So that’s what Madagascar is like

We left Japan in a lengthy and protracted hurry. Few of the things we had planned to have in place were there, we had no lawyer, no confirmed UK representative and no agreement with the Japanese insurers as to our plans or the future of Gemma’s case. But none of this, despite our best and most concerted efforts, could be helped. And, although Japan has been impossibly welcoming and courteous and polite and clean, and full of unexpected benevolence chartered in our direction, we had had quite enough and could not stay a day longer. So, as the last slushy lumps of snow soaked into the dirt, as the once narrow corridors with 2 meter high walls of ice and snow became surprisingly generous boulevards in and around the small town of Kutchan where we were staying, and the whole area began its yearly spring revolution to migrate from snow fields to an assortment of gardens, allotments and harvest fields, we said goodbye to Hokkaido and Nippon and the snow. Especially the snow. Of that, Gemma had had her fill.

Our plans were still undefined, especially with the recent earthquakes causing much distress and disruption in Nepal and Indian visas requiring a personal visit to an Indian consulate and a 14 day wait thereafter. We decided to keep things simple, not least because this was the first bit of real travelling since the accident, and all sorts of unforeseen events could have transpired. We went to Thailand. Arriving in Bangkok we had already arranged to make a beeline for an apartment block where a friend was living. Mr. Matthew Browne has been in Thailand for some while, and with his help life was made a good deal easier. We lay in the sun by the pool, we learned how to pick and cook proper Thai food (without the MSG) and caught the energetic tail-end of Matthew indulging in all the luminous delights that Bangkok has to offer before his imminent return to the UK to begin a teaching course in Cornwall.

As expected, Bangkok is busy and congested, but beneath the frantic pace there is an observable (if unconventional) orderliness. It struck as a city of the future. A future already imagined by Phillip K. Dick and Ridley Scott. Its reassuring that in spite of the infamous lack of dedicated green spaces in Bangkok, in the alleyway and byways, on the ground where the majority of the city’s population exist, the streets still froth with vivid flora- in plant pots and boxes, hanging from roofs, growing from cracks and gutters. Depending on how far the elevated sky trains are taken and how high the flat, windowed edifices rise over the horizon will likely dictate which kind of ‘topia’ it will lean towards. As always, one can only hope that in its rise upwards, the city dos not forget those on the ground floor.

After a few days in the capital we headed for the beach. Of course we did, it’s Thailand. The beach (island) we headed for was Koh Samed. It is fairly close to Bangkok and we had heard good things, we also contacted a yoga man there who was willing and able to help us endeavour to get all yogic. For Gemma, that meant trying to take it slowly and not ask too much of herself. For me, that meant trying not to feel and look like a twat (the latter being an impossibility). Anyhow, he seemed nice, and he was kind enough to recommend a quiet little cove with inexpensive huts by the beach. It was ace. It was a quiet little crescent of paradise with warm water and soft sand. We did yoga, we drank beer, we ate good food. We spent our free time swimming and talking with a charming and lovely Swedish/Australian family who were backpacking their way from Aus towards Sweden. They were ace. The place was ace. The staff were ace. Which was nice, because by all accounts the rest of the island was a bit shit. Busy, dirty and a poxy slice of burdened tourism slapped on an otherwise paradisal coastline.
  

So it turned out that our yoga man, Amaro, was a gem, and with his help we learnt a lot and began feeling better. We didn’t stop looking like berks, but we did feel like well smug berks, so that means that our zen or chi or whatever must have been tuned up to an eight. After a fortnight on the island we needed to move on. Unfortunately, while we were sunning ourselves a second earthquake hit Nepal, making it a pandora’s box of possibilities that we simply couldn’t take the risk of venturing towards. Add to this our lack of Indian visa, the fact that we weren’t able to arrange Russian or Chinese visas with enough time to spare, and the fact that Jamie D. Huxley had clearly listened to our plans and stole our trip anyhow, we decided to change tack. Completely. In fact, we decided to tack towards a whole different continent.

