Maeva* is an intern at ADES and is currently writing her Master's thesis in Madagascar. She gives us an insight into her experiences.

Fianarantsoa is a great city! It stretches over several hills, so it goes up and down quite a bit. Even if you're standing on the streets in the centre of town, you can look straight down onto a rice field where people are working. It's a strange mixture of city and countryside, where the two are right next to each other, or actually more intertwined. The city is quite high up (1200 metres above sea level), and even though the sun warms us well, it quickly gets very chilly in the shade and at night. In fact, we are lucky that the sun is shining during our visit. Luc says that he had always experienced bad weather, grey, fog and cold here before. Our accommodation for the three days we are here is the La Rizière hotel management school, a beautiful building with an elevated view of part of the city. ADES has also built an institutional kitchen here for the students of the hotel school. The entire staff is made up of students from the hotel management school, which made some of our meals at the hotel quite interesting, depending on which year of students served us... This is also where Luc and I met up with Azagen again, whom we had said goodbye to in Tana. He and Jean-Yves (DirEX Production) travelled down from Tana to here by car.

The day after our arrival, we set off for the centre and production site of the clay cookers here in Fianarantsoa. In the morning, Luc and I hold our fifth and final strategy workshop. We've really got the hang of it now and are (finally) making good progress. In the afternoon, we both learn how to make a cooker! I was really looking forward to that. We are both officially kitted out in the green ADES overalls and given all the additional safety clothing. Jean-Yves, who is accompanying us and watching, can hardly stop grinning as we both stand in front of him in green and are ready to get started. While the exact components, origin and purpose of the first step are explained to us and it's more like a guided tour than a trial and error, Luc listens patiently while my fingers itch to finally get started. So I ask for the shovel from the employee standing closest to me with a grin. He was the one shovelling clay into the spiral machine that shapes the clay into a tube. He nods at me, makes a few more gestures and I get started. The clay is really heavy... I ram the shovel under a pile of earth with my foot and have to make an effort to lift my arms high enough with the load so that I can get the clay into the machine. When I start, Luc is quickly assigned a task: he now adds a dry mixture of already baked clay for a better consistency, while I provide the muscle power. And so we start. Sometimes together, sometimes in turns, we get to try out all the stages (except the actual firing and drying). Only when it comes to finalising the pottery and putting the finishing touches to the cooker do we both decide to leave it to the professionals so as not to deface the cookers. Then it's on to spraying the metal covers of the cookers. The people in charge of this part were already eagerly awaiting us, despite being off work. They clearly enjoy equipping us with mouthguards and then patiently and precisely explaining to us how to hold the spray gun, which distance is most efficient and creates the fewest bumps, and how to continue spraying as cleanly as possible afterwards. He made it look so easy and fluid. As soon as I have the paint gun in my hand, I point it at Luc, to his horror and the great amusement of myself and the people around us. I get started, and even though I'm a lot slower than my teacher (which Luc lets me know with a grin while he waits for the coloured metal sleeves to be ready), I find a rhythm after a while. It's a lot of fun and Luc and I are both happily colouring. Finally, I get to label one of the finished cookers with a knife and carve my name into the base.

When we come out, we meet all the production staff here in Fianarantsoa down on the petanque field. We have a few more petanque matches over an after-work beer and aperitif. Although I end up in a team with the two "super snipers", we lose against Luc's team. But it's a very nice evening shared all round, and it was great to be allowed to make a cooker myself. In the evening, after a magical dinner (Idris, the driver, is apparently not only a chauffeur but also a magician, he has so many tricks up his sleeve), Azagen and I go to a karaoke bar in Fianarantsoa with some of the team. There's practically a second dinner, a dreadful rum arrangement, beer, lots of singing, most of it seems to me to be Malagasy chart music, and then there's a quick dance in between when there's no other song on the programme. It's a cosy evening, and before it gets really late I come home to La Rizière. The rest of the time in Fianarantsoa consists of work at the hotel, a visit to a beautiful botanical garden and potential future ADES project, and a very exciting and fruitful dinner with the director of another cooker manufacturer.

* Name changed