Portrait of a Wild Postcard Artist, Madagascar

Who are those determined young artists going for gold in the Wild Postcard Project art competitions? Meet Solo*, a 13-year-old winner from Sainte Luce, Madagascar.

Solo is one of those children that stand out from the class because of the bright light of their potential and determination. Studious and artistic, he is also, secretly, the true ring leader of his friends, a veritable Malagasy Bash Street Kids. Once I saw them giddily clambering up and down a tree to pick flowers full of delicious nectar. A member of the gang snatched a flower from the hands of a child who was unable to climb the tree. Solo scolded the thief, and climbed the tree a second time to get his friend a new flower.

The group has a mischievous second-in-command who leads the group’s clamorous messing sessions, but when Solo decides that enough is enough and the SEED Madagascar conservation team are attempting to teach the hundred-plus members of Club Atsatsaky, he only has to say the word and they will settle down in their seats quietly. In 2011, I asked him when he would run for the position of Chef de Quartier (similar to a local TD or the village mayor), and he said, “Tomorrow!” In 2013, he replied, “In fifty years.” This time, he says, “I don’t know.”

Three years have passed since I worked as a conservation research assistant and environmental educator in Sainte Luce with SEED Madagascar. Last month I returned, with fellow SEED veterans Conor Friel and Daniel Wood, to run the Wild Postcard Project with Club Atsatsaky. This biodiversity themed art competition, created by fellow Biodiversity and Conservation MSc graduates Eileen Diskin and Angela Stevenson, has already been a huge success in Ireland and the Philippines. It is currently open for submissions in British Columbia and will run again in Ireland this spring. The winning entries are transformed into postcards which promote local biodiversity all around the world. The scaled down version we carried out in Sainte Luce aimed to encourage the children to celebrate their unique local wildlife (of which they are already very proud) and produce postcards for SEED to sell to volunteers and tourists in Fort Dauphin.

An artist concentrates deeply on his red-collared brown lemur.

Since I left the region in 2014, Solo and his family have moved to another village. It is accessible only by foot from Mahatalaky, the nearest market town, a three-hour walk to Sainte Luce. But news of the Wild Postcard Project art competition travelled fast. The opportunity to use nice art materials and win a prize from andafy (abroad) was an exciting prospect, and Solo made the long journey from his new home to Sainte Luce just to take part!

Because of the scarcity of art materials in the three hamlets of Sainte Luce, we ran the competition a little differently from other Wild Postcard Project host locations. The conservation club meets twice a week – once in Ambandrika and once in Manafiafy. We took advantage of the reliability of turn out to these club meetings to run two drawing sessions, one in each location, providing pencils, oil pastels and watercolours for the children to use. Strategically placed posters boosted numbers to at least 150 children per session. Each child was allowed to submit two pieces, and in the end we received 573 entries!

Drawing is a spectator sport in Sainte Luce!

Solo’s approach was contemplative and methodical. He stayed in the classroom long after the others had left in order to perfect his masterpiece. His hard work paid off. His drawing was one of the ten artworks chosen to become postcard designs. Although I admit this kid is one of my heroes, I can’t be accused of favouritism, as I remained quiet while the other 6 members of the judging panel voted unanimously for his work! Not all choices were as easy to make, however. Trying to spread the winnings out across all three hamlets in Sainte Luce, get some semblance of gender and age balance, while ensuring that the winning drawings would look good on a postcard was tough, emotional work and sometimes ruthless out of necessity!

Each winner received a beautiful certificate, a set of Wild Postcards from the Irish competition, a bar of chocolate and a pencil or pen. The first winner to receive his prize couldn’t believe that all of these things were for him. He picked one item from the Conservation Programme coordinator’s hands, then a second, then the whole lot had to be forcibly piled into his little nine-year-old arms!

The SEED Conservation Programme team with some of our talented winners!

Because of my obsession with creepy crawlies, I insisted that we have a special invertebrates category. The winner drew an almost anatomically perfect spiny lobster, a species of major economical importance to Sainte Luce and the subject of one of SEED Madagascar’s sustainable livelihoods schemes, Project Oratsimba. He beamed with joy on receiving his award. We later learnt from his proud mother that he has been fantastic at art since he was tiny. Official recognition of his skills was a really big deal to him. Malagasy kids love a good certificate!

