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The drive to the end of the paved road took one full day, after that another 24 hours of driving, over the worst road I have ever been on, which took me to a town on the southeastern point of the Island, Fort Dauphin. The drive was incredible. Towering granite batholiths separated by groomed rice fields and small villages with clay brick houses and abandoned patron villas (bad karma?) slowly gave way to drier vegetation; introduced cacti and sisal dominate the road side, at times seeming to close in like triffids (that happens when you don’t sleep and keep on driving). This is the land of Androy: “A land where one goes thirsty, where one often goes hungry, where the people are strong and proud.” Tall spires (Didieracea, endemic plants) with rows of spines spiralling towards the top and interspersed with tiny round leaves, which the sifakas (the white lemurs) feed on, were all around us now. It was incredibly hot out. The ground has no soil and no laterite (due to the lack of moisture) and as a result, the people make their homes not out of clay bricks, but wood. And the only wood available is that of these Didieracea. It is unimaginable, these people harvest the spiniest wood possible, build their homes out of it and eat prickly cactus pears for food and moisture. No wonder they are called people of the thorns. What did they eat before cacti were introduced? It was cactus fruit season and after picking one and eating the inside (delicious, similar to a kiwi), I had tiny needles on my hands and inside my mouth for two days. “rub your hands into your hair”, my driver said, but my hair is very fine and so the prickly spines continued their torture into my scalp. We encountered an older man hitchhiking, who said “Azafady” (please), which I thought unusual for these strong and proud people. So after about 800m I asked my driver to turn around and pick him up. He was a stereotype of the thorn people, a piece of cactus fruit on the side of his mouth and two large cactus spines sticking out of his throat, which my driver and I carefully extracted and the man had no notice of, because he was fascinated by the automatic window control. He made sure any person in the next few villages was sure to see him inside the vazah vehicle. Turned out his older brother was very ill and he was on his way to visit him. After dropping him off, a good deed done, I figured it was now allright for me to photograph their tombs. (there is no such thing as true altruism) These tombs differ from the ones in Central Madagascar in that each tomb is made for one person only, instead of a family grave. Only certain types of zebu are selected for the sacrifice and the number of horns on top of each tomb represents the importance of that person. Some tombs would have one set of horns, others 60 or more. Most alluring are the aloealoe, the wooden totems with carved zebus, soldiers (guns, airplanes, helicopters and early vehicles are a favourite in aloealoe and decorations) or daily rituals, all depicted in miniature and at one time, painted. I say alluring, because it crossed my mind more than once to take one…and my brain came up with some excellent excuses as to why it would be o.k. to do so: surely they are weathering and in my house they would last much longer, and I would give credit to the place it originated, and it would teach other people about this culture, and so forth. But I resisted, after all, my driver would witness this desecration and not take it lightly…..At one set of tombs, particularly abundant in guns and soldier paintings, I saw the villagers come towards me. Snapping a few more pictures before they got close, I hear my driver pleading for me to return to the vehicle. Reluctant, I turned back, only to have the locals bar my way. Hmmm, no children, all adults, a young man with a wig (?) comes to me and upon closer inspection it resembles the scalp of a Japanese student, thick, straight, spiked and with reddish streaks, while underneath the piece of skin I can see evidence of a normal head of hair. A decoration piece? A trophy? I extend my hand and he shakes it, says something that makes all the others, except my chauffeur, laugh. I got back into the vehicle and had, for once, no urge to hand out biscuits and candies. We drove off quickly.. Fort Dauphin is a dirty and rather ugly town in a gorgeous setting, surrounded by ocean on the east, south and west sides and leaning into steep, densely forested mountains to the north. It is on the west side that the new port for Rio Tinto’s mineral sands exploitation practise will be constructed. A shame, it’s the nicest stretch of beach around. There is a very nice restaurant with amazing views of the beaches and abundant Nephilias…I’ll spare you the horrific details of that dark and rainy night where the taxi driver pulled up underneath a palm tree, which I had to brush aside to enter the vehicle, and how I screamed in the dark when a Nephilia crawled down my arm onto my hand, taking up my entire hand, which I shook spastically in the direction of the driver, who immediately stepped on the breaks, giving me the chance to jump out of the little Peugeot, causing a scene in the centre-ville of the town….After vigorously shaking out my clothes, I refused to get back into the vehicle and walked the rest of the way, with the taxi behind me, lighting the way with his headlights…. After Fort Dauhpin I visited the famous Berenty Reserve. It is situated near a wide river and therefore has a “galley” forest with enormous tamarind trees, whose massive, serpentine limbs support hundreds of lemurs, who feed off the young leaves and flowers. The bonus of this marvellous place is that you can take a guide with you, but it is not required, so I spent many an hour alone, wandering through the reserve, observing primate behaviour in a typical Jane Goodall fashion; quietly taking notes, photographing them without a flash, not feeding them, no interference into their daily rituals. And so I found myself sitting on one of their water basins...turns out that they were being eaten by crocodiles (which I have yet to see in this country, besides in the form of handbags) when drinking from the river, and so the reserve has concrete water basins for the lemurs to drink from. Not wanting to move, debating whether I had already disturbed their behavioural patterns by being seated or was about to if I moved, a large snake came closer and started to gulp water …barely moving, except for writing and takings pictures, I was astounded…snakes drink water? It was about 2 meters in length, reddish brown and when it slithered away, it caused some elevation in the mewing calls of the ring tail lemurs. I later was told that I had witnessed a “fandrefiali”, a rare species of snake that first hypnotizes its prey, be it zebu or human (!), then spears its victim and sucks its blood, hence the color…personally, the small rounded head did not strike fear in me. We drove down six hours further to the most southern tip of the country, to Faux Cap. Completely isolated, a place where the spiny forest meets a windy coast with a rough sea, Faux Cap is known for the presence of partially fossilized eggshell fragments belonging to the recently extinct elephant bird, Aepyornis Maximus. This bird stood 3 meters tall, was similar to an ostrich, but with thicker thigh bones, individuals weighing up to 300 kilos. While walking the coastline, I wondered, what did these birds eat? There are accounts of them still being alive up to 300 years ago, so the vegetation could not have changed much. I (guiltily) collected fragments. The only food source could have come from the ocean, where a narrow reef encloses the beach, littered with cockles the size of a large man’s fist. A French man, Xavier, runs a modest suite of bungalows and a lovely bar, collectively called “Libertania”, after the pirates who moored there hundreds of years ago. I thought he might be a descendant, except that the hostile natives killed all of them. I had brought a bottle of mangostein rum and he had some great home-made vanilla rum, and while we drank and smoked he told us stories of the shipwrecks and their treasures…. At night, in a small but very cozy stone house, in the mood of du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, I listened to the wind howling under the door, imagining huge birds standing in the reef, their massive legs withstanding the strong current, fishing and pecking at the shells. The next day I enjoyed fresh lobster and fish in the aptly named “cactus hotel”, where one of the owner’s 14 (!) children was making faces at the chromed bumper of our truck. Another 36 hours driving, and during my shift I got us stuck in slick mud for 3 hours until a landrover passed by and towed us out (hurrah for landrovers!), and we were back on a paved road. We slept the day away in the beautiful Isalo National Park and drove back to camp the next day. The road I took is rarely driven by vazah [foreigner], since most are on a time constraint and an hours’ flight from the capital can get you to Fort Dauphin. Thankfully. Preservation due to difficult access. Continue reading... Emeralds and a King, Mananjary Region, Eastern Madagascar, 2006
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