Maps on the wall, agreements on the table
In the mediation room at the mairie of Ambalavao there are three cadastral maps hanging on the back wall. The largest covers the urban perimeter and the agricultural plots stretching toward the granite hills to the south. The other two are enlargements of conflict zones: a stretch of irrigated land where three families dispute water schedules, and a strip of grazing land near the boundaries of the Réserve d'Anja that changes owner depending on who you ask.
Wesley put them there his first month at the post. Before that, the maps were rolled up in tubes inside a metal cabinet nobody opened because the lock was rusted. Wesley asked the market carpenter for three light wooden frames, paid for them out of his own pocket, and hung the maps at a height where anyone sitting at the mediation table could point with a finger without standing up. That changed the meetings. Instead of arguing from memory — "the line was always higher up," "my grandfather farmed here his whole life" — the parties could look at the same document at the same time. The map doesn't resolve the conflict, but it levels the conversation.
