Throwing a Festival for Lemurs in Madagascar

After an inspirational pep talk from my dear friend and colleague, Caroline Rojosoa and I committed to throwing a big World Lemur Day celebration in Ranomafana. My roles were to build our team, brand the event, and fundraise to make it all happen in time with eight weeks to spare. As it turns out, throwing a festival is A LOT of work!

Our Top Goals for the Lemur Festival

1. Focus and raise awareness of critically endangered lemur species living in their natural habitats

2. Increase local capacity to carry out future conservation efforts through training and experience obtained through project management and participation by Malagasy citizens

3. Demonstrate the economic benefit achieved through conservation of a species and its habitat, as compared to loss thereof

4. Strengthen international network of partners and enhance their capacity to be successful conservationists

Caroline and I began by jotting down our ideas for activities, and researching what’s been done in the past. Lemur Conservation Network’s website was a great starting point. It provided ideas and recaps from previous events with lots of facts about lemurs. They also had an official World Lemur Day logo for 2019 that we were able to download and adapt to say RANOMAFANA. From there, we developed a highly visual powerpoint to explain our goals and activity plans to potential donors and local participants. There wasn’t enough time to develop in-depth sponsorship levels, so I reached out to potential partners to discuss mutually beneficial agreements. My commitment grew stronger as the funds started to roll in. Lovasoa, the Head of Education at Centre ValBio, took on the task of calculating out a detailed budget. She then rallied her education team and delegated tasks for the event. She also helped translate our marketing pieces and activities in local Malagasy dialect. 

Jocelyn took charge of spreading the word and organizing community meetings to get everyone involved. He works at the Ranomafana Telecommunications Center and is the president of Ranomafana’s Nature Center. After designing and printing fliers for meetings, I walked 6 kilometers from the National Park entrance down the mountain to Ranomafana town to let people know about the festival. We held regular community meetings in the town hall, Tranompokonolona, to plan and share ideas leading up to the event.

The result of one meeting led to scheduling a swimming competition in the hot springs for World Lemur Day. I was a bit concerned that people were starting to lose sight that this event was about lemurs and their connection to the well-being of our community, but in the end it worked out. We had nature-themed prizes for everyone including medals, posters, and lemur toys.

We commissioned local artists Alain Rasolo and Christian Menabe to illustrate and paint invitations, street banners, and fliers for the event. Madagascar’s US Embassy Ambassador, Michael Pelletier, and his family were touring Centre ValBio when I was working on the balcony finishing the graphic design for the Festival’s Facebook event banner. I told them about the event, and to our joy, they said they would love to come!

On October 1st, we took our first shopping trip to Fianarantsoa (about an hour and a half drive away) to grab money and materials. I did my best, but it was surprisingly hard to find lemur-themed school supplies for prizes. We eventually found some lemur notebooks and nature-themed art supplies. We continued to have productive meetings in Ranomafana, which involved further development of the program schedule and activities. I commissioned a local wood carver to create a conservation promise tree, and Fidi to create the swimming medals for the competition.

I had to take a trip to South Africa from October 11th-20th prior to making this World Lemur Day commitment. Before I left, I had to finalize sponsorships with partners, frantically transfer funds to the shirt company, and send in final designs to have everything ready by our event. It was difficult to leave my team two weeks before the Festival date, but they made some serious progress while I was gone! I returned to Madagascar on October 20th and shopped for decorations in the capital of Madagascar the next day. I was so excited to get back for that final push before the event.

On October 23rd we had one last community meeting in preparation for the festival. The next day, Caroline and I took our second and final shopping trip to Fianarantsoa with our friend Ray to order event tents and find more supplies from our favorite school supply store called Alefa Mianatra. The education department and some teachers made lemur art decorations with Rasolo from Lovasoa’s office. We also threw a decorating party that night at the research centre with some volunteers. I painted a sequence of jumping sifakas for an interactive “Sifaka Jump” station, while others helped cut out leaves and string them together.

Friday, October 25th, was officially World Lemur Day! I spent the morning at Centre ValBio to run through the program with the senior management team alongside Lovasoa. We gathered the rest of the festival supplies that were stored in her office and headed into town with Rasolo, Gabby, Caroline to make lemur masks with the kids from templates designed by Yana Grabner. While the children colored with Rasolo, I set up the four meter interactive sifaka jump so the kids could test their skills and show off their new lemur masks. Christian Menabe, a few other volunteers, and Lovasoa’s student teachers showed up to help as well. There were some amazing masks, and the kids really enjoyed themselves. Lova coached the kids into trying to jump as far as a sifaka. Their parents told me that they came home raving about the masks and jump.

