LISTENING UNIT 8

Hi, and thanks for inviting me here tonight to tell you about the time I spent as a volunteer on a
conservation project in Madagascar. I was looking for something to do in the year before I went
to university- what they call a ‘gap year’. There were various possibilities, and I had a lot of
interests: ecology, sports, computer programming- but it was my long-standing love of animals
which led to become volunteer on this conservation project.

It was a great opportunity to learn more about the wildlife of that part of the world. Not just the
obvious cuddly mammals, but also fish – even the reptiles were fascinating. All good
background knowledge to prepare for my university degree, which I am currently halfway
through.

The project involved taking surveys of both land animals and ocean creatures. For this reason,
we were based in different camps, depending on the type of data we were collecting. Mine was
next to the beach, but most people slept in another camp in the forest. Conditions were pretty
basic- the beds were small, and there were four of us in each tent- but they weren’t actually as
bad as I thought they’d be.

I had to do camp duty once every two weeks or so, which I didn’t mind so much because it kept
me busy. It was interesting having to cook dinner for about 30 people! The washing up wasn’t
exactly fun, but you just took your turn like everyone else.

The food was actually pretty good: simple and fresh with a huge variety of seafood. Seriously, I
ate some strange things. I still have no idea what they were! They have amazing chocolate there,
too. The only thing I really would have liked for breakfast was my favourite cereal- I couldn’t
find it anywhere. But I got used to fruit and coffee every morning.

One of the things that made the experience so worthwhile was all the stuff I learnt. I learnt how
to scuba dive, it’s so great to get up close to marine wildlife. I’m currently finishing a project at
university on birds and the practice I got in data collection during time in Madagascar has
definitely helped me with that. In fact, the whole thing kept my brain working, which is handy if
you’re taking a gap year from studying!
If you decide to go on something like this, I’d definitely advise you to take a decent camera. It
was hard trying to get photos of birds as they’d fly away most of the time, and my camera didn’t
have a very good zoom lens. I only had a little 35 millimeter thing, but it was completely
waterproof so, although I got some reasonable shots of lizards and monkeys, the best ones were
sea life. I’ve had some prints made.

We didn’t get much spare time, but sometimes when the weather was bad, we didn’t do much
because the wildlife would be hiding. A few of the volunteers were into playing chess, but I
wasn’t much good at that so I spent my spare time reading or taking part in card games with the
others. On sunny days when we couldn’t do surveys for one reason or another, we could
sunbathe or go for a walk or a swim.

We got Saturdays off, and we got to go on trips to nearby places. I visited a local school, some
nice villages, and of course the zoo in the capital. One town has a park where you can hold out
bananas for monkeys and they’d jump on your shoulders to get them- another experience.

Some of the volunteers kept video recordings of their time there; they said they were going to
upload them but I haven’t seen any of them yet. Others updated their blogs. I kept a record the
old fashioned way- every night I’d update my diary with the events of the day. I got some copies
made and you can buy one for a pound after this talk if you’re interested. I might get around to
turning it into a website one day!

1. ANIMALS

2. UNIVERSITY DEGREE

3. THE BEACH

4. WASHING UP

5. FAVORITE CEREAL

6. DATA COLLECTION

7. SEA LIFE

8. CARD GAMES
9. PARK

10. DIARY