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MEET Malaindrano, a giant baobab tree hollowed out to store water. It grows in Ampotaka, a village in the Mahafaly plateau region of Madagascar, where there are 300 baobabs for every 475 people. Each tree has a name and a family responsible for protecting it.

Malaindrano means “he who hates water”. In fact, this baobab doesn’t hate water at all, but it is so big many people believe it has never been completely filled.

Even semi-full, the trees are a vital store of water in one of Madagascar’s driest regions. Also known as bottle trees for their thick, cylindrical trunks, such baobabs form a network of natural water tanks that has allowed people to thrive in a place where rain is rare, and where the porous soil quickly absorbs the little that does fall.

Lack of rain can lead to famine. In the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of people died after extreme drought. This prompted locals to come up with an ingenious way to survive: hollowing out baobabs to store water in when it is plentiful.

It takes three people around 10 days to scoop out a baobab. The tree then grows a new inner bark that stops stored water soaking away. And it doesn’t rot, as baobab wood already has a high moisture content. Larger specimens can store about 14,000 litres of water.

Today, some 20,000 people live across the plateau, many of whom rely on the stored tree water for around a third of the year.

Photographer