Solo accepted his prize with a serious, dignified air, bordering on aloofness. These days he has a look of someone who has spent more time loitering, bored and unchallenged, than usual. It turns out he has completed primary school but his parents can’t afford the 40,000 Ariary (10 euro) per year for his secondary school education and the substantial cost of food, clothes and school supplies that parents everywhere must be all too familiar with. He has been out of school for a year. My heart sank on hearing this, knowing that another of my bright, determined students recently failed his high school exams because of the challenges of returning to the education system after two years of absence.

The sometimes crushing sense of guilt and futility is one of the hardest things about working in a developing country, and also about not working there anymore. Why wasn’t I there? How did I let this happen?

It’s important to remember the bigger picture and not carry more than your fair share of the responsibility. Madagascar is vastly rich in mineral and natural wealth. The government could afford to pay its teachers properly, and could afford to provide free education to all of its children, if it felt like it (while larger than France, Madagascar’s former colonial power, the island is relatively sparsely populated – only 26 million compared to France’s 66.9 million). Instead, corrupt politicians pocket what mining companies pay them and allow them to plunder Madagascar’s irreplaceable wildlife – its most valuable and sustainable resource and its best chance at longterm prosperity.

On returning to Sainte Luce, I had begun to doubt that flying halfway across the world to run an art competition could benefit such a poor village in any way. How frivolous, how deluded I had been. But the look on the children’s faces as they drew and received their prizes diffused some of those feelings. Certainly, they need more nutritious food; protection against malaria and worms; better education, transport and healthcare; sustainable incomes for their parents. But, just like kids anywhere, they also need pride and confidence in their talents and knowledge. They need fun and play and outlets for creative expression. And in this current, unscientific climate, all generations need to be equipped with an understanding and appreciation of their environment.

In Sainte Luce, embroidery, weaving and ecotourism guiding are rapidly becoming significant sources of income. They enable fishermen to remain at home on dangerous stormy days, knowing that their children won’t go hungry as a result. In that context, drawing, colour theory and knowing the names of local wild animals become life-saving skills.

Raising a glass of Bonbon Anglais to the new members of the Stitch embroidery cooperative.

Before I left Sainte Luce again (heart torn out for a third time), I commissioned some of Solo’s drawings to send to a friend, another one of his fans. He presented them to me with his serious Chef de Quartier face on. Then I spotted a glimmer of his former glee and bashfulness, as he curled his chin into his chest, smiling, when I handed him my shabby old watercolours to keep.  A good Malagasy friend, a dedicated teacher-and-guide-and-reptile-and-amphibian-expert-extraordinaire, has offered to find out about his family’s circumstances and work out how we can help with his education.

The Wild Postcards of Sainte Luce, Madagascar, will soon be available for purchase on my Etsy page, through the Wild Postcard Project website, and from SEED Madagascar in Fort Dauphin. All proceeds will go to SEED Madagascar’s environmental projects, including the conservation club itself. I’ll keep you posted.

*I have changed this name to protect this family’s privacy. Solo is a common name in Madagascar meaning “replacement”, as in “we have lost one child but have been blessed with another”.

 

What Do You Do? 2017 – 2018

Extracts from a year in the life of a Creative Entomologist.

In 2017 I made probably the most difficult decision of my life to date, if indeed it really was a decision when it came down to it. Having salvaged one of my longest-standing, most beautiful friendships from the rubble, it feels…hmm…not as though anything is possible, but that something worthwhile is always possible.

I received an important piece of wisdom at the time: Sometimes there is no good or bad decision, there is only the one that you make. The first time I volunteered in Madagascar, I learnt something similar. You commit to that spot on the far side of the river and you leap. That’s how you move through the forest.

After that cryptic introduction, let me tell you about some of the work-related leaps I made in 2017, and how they will shape the coming year of Creative Entomology for better or for worse.

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Next week I’m returning to my favourite village in Madagascar to carry out the Wild Postcard Project with SEED Madagascar! I’ll spend four weeks there, running an art competition to produce Sainte-Luce-wildlife-themed postcards for the charity to sell to support their valuable work in the area. There will of course be a special insects/invertebrates category! I’m eager to work out how many postcards I should print – please contact me on Facebook if you would like to register your interest in buying a pack or donate towards the costs of art materials, prizes and printing.

