Madagascar Rainforest

‘Tagesschau’ says that several countries in the South of Africa – including Congo, Lesotho, Angola, Mozambique, Madagascar and Tanzania – have decided that the South of Africa should become the global leader in the field of hemp production for medical purpose.

The German newspaper ‘GEA’ says that in the South West of Madagascar some areas are so dry that parents send their kids to beg for water – instead of having them attend school. They ask for example tourists to go to their hotel and fill up their bottles with water from the tap. If you give in however, you encourage parents to keep their kids from school as their begging for water is too successful. On the other hand psychologists found out that especially on vacation we are prone to donating stuff. Reason is that on vacation our brain is on arelaxing mode – and suddenly stumbling upon a poor beggar child just is a slightly stressful situation. Still we should resist. Some people however go on a trip like this, because they want to help the poor country they visit. With the correct planning you may even help these people by travelling to a poor country. For example instead of going to a hotel belonging to an international hotel chain you should go to a local hotel, run by locals and where guests are offered local food instead of food imported from industral countries. You should buy for example snacks on local markets instead of using international market chains. Tour operators like “Tui” or “G-Adventures” for example are knoen to offer trips to developing countries where llocals are treated with respect/ as equal partners. Positive side effects of tourism in developing countries are: an increasing GDP, thousands of jobs in the tourist branch, cities try harder to ensure access to water and electricity in most places and more locals learn to write and read as this sometimes is necessary when dealing with people from industrial nations.

Today I watched a documentary movie on TV. It was about unexplored places on Earth:
>Tsingy de Bamaraha in Madagascar for example has dense and unaccessible rock formations, making it (almost) impossible to climb here.
>The Mount Mabu Rainforest in Mozambique is very dense and has a challenging geography.
>The Northern Forest Complex in Myanmar: Sure one major problem is the government not letting too many tourists in, but heat, heavy rain and a lack of oxygen – it’s very high above sea level – also make this a very hostile place.
>Gangkhar Puensum in Bhutan is the highest unclimbed mountain on Earth. It’s not just that this geographic area is very hard to climb, but also it’s forbidden to climb here as locals would be very upset. They think this place is haunted by ghosts, demons and gods. By the way Bhutan also has another mountain that has never been climbed before. It is called Tongshanjiabu.
>Nepal has a variety of dangerous, yet unclimbed and thus unexplored mountains such as Thulagi Chuli, the Southern summit of Chamar, Himlung II or Machapuchare.

‘Suedwestpresse’ says that due to an overproduction of vanilla the worldwide price has dropped rapidly. This is especially hard for Madagascar as this country has a very strong vanilla-based agriculture.

>‘GEA’ says that in the future vanilla-based products may be a bit more expensive than now. Reason is the high number of unemployed people on Madagascar who feel forced to earn their living by stealing and in most cases re-selling vanilla beans. The number of cases has increased so rapidly that meanwhile farmers start harvesting before all of these beans are even ripe – making some of the harvest useless. Can’t blame the thieves though! Madagascar is a poor country with very little governmental support for unemployed people.
>The Roman-Catholic church St. Wolfgang in Reutlingen (Baden-Wuerttemberg /Germany) in cooperation with some other institutes founded the aid-organization ‘Zukunft Madagaskar’. They provide poor, but promising young people on Madagascar with a scholarship for the university of Vakinankaratra. On a flyer made by ‘Zukunft Madagaskar’ I read this week that for example this year they helped the poor son of a single mother and they helped someone who was too poor to start studying, but was promised a job by a radio station if he graduated from university.
The IBAN of ‘Zukunft Madagaskar’ for donations is:
DE81640500000100055986
and the BIC/SWIFT-code is: SOLADES1REU.