Are you a green vazaha, vazaha vert or vazaha maintso?  Spotlight Madagascar’s 2008 t-shirts can help you show others just how green you are, in three different languages! 

Calling all aspiring event-planners and marketing experts!  Our North Carolina team needs help with this incredibly busy summer of fundraising.  Click over to the Volunteer page for specifics and contact information.

Our Director of Video Production, Misti Pinter, has created some great films for us.  They’re available in HD on Vimeo at http://www.vimeo.com/channel9435

and the ubiquitous YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/spotlightmadagascar  

See these clips and more at a Spotlight Madagascar presentation at McKinney in Durham, North Carolina on Tuesday, May 13.  Be there at 6 pm.  Email sara@spotlightmadagascar.org for details! 

Americans have Bold Vision for Madagascar

By Lindsay Redifer

  Americans Sara LeHoullier and Sondra Fischer love two things: teaching and Madagascar. Now they are combining the two in a project custom-made for Tamatave, a city on the east coast of the Island, a center for learning and cultural exchange for native English speakers and the Malagasy people.

  The two lived in Madagascar from 2005 to 2007 when they served as volunteers in the Peace Corps. Once their tours ended, they found themselves at home in the United States and unsettled. Fischer called LeHoullier with an ultimatum-if she got down to her last two thousand dollars and was still without a job she was returning to Madagascar and wanted LeHoullier to come with her. “I thought, why not?” LeHoullier said.

  And, they were off. Today, the two friends work constantly to bring their idea of a cultural exchange center to life in Tamatave. “We’re one,” Fischer said of their partnership. The two want the same things for the community, a place to learn English and learn how to benefit from local tourism, an industry on the rise.

   Tour guide Fidelys Raharimandimby is one of Fischer and LeHoullier’s biggest cheerleaders, said he’s already worked with many English speaking tourists. He’s noticed English speakers seem more likely to spend more money than French speakers, but only if there’s something special to see.

  “I want to show people the hiking trails near the University of Tamatave, waterfalls in the nearby forest, the farmers who sing in their rice fields,” Raharimandimby said. “And the grazing zebu and to taste the amazing fruits in the area.”  The Pangalana Canal, which runs through Tamatave, could also be developed as an attraction, he says, and could be made into a one or two-day trip for visitors.

  Raharimandimby is one of many who’ve seen some changes take place and anticipate more. Students at the English Learning Institute, (ELI), have also said that English is now an essential for tourism.

Jean-Baptiste Randramario, 45, an eye-doctor; explained that Malagasy people are so accustomed to French foreigners and the French language that English will be a huge change for them.

 “It’s not only a matter of speaking,” said Randramario, “but thinking as well. It’s not the same as French.”

  Briand Thiophile, 28, full-time student, agreed.. “In a few years,” said Thiophile, “we will see that Madagascar is not the same.”

  A major change has already taken place at a local restaurant, Le Bateau Ivre.  Formerly known as an exclusively French haunt, the restaurant is now seeing all kinds of new clientele as a result of new mining projects and foreign investors who now live in Tamatave.

  Helen Hodgson, a South African and co-owner and manager of the Bateau Ivre with husband Christian Fay d’Herbe, said she loves the new international community. “The other night we had a party on the deck. We had Koreans, Japanese, Norwegians, South Africans, English, Welsh, Scotts, Irish all up there,” she said. “Which is marvelous.”

  Like Fischer and LeHoullier, Hodgson adores Tamatave and feels it deserves to be discovered. She spoke of the towns endless coastline and the perfume of cloves and jasmine that permeates the air. She supports the plans for the center and hopes to see the two Americans find success.

  Meanwhile, LeHoullier and Fisher are have dedicated themselves to making their vision happen. Everyday is a series of meetings, real estate hunting, faxes, calls, confirmations and baby steps forward. Its slow going, but they’re optimistic.

  “Madagascar is beautiful,” said LeHoullier, “and the Malagasy people are capable and intelligent. They just need a better structure and a platform for their ideas.” The center could be the very place to start hearing what the Malagasy have to tell the rest of the world.

Lindsay Redifer is a Peace Corps Volunteer.  She teaches journalism in Majunga, and has started a website with her students: http://ecolefiresaka.pbwiki.com/English.  She is also a talented photographer, and has provided us with some wonderful shots of Toamasina.  

Spotlight Madagascar needs your help!  It’s serious fundraising time, and all I’m going to be doing in the next four months is writing grants, applying for fellowships and hosting activities and events.  We will be posting new and exciting things to the website, including a series of short films we’re making using the footage we took during our research trip, and a Malagasy-English dictionary with audio so that people can learn a little ‘Gasy before going over, or a little English before coming over here!  Great tourist information is on the way as well.  Though the Mayor of Tamatave has offered to donate a building for our Community Center, we will still need to renovate it, and would like to make it as “green” as possible.  This, in addition to buying computers, desks, books, etc., is going to take advice, cash, support and creativity.  We would appreciate it if anyone with any of those things to spare could contact us! 

It appears that Spotlight Madagascar has come to Tamatave at exactly the right time! After a week of meeting with local associations and speaking with community members, we have seen again and again that a large majority of the people in the city and the region want to learn to communicate in English. Motivating factors include a recent increase in Anglophone tourists and the arrival of the Ambatovy mining project, whose employees are mostly English speaking. Tour guides, small business owners, taxi drivers…anyone who has any interaction with these new arrivals are finding it difficult to take advantage of the economic and social possibilities they represent solely because of their inability to speak English. Though there are some great institutions that teach basic language and grammar here in Tamatave, there is little opportunity to practice with native speakers. We’ve identified several local Associations who are excited about working together to achieve our goal of creating a Community and Cultural Center here in Tamatave where we will host courses and seminars in English focusing on subjects that are of interest to the community at large.We’d like the Center to serve as a cross-cultural exchange as well. It will be a place that will feature Malagasy and Betsimisaraka traditions, art and music–a forum where community members can showcase their culture. Tourists and locals alike will be able to access the Center for art shows, films and activities.Working alongside the Regional Office of Tourism and other related organizations, Spotlight Madagascar will also work to help develop an infrastructure for sustainable community-based ecotourism. The entire region would benefit from a further increase in Anglophone tourists, especially those interested in seeing small-town life in Madagascar. Community-based tourism would allow the local people to see the economic and social rewards from the tourists that may pass through to eat a traditional lunch on a mat of palm fronds, drink the local liquor, or watch a Betsimisaraka song and dance performance. While visitors get a taste of real life Madagascar, they will also be helping facitilitate cross-cultural understanding between two very different worlds.

Spotlight Madagascar was officially incorporated in the state of North Carolina on November 1, 2007. In order to complete our 501(c)(3) paperwork and gain nonprofit status, we must first make a research trip to Madagascar.

On December 29, we will fly from Boston to Antananarivo, and we’ll return on February 20. During our time there, we will meet with the appropriate ministries, potential partners, and look at buildings while organizing a formal budget. We’ll also reconnect with those that we said ‘goodbye’ to in August, and our network of reliable contacts.