Winston Churchill Fellowship Report

Expedition to Madagascar

Kate Bassett

hurchill Memorial TrustFellowship Report 2010

ition to Madagascar

Kate Bassett-Jones

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Expedition Outline

My aim was to work with Outlook Expeditions (North Wales) to run an expedition to Madagascar for students from Pembrokeshire College. The expedition was a month long and involved trekking, canoeing, R&R and volunteer work. The students had instigated the trip and I helped them plan and put it together. The expedition company were invaluable at every stage providing help with planning, technical support, staff training, student training, providing a qualified leader and in-country support.

Use of Fellowship Grant

To fund the staff place which is normally funded by students. I felt that as the students had to pay just over three thousand pounds I would like to make sure that the staffing costs were removed from the total. By funding myself I could take the pressure off the students a little and by having this grant I had more time to help them fundraise.

Before the Expedition

The 28 days travelling was the culmination of 18 months hard work for us all. The students had to learn how to run meetings, plan events, raise money, budget & work as a team in order to be actually able to go on the trip.

They fundraised through numerous events including 2 sponsored head shaves (girls), 2 big gigs, busking, selling cawl (Welsh soup) on rugby days in the local pub, working in part time jobs, a sponsored abseil on our North Wales training weekend, making and selling valentines and Christmas gifts and much much more….

The team met most weeks to discuss plans. Some weeks it was planning fundraising and some to research Madagascar and contact the orphanage to learn about our projects. We ran the events from early on in the process and were met by Outlook Expeditions three times at the college over that time: once for initial team building and itinerary planning, once for more fundraising help and itinerary finalisation and once for final planning and to discuss kit.

We also had a weekend in North Wales, the Olwen Valley, hiking, camping and getting to know our equipment. It was March and rather snowy, just the preparation we needed for tropical Madagascar! ☺ One student could not come due to illness however as he had his Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award I was not worried about his outdoor ability, it would have been good for team building though. The sponsored abseil was on that weekend from the top of the Marquess of Anglesey tower. Five or six of the group took part and I got shoved over the edge too, grumbling and cursing!

The final preparation day was held the day before we left. Broad Haven Youth Hostel kindly gave us the field study centre to use for free and fed us well! It was a good idea to have a final preparation day to get us all into the right frame of mind, get missing kit, leave other things behind and leave the parents behind before we formed finally as a team of thirteen and set off on our big adventure.

Itinerary

10th July – 8th August 2011

Travel and Antananarivo (Tana)

As ever the best made plans can go wrong right from the start - whilst sitting waiting for our bus to pick us up in Pembrokeshire, the coach company announced they would not be coming! Local heroes are amazing and ours that night were Raymond and Joanie Stoddart, a couple who run the village taxi-service. That night they took their car and minibus to London Heathrow with half an hours warning. We shall forever be grateful to them for that.

We had a smooth transition through Heathrow with already one of the student’s in charge of check in, bags and meeting places. The flight to Nairobi was smooth, we had half an hour between planes, but again it all went well…until the plane to Tana was cancelled! The students then experienced Africa a little sooner than we had planned, ‘queues’ for a hotel with jostling businessmen and bossy old ladies. Then there were the queues for a Kenyan visa (keeping an eye on the world cup final with some Dutch nationals in the immigration hall) and an insane bus ride around Nairobi in the dark on a 1950’s bus. We ended up at a five star hotel at 1.30 am, wonderful! The driver then announced he’d be back to get us at 6 am, groan! So the last bit of luxury for the month was amazing if not short lived, that’s travel for you! ☺

The next morning the 9 am flight became 11 am and then 12 am, but we did go after they solved the problems of no pilot, no crew and some very tetchy Kenyans trying to get to a meeting in Tana and offering to fly the plane! The students dealt with it all very well, no grumbles, just naps, card games and a great deal of people watching!

We arrived at a small airport in Tana and changed our money to Ariary and became instant millionaires! (2800 Ar to 1 Euro). We found our way to the Manoir Rouge hostel and settled in for two nights orientation. Meals there were very good and we started the first night with crocodile kebabs (from a local farm).

