Madagascar

20 May, 1977, Antananarivo.  Made it thus far. The plane stopped briefly at Moroni (the capital of Comoros), and Majunga (a port of Madagascar), depositing us Saturday in Antananarivo.  Checked into a hotel (about four dollars for the double), right on the main street.  We’re back in the same hotel for the third night after a quick trip south to Ambositra. The bed is as hopeless as in the first two nights - the large mattress is so worn that one must carefully position one’s body around the springs so that none is poking too sharply, while still maintaining a mostly horizontal orientation. We had a much better bed for half the price in Antsirabe, a mattress made of a finely woven mat bag stuffed with hay - unfortunately, it was also stuffed with fleas, and I’m covered with bites now, and with only one pair of long pants, and this cool climate, the de-infection is going to be tricky.

Been reading Saul Bellow's Humboldt’s Gift for the second time (I never finished it the first time).  Started out slow, then it started to grab me, and now I’m reading ever so slowly, lingering on each phrase, each choice of words, dreading its completion. I may just read it again. The guy knows how to nail down descriptions with such an apt choice of words. And I love his alternation from deep philosophy to feeling silly about philosophizing. A really great book.

What a funny country we are visiting! so different from East Africa. The people are small, of various shades of brown, with an endless variety of faces, hair types, shapes. In general, a handsome bunch, if slightly too small and stout for my taste. Still I’ve seen a number of tasty specimens, with long Malagasy hair and slim, strong bodies. Clothes are nothing special - very western- although the men occasionally wear knee length shirts of bright colors. And everybody wears a hat, even the little kids. I’ve seen western hats, bowlers, Hawaiian ones, skullcaps - everything.

An amazing phenomenon is the huge number of merchants there are, on every street and along every road, selling peanuts (great! Best I’ve ever had), yoghurt, beer, chocolate, cookies, pots and pans, shirts, earrings, precious stones, even kitchen sinks. The famous Zoma Market is in town is on today (Friday). I had a short walk near the hotel this morning, and must’ve seen at least a hundred street vendors of locks and nails and such - how do they all make a living? Who is buying the stuff? And prices aren’t necessarily low. Butterflies and glass boxes cost about eight dollars each, so they must be just for tourists. But I’ve seen only a handful of foreigners in the country. They must sell about one a month. Tana is a fun town, a real market town. There is stuff for sale everywhere, and the backdrop of steep hills covered with cute homes in good condition is impressive. Took a number of photos of the town.   Today is market D\day, and I’m out my first black-and-white film.

We took the train south three days ago- a journey of about three hours. Lovely countryside of fairly high rolling plains, cultivated rice paddies (Nicole‘s first view of them- she was enchanted), tiny homes of neat reeds and rattan, around with smooth round stones, grouped in villages is spotted like all through the country land. Eventually we passed a patch of forest, mostly of pines.  Antsirabe, "The Vichy of Madagascar,””, has a kind of grungey  but once lovely thermal, which we rented one morning for a forty cent hot bath. I didn’t realize there was a cold water tap as well, and almost fried at the maximum temperature of about 8000°F. The town is full of rickshaws, with barefoot men pulling them, some quite old, pulling ladies laden with groceries and kids, trotting through town at a good clip. These guys are in shape. We rented bikes with a Malagasy buddy we met on the train and toodled around one afternoon. He works for a company which mines semi precious stones, and promised to show us around Tana on our return.

We hitchhiked from Antsirabe to Ambositra, our most southernmost visiting point. Not much to see, a funny town with a great main street (old wooden houses, each different, reminiscent of a southern German mountain town), situated in a series of hills overlooking more of the high plateau. The weather is magnificent, fog in the early morning clearing to warm, dry 70° to 75° during the day. Much, in fact, like Palo Alto. We hitched back to Tana with a, nice fellow north from Fort Dauphin in a Land Rover - he even stopped on the way to let us take some photos of the countryside on the way.

The friends we almost sailed to Madagascar with from Mombasa flew with us from Moroni to Majunga  - they were stuck in Comoros for three days with no chance to visit, and then were forced to pay for round-trip tickets to Majunga.  All told, they paid five times what we did to get to the “isle vert”.  Plus, elaborate searches, passport confiscation, the works. We, on the other hand, flew in without a hitch. - they didn’t even ask me for our return tickets.  So it goes.