Club Atsatsaky with butterflies for Sainte Luce’s World Environment Day festival 2011

Upon my return in mid-February, I will be available to lead bug workshops and nature outings for a primary school near you (if you live in the greater Dublin area), subsidised by the Heritage Council! That’s because I’ve been chosen for the Heritage in Schools panel 2018 – 2020!

It’s appropriate that I’m returning to Madagascar with my artist’s hat on, because 2017 was the year I really got my art buzz back, on the inspirational Bee Time residency at Emerson College. It opened my eyes to our complicated relationship with the honey bee and the importance of creating art with the communities in which we live. I made a bee line for the Bee Time HQ in Spain later in the year, visiting the land which the beetimers are healing for the bees, and becoming pleasantly embroiled in some plotting to bring a Bee Time residency to Ireland…

Insect walk for the Bee Time exhibition at Emerson College, East Sussex

Last year I also applied for a pollinator art commission from Laois and Offaly County Councils. Didn’t get it. Made the art anyway. My video collaboration with the public in Laois and Dublin, More than Bees: Lesser Known Tips for Pollinator Conservation, was screened in Dunamaise Arts Centre during Heritage Week, thanks to the Laois Heritage Officer Catherine Casey. I also made some lovely beekeeper friends!

2017 saw the launch of my first solo exhibition, BUGONIA, built around the prints, paintings, and sound pieces I created in those two fruitful weeks at Bee Time, and hosted by Bí URBAN in Stoneybatter. What a calm yet thought-provoking space Kaethe Burt O’Dea has created! I’m excited to get involved in her Lifeline Project in 2018. The aim is “to create a flow of biodiversity from the Botanic Gardens to the Liffey as a living laboratory where the citizens of Dublin’s Northwest Inner city can map and measure the value of re-partnering with nature in the urban environment.”

In conjunction with the exhibition, and for Remembrance Day for Lost Species, I held a pollinator video workshop and a poetry and music evening at St. Michan’s Church, generously supported by Phibsboro Tidy Towns and Church of Ireland. A poetry competition and open call for musicians for the pollinator event led to many interesting international connections with insect poets and bug festival organisers! Opportunities are sticking to me like flies to fly paper! Which reminds me of another piece of wisdom I’ve been keeping close at hand this past year:

The amount of serendipity that will occur in your life, your Luck Surface Area, is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you’re passionate about combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated.

Jason C. Roberts

My volunteer role as intercultural workshops coordinator with Discovery Gospel Choir brought me to Hatch Hall direct provision centre. I effectively communicated what I’m passionate about to the centre’s management and I was invited to run two chaotic creative entomology workshops with some amazing children. We created a “music video” for the song Inchworm, which featured Geometrid moths and their loopy caterpillars!

Some colourful fun for kids stuck in the mind-numbing system of direct provision

My most unusual work location this year was probably at the side of a road in Terenure. My Dublin Canvas painting of Staphylinus dimidiaticornis, a rove beetle of wet grasslands and fens, has been popular with the Instagrammers of South Dublin, where I continue to carry out insect surveys for the County Council’s Heritage Officer, Rosaleen Dwyer.

I published a short note (my first!) with my entomological hero Roy Anderson and Laila Higgins in the Irish Naturalists’ Journal, about a ground beetle we found along the Dodder: The status of Trechus subnotatus (Dejean) (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in Ireland, with a new site in the Dublin area.

Catchin’ grasshoppers with my wonderful intern-for-the-day Tyler. Want to volunteer in 2018?

I look back at the post I wrote about my fibromyalgia in 2016 and wonder how I’ve managed to hurtle through so many bizarre and exciting projects and experiences in the last year, under a job title I invented for myself, during a really difficult period of personal change, without collapsing. Two things were key to this being possible:

1. I learnt to ask for help. And friends, family, choir mates and people who had never met me before gave it in abundance. The term ‘sole trader’ is misleading – it takes a village to raise a business!
2. I learnt to embrace anger as a powerful force for change, put it into physical action, and it freed up so much energy. Anger, like pain, is just a feeling telling you that something needs to change. Listen to it.