In the discussion over destinations, we pondered over the globe and poked around various options, some of which were too easy, others too difficult, others too cold. Some countries just didn’t have a weird enough sounding name. We patrolled Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Australia and then we looked at Africa, shuffled a little to the right, and found it, Madagascar.
Apart from the fact that Madagascar is a big island where David Attenborough lives and is home to a load of lemurs and cats and plants and insects and reptiles that won’t live anywhere else in the world, we knew virtually nothing about Madagascar. But it sounded good, so why the hell not. We now know (amongst other things, some of which will come later) that Madagascar is the world’s fifth biggest island (after Australia, Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo) and home to 5% of the world’s Animal and plant species liver here and nowhere else. And yes, there are a lot of fuzzy lemurs and chameleons and all sort of other animals and plants and the like. As well as people. Very nice people.

We arrived in Madagascar via the Seychelles. Landing in the Seychelles airport is like setting down on the front cover of a Danielle Steele romance novel. A narrow strip of light grey beside a pearl-white bay with shallow indigo and turquoise water lapping the shore. It would have seemed entirely appropriate to look out of the port window and see the rippling torso of a long-haired Adonis atop a white stallion, both their lustrous manes entwined as one, flowing in the wind, galloping aside the plane to welcome us and check our passports. Landing in Madagascar isn’t like that at all. Arrivals at Antananarivo, Madagascar’s international airport and gateway to the capital city is made of wood and has one conveyor belt for luggage and 3 police/immigration men using a Dell laptop to give out visa stamps. From the direction towards the airport at which we descended, there were no paved roads, only dusty red lines sketched roughly between the plots of land and dwellings that divide the choppy plateau on which the city sits between them. From the airport a single strand of tarmac unravels towards the capital.

We arrived in mid-afternoon, so the taxi journey from the airport gave us our first glimpse of Africa (neither of us have visited the continent before). The road sloped away on both sides to flat silvery rectangles, pools of shallow water funnelled and collected by low banks into rice paddies. The madagascans eat a lot of rice. Behind these a jumble of colourful but crooked huts and houses perch on the hillsides. Some of the squares of land have been drained to grow other crops. On every available bank, fence and reachable roof clothes are laid out – either drying in the sun or for sale to passers by. Everyone is busy. Everyone is carrying, selling, pushing, loading, tending, fixing. A little later we pass a flat plain that has been given over to sport pitches. It looks a little like Hackney Marshes, except for being dustier. There are lots of games happening at once, on one muddied pitch it seemed as though a brawl had broken out, on closer inspection it turned out a game of rugby – so at least it was a sanctioned fight. And who knew the Madagascan’s were rugby fans? I guess their French history and proximity to South Africa are to account for it, but it still seemed strange to see. Later, we saw teams of burly men and women climbing the steepest hills in Tana (‘Tana’ is how Antananarivo is referred to by most all nationals in Madagascar).
In Tana we played it safe and stayed at the number 1 spot for visiting Europeans. They had a pool and a parrot and a delicious all-you-can-eat buffet. It was sanctuary. Outside the high walls and gated entrance things get decidedly more lively, and within two steps you are offered everything from vanilla and spices to tin cars, taxis, clothes, watches, money, gems, fish in jars, musical instruments, a menagerie of colourful animals made out of dry reeds and countless other things. There are also the direct appeals for aid, usually from women, children and the elderly. It was clear from the start that there is a lot of poverty in Madagascar, especially in Tana. But the sellers, though determined and persistent, approach with a smile and take it in good countenance if you turn them down. They get little and work hard for it. The sellers, as well as the women, children and elderly, are also happy and very grateful to receive water, food and old clothes in place of money. They are hungry and impoverished and, so far at least, it does not seem that begging has become the cultivated institution that it is in many other countries. Considering that the average ‘well fed’ Madagascan family will eat rice three times a day – at breakfast with a little meat or fish, at lunch with potatoes and in the evening rice with pasta – it does not bear well thinking about the diets of the poorest. We found out later that in rural areas they will eat chicken probably twice a year and the eggs and fish they harvest are worth more sold than eaten. Of the fruits that grow in fecundity all around them (bananas, coconuts, avocado and the like), we were told that all the trees are ‘owned’ by someone, and therefore picking is forbidden. And Madagascans do not look lightly on theft. The story from one small village we stayed in by the coast was that only last year a local who was caught steeling from his compatriots was hunted down and had a nail hammered into his head. The moral of the story: Hands off the ‘nanas.