The time based at the hostel was split up by the student leader and spent in small groups meeting the trekking company guide, buying food and stove fuel, sorting banking and updating the blog. It was a good way to get used to people’s reaction to us, the money, the language and the climate. Some really enjoyed it, some found being white ‘vasar’ quite an experience! We heard that word a lot!

Throughout the expedition the students had a leader for the day. The assistant leader became leader the next. It was up to them to look at the itinerary and prepare for the next phase, organise food, stove fuel, travel and accommodation. If things were pre-booked then they had to check arrangements with a guide or companies. A few weeks before departure Outlook had to pre-book a couple of guides and some transport because they were unsure what we would find in a country that had recent troubles. We all would have preferred to more independent all of the time, but it didn’t take away from the experience and our daily leaders still had plenty to do.

Every night we had a group review of the day and the leader for the next day would explain plans and allocate responsibilities. The group worked to a budget of 5 Euros a day each for food, 4 for accommodation and 6 transport. Fuel was expensive so the transport money was easily spent however they ate like kings on many occasions and accommodation could run as low as 2 Euros in the more rural areas. The group used some of their extra money to treat themselves and then to buy clothes and food for a last night party for the orphanage.

Zafimaniry Trek

We met Mike, our guide, and two drivers Hairy and Bozo (no I am not joking!) early the next morning and set off on a long drive to the Zafimaniry region. We stopped en-route in a colonial town, Antsirabe, to stock up on fruit and bread. Bozo liked his music, local pop (Kilalac) and a lot of Michael Jackson which half the group appreciated! We drove through amazing countryside and rural villages, saw Zebu (cow) towing carts, chickens and ducks for sale, banana stalls, children selling roasted nuts and miles and miles of rice paddy terraces amongst rocky mountains. Beautiful. We stayed that night in Antoetra in a small hotel, found a local restaurant for dinner and set off for the hills along bumpy tracks early the next morning.

This really was an opportunity to experience authentic Malagasy culture at its best and discover some of the country. The Zafimaniry trek, is usually a busy circuit but since the troubles has been very quiet and the villagers welcomed us, pleased to have the business again. The local people are very conservative with a culture built around ancestral worship, family and earning money from growing rice and selling handicrafts. It was a great opportunity to spot native birds, skinks and chameleons. It wasn’t the rainforest I had imagined but well tended and well used agricultural land in amongst vast mountain ranges. Often outside villages we saw tombs were the ancestors are kept, and are brought out at a big party each year, (we saw a couple from the bus when travelling) and the bones ‘re-wrapped’!

We slept in two different villages, and wished we could have stayed longer. The rural people might be ‘poor’ but they were well fed, resourceful and proud. They welcomed us to stay in their beautifully built one or two room wooden houses. Two girls and myself even stayed in one village president’s house. I gave them the bed as I had a thermarest – I was really glad I did, I don’ t think they have mattresses, just a blanket on a wooden base! The lads had a hut with a friendly rat one night, all part of the entertainment; a dog ate it in the morning!

We had a great time hiking between villages, stopping to cook lunch by rivers, waving to children, and buying carvings. The terrain was mostly easy going with a few tracks up big hills and one really extreme rock face to scramble up one morning. At night we cooked on fires with the villagers, played football with the children and sang…and can they sing! I have to learn more songs for next time! One day we sat resting across a valley from a church, the sounds were beautiful, bringing tears to our eyes, these people are so happy to be alive and celebrate life daily. We have much to learn!

The welcome from every village was as enthusiastic as the next, what seems like hundreds of children appeared from every direction and followed us, they were really fascinated by Lowri’s pink hair and lip piercing and Emily’s braces. They followed us into the villages where we met adults, usually the president first. The men were sociable but the women hung back a little. I found complimenting them on their beautiful babies helped break the ice. Even if we had spoken good French it would have made little difference as the local Malagasy language (and dialects of that) were much more common.

River Trip - Tsiribihina

We arrived in the town we would start from an hour before dark but we could not get across to a quiet sand-bar as the chief of police insisted on meeting us all and writing down all of our details. We camped in the grounds of a hotel thanks to a friendly mayor.

Apparently they now keep track of all visitors as they think they had Al Qaeda training in the area a while back.

