surfEXPLORE Madagascar part 2 (of 3)

surfEXPLORE Madagascar part 2 (of 3) 

by Sam Bleakley (link to part 1 & part 3)

The Ghosts of Antananarivo

In Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, sulphur-coloured Citroen 2CV6 and Renault 4 taxis prowl the cobbled streets like tin animals as if ferrying invisible passengers from and to the underworld. As the drivers disengage their engines to save fuel on the steep roads’ descent, the taxis are a ghostly presence powered by solid air. Creaking suspensions and whining engines add to the mystery or the misery, depending on your mood. Sulphur colour can be honeyed ice-cream or vice versa. Set amongst twelve hills, Antananarivo (affectionately known as ‘Tana’) sports a growth of tall, narrow houses with terracotta tiled roofs and wooden balconies reminiscent of San Francisco with an unexpected Alpine voice. At 4,000 feet on a high plateau, winter temperatures dip below ten degrees centigrade. Off Avenue de la Liberation in Haute-Ville (Upper Town) the crisp night air is a curtain ready to raise on a super-breed of mosquitoes, hiding in wooden floorboards and haunting the guesthouses, launching from behind cobwebbed shutters and antique furniture to stab flesh and suck blood. Like the city taxis, their engines are disengaged and noiseless as they strike home.

I’ve experienced some sinister-feeling capitals, such as Haiti’s Port au Prince, where the Vodou vibe brings your skeleton out to dance, but Antananarivo has a special feel of otherwordliness caught between heaven and hell, affluence and deep poverty, captured in the desperate attempt of the flowering jacaranda trees to eclipse the stench of urine and sewage with its scent. Desperately poor homeless families, even infants, beg their way through the street markets. In stark contrast, at dusk upbeat and electrifying selagy music blasts out from zumba classes and hipster bars while trinket hawkers reduce their prices by ninety per cent desperate to buy something to eat. In the morning street families lay out tattered clothes to dry while French expats grope for a hangover cure. The sun burns off the dew, damp earth smells rise mixed with those of fresh baked baguettes out of the grasp of the poor whose taste buds are inflamed and incensed.

These inequalities percolate down to the local football matches. The last game of the 2002 Three Horses Beer (THB) Champions League season saw AS Adema beating Stade Olympique de L'Emyrne (SOE) by 149-0 – the biggest ever recorded win. Surely AS Adema were invisible to warrant such a score, a ghost team running rings around the competition – yet, bizarrely, AS Adema did not score a single goal! SOE, the 2001 Champions, deliberately scored one own goal after another in a pre-determined protest over refereeing decisions that had gone against them during a four-team playoff to crown the national champions. Radio Madagascar celebrated a new world record score in a first class competitive football match.

The Traveller’s Tree

The crew for the trip gathers at La Villa, a guesthouse in the Haute Ville, in the back garden under a giant ravenala tree (known as the ‘traveller’s tree’ and native to Madagascar). We order coffee. John Callahan is in a somnambulant state having flown halfway around the world. But he’s typically loose limbed, appearing to move in slow motion, speaking when he needs to, languid, efficient. Emi Cataldi is fresh-faced despite having travelled from Australia. He seems to have gained time, and reveals all the possible spots on his ipad GPS app that we must check in the Barren Islands. Bretagne Erwan Simon is fired up on all the coming challenges of the project. Approximately 20,000 French expats live and work in Tana, and all the good literature on the island is in French. In fact, without any French speaking skills, your trip here will falter at the first hurdle. Malagasy is the national language, but many educated Malagasy speak French.

The road to Tsiroanomandidy is paved, so we hire a buxis, a twelve-seater Mazda van driven by Chauffer Lucas. We’ll move into two four-wheel-drives in Tsiroanomandidy for the punishing off-road drive to Maintirano. I read about the Malagasy phrase mora mora (slowly slowly) in the guidebooks, advising travellers to be prepared for the laid back attitude of the locals. But I find everyone to be punctual and motivated, including Chauffer Lucas, who arrives on time, and is keen to load the kit and get rolling on the day drive to Tsiroanomandidy, 100 kilometres away.

The outskirt of Tana is swarming with mini markets selling zebu meat, rice, maize, tomatoes, cassava, carrots and cucumbers. Where the population thins, rice paddies and brick making takes over. The bricks are farmed from the ground, cut out from dried soil and hard-baked in on-the-spot kilns. Good to think of your house as farmed rather than industrially-produced. The houses are inevitably red brick and two storeys, with balconies and pitched roofs. Soon the red earth begins to dominate as we go through Arivonimamo and Miarinarivo – hard for an Englishman to get his tongue around.