Madagascar is big. It has desert in the south, rainforests in the east, fat baobabs trees in the west and fancy ex-colonial luxury in the north. We could not hope to see it all, so we had to choose. We had read that in the east travel was difficult and connections were not always readily available, but that the rewards were worth the effort. We heard that Tulear in the south could be fruity. We heard that Nosy Be in the north was a bit of luxury. We heard that the west was also difficult to get around and would probably involve a bit more cash and a pre-arranged boat or car and driver, neither of which we had. So we plumped east, and had the vague plan of heading north after that if time and funds allowed. Our first stop was Andasibe, and the rainforests and national parks famous for ringing each morning to the loopy, Jurassic shrieks of Madagascar’s largest lemur, the Indri.

Indri’s are cute. They’re black and white. Their neighbours are a singed, clay red and white. They’re cute too. They live alongside round-faced lemurs who have gold fur, also cute. At night, we spotted Goodman Mouse lemurs, not, as you might think, named after King Ralf, but the explorer who found them, also called Goodman. They’re tiny (like a mouse) and nocturnal and also cute. So, confirming all expectations, all lemurs are cute. Fact.

Along with the teddy bears, which were thankfully left wild and given the freedom of acres of forrest to escape the daily intrusion of their breakfast (7am – 10am is the best time to see them, just when they’re chowing down on lemur Frosties), we also saw chameleons and frogs and spiders and all sorts of lizards. The enormous, lush, primordial vegetation was fed by a daily downpour of both light and rain. It’s the rainforest. It’s damp. Gemma doesn’t like the damp (it’s cold), and neither of us were feeling 100%, so, after a couple of days’ exploring, we headed for the coast in the hope of sunshine and in pursuit of the long waterways that navigate the disconnected frontier.

Since political upheaval in 2009, Madagascar has been struggling to recover. It struggles still, and the roads have suffered under the dual burden of non-existent maintenance and the corrosive effect of changing temperatures, flash floods, insufficient drainage and vicious cyclones. The potholes are worse then my mum’s drive (anyone visiting my mum in Three Oaks will understand this well). Not that this bothers the local drivers any, they seem to approach the potholes as a chance to practice their slaloming and test their nerve as they swerve onto the wrong side of the road and back again with nothing to spare but a wisp of black smog between them and an oncoming juggernaut.
Along the roadside are villages comprising of little more than wooden shacks and mud huts. The roadsides are blissfully free of adverts and logos and anything but the towns, the people and the goods they are selling. This is not true of Tana, but up and down the east coast the glaring over-enthusiastic colours and plastic faces are noticeably absent. The freedom from intrusion, instruction and the ever-present appeal to want more or do better is palpable. It’s relaxing. It makes you want to look at things, instead of feeling like you have to filter the view and shy away from the shouting.
When we reached our destination, a hotel that sits on a 200m channel between the roaring Indian ocean and the silver pancake of water that is the Canal de Pangalanes, we left the jeep and took a wooden ferry over the placid water. The canals were built by the French at the expense of millions of Chinese slaves who were (apparently) eaten by crocodiles. The canal circumvents the charging deep of the Indian ocean and allows safe passage for goods and people up and down the east coast, connecting three large lakes and branching into a few smaller channels as it goes.
  

The hotel (voted as one of the Lonely Planet’s top 10 “End Of the World” hotels), was empty but for us. It was the off season. So after visiting the beach and paddling in the canal we began our walk north, to a small town/village called Ambila-Lemaitso where we were told we could find a boat. The 4km walk to the entry point of the southernmost lake was a sandy track beside the canal. The locals were busy going about their business as we passed – fishing or mending their nets, tending livestock, washing clothes, playing with the children. At one juncture a makeshift game of Subbuteto was covering the path, the pitch marked out in the sandy track, the players made from plastic bottle caps filled with dirt and the ball a round nut. Mostly the houses were small raised huts constructed from slender wooden trunks with roofs thatched from dry reads or dry palms. Mostly, they had a well tended garden and almost all were kept meticulously tidy and well kept. Closer to the town, some of the houses, which had the appearance of little summer cottages, had low mud or brick walls at their base. In cyclone season there is always damage, and many of these places will loose their roofs or be destroyed entirely. This is the same all along the east cost. It is accepted as a part of residence there, and those who do lose their homes are helped by their friends and neighbours to repair and rebuild. We were told that because of this many of the communities have a detachment from worldly possessions, and instead value those things promised and handed down to and from the afterlife. Though that does not stop them from working hard to ensure that what they leave behind is more than what they were given- as well as celebrating death, Madagascan culture focusses on ancestry, and so, if you are going to be remembered by your descendants, and are going to be forced to live with them forever in the afterlife, it makes sense to work hard and to be remembered well.

