Namana Serasera and Mirasoa Association, February 9th 2008

Tree Planting event. Today, it takes place near one of the most important spring for mineral water in Madagascar.

When planting tree roots that way, the leaves will begin to appear after 5 years

and can be utilized for medicinal purposes.

over the past 4 years, we expect to have around 4000 trees.

As of today, we already have 2000.

however, only 9 of those can be credited to you guys (so you'd better get moving...)

(laughters)...don't despair !

if some of those trees are taking too long to grow, we'll switch to gravileae.

girls can partner with boyz or ...? (laughs) anything that suits you guys

you take the root and you make a spherical shape of the soil surrounding it so that it protrudes

we have 20 blades here but we are 45 people here today

that's why we will work in pairs.

you make a cut on one side and then on the other side

then you put the root and the soil in the hole that was previously digged out.

however, you need to dig a little deeper because we don't want sand to go inside the soil.

so after you dig further, I probably should show you a dry-run....here is a hole but we will not plant here

let me find a shovel

do you see the black soil on top ? That's the one you put back inside first

you break apart the dry soil and you turn it over

then you use your shovel to level the side of the hole. This is why there has to be two people

one person prepare the hole and the second one plants the root inside

the one who has the angady gently press the soil around the root to cover it....

but one has to be gentle because the root needs air to grow

but not too gentle because the soil has to stay around the root......so there you go

the roots are ready to be planted

how many tree roots do we have again ? 300?

you can get going now...yes let's get started

how about our bags ?

Thank you !