Travelling through a scientific eye

“… That is a friendship test!” Looking deeply into my eyes, my friend Lindsey has just asked me to accompany her for a night frog census within the Ranomafana National park.

Our research station was based near the park entrance, about 5 miles uphill from the village. But like last Sunday, I decided to walk down the hill to visit its market. It is a quite a long walk but I did not feel bored at all. Rarely do I meet people on the way, but with the few ones I bumped into, they met me with their biggest smiles, and greeted with a warm and long “Salama e!” The air was clean as I met very few cars on the road. It seemed cleaner to me as I gazed at the rainforest hills surrounding the village of Ranomafana.
I spent my day visiting its colorful market. My way back home was also pleasant but when the evening came, I felt quite tired. I just wanted to finish my supper, climb up to my tent and get sleep.
Unfortunately, Lindsey came near my table, sat down and began to ask me her question. I understood that she did not need help for her frog research project, but she really did not want to go in the rainforest by herself. I gave a glance at my watch: 08 PM. My mind kept telling me how exhausted I was, and that nobody would venture out in the rainforest at this time. But she really had a stronger argument – Friendship! I left my table, cleaned myself, wore my rain boots, and put my jacket on. I switched my headlight on and there we were ready to hit the rainforest. A guide came with us.
As we began entering the park, I kept hearing noises from every direction. I could not recognize any noises. We walked for another mile, then, our guide led us off-trail to end up near a stream. The noises increased in number. “Were these frogs? Birds? Or lemurs?” I began to ask our guide. With a gentle smile, he began to lecture about frogs and threw some frog names. As he noticed I became more interested, he asked us to switch our headlight off. In total darkness, we were in the middle of the rainforest surrounded by hundreds of frog noises. Our guide told us to keep quiet for a minute. Wow! I was just aware that I was standing in the middle of a trail, that on my left was the stream, on my right the rainforest, and hundreds of frogs were singing all over us.

After Lindsey finished her work, we came back to the station around 11 PM. I was still exhausted but I did not regret taking that friendship test. Whether or not I passed it, the result was the same for me. A rewarding one!