21 May 1977 .  Hotel Glacier, Antananarivo. Stretched out on the lumpy bed, just dark outside, quite stoned from a small joint. Some observations: I can’t understand the way one buys things over here. Will ask the price of an item in their shops, and get told 350 francs, 1200 francs and 2000 francs - when we know the item isn’t worth more than Fr.100. OK, no fixed idea of a starting price, but always very high for non-essentials. Next, the bargaining stage. What do you do? If he says 2000 francs, and You know it worth Fr.100, should you start at Fr 25, and try to work up to 100? I tried that, and the joker is so incredulous that the bargaining session disintegrates. So should I say 400, prepared to take a big loss ? He rejoins with 1800, and refuses to go any lower. What to do? They’ve got a particular notion of sticking it to the visitors, and they don’t seem to sell to him at ordinary levels.  Six dollars for a butterfly! Six dollars for a leather purse! Yesterday I was quoted some price on some semi precious stones from a respectable looking lady and her family. I learned from Carl Puhl, a German traveler/wheeler dealer and itinerant gem dealer we've seen off and on in Kenya and now Madagascar, that decent prices for the stones she wanted to sell me should be bought at about 1/10 her prices. The trouble is, I really want a butterfly, but I’m pissed at the process I’ll have to go through to buy, and I don't want to see something on my wall in 10 years time which which brings back memories of what a bastard the salesman was.

We went to turn on Antananarivo's zoo and museum today, and had a ball. Lemurs everywhere, plus some birds, an island full of white herons with bills, as well as some crested black ones, big crocodiles, chameleons (Madagascar is the world capital for these amazing buggers), giant tortoises (only found here, the Seychelles, Mauritius, Reunion, and way over in the Galapagos Islands), and some kind of jungle cat built like a mountain lion (not quite a cat in the face - more like looking at a ratel); took some black-and-white photos of birds and a lemur, but the clouds prevented any great shots. Jesus, there are lots of lemurs species.- the museum had about 25 different specimens, one small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. They are instantly likable creatures, and even the strangest faces with bulbus, orange eyes, perfectly circular, countenances, and thoroughly human nose and mouth, evoking an obscure familiarity in me  - “Hey, how’s it hanging, old buddy?”  They zing around with great springing electric bounds, like colobus monkeys, but more agile - more like galagos. They have great little hands with flattened fingertips, and a funny chirp/grunt sound. Covered with luscious fur, from pure white to banded white and black to white with red on the faces and elbows, two shades of orange and brown, and onto jet black.  Pet of the Year nominee.  Saw a dead coelacanth in the museum, about 3 to 4 feet long, and rhino-like in its plating, ugliness, and ancientness. First found off the Malagasy coast around 1935, since then at least 40 have been hauled up to the surface, mainly by fishermen. Completely forgot it was supposed to be extinct 300 million years ago. Also, a skeleton of a giant ostrich like bird with an egg bigger than a rugby ball (eight times as large as an ostrich egg).  This critter, which only went extinct about 500–1000 years ago, is an example of the gigantism of many of Madagascar’s animals, explained by the museum as a glandular thing. Also: giant hippo, crocodile, lemurs (the size of a big monkey). The museum had a wall devoted to butterflies, and we checked out the ones we like to buy. There are two or three which are as lovely as any I’ve seen anywhere. 

Had an interesting pickpocket attempt yesterday. The guy zipped open the small pocket of my rucksack while I was taking a picture. I turned around before he could reach in, and just saw his hand retracting under the coat over his arm. I looked back-and-forth between the open pocket and his eyes, and told him to watch it. As I left, he kicked me in the foot, and as I continued to leave, he belted me with his jacket. Nicole arrived just then, and he melted away in the crowd. Carl told me later that a similar technique was tried on him at once. He caught a guy grabbing his camera, and as he struggled with him, he heard his keys hit the ground, and discovered the guy's other hand was in his pocket. Rule: move away from the fuckers  - they are smarter and quicker than you. Also, they have buddies.

Right now, Nicole is cooking up a meal in our hotel room - about $.60 for enough steak to sink us both. Plus spaghetti, yogurt, and coffee with milk, and you’ve got yourself a meal.

Thoughts on travel: Snother way to go is with a long ticket, stopping every place you can think of. Carry everything in a shoulder bag (or internal frame backpack doubles as a suitcase), probably leather, with no open pockets, and lockable. No food, no tent, no sleeping bag, but maybe a Bluet for that occasional cup of tea. Still, food is such a good deal in many countries that you should probably carry the minimum to prepare a meal.  And carry all money as cash, except maybe 1000 bucks in Travelers checks to show people. And a money belt or in an inner pocket or a pocket in your luggage, which is small enough to go on planes. Too much ripping off and breaking of non-accompanied baggage, not to mention delays.

