I was to intervene in Village Ankazomborona, District of Ambilobe, Region Diana Northern Madagascar. We (Guillaume lippinois, Tatiania Saade and Me) were working on a Adaptation to Climate Change Project In Bay Ambaro Seascape.

Once in Madagascar, I was in a different world. It was my first time In an Island state and it presented an array of mixed thoughts. The realization that I couldn’t speak proper French as I come from a English speaking nation made the experience more exciting from the airport to the hotel and finally to the villages. I walked in confusion for a couple of days trying to find a bearing of the beauty and strange place that I had found myself.

Time in Madagascar offered me different perspectives to life’s views. I was powerless there, engulfed with beautiful, cool and respectful people. With my not so good Malagasy you would ask for directions to the nearest bank, bureau, restaurant and where to get a taxi bourse (that was always exciting). Just you know the taxi bourse is never full.

I spent time in Ankazomborona…a village I grow nostalgic of any time the name comes up. I have come to fall in love with the people, villages, and lifestyles and above all I met awesome friends that I do not believe I would if it was not for WWF. I at time have watery eyes and shade small drops of tears when I think of the glamorous moments I had in the village. In the village the party never stops. It’s all the time and all week. 
 

Malagasy are very curious and want to learn a lot, you will come to learn that they are shielded from the rest of Africa when it comes to global development and information. They do not live in hurry, live at the moment and handle each day as it comes.
 

“Being in Madagascar you learn how to live life on the basic of levels possible, you understand how people are greatly interlinked to natural resources extraction and how degradation of such resources tends to affect them”.