By Catherine Craig, Mamy Ratsimbazafy | Directors, CPALI and SEPALI Madagascar
First things first - we are revving up the work at the demonstration site and that means we need to bulid a house for a 24 hour watchman. The watchman is needed to protect the property from maurading cows, chickens, and individuals who might want to harvest our cocoons and vanilla. Included with the house will be a fancy composting toilet! We do things right at SEPALI Madagascar! What is a bit unexpected is that the toilet is more expensive than the house. Hmm - something is wrong here.
While getting ready for the training center the team has been making multiple site improvements with plantings of silkmoth host plants, cleaning out of a pond that is going to be used to raise dragonfly larvae for food as part of our insects for food program. In addition the team has been planting vanilla to gorw on the silk moth host plants to illustrate to farmers how they can use the Talandoha for an added income opportunity. In fact, Mamy has been growing vanillla at the demonstration site for two years and the flowers are quite beautiful. Did you know that vanilla does not have any pollinators in Madagascar and therefore each flower needs to be hand pollinated? Furthermore, each plant produces only one flower per day. With increased farmer activity in vanilla production we hope to increase farmer activity to tend the caterpillars - it all fits!
We are still trying to deal with our electricity conundrum. A new point of attack is to purchase manual sewing machines and therefore greatly reduce our electricity need for now. In that, case we could probably manage with a few solar cells for cooking, evening light, etc. We had hoped to have our office at the training center but we are being creative and looking for a secondary site in town. Stay tuned!
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