We are still on the high plateau where the land is heavily stripped for wood fuel and to farm. There are sisal plantations grown for ‘enviro-friendly’ packaging sold in Europe. Friendly farmers wrapped up in lamba (massive scarves) travel by charette, wooden carts drawn by a pair of zebu cattle. Zebu, the horned humpbacked cattle of Madagascar, are hardy and highly valued, with fat-storing humps. The hills are trimmed with occasional wild sisal plants, deep erosion gullies and neat rice paddies shape the valley bottoms.

The landscape of Madagascar sits deep in the popular Western imagination with its museum and curating mentalities as a unique treasure trove of animals and plants, but for the Malagasy there is a living spiritual relationship with the land. Alongside the road are low, squat, sometimes colourful tombs, far more elaborate than the baked brick architecture of the homes.

“The tomb is for eternity, the house is temporary,” says Chauffer Lucas.

“What happens when someone dies?”

“They assume the status of a spirit. But you must be buried in the land where you were born. There are a lot of dead people travelling by taxi brousse.”

A trio a taxi brousse pass on the other side of the road.

“Journey to the otherworld,” jokes Emi.

Chauffer Lucas is from the Merina group. The Merina consult their ancestors in ceremonies every few years called famadihana – turning of the bones. He tells me all about it when we stop for lunch - rice and boney fish - in Analavory.

“I’ll order an extra Coke,” says Callahan. “For any long dead who turn up late.”

An unnerving number of police checkpoints appear on the last three hours run to Tsiroanomandidy. I expect the officers to ask for a cadeau vazaha – a ‘foreigner’s contribution’ – every time, but they merely peer curiously into the van, gaze up at the rack of surfboards, inspect Chauffer Lucas’ papers, which are clearly in order, and wave us through.

Tsiroanomandidy is congested with wheeled carts and brightly painted Asian rickshaws, known as pouse pouse - push push – with racy names like Air France and Force One. We quickly find Donnè in the crowd, knowing we need to generate immediate trust and good vibes as tomorrow our life will be in his hands. Greetings fascinate me, like how’s the body in Sierra Leone and how are you since yesterday in Kenya. A big component of Malagasy conversation is making introductions, opening discursive encounters with long formulaic strands of friendly talk. They call it maresaka, which means good talk.

“Inona ny maresaka - what’s new?” or “Talilio ka - what’s remembered?” is followed by a yarn about one’s relatives, where people have been, or maybe “Tsy misy - nothing’s new” if you had the same conversation yesterday. Donnè and Chauffer Lucas linger on the small talk. But of course we are not concerned with small talk right now. We want to know all about the dangers of the road.

“When do we leave?”

“Three am.”

“How long will it take?”

“Twenty hours.”

“Will we be safe?”

“We hope so.”

“When was the last attack?”

“Last week.”

“Who the hell are the Dahalo anyway?”

“Bandits.”

“What do we do if we get attacked?”

“I have a gun.” Donnè nonchalantly shows us his loaded gun and a pouch of eight bullets, plus a tazer.

“I get ‘em with this,” he adds, proudly.

“When did you last use it?”

“One month ago. I shot a Dahalo in the foot. Mostly they want zebu, but sometimes they get desperate and they want money. I try to scare them off. There’s been no bank in Maintirano for a long time. So money comes in by car.”

“Why do you do this drive if it’s so dangerous?”

“It’s my job. I’ve been doing this for nine years. It’s just what I do.”

Wild West

My alarm wakes me out of a dream so vivid I can recount every moment. Ghosts of ancestors are rising up around me from a giant graveyard. I’m not sure if it is a warning, a form of protection from danger, an initiation or a connection – a plugging in. But it’s 2.30 am and Donnè will be here at 3.00. I want a quick shower as it will be the last for a while. Now wide awake we load up the two four-wheel-drives in the dim light of the hotel and set off into the dark night of Madagascar. Immediately we learn that alongside the loaded gun Donnè has another form of security: Malagasy gospel music – musique evangelique - that he plays at full blast.

“It keeps us safe,” assures Donnè. “The Dahalo don't like it. Musique evangelique.”

The music is basically call-and-response and based on echoes from the ancestors – we, the living, link with them, the dead, in our common fate that we will all meet in a better life. But that collective meeting is of course the work of memory in re-fleshing the dead as they become part of the living, re-membered, their bones turned. 