The Tsiribihina is western Madagascar’s biggest river. On its way to the Mozambique Channel, the Tsiribihina cut through the limestone Bemaraha Plateau in a series of forested gorges, rich in endemic flora and fauna. Although less remote, the Tsiribihina offered a view of Malagasy river life as we passed villages and small settlements along the way. The lemurs we saw along the river were Verreaux’s sifaka. We passed a fruit bat roost and sandstone cliffs whose ledges and eaves attracted peregrine falcons. On the sandbars we saw flocks of knob-billed and white-faced whistling ducks and many herons. The bird life was very colourful, especially king-fishers, and we met a few small crocodiles and chameleons in the reeds. Luckily the crocodiles were just keen on getting away from us and were only a meter or two long!

Boats for the journey on the Tsiribihina were the local ‘pirogue’ which are wooden canoes made out of one trunk. They are made out of endemic hard wood like Soarafo or Arofy but are gradually being replaced by fibre-glass ones as large trees get harder to find. Usually there were two or three of us in each pirogue, along with a Malagasy boatman who paddled and navigated. The students all worked very hard paddling and we made sure we all did our share, much more than a French group we passed with parasols. A few of our group sang ‘Rule Britannia’ rather loudly, not my idea! ☺

The river was very shallow in places and at times we had to jump out to push the canoes across the sand bars. Camping was on beaches and sand bars under the stars….millions of bright stars and a glowing milky way. One night we were joined by inquisitive villagers from nearby but others we were alone.

The river trip was wonderfully relaxing, the river was slow and safe and the group swapped boats so they got to paddle with different people. They sang, watched wildlife, read books and snoozed. We stopped for lunch one day at a beautiful waterfall cascade and had a good wash and stocked up on clean water. Another day we saw fishermen catching tilapia and the pirogue men bought some to cook, very tasty!

At the end of the river trip due to some communication error we arrived in a very remote village a day earlier than the pre-booked transport! After a few hours, football with the locals, a little debating our guide rustled up the one vehicle owned in the next village to take us to town and our hotel a night early. It was less than ideal transport, a bit smaller than hoped, but it did the job!

We arrived in the Menabe Hotel in Belo Tsiribihina, where we cleaned up and re-stocked on food and fuel for the excursion to the Tsingy de Bemaraha.

Tsingy de Bemaraha

The Tsingy were about 100 km away so we had another early start, this time with driver Duco and his enormous bright yellow land rover! The students were most impressed! We camped in a wonderful campsite with showers, real toilets and hammocks to sleep in.

After an early breakfast, we met a local guide from the Madagascar National Parks, Julian. He soon became known as ‘King Julian’ after the head lemur in the children’s film Madagascar.

Using local canoes we paddled upstream to the Gorges of Manambolo. We learnt about the people that used to live here and explored a small cave system (complete with crocodile footprints in!) We spent the afternoon exploring the ‘Petite Tsingy de Bemaraha’, wonderful limestone formations in a forest teaming with wildlife, including several lemur species that were not perturbed by our presence.

The next day we drove to the Grande Tsingy, a World Heritage Site. We walked through the Tsingy - narrow passages and canyons, larger canyons, a variety of caves and then up to the ‘roof’ of the Tsingy at 100 metres with the help of climbing harnesses. This ‘pushed a few buttons’ for myself a couple of the girls, but was a worthwhile challenge! We lunched in a shady overhang and were joined by a mongoose!

Kirindy Forest – as recently seen on David Attenborough’s BBC documentary.

The 25,000-acre Kirindy Forest has the greatest density and diversity of primates in the world. It’s apparently the best Western Reserve for seeing Madagascar’s endemic dry forest species and the Baobab trees.

We stayed at the park headquarters in small dorms and cooked on picnic platforms. That night we went on a walk with the guides and spotted several lemur species, the cutest by far being a tiny mouse lemur that came to our torch light and stayed with us for about ten minutes. He was gorgeous! We never thought we would see the elusive fossa, the night predator of the lemurs, however we didn’t bank on them liking to raid campsite bins: there we were eating breakfast when two popped up in broad daylight! There are many researchers there and one fossa wore a tracking collar as did a few lemur. We had a day walk to spot many more lemur and bird species and then headed to Morondava on the west coast.