The local decoration team showed up late that afternoon, and began preparing inside the Town Hall, while the tent crew set up for partnership booths in front of the Mayor’s office. After dark, Jocelyn put together an outdoor movie showing of BBC’s Madagascar nature documentary translated into Malagasy, while volunteers at my house continued to work on lemur decorations. I ran back and forth to make sure everything was going smoothly. I looked around and paused during the movie showing. I saw people completely enamored by the animals they were seeing on the film. Those fleeting moments remind me how important this kind of work is for conservation. It was a lovely soft launch before our BIG festival event the next day.

I stayed up all night finishing decorations and making masks to represent all 12 lemur species. Jocelyn did not sleep either. He helped the crew set up the sound and light system inside the Town Hall for the party. At 5AM Caroline came back over to my house, and started decorating the Madagascar National Parks (MNP) cars with string decorations and foliage with Ella for the parade. The tee-shirts were supposed to come to Ranomafana town by taxi brousse between 2-3AM that night, but they did not come until 8AM. Nicolas and Gabby were in charge of signing off shirts at my house from the list Lovasoa and Jocelyn made of people who put time in to make sure the festival was a success. Everyone and their mother wanted a free shirt. We emphasized that shirts are for people who participated and worked to make the festival happen. There were a few cars designated to take locals to and from the National Park entrance that morning because FREE entrance was allowed between 6:30AM-7AM that day.

Alain Rasolo teamed up with Christian Menabe to start face painting at Kianja Maitso where the parade would start. Many organizations began to show up from around the region to get their faces painted. They held signs to display their organizations and lemur love.

The parade was scheduled to start at 9AM, but we needed to wait until the authorities arrived. Pat had taken them into the forest to see golden bamboo lemurs and other critically endangered lemur species. It was ultimately a good thing that they were late because our sound system in the back of the lead truck decided to stop working. They had to drive off to get it fixed. People in the parade were anxious to get started. Around 10AM we made a last minute route change, and got the call to start the parade. When the parade reached the Tranompokonolona, the national anthem was playing with all the authorities, so we had to halt the parade in the town center which is also a National Highway. There was no one directing traffic, so I had to step in and block traffic until the anthem was over. People in the parade were hollering and cheering as they marched through town and circled back to fill in the empty space in front of the speeches.

During the speeches, I went back to my house to take a breather and to check on how the tee-shirt distribution was going. We only had enough in our budget to order 200 shirts. Turns out I ordered way too many smalls and not enough larges and extra larges. (Next time, we will have sign up sheets so people can put their name, event job, and shirt size).

I returned to the festival as authority speeches were ending. The VIPs looked thirsty, so I traded water bottles from the shop across the street for some shirts, then passed water out to the kings and other special guests. I recruited some women to help Caroline with educational quizzes and prize giveaways.

The day grew hotter than ever. Organizations wrapped up their education booths, and I went up to Centre ValBio where Dr. Wright and the VIPs were having a late lunch. I got to catch up with them and hear their positive thoughts about the festival. Afterwards, they went to go explore the scarf shop and hot springs, while I joined the festival’s music and poetry competition. The crowd outside brought lots of energy, while Ranomafana’s teachers were setting up for the night party inside. After the competition, we all went to the hot springs to watch the swimming competition at 4pm. The kids who won would go to national swimming competitions. It was so nice and relaxing to finally sit with my team, watch the competition, and celebrate the fruit of our hard work. We gave out awards, and then got some dinner together as the sun went down.

I had not slept for nearly two days, so right after dinner I fell into a deep sleep upon immediate contact with my bed. Around 9PM, I woke up to my neighbor Lova in my front yard yelling “Jessie wake up! Dr. Wright is at the night party. It’s starting!”. Luckily, I live a few houses from town center (and the coincidentally where the party happening), so I quickly put on my dress and dancing shoes and headed in as it was starting. Jocelyn and I joined in the dance. The lighting system was incredible. I’m really impressed with Jocelyn, my team, and how we managed to put all of this together. I sat with Centre ValBio staff a bit and danced as much as I possibly could. My hips were so sore from all the running around the past two days. I stayed until it was time to vote for the music competition winners. I announced the first place winner on stage, and then walked out of the dance to go to bed because I couldn’t stay awake any longer. As I was leaving there were a bunch of people outside waiting to come in. I yelled “MANDROSO!”, which means “come in”. People cheered and started moving towards the entrance as I went home to sleep like a baby.

The night party raised funds to help complete the construction of Ranomafana’s new High School. We will be working with the teachers to include conservation education into their curriculum. I’m so thankful for the handful of people (especially Jocelyn, Lovasoa, Caroline, and Lova), who stuck with me from the beginning. Thousands of people showed up and had a good time at the festival while learning and celebrating the importance of lemurs in our community too. Everyone had good things to say, and I want to give a special shout out to the Oakland Zoo and other supporting partners for making this special conservation event a reality.