We arrived in Ambila-Lemaitso and looked for the port. We didn’t find it. We walked on. Eventually, someone took pity on our impending march towards kilometres of nothingness and enquired as to our business, “There’s no port here”, they replied, “The next village is another 15 kilometres. It’s a long walk”. From the map and from the book we had expected to find the lake at our feet. We did not. But, with a bit of negotiating we were offered a variety of transport – speed boat, ferry, canoe, moped, car – to get us to where we could find a boat across the lake. We couldn’t afford the boat, and the canoe wasn’t available for another two hours, so we squeezed in with a brace of dead ducks and scrounged a lift in the car. We finally arrived at the lakes.
  

A gentle pirogue ride (open canoe dug out of a large tree trunk) took us across the first lake to Manambato. These small wooden boats are everywhere. The local kids learn to pilot these from when they are 6 years-old, and any local is willing and able to offer a ride (at varying and negotiable expense). When we arrived our boatman helped us embark on the next leg. It is the low season, so there were no groups for us to join and from Manambato the bateau-brousse (cheap local cargo and passenger carrying boats) were not available. So we flipped a coin and took a short but expensive boat trip to a village further north. There we were fortunate to alight and find a place at a local’s bungalow accommodation that was not only cheap but where we were able to meet a host of interesting folk and be given an unexpected window into life there.