Baobabs & Morondava

We found a dormitory in Morondava and then headed out to the famous avenue for sunset. It was strange to suddenly run into tourists as we had mostly been isolated on the trip so far! Its famous for a very good reason, the sunsets were almost good as those in West Wales! We had an hour or two one afternoon at a posh hotel in Morondava. The owner owned the trekking and canoeing company and asked us to pop in, use the pool, have lunch and give him feedback on our trip. It would have been rude to say no! In Morondava the students all had ordered local trousers made from fabric they had picked in a material shop, we picked them up that afternoon.

R&R

The next day we travelled south to the seaside village of Belo-Sur-Mer and stayed at 'Dor'tel' Bungalows, wonderful shacks right on the water. We ordered dinner, it was a very remote area - dinner that night was crab and rice. Vegetarian option? Rice. The nice man cooked a couple of eggs for them. The veggie girls quickly realised on this trip that being vegetarian is something they were privileged to have a choice about, most people are just happy to have food to eat! It was nice to stop in one place for three nights, read, explore on canoes, snorkel, see a whale skeleton, play football and chill…..

The Project

Akany Avoko is a children's home that feeds, clothes, educates and provides a safe environment for children from broken families, orphans, street kids, young people with disabilities, teenage girls on remand and teenage mothers with their babies. It is primarily a home for girls, but there are some young boys too (mainly brothers who have sisters at the home). There is pre-school child care centre, main school and a halfway house, which enables young women who are capable of supporting themselves, to prepare for their

future away from the home. The centre has been running for around 40 years and now houses over 120 children from 1 - 18 years old.

There is an educational focus, but other activities at the home include craft design, screen printing, woodwork, organic food growing and environmental education. The halfway home does vocational activities such as making bags, crafts, papermaking and fibre crafts. The older children with disrupted education also have lessons in life skills, family planning, budgeting, English and cooking.

The centre has a small visitor shop / restaurant, where food (cooked by the girls) is breakfast was served. It was also a place to buy the crafts which the girls in the half way home produce (baskets, t-shirts, picture frames made from re-cycled paper, mats etc).

The centre is sustained solely by sponsorships and charitable donations, and contrary to popular belief, it receives no funding from the Government. It is run by Malagasy but has links to fundraisers in the UK and three westerners on site permanently. Denys and I have now sponsored three girls for a third of each of their university degrees this year and for the next two.

Only approximately 60/150 of the children were on site – some were on holiday with Akany Avoko and some back with their families. It must be very busy when they are all there as it was hectic with just 60!

Ken & Lorna (Aussie) settled us into classroom accommodation (floor) on arrival and we feasted on homemade soup. In the morning we had a tour of Akany Avoko and the project site. We were to build a nature trail around the scrubland behind the buildings. We ate lunch and dinner in the dining hall with the children.

Working also with Chad (American) we split into groups each day to work on the trail and some other projects. Tom and George rebuilt some crumbling steps, Pip and Lowri some new washing lines and Adam fixed the shower plumbing at the crèche. Emily and Alex made the sign for the nature trail and we all took turns to dig, clear vegetation and cut steps. One day we heard Tom shouting and a small brush fire had started near the vegetable patch. Its not like in the UK, everyone big enough to carry water did, amazing team work had the fire safely out in fifteen minutes.

The trail and an area to sit was complete in three days so we helped with smaller jobs, visited the village and a factory making ornaments and crafts from recycled metals. On the last night we face painted and had a disco with the children. We bought lots of fried bananas, dough balls and hot chocolate which went down very well.

Homeward

On the last morning we travelled to the airport via an ice cream parlour, strange after a month of rice, fish and bananas! Thankfully the journey home was more straightforward! We met Outlook reps at Heathrow (still dressed in our bright Malagasy clothing!) to hand over kit and found Tom’s mum and uncle had brought a minibus to take us all home, via his grannies house for bacon sarnies!

Student Group…(in no particular order!) R

osie

Rosie is a bubbly A level student from quite an alternative background. She was the life and soul of the group, throwing herself into everything we did – and was especially brave trying out her basic French! She was terrified when we started the canoe trek, and we definitely should not have pointed out the crocodiles on the bank! She dealt with quite a few personal challenges along the way, such as dealing with other members of the group when they annoyed her, and did ever so well. She has really matured in the last few years and I think the trip has helped immensely. Rosie is completing her A levels now. She doesn’t seem as bubbly back in the UK but has travel plans for the summer with friends, and I am sure will do well in life and her smile return more permanently!

