Berenty Things to Do

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I dearly wish that we had been able to spend more time in Fort Dauphin - we only passed through for a couple of hours en route for Berenty, and the little that we saw of the scenery was stunning. In our two visits to Madagascar, it is the only truly rocky coastline that we've seen, and in fact, if you'd asked me to identify the location from the photos above, I'd have suggested it was somewhere in the Western Cape of South Africa.

After the suffocating torpor of Toliara (where we'd flown in from), there was also a very welcome sea breeze blowing in, and it had the breezy air of a coastline that warranted closer inspection: in hindsight, if we'd know this, we'd have skipped the very underwhelming Anakao and flown straight to Fort Dauphin.

However, don't expect any bargains in Fort Dauphin, as it is currently experiencing an economic boom due to Rio Tinto's massive QMM mineral sands project on the edge of town. This project has created literally thousands of jobs, and has placed considerable pressure on everything from housing to availability of air flights between Fort Dauphin (which nobody seems to call by its new name of Taolagnaro), pushing prices upwards.

The QMM project will mine ancient dunes along the coastline to recover ilmenite and rutile (the little black specks you often see in beach sand), which are subsequently used to produce titanium dioxide - used in sunscreens and as a pigment. The process is not quite as invasive as it sounds, since much of the indigenous vegetation on the dunes that will be mined has already been irreparably damaged by human activity. As a biodiversity offset for the land they will disturb, Rio have also established three nature reserves (the largest being Mandena) where pristine dune ecosystems are being preserved and will be used for education and ecotourist purposes.

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Of all the interesting things that we saw along the Berenty road, by far and away the one that intrigued me most was the aggregate extraction. Maybe it's because I am originally a geologist, and more likely because I have had periperal involvement in research around the sustainability of 'sand harvesting' (the euphemism most often applied to this practice in areas where the extraction rate exceeds the rate at which the resource is replenished from upstream in major flow events, rendering aggregate extraction unsustainable).

Aggregate needs to be sourced wherever cement, concrete or mortar is required for construction purposes. In the developing world, this is most commonly from a river bed, which removes the need for expensive crushing. In areas which experience fairly consistent river flow, aggregate needs to be dredged from the river bed: however, in areas such as this, where there are marked differences in seasonal flow, the sand can be recovered by hand or mechanical means.

What impressed me most was the sophistication of the materials handling system. The number of stockpiles - each for a different particle size or shape - was astonishing: each presumably customised to a particular use. What was even more amazing was to watch sand being shipped in on shallow draught boats - presumably to provide a product unavailable locally?

If only some of the mining companies that I have worked with over the years had had such effective quality management systems! It's only a shame that such wonderful aggregate has not been put to use in fixing the infernal road!

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In every village along the Fort Dauphin - Berenty road, you will come across a number of charcoal sellers: this is to be expected, as grid power has yet to reach most of the remote areas of the country (and even those areas which have been electrified experience often frequent supply outages).

This presents one of the great moral challenges for visitors who consider themselves environmentally responsible - and come to places like Madagascar to marvel at the extraordinary and unique fauna and flora. The charcoal (and firewood) being sold is generated from the surrounding forests, many of which form part of fragile and threatened ecosystems. Close to centres of population, the 'sustainable' sources of firewood and charcoal (fallen trees and branches) have long since been exhausted, and thus wood is gathered by felling living trees, usually with no corresponding programme of reforestation (and, even if this happens, very seldom with indigenous species).

There is no easy answer: people need a fuel source for cooking and heating, and in the absence of any alternative, firewood and charcoal are the only options. However, when you consider the quantity of charcoal on sale and mentally convert it to the amount of wood that would need to be harvested to generate the fuel sources that are on sale, it reinforces the pressure that people are placing on the natural resource base. When you consider that many of the areas in which wood is being collected are either within or adjacent to vulnerable habitats, it throws into stark relief the immense threat that population pressure poses to Madagascar's biodiversity.

Perhaps the only positive note that I can add to this rather depressing note is that the packaging is generally recyclable - virtually all the charcoal we saw being sold was packed into old rice bags!

Conventional medicine in most parts of Africa - and particularly in the more remote regions - takes second place to traditional medicine, and Madagascar is no exception. People place greater trust in what they know, and what has served their ancestors for generations, and traditional medicine is generally more readily available, and often more affordable than 'western' drugs.

This photo is of a traditional medicine stall in a village not far from Berenty. We were assured by our guide that some of the bark on sale had properties similar to Viagra: all we can say is judging by the number of children running around, it must be jolly effective!