Donnè’s greatest weapon, however, is his driving; precise, bullet-like, always looking out across the landscape for Dahalo signs, swerving holes and accelerating out of corners. I am brutally squashed in the back, my long legs jammed sideways. There is incessant bouncing, head slams. The engine roars like a raging bull, the tailgate rattles and Donnè riffles through the gears, up-and-down-and-up. We are the living dead, entombed in metal. Callahan is great in circumstances like this. He’s never excited, or agitated or wasteful of energy. And in the discomfort of it all we somehow drift back to a light sleep, the thought of an attack casting a kind of numbness across my mind.

There is a ghostly quality to Donnè’s driving that I have never experienced: invisible, but present. He wants to move so fast that the Dahalo do not see him, yet he engineers a cloud of gospel music for safety, and seems to work the wagon like a hovercraft, just at the right pace to hover above the worst pot holes, gain traction when it matters and dart out of corners. Sometimes the wheels follow the lines of deep ruts (formed by the few lumbering trucks that ply the road hauling dried fish cargo back-and-forth to Maintirano), until Donnè has to force out of line, cracking the ridge lip, temporarily launching off target, re-correcting, accelerating on a new line.

At the crack of dawn and as our backs crack in a collective unwinding we stop in the first settlement since leaving, Mahatsindo (or is it Ambaravaranala?). There is no ventilation in the thatched roof café (known as ‘hotels’ in Madagascar) so the charcoal fire has caused a coal-field-like smoke. We take turns collecting sooty coffees. We are all desperate for some caffeine and then for an overdue piss as we line up in the chilly morning air and, bladders relaxed, we’re back on the track.

The sun rises like a ripe peach into a perfectly clear sky as we continue towards Beravina. The landscape is wide, open and three-day stubbled crying out for a shave. Ridges of stubbly scrubland are still smouldering from night fires where zebu herders have torched dead savanna grass to encourage new growth. The very occasional hamlet only contains three of four huts alongside the road, dust-blasted. There are no windows or chimneys, just a door, some tall sacks of charcoal and a few families eating a breakfast of boiled manioc.

“Some of the larger villages have been abandoned following attacks by the Dahalo,” confirms Donnè. It’s bone dry, but things still somehow grow, and shrubby acacias and vines are slowly devouring the abandoned houses because the Dahalo haven't moved in, but just stolen food and valuables.

We drive through the spot of the last attack (one week ago) where a roadblock of wood and foliage still rests at the side. Donnè cranks up the musique evangelique on the stereo, speeds up, driving on instinct. Suddenly, two teenagers pop up after a corner, with zebu meat hung on sticks over their shoulders. In a flash they are at the window and Donnè has almost stopped, surprisingly. But he knows what to do. He gives them cigarettes and they stare into the car, eyeing every detail. Four beady eyes focus back on Donnè, they chat and develop suspicious grins before Donnè accelerates.

“Dahalo,” he confirms. “But we don't worry about them. Too young. They just want cigarettes. That meat was probably stolen though. They are outlaws. Stealing is their business. It’s the older ones you don’t want to mess with.” Close shave, unlike the stubbled landscape.

At Beravina we stop for another piss and hear the distinctive shrieks of lemurs from canyons below. Above the canyons the surfaces of rock and soil are burned amber by the sun, all the way to the horizon.

“If you could market ‘wilderness’ this would be your line,” says Callahan, lighting up a cigarette and soaking in the silence, before firing out some images. The camera seems to click-click in harmony with the light changes that dance in perfect geometry through this wide and wicked landscape.

At Andafiha we start to descend to sea level and red earth turns to sand with sharp crystalline rocks breaking through the surface. We stop for a miserable lunch of fly infested rice and chicken. We are now caked with dust and our dead legs need a chance to stretch. We know every line of Donnès’ gospel hits by now and every bag, garment, wheel, boardbag, is now decorated with dust. We, the living, are coated with what we will become – soil and dust infected with songs of praise.

The second wagon (driven with equal zest by Donnè’s cousin) suffers three flat tires, back-to-back, leaving us with two flat spares. Maintirano is rapidly rising up the surfEXPLORE list of hardest-to-get-to-places-by-road, and we’ve been on some far-out drives, like Mayumba in Gabon.

There is a sudden string of police checkpoints as civilization seems to re-emerge. Emi spots one of the gendarmes wearing flip flops and a bulletproof vest – a surfEXPLORE first. But the gendarmes are friendly and confirm that in the Malaky region they cannot control the Dahalo.

“What shall we do if the try and stop us?”

“Don't stop.”