Let the raging fire in your belly propel you forward in 2018. Put on some red boots. Practice saying “yes” and “no” and “help!” in a loud, clear voice. Kick through your inhibitions and frustrations. Imagine yourself standing in your favourite habitat, in peak bug-spotting form. Leap over that river and march right up to what makes you happy. You will find something very worthwhile there.

Where Do Humans Belong?

A slightly naive review of Where Do Camels Belong?, the story and science of invasive species by Ken Thompson (Profile Books, London, 2015), and how it revealed to me my xenophobic tendencies.

It took me nearly a year to finish Ken Thompson’s book, Where Do Camels Belong?. Partly because I’m bad at giving myself time to read, and partly because his tone often reminds me of people I know who argue for the sake of arguing. He annoyed me until it became clear that he is alarmingly right about a great deal of what he argues.

Where Do Camels Belong? (Where does this picture belong?)

I won’t go into detail about Thompson’s evidence (usually solid, sometimes dubious), because I highly recommend you read the book for yourself. In a nutshell, he makes a strong argument for a less gung-ho, more nuanced approach to our interaction with so called invasive species, exotic pests, noxious weeds. He demonstrates that not all introduced species are bad, and many are of overall benefit to the economy or to wildlife (think potatoes, and shrubs which offer forage for bees and berries for birds).

The reader is encouraged to view the natural processes of the world on a bigger timescale than our human-centric society is used to. Consider a constantly, gradually shifting world in which ecosystems balance themselves out and plants and animals introduce themselves to new territories following changes in climate and geology.

The available scientific literature focuses on a relatively small number of introduced species which have caused actual biodiversity loss or economic harm. Thompson cites many cases where the costs of attempting to eradicate a species comprise the bulk of the economic damage of which the species is accused!

What I have come to see is that the introduced species is often a scapegoat for damage caused or enabled by human interference in natural processes. Focusing on the harm caused by a handful of invasive species distracts us and diverts funds from more urgent conservation issues such as destruction of existing quality habitat and climate change. In other words, from addressing the underlying problems.

Does this scapegoating sound familiar, in this era marred by Brexit and Trump, the rejection of refugees, and disturbed, disenfranchised young people blowing up the natives?

Obviously, it’s not a direct parallel. Humans of every race and nationality are all of the one species. But the language we use to reject species and people we feel are different or don’t belong, shares similarities. Invasion, exotic, non-native. It’s a language of fear.

What startled me the most about reading Where do Camels Belong? was discovering my own disproportionate fear of introduced species and the perceived harm that every new species which enters the country might do to my beloved Irish wildlife. “They’re importing bumble bees from Europe to pollinate crops inside polytunnels? Fools! What about disease? Encouraging people to scatter wildflower seeds from the UK? Our local wildflowers will be destroyed! Somebody please think of the outbreeding depression!” I have even been known to wander through parks wondering how much meat there is on a grey squirrel…

“The only good squirrel is a red squirrel!” (The Nessapotanian Revolution, 2007)

I realised that part of the reason Thompson annoyed me was the defensive attitude with which I began reading the book. Fuelled by the media, and many of my scientific peers and mentors, I was convinced that invasive species could be a major contributing factor to the downfall of our remaining wildlife.

I’m not saying that plants and animals which multiply vigorously and have an above average effect on the make up of an ecosystem are never a problem. We do need to talk about it, and work on preventing it where we can. Where do Camels Belong? is just one book and I’m still making up my mind about it. All I’m saying is let’s be careful, calm, open-minded and scientific about it, and put ourselves in other species’ shoes now and then.

Standing up for bugs and other environmental essentials at #MarchForScience in Dublin

Hope Blooms at the Central Mental Hospital

The hyacinth first bloomed from the blood of Hyakinthos, a divine hero struck dead by the jealous West Wind. The crocus flower opens its petals to the first sun of springtime, a reminder to open our hearts to the goodness of all that surrounds us, to “discovery beauty in everyone”. Discovery Gospel Choir were greeted by these natural symbols, of hope in the face of tragedy and of open-hearted acceptance, as we entered the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum for an extraordinarily moving concert.