The canals and their interconnected lakes are described as the ‘quiet wonder’ of Madagascar, and they are just that. Soft white sand beaches, crystal clear water, tall, willowy reeds, swarthy men in straw hats fishing and pushing wooden canoes about the place. Isn’t it just. Dark green hills rise steeply from the shore with narrow, barely discernible alleyways cutting through the bush leading to village enclaves within. The lakes act as larder, laundry room and bath tub. Pottering along the canals as they snake through the thick greenery you get a sense of life as it has been here for many languorous decades. The canals have the same wild serenity of riverboat jaunts in Mississippi or Louisiana, there is even a touch of the Amazon around the long, swooping bends. In years gone by it would have been usual to hear the plop of a croc sliding into the water, but apparently these days they are all gone.
Our bungalows are part of a nest of traditionally hand built huts. They were fashioned by Nola, a local man who is hotel owner, builder, farmer, electrician, boatman, fisherman, father, grandfather, modest celebrity and Vice President of the Madagascan end of the Relais Sainte Ampahantany. At Nola’s place we happened immediately upon his friend, guest and partner, Isobel. An elegant and enthusiastic Frenchwoman who has poured her heart and soul into helping Christophe (the President) and Nola to implement a programof education and development for the local village that works from the ground up – not working for the local community but giving them skills and opportunities to work for themselves, and ensuring that they are the driving forces behind the program, not the enthusiastic and well-meaning Westerners who so often shake hands, clean up and bugger off after their ‘work’ has been done. In Madagascar, as in the rest of the world, there is little shortage of well meaning investment, but such a small amount of that work, money and energy ever ends in the right hands or is capable of lasting longer than a sticking plaster over a running wound. In Madagascar there are 21,000 Non Government Organisations. There is a lot of waste. A lot of back-slapping. And, often, not a lot of real change.
Isobel, the founder and French side to the project, was a teacher in France. In her pedagogy she shares the same misgivings about the application and motivation for education as Gemma (both in Madagascar and Europe). They talked about it a lot. In broken French and charades we talked about a few things over a few beers. Then the other Frenchies got involved – Anotoine, Guilham and Thibault and – they could speak great English, and a few other languages besides, and have been travelling the world in search of traditional fishing. We talked. We drank. They smoked. The next day we were invited for a day trip with Isobel and Nola to visit their village project. After a nice breakfast we walked a few kilometres, took a pirogue, hiked some more, stopped for drink, walked some more, took another pirogue, walked some more, took another pirogue and walked just a little bit more and then we were there- the village. In a hidden enclave overlooking the lake they have turned the hillsides and planted pineapples and other crops, they have built water towers and dwellings for workers. They have turned a huge area of soil that has apparently been tested as being too acidic, so they are looking for ways to treat the soil on a sustainable basis so that they can grow more crops. It surprised us that withe all the deep greenery growing around us and with the large amount of rainfall so little edible crops were able to be grown in the deficient soil. On the crest of the hill as you enter the village the schoolhouse is a dimly-lit hall with low stone walls and a dry palm roof. The whole village is simple as simple gets, but the walkways are swept and the cabins are as clean as they can be and the children (of which there are many) are bold and excited and just as children should be. I am always nervous of taking photos of people without their permission, so I asked a few older kids and with their consent took a snap of the boy in a white shirt proudly sporting his calculator. In seconds we were swamped and  followed and continued our walk to delighted squeals and hollers as they saw themselves in various self-proclaimed poses. Alongside the village is a small enclave of huts similar to those we stayed in, they will be ready to receive guests in the October. The view over the lakes is breathtaking, especially when the sun splits into pinks and golds that gleam in splintered duplicate from the surface of the lake. We ate a lovely meal and began the journey home.
Next morning the whole group were heading onward to Tamatave, it was also Isobel’s last weekend there until her return at the end of this year for the opening of the bungalows. We joined forces and took the train. In Tamatave we were joined by Christoph, the Madagascan President, and we spent the day discussing the project and it’s future. They found us accommodation on the edge of town and even invited us to an evening meal at his sister’s house which was nearby. They are all very smart, very hardworking people, and it’s heartening to see that sometimes the effort and modest funds can make it to the right people. Nola, Christophe, Isobel and the project are gaining notoriety in the area, and, as the project has been developed and run with the efforts of locals, their is hope for its influence to spread. We wish the project, and especially those who run it, the very best of luck.
After Tamatave we headed for the ‘paradise islands’ of Isle Sainte Marie and Isle Aux Nattes by way of taxi-brousse and choppy boat ride. And they were that. We were proper smug. At night we walked through alleyways that crackled with fireflies. We ate well. We drank fresh coconut. We laid back on palm-fringed beaches and swung in the hammocks on the porch of our bungalow. We fell in the river walking home in the dark after a lovely romantic dinner. Over the weekend we visited pirate graveyards and toured the north and west of the larger island, Isle Sainte Marie. Especially in the north the small village were full of locals carrying their daily crops atop their heads – fish, baskets of fruit, stacks of vegetables, piles palm leaves, enormous bamboo trunks, and anything else that could be traded for the former – bicycle parts, clothes, tinned goods, etc, etc.
  

From Isle Sainte Marie the road for us ended, so we headed back towards Tana. Along the way we had a close call with a fishy driver and some fake Gendarme that was eventually abated by me climbing out of the van window screaming and waving for passing traffic to stop. When I asked them to present their credentials and they merely pointed to the army pants they were wearing and the gun they were holding I got suspicious. In the face of the abject refusal to comply, pleading in broken French to be let continue and with a weird English dude trying to flag down traffic I think they got freaked out and they eventually let us go. Which was nice.

Back in Tana we visited a few historical sites, markets and museums. The traditional crafts in Madagascar are some of the best in the world. As are their cars. I believe that Madagascar is the place cars come to live forever. Their taxis are cream coloured Renault 4s, the towns are filled with vehicles that have no right to be still working – mostly classic French vehicles. On our last day we visited a croc farm and stretched out into the surrounding hills. All around Tana are hand-cut quarries. By the sides of the roads locals hammer big stones into smaller ones and then pile them by the roadside in mounds of assorted sizes ready to be collected by trucks for building. From flat, square bricks around 20cm on each side to pebbles the size of walnuts. Men women and children do this work all day every day, toiling in the dust clouds, hammering with dull, basic tools. It is a stiff reminder of the poverty that exists there and the difficult hand that is dealt to some people.
Lastly, the internet is shit in Madagascar, which is why this was done all in one go. Let’s hope it works better in Zambia.

P.S. All the photos are from Madagascar. Sorry Thailand. There were issues.