Landed in Tana!

After a near-miss of my flight at the Paris airport (a minute to spare), I made it to Tana, where miraculously all of my bags arrived as well. Things are looking up, since last summer I spent 3 weeks without my luggage. A change of clothes is a beautiful thing not to be taken for granted.

I'm here in Tana for a few days to arrange for all of my required permits and my extendable visa. Madagascar has a fairly serious permitting process, with a full application and review process that takes about 3 months, so researchers have to apply far ahead of time. The process is facilitated by MICET, an organization that supports and coordinates visiting researchers throughout Madagascar. Each foreign visitor that does work in the country also sponsors a Malagasy student. I met my assigned student today, a master’s student named Herman. He’s interested in comparing the feeding preferences of mouse lemurs in the dry and wet forests, which will fit in nicely with my project. We did pretty well with our communication, although my bad French and his limited English will be an interesting combination.
Photo: Steve Evans, 2005, Wikipedia