Ale

x

Alex is completing her A levels this year. She is chatty with her peers but quite quiet with older people so it was wonderful to see her blossom on the trip. She did get involved and showed real grit on the physically challenging parts of the expeditions (even when she was ill one day). Alex really enjoyed the orphanage part of the trip and always had several children in tow!

Low

ri

Lowri is completing her A levels this year. She’ll probably be going to university and travelling quite a bit more in the near future. She is a very private person and found the month with 12 people other people very challenging. It was a good experience for her to have this closeness and work with others even when she didn’t always want to. She dealt with it very well and I think it’ll stand her in good stead in the future.

Pip

Pip completed her A levels just before we left. She found them very hard and was unsure she would get into university. She found most aspects of the trip really challenging and there were a lot of tears! She did however grow and grow and grow and we saw great progress. Pip mastered cooking on stoves, tents, backpacks, personal organisation, climbing harnesses and using a saw and spade. These were all new challenges that ‘pushed her buttons’, but with the help of her friends she made great progress. We were delighted on results day to find out that she had a place studying Psychology at Newport University. We’ve seen her since and she loves university life. Its academically hard but she’s sticking at it! We think the trip gave her the confidence to meet new people and break out of her shell, it was certainly a good introduction starter in fresher’s week! When we saw her dad a few weeks after our return he asked “What we had done with his daughter?!”

Carissa

Getting Carissa to Madagascar was a challenge in itself! She had medical problems that made it look unlikely that she would come and then lots of ‘wobbles’ along the way, to the point that we nearly didn’t get her on the bus to the airport! Carissa found the first few days very hard & the trek difficult, but after that she conquered her fear of bridges, her fear of heights and gradually enjoyed herself more and more. It was a delight to see her fully involved and having a wonderful time canoeing and at the orphanage. She was a challenging young lady to have along but I am really pleased that her confidence grew and she developed so much. Carissa got to know herself a lot better and realised why she did not believe in herself (family reasons) so I think she will be able to tackle many more hurdles more easily in the future.

Adam

Adam, boyfriend of Carissa, is a plumber and comes to college one day a week to further his qualifications. Adam is a very laid back chap and he and Carissa compliment each other well. He worked hard at his job to pay for his trip and really relished all the different experiences. He also supported Carissa in her many challenges. Adam loved the river trip and powered away all day long with the paddle in the dug out canoes! His skills were really useful at the orphanage and Ken the Aussie volunteer coordinator kept him busy digging steps and trails and solving many of their plumbing challenges. Thanks to Adam there’s a shower block up and running at the crèche! He got very wet in the process!

Georg

e

George is completing his A levels this year and planning on reading Law at University in September.

George is a real lovable character, very popular with his peers and hilariously funny, often when a tense situation needed some humour. He really got a great deal out of every stage of the expedition and was a really stable character to have in the group when decisions needed making. He was a real hit with the orphanage girls!

Rob

Rob studied part time at the college for 2 years on a HNC in Animal Science. Long term he plans to work in veterinary nursing but for now is completing a gym instructor course in Cardiff. Rob is a little older than the rest of the group and didn’t join in the fund raising as he was working nearly full time, but being a very easy-going chap he mixed in very well. Rob was very apprehensive whenever he was to be leader for the day but he rose to the challenge by making careful notes the day before and really thought through what responsibilities he had. He allocated tasks appropriately to his colleagues. Rob really enjoyed the trip and was really in his element outdoors. He also really dotes on his young niece at home and so was wonderful with the young children at Akany Avoko.

Tom

Tom is a real larger than life character, very bubbly and extremely enthusiastic about absolutely everything! He was very capable at all things technical such as use of the stoves, climbing harnesses etc. and happy to help anyone who needed it. I was really impressed that Tom managed to hold back when he knew what should happen and didn’t step in but let people learn for themselves. He would offer help if needed, that is a big change over the last couple of years.