I want to tell you that the grounds of the Central Mental Hospital are beautiful at this time of year. That there are swathes of spring flowers breathing a gasp of colour and surprise all amongst the tall, inspiring trees. I want to tell you that they have donkeys, chickens, rescue dogs and bee hives now, for the patients to care for and to care for the patients.

I’m dying to tell you, stumbling over my sentences with excitement, every detail of the most joyful and meaningful concert I have ever sung with Discovery Gospel Choir! How I’ve never felt as connected with and as appreciated by an audience as I did with the patients of the “Central Mental Hospital for the criminally insane”, as it’s sometimes called. And we get some truly awesome audiences.

Yet I have held back and hesitated to publish this blog post, because not everyone had the privilege of being there, so not everyone will understand. I expect people might put up high walls in their minds when I tell them, maybe even respond with disgust or anger. Because (and this startled me too) many of the forty or so people in our chapel audience had killed someone, in many cases even a member of their own family. They had been found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity, so they were sent here instead of to prison. But the media vilifies and mocks those who suffer from mental illnesses, so those who lack awareness fear these sufferers even after their medication has healed them.

Take schizophrenia as an example of one such illness during which a person can act without understanding the reality of their actions. The rare story of a young man wielding an axe sells more newspapers than the one cowering in his bedroom afraid for his own life. The bizarre tale of the person who kills someone they believe to be Satan gets more clicks online than the local “mad woman” wandering the streets and harmlessly and humorously (if it wasn’t so sad) telling strangers about her chats with God on the phone.

From everything I have heard and read the two non-violent examples above appear to be much more likely manifestations of schizophrenia for the roughly 1% of the population in Ireland who will suffer from this awful illness. One percent of our documented population amounts to roughly 45,950 people. There are roughly 100 patients in the Central Mental Hospital, the only forensic psychiatric unit in Ireland. I’m not a doctor or a statistician, but do the maths and break down that stigma.

Psychosis (an umbrella term which mainly covers hallucinations, delusions and disorganised thinking, which can be tormenting and terrifying for the person who has it) is the primary symptom of schizophrenia and features in a number of other illnesses. It’s also something you can experience once off. It is estimated that 8% of the population at any given time have had psychotic experiences. It’s the luck of the draw what you or your loved one might hallucinate about if they have the misfortune to be struck by this illness.

That’s all that has brought these patients here – illness, and an unfortunate set of circumstances, which could strike anyone at any time in this society where mental health is so often an afterthought, a regret. Can you imagine recovering from a serious illness to discover that you have killed someone you love dearly? It seems like the cruellest sentence. Your life and the lives of your family and your victim’s family are changed beyond recognition forever.

We met a member of staff whose dedication to these patients goes far beyond his remit. While also lamenting the lack of supportive resources for victims’ families, he blames these tragedies on the lack of availability of mental health services in the outside world, and I agree. If the public were equipped to recognise the signs, look past the stigma, and seek and receive help as soon as it is needed, many of these cases could have been prevented, not to mention the suffering of thousands others who go under the public radar.

We heard from our hosts that the Central Mental Hospital used to be more prison-like. When you hear “high security psychiatric unit” you think Hannibal Lecter. It’s an image that strikes fear into people’s hearts, and the beings encased in hard layers of security become dehumanised. The grey stone buildings date back to 1850. The 18 foot high outer walls tower above the suburbs which have grown up around it.

Nowadays, there is much more of an effort towards rehabilitation. There is more of an atmosphere of hope and healing, at least around the flower beds and in the beautiful old chapel where we sang. The patients have something to talk about other than their past, and they sell their own brand of honey: Patient Bee. Outside of these walls, Ireland needs to reform its attitude to mental health to prevent others from ending up here. We can no longer brush this problem under the carpet like so many others.

Lifting the roof of the hospital chapel with four-part harmonies, songs gathered from around the world, was a mere drop of compassion in the ocean of troubles this country needs to face right now. But, for the gentle-spoken migrant patient in the front row who recognised and sang along to a song in his native language, for the smiling toothless man who danced like he was at a rave, and for all of us who clapped and danced and sang and opened our hearts and minds in joyful connection, it was a storm surge.

Master bee keeper Liam McGarry at the Central Mental Hospital (Photo: Cyril Byrne, Irish Times)