I know lots of you have been interested in seeing what my living conditions here are like, so here’s what you’ve been waiting for – a tour of KAFS, my home away from home here in Madagascar.

Dining Area / Kitchen

This is our main communal area at camp. It’s one big all purpose structure, with groovy checkered tablecloths to boot. We have a team of open-fire cooks, including Nadia, Christina and Fabby, who work wonders with rice three times a day. We also use this area as our office, meeting room, classroom, and area to shelter various uninvited animal visitors from the village!

Washing

KAFS has two ‘flushing’ toilets, which do not flush, and about 5 gravity fed showers which do not work. A lot of time is spent hauling buckets of fresh water up from our well for washing. We can do our laundry by hand here, but we’re also lucky enough to have a little woman from the village who will wash our clothes for a pricey 7 cents per item!

KAFS Building

A mostly empty building that contains our lockers (for all our valuables), a ‘library’, store room, and solar panel charging stations so that we always have power for data entry!

Nurseries

One of the Madagascar Biodiversity Project’s big programs is reforestation. They have a bunch of nurseries across the region, including some here at KAFS, where they grow seedlings.

Tent Site

This is my tent site. It’s a similar structure to the dining area, and three of us share the same space. It helps to keep out the wind, rain, rodents and curious locals!

Hammocks

As there’s only a small group of us living here at the moment, me and another worker have claimed one of the other tent sites for our hammocks. At least 50% of our conversations revolve around when we will have time for our next hammock nap.

And that’s it! Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to know about KAFS or what it’s like living here!