Tom struggled with dyslexia through college and so the academic part was very hard work for him. That, and being a distractible teenage boy(!), made it take 3 years for him to pass his A levels. On the plus side, in those three years he did his Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award, sailed on a tall ship, helped at a cub pack, taught kayaking and learnt to climb! Tom worked hard in the last year of college and did pass his A Levels, although did not get into the Universities he had applied for. In a complete turn of events he went through the clearing process on results day and on the back of his experiences in Madagascar he gained a place in Manchester Metropolitan University to read Outdoor Education and Leadership! They wanted high grades so he hadn’t even applied there but his record spoke for itself.

Tom is a wonderfully bubbly chap and has really matured in the last year, he will make an excellent leader wherever he takes groups and rose to the leadership challenge whenever he was in charge. His family have also noticed the growth. I am very proud of Tom and his achievements and we’ll be popping in for a cuppa next time we go through Manchester!

Em

ily

Emily studied a National Diploma in Fashion at the college and finished just before the trip. She enjoyed the course but said she wasn’t sure would have finished it had she not already signed up for the expedition, so already she gained something before she left!

Emily was very quiet when we started the whole process 18 months previously. Her fundraising efforts were creative and inventive and she raised all the money through events and utilised her skills in fashion to good ends. Emily grew and grew in confidence throughout the whole process and really blossomed on the trip. She still found it hard to challenge people she did not agree with, not wanting to make ‘a fuss’, but she did get good at quietly getting her point across and speaking up if needed. I think its something that will improve more and more over time. Emily’s skills were well utilised at the orphanage and you see her painting the sign for the nature trail the team built.

I am delighted to say that in the last few days I have been in contact with Emily, she is fundraising for her trip back to the orphanage this summer and applying for her visas at the moment.

And the ‘staff’…… D

enys

Both Kate and myself have travelled to various parts of the globe together, but this was the first trip of this kind that we participated in, so it was quite a different experience for us. One of the many phrases commonly used in education these days is ‘distanced travelled’, how far a student has progressed in their education and personal development through the time they are studying with us. One of the most striking things I noticed from our expedition was how noticeable the ‘distance travelled’ was by many of the participants in only a month. To see some of them being quite shy adolescents at the start of the trip, then blossoming into confident young adults was the most rewarding part of the whole adventure. We also made sure that throughout the trip we all took time to reflect on the poverty, waste management and conservation issues we witnessed first hand, as well as the apparent overall happiness of the Malagasy people. Although we may have only made a tiny difference to people’s lives when we were in Madagascar, real change can come from changing daily habits, spreading the message among our peers, and making our voices heard. I feel confident that ten young people, as well as myself and Kate, have returned with a new outlook on life and a passion to make things right.

Kate

Wow, what an experience! It was really different travelling as a couple and with another leader and 10 teenagers in tow! It was a very hard month but a wonderful time as well. They all improved their tolerance levels and I did too! It was a real challenge and lesson to sit back, not lead and to let the students make mistakes, but a really good one that has come across into my teaching and general life. They were a great group to be with and although some were easier than others I would not change any of them. They all changed, some in massive ways, some subtlety and I am sure this is just the start. Often we look back at things that have happened in our past and see how they have shaped our paths. I am very proud of them all and know several of them already have future travel plans.

Tea towels!

Thank you to the Welsh branch of the trust for the 10 Welsh tea towels they donated for us to give as gifts along the way. The towels (and the five footballs that we took) are now in pride of place in the President’s house of a Zafimaniry village, with a guide from the river trip, a guide from the trek, several girls on a vocational catering training program at the orphanage and a restaurant chef or two in Tana and Morondava. Thank you, they were a wonderful ice-breaker and gift, and a good way to explain about where we came from.

How far the purpose of the Fellowship was achieved.

The aim for me was very clear and simple. I wanted to help fund the trip and to help the students achieve their aims. I wanted to help them experience travel in the developing world and different communities in the way that I have been fortunate enough to – with the hope that they will be able to take the confidence and skills gained in the month into the rest of their lives to benefit those that they meet. As I said at the original interview I will never know all of the effects that this trip will have had on each person, but I have been teaching long enough to know that each person will be changed a little at least. I hope they can recognise that in themselves and pass on their experiences to the benefit of others. Often in teaching you will meet someone several years on and they’ll share with you how something that happened in school has impacted on their lives now. My long term goal was also (if this worked well) to set up a legacy for more travel at the college.