Madagascar pluses: 

• Fried peanut (four cents a cone)

• Meat on a stick (four cents)

• Liver on a stick ($.20 for an enormous helping of the softest, tender liver you’ve ever tasted)

• Lemurs

• Butterflies

• Weird, fossils and extinct animals animals

• Variety of physiognomies

• Zona market in Antananarivo

• Vanilla

• Weather in May

• Bus (four cents a ride)

• Hats

• French bread

• Rum with vanilla

Madagascar minuses

• Bargaining rules with foreigners

• Bus packing - as tight as Japan

• Gaping - and reacting strongly to cameras

• Boat and taxi prices in the (about as high as planes)

28. May, 1977.  Antsohihy (between Majunga and Nosy Be).  Stuck in this small town by an estuary, hoping to climb on a boat departing for Nosy Bay tomorrow morning at four.  If our hopes are realized, the trip from Majunga to Nosy Be will have taken three days. The road from here to Nosy Be, although only 150 km, is supposed to take all day by taxi, and, in fact, the taxi we had hoped to take this morning broke down on the way from Nosy Be yesterday, and hasn’t yet been found. We are too close to the end of the rainy season.

The train ride to Tamatave was lovely, steeply downhill all the way to the coast, creeping along steep mountain flanks with glimpses of rushing rivers, cascades, jungle trees, bamboo thickets like ostrich plumes, tiny villages of mud and saplings, many, surprisingly covered with galvanized iron  - it rains a lot on this side of the island. The trip took 14 hours, counting a two hour lunch break.

Tamatave is quiet, empty, with wide tree lined avenues, and neat, clean, two-story shops with enclosed veranda on the second floor, and covered walkways on the first floor. The port is opposite the main street, and seemed busy with about a half dozen freighters. We met some Burmese Merchant Mariners in our hotel the first night who were bringing rice from China.  Tomatave exports vanilla and cloves, and we visited warehouses for both commodities. Vanilla comes from a long fruiting body, which results from the artificial mixing of male and female plants, each resembling a house plant of shiny green leaves and long, climbing stems. We were given one half kilo of vanilla, and hope to send it to France from Zambia. The man we talked to told us he had just received an order for 500 tons of top quality vanilla from a California company (Spice Islands?) Tamatave is not the principal port for vanilla - that honor belongs to several further north. The cloves get shipped mostly to Indonesia, where they are put in cigarettes, as a perfume.

We took a bus to Mahavelona, some hundred kilometers north of Tamatave, the closest swimmable beach (sharks are the big menace), just in time for a good rainstorm to send us back. So it goes.  We saw once more our German friend, Carl Pohl, in Tamatave with his Swiss buddy, but we only overlapped by a night, before we took the train back to Tana the next morning. The morning after we finally linked up with Alain Roi, if only for an hour. He’s been in Madagascar for 22 months, and is only now beginning to head home to Quebec, hoping to reach it in 1979. He loved his stay here, and considers Nosy Be to be a true paradise. We also ran across once more the crazy Americans we were going to boat with from Mombasa. This group spent $150 on top quality Kenya flower tops, and sent home about 5 kg of it wrapped as Christmas presents and addressed to his mom. If it works out, they’ll sell it for about $4000.  They pull the same trick buying tickets in Dar, but will continue to Reunion, Mauritius, and South Africa. They may thus get a full month over here.  May well run into them in Zambia.

We also saw once again the Malagasy citizen who befriended us on the train the week before. He helped us buy a pocketbook for ($6), two small stones to be set in ($2.50 total), and a bunch of semi precious stones (blue, and rose beryls, garnet, amethyst).  To send to Irv. If Irv can sell them, we have a good source through this fellow. - and I don’t doubt his honesty. Met his (great looking younger sister.), and took a group photo in black-and-white which I promised to send from Lusaka. What a nice guy he turned out to be! I can almost see, settling down in the country for an extended visit, but Indonesia has all this place has, plus an ancient, rich culture thrown in free. Oh, yes. we also purchased a box of six butterflies for $10.

An uneventful flight to Majunga, Over dry green-brown plateaus cut by rivers and eroded fissures. Took two photos, one of the villages near Tana, and one of the unpopulated plateau further north. At Majunga,we learned that the Indian family we had hoped to see was in Tana for a wedding, that two boats had left the previous night for Nosy Be, and that the next boat wouldn’t leave for another week. So, it’s taxi time to here, where we’re stuck a day only, fortunately; in fact , the boat trip tomorrow is supposed to be fabulous, so all is not completely black. We talked briefly with a French expat who was witness to the Comoran troubles last December. About 1500 Comorians were massacred by the Malagasy people, their hands cut off for some undefined reason, while the army stood by and made no moves to stop the bloodshed. Since then, over 15,000 Camorians have left Majunga for Reunion and elsewhere, and the town is spookily quiet and empty. As he related the horrors he witnessed, I was reminded of the many killings in Indonesia in 1965, and that the word "amok" is specifically Indonesian. There is something scary in their culture that comes out in violence of the worst sort at unpredictable times and for seemingly trivial reasons.

Travel Note: buy a car in Europe; drive it to Nigeria; sell it for a profit; by an air ticket all over South America, ending up in the US. But no backpack – just a solid leather shoulder bag, and lots of bucks hidden away.

