In her autobiography, the famous primatologist Patricia Chapple Wright wrote, Once you drink the water in Madagascar, you will return. The same is true for Fred Triep and Kaatje Bout. During their first visit to Madagascar, they were touched by the people, landscapes and nature and decided to return to this fascinating island. Fred Triep travelled the island for seven weeks in 2004 and returned in 2012, 2015 and 2017. Kaatje Bout did a project in Madagascar as a sixteen-year-old in 2016. She came back in 2019 and travelled the island for a month and then worked on a project for a month with insects. You can read about their experiences in this book. Fred Triep (1949) is a biologist. He taught as a biology and ICT teacher in secondary schools. While studying biology, he was already dreaming about travelling to Madagascar. But it was not until 2004 that he made his first trip to this island. His passions are travelling, hiking, plants, animals and photography. He previously wrote books about Madagascar: the travel story The call of the indri, part 1 (2013) and the Dutch novel Het verdriet van Koesoesoe (The sorrow of Koesoesoe) in 2015, which is also set in Madagascar.
Kaatje Bout’s (2000) fascination with Madagascar began when she couldn’t get enough of the cartoon ‘Madagascar’ as a child. Although that may have been because of the dancing lemurs and talking penguins, she has always remained mesmerized by the country. In 2016, she spent a month volunteering in the rainforest in the East, which only made her more curious about the rest of the incredibly diverse Madagascar. So she went back for two months in 2019, first travelling around and then spending a month interning at the Madagascar Biodiversity Center . She is now studying Life Science and Technology in Delft and hopes to return to the country one day.