Their goals were set out early on at the first development day with Outlook and recorded as:

• Make an impact and meet people

• Trek

• River Trip & visit the West coast

• Snorkelling

• Seeing lemurs

• Community or environmental project

The funding received from the WCMT was very adequate and the fellowship was entirely achieved and much more. I could not have hoped for it to go so well and to see so many positive changes in the students in so short a time. I would definitely recommend setting up these trips to other people and to use a professional company to take the legal pressures, risk assessment and planning responsibilities.

The Future

The students have already benefitted in many ways as described above. The best change in all of them to see was the growth in confidence and independence, things that will help them in whatever they do in the future.

As leaders Denys and I have secured funding from Outlook Expeditions & the local Duke of Edinburgh Award group to take part in Mountain Leadership training in July. Once qualified we will be able to be the lead on Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award expeditions, and lead expeditions overseas for Outlook Expeditions with the college groups. This way we would be paid and not be funded by students. This way the students would have less to raise and we could contribute too.

The benefit to future students at Pembrokeshire College is that I have now set up a file of information on how to run an expedition from start of fundraising to the end. In September I emailed all staff and found a great youth leader to run the next trip. Mark and his 9 students are well into fundraising for Borneo 2012! Mark has travelled in Borneo before and is very keen to take students there. Their biggest challenge will be an ascent of Mount

Kinabalu. www.pembrokeshire.ac.uk/borneo is live if you would like to see what is going on!

Every June I will now start a new expedition off with the college staff, stepping in for an adventure myself every two or three years! Some years it will be a two year, long expedition and sometimes a shorter process for a trip over 2 weeks closer to home in Eastern Europe or Morocco.

In Conclusion….

I would like to thank the trust enormously for their support and funding. It seems a lifetime since the snowy train trip, amongst travel chaos, to the interview in London and talking about what I hoped might happen. It was an awesome experience for all involved, exceeding all our expectations and it has fuelled me to start more trips and travel more myself. I am having a break from group travel this year, however Denys and I are heading to Nepal in a few months to attempt a trek to Everest Base Camp ☺

I hope you have had a good flavour of the adventure from this report. It is hard to convey how amazing the experiences we had were in writing and photos, and indeed everyone in the group found that when they went back to their families. Please see our website www.getjealous.com/madagascar to read more about the whole adventure, including the students blog along the way, and to see more photographs.

Once again, a massive thank you to the trust, the work you do and your support and encouragement is wonderful.

Kate Bassett-Jones

Photo Diary

Attracting attention at the start of the trek.

Trekking.

Stopping to buy crafts and carvings.

Presenting the village president with a thank you tea towel and football for the children.

Rosie and Carissa in the president’s bed!

Lunch stop – rice of course!

Campfire and cooking.

Are these buildings built for tall people?

Trekking.

Zafimaniry region.

Lunch stop at a tomb – we didn’t think we should sit on it but the guides did!

Starting off on the river.

River trip.

River villagers came to visit.

Camp on the river.

Tilapia, yummy!

River villagers came to visit. Good football skills!

River villagers came to visit.

Our ‘alternative transport’ at the end of the river trip.

Local market, Belo.

River crossing.

Comfy bed!

Make your own entertainment on a long bus journey.

Road-side service station!

Tsingy.

Tsingy.

Tsingy.

River crossing, safety first – top half anyway!

Fossa!

Twisted Baobab.

Baobab avenue.

Baobab avenue.

Our friendly guides and drives in Morondava.

New trousers!

R&R

One whale vertebrae!

R&R

R&R

R&R

R&R

New washing lines at Akany.

New washing lines at Akany.

New washing lines in use at Akany.

Dining hall and dorms.

Veggie patch.

Trail building.

Trail sign painting. It means ‘Our little trail’.

Completed trail – the first story time at the seating area. Seats yet to be made!

Fun with face paint!

Fun with face paint!

Fun and games.

Last night disco.

Last night disco.

Beautiful Bena, so many cuddles in 5 days!

Kilimanjaro fly by – rather emotional as I’ve climbed it!

Waiting to board in Nairobi – make your own entertainment!