Magical Madagascar: Textiles, Chameleons, Lemurs & Baobabs!

Antananarivo

We’ll arrive in (and depart from) the bustling capital city of Antananarivo or just ‘Tana.’ (If you want to say the whole word: ‘An-tana-nana-rive-oh’…long word but easy when you break it down.) Almost every city name and personal last names are very long here!

Tana is about halfway in the middle of the country; we’ll go a ways both north and south, to see particularly interesting regions. Each area is home to special flora and fauna that lives nowhere else. This will involve a couple of domestic flights, but will avoid some of the most pot-holed roads!
Much of our time will be spent in and around the large National Parks and official nature reserves. These preserves have been specially created in regions with special endemic creatures, even some that are rare and endangered.

Our naturalist/guide Patrick will be with us during the entire trip. Local guides will also accompany our group in each National Park and reserve. This practice offers work to expert local guides, who know the locale and the animals better than anyone. They are also keen to motivate and inspire others in their home region to learn about and support the local ecology. Many of these local guides have discovered new species and accomplished a great deal of important research on site.

The exact itinerary is still being confirmed but we will maximize our time and see as much as possible! Each area we visit is home to specific varieties of lemurs, chameleons, and other fauna. One guaranteed highlight is the extremely bio-diverse Ranomafana National Park, south of the capital. We’ll take both day and night hikes here, to spot sleeping chameleons and other nocturnal creatures. This park is famous for Black & White Ruffed Lemur, Bamboo Lemurs, Sifaka, and Red-Bellied Lemur, among others.

Our guide Patrick grew up in Ranomafana Park and loves its wildlife. Patrick’s dad is a renowned lemur geneticist who coordinates with an important US zoo, famous for its lemur research.

Weaving with Wild Silk Cocoons

Big, tan-colored, wild silkworm cocoons produce the fiber for one of Madagascar’s textile forms. In the natural cycle, the silkworms have metamorphosed inside the cocoons into pupae. Then in the next stage, they transforn into moths.The moths eat an exit hole into their cocoons which breaks the continuous filament of the silk. Thus this silk cannot be reeled like silk from unbroken cocoons. It’s boiled and scutched or roughly combed to form a fiber mass. This mass is twisted into thick strands on the spinner’s thigh — then these fibers are further boiled and softened and then woven into scarves with a surprisingly soft and pleasant hand. We’ll visit a silk workshop where we’ll see the whole process of boiling the cocoons and processing the fiber into thread for weaving.

Another Malagasy textile form is the colorful coiled baskets and mats found in some regions. We’ll make our own beautiful coiled project in our basketry workshop! Materials included.

Chameleons and Other Creatures

Plus there’s a wide array of gorgeous chameleons in different colors and patterns. Over a hundred different species of chameleons live in Madagascar! We think of chameleons as changing colors but most only get darker, almost black, when they are afraid or stressed. They are harmless, slow-moving and will walk onto your hand if you approach slowly.

We’ll see loads of other critters everywhere we go, as well as interesting flowers and birds! We’ll see lemurs of different varieties, from tiny Mouse Lemurs (at left, about the size of a hamster) to big ones like Sifaka.

At the end of our adventure, we’ll return to Antananarivo and connect with our homeward bound flights on June 20.