Prediction: Zambia, Malawi, Zaire, maybe Rhodesia, and back to Nairobi by August. Boat from Mombasa to Yemen; across Saudi Arabia; train to Iran, Isfahan, Persepolis, Afghanistan, Goa by Christmas; North India, Nepal, South India, Ceylon, until June 1978; Ladakh June – July; North India – Burma – Thailand – Malaysia – Singapore by December 1978; three months in Indonesia; up to Japan by May 1979; Japan for six months; back in California early 1980. Total trip: about three years.

3 June, 1977. Majunga.  Waiting out the afternoon in the Central Hotel, after a lunch of French bread, pate, chocolate, and bananas. Sitting before me as I write is a dollop of rum with vanilla, cloves, and grapefruit skin for flavor. Just the thing to make up after a (rare) morning nap.

The boat left Antsohihy on schedule, and carried us down the river for several hours until we are arrived at its mouth around noon time, where we stopped an hour for lunch (steak for 100 francs, Coke for 100!). Then north along the coast through the afternoon and evening, a three-quarter full moon above us, about 20 very docile passengers beside us, and a thin young man in handcuffs on his way to prison.  We arrived in the port of Nosy Bay around two in the morning, and opted to spend the rest of the night on board, the saving another 3 to 4 bucks in hotel expenses.

What a paradise and Nosy Be turned out to be! We found Raymond Bernard in town, one of Alain's friends, who fed us breakfast, drove us to his beach cottage, and even lent us 3000 fr because the bank was closed for some Catholic holiday. The cottage is no more than 50 feet from the beach, with palm trees, gentle breezes, smiling faces of locals, etc., etc. Perfect for jogging, swimming, sitting on one’s ass. Only 200 yards further south live George and Cathy Lejanble, further friends of Alain, who have been there for about a year with their child Lawrence, dog Whiskey, and black cat of no name at all.  Thus began five days of total relaxation, peaking each evening with a joint meal of perhaps fresh parrot fish or merou, sometimes prepared à la Tahitian, that is, soaked in lemon juice and coconut milk; or perhaps a local specialty of shredded maniac leaves cooked in coconut milk, tasting somewhat like spinach. The fish was incredibly cheap, about forty cents for a one and a half footer sufficient to do the two of us in. Cathy drove us to the central volcanoes with their seven lakes one afternoon, the fields of flowering sugarcane, rich, white, purple, and pink clouds below us. We never went skin diving, but Cousteau's son has said that Nosi Be has the most beautiful coral formations in the world, and the clarity of the water is unbelievable.

Birds: lots of cattle egrets; drongo-like black purple birds with prominent crests; small, bright, orange bishop-like birds; doves, Madagascar bee eaters; swifts with striped chests.

Bought Nicole a tortoiseshell bracelet for eight dollars, and received a gorgeous orange shell (particular to Nosy Be) as a gift from the shop.  Nicole and Cathy went shopping one afternoon for a pair of kangas fo make an Anne Hill style dress - Kathy loved it. George and I spent some happy moments chucking a frisbee around - he was very good almost immediately. Good folks, these two; we got quite close to them straight away, and stayed that way. Gave them most of our dope, and cleared up some of their misconceptions. Stayed up till two the last two nights, rapping and eating and drinking, Nicole especially happy to be speaking and hearing French, and Quebecois to boot (Philippe, in particular).

Met Henri Schops as well, a fellow traveler from France, who spent five years in Cambodia working as a doctor with the Khmer Rouge. Quiet and shy, he opened his heart to Nicole two nights ago (as usual); a lonely person who needs other people, but who doesn’t?

Nicole and I received repeated compliments on our happiness, serenity, and general attitude towards life, and all thought it marvelous that we had taken off the way we did. It seems simple to us now, but I guess it really is a major alternative, that most people have thought of and rejected. And once more, when our ages were revealed, people gasped with disbelief. Makes one’s head swell. 

Tomorrow morning we fly to Dar!

Horrible memory of the week: the first night we spent in Raymond/Allaon/Phillip'ss cottage, a palm rat ate off the skin of the soles of Nicole’s feet, and snacked on two of my fingers as well. We slept in the tent from then on…

Philippe, I’m friend of Allain, fellow Quebecois, and head of the Ecole Framcais in Nosi Be, drove us to his house on the other side of the port from the cottage, where we talked until two, listened to records, drank beer, and, thoroughly exhausted, felt thoroughly good about ourselves. Philippe is an imposing and rare person, full of warmth, with incredible facial expressions, explaining all at 1/2 normal speed, his eyes opening wide with wonder at what his mouth is speaking, and his hands are illustrating. He went to school with all the Quebec politicians, including Trudeau. Anyway, I just asked Nicole why Philippe took the trouble of having us stay over our final night, and she told me that he was fascinated by our “serenity “. Hey, this traveling really works!