We stop for another piss at a brilliant look out point, views stretching across four horizons. I hope to spot a baobab tree. Outside of Madagascar these come in two varieties – African and Australian. Madagascar has seven species alone. One baobab in Majunga reaches 46 feet. The native Sakalava call it reniala - the forest’s mother – because it can fit 200 gallons of fresh water inside. But the baobabs are concentrated more to the north and south, around Mahajanga and Morondava, where the tourists go. We are typically off the tourist trail. And like the Dahalo, the baobabs prove elusive.

But an hour later we strike lucky with the karst geology. Not gold (again found around Morondava) but certainly a glimpse of silver. This is a geologist’s dream: silver-blue rock rising out of the ground and scratching at the sky like skeleton fingernails. Tsingy is an interesting play on words. It means tiptoeing in Malagasy, as if a hostile terrain can be made welcoming and habitable. But it looks cavernous, fissured, sucking down air, and sucking out life. Only lemurs live here. The limestone was made from dead animals in oceans, migrated through geological time, their calcium carbonate and gypsum dissolving through acids in weather and rain to bring the skeleton out to rust.

The landscape fuels me for Ambonarabe where the worst section of the road begins, lasting five hours until Maintirano. We pass a charette travelling at zebu pace.

“Twenty day trip by zebu from Tsiroanomandidy,” confirms Donnè.

It took us twenty hours.

Maintirano’s black water

Maintirano doesn’t make the guidebooks. We cough our way into town long after nightfall, and check into the Hotel Rovasoa, ready to wash our dusty throats with an ice-cold THB beer. We say farewell to Donnè and confirm the dates of our return. He agrees to be back in Maintirano in good time, and heads off to his usual haunt in town to sleep. He’ll pick up some passengers and head back to Tsiroanomandidy in two days.

There is a large Muslim community and the muezzin wakes us up at five am; second call is at six, and by the third call to prayer at seven we are drinking strong coffee (bought to Madagascar by French colonials, along with a system of forced labour to farm it), and eating bananas and ramanonaka (powdered rice and sugar moulded into cakes). The softly spoken manageress Ange Marie Samaras (Malagasy-Greek) is clearly proud to have some vahazas staying.

“The only vahaza in town is Cécile Fattebert who works for Blue Ventures,” she explains. We plan to meet up with Cécile for lunch to fine-tune the logistics for the Barren Islands.

We set out to the beach - a fifteen-minute walk through a surprisingly large port town of a good twenty to twenty-five thousand people. Compared to the temperature in the high plateau, the difference in heat is immediate. Bright African colours on wall-sides and fabrics meet hardwood fences and sturdy Mozambique Channel palms. There are massive mango trees, busy pouse pouse ferrying people for the morning shift and a few Land Rovers that can handle the vicious drive to Tsiroanomandidy. Most of the women wear a thick yellow layer of sandalwood suncream on their faces. They smile confidently as we walk past, but look puzzled at our surfboards, and confirm that they have never seen surfers here. We rush, eager to catch the morning offshores before they switch at ten. The winds here blow offshore southeast in the mornings, and onshore southwest in the afternoons.

Maintirano means ‘black water’ and we soon see why, inspecting the local beachbreak and rivermouth, the water a brown-red mahogany soup. Much of the west coast is like this due to iron rich silt from rivers. The Barren Islands are far enough offshore to deliver crystal clear water. But the coast is like surfing in a bleeding sea. We paddle out to wash out the exhaustion from the drive and re-align our spines. Muscle memory kicks in. But our bodies are so iron-like from twenty hours welded into the wagon that we are disappointed with our performances. The waves are chest high and we quickly pine for the deep clear reefs around the Barren Islands.

We meet Cécile for a late lunch. Erwan and Cécile have been exchanging emails and ’phone-calls for months planning the trip. She explains the community conservation work that Blue Ventures are performing in the Barren Islands:

“We are developing a Locally Managed Marine Area. It’s not a Marine Reserve. That would infer fishing limitations. It’s a Protected Area. The locals can fish, but we are trying to encourage self management, and prevent industrial boats from fishing inside the Protected Area, which is 4,000 square kilometres, from Nosy Marify to Nosy Lava.”

We unfold a map, and Emi highlights the potential breaks on his ipad GPS. Cécile introduces us to the boat crew we’ve hired to motor out, explore and also cook. Haja is from Maintiarno, a keen Liverpool football fan who speaks decent French. Cook Neke and Captain Malimbi are both Veso, currently living on Nosy Lava in the Barren Islands. Neke is shy, but has a generous handshake and kind eyes. Captain Malimbi is distracted, with itchy-feet, ready to set sail. He has the frame of a gymnast and Cécile assures us he’s the surest captain in the Barren Islands.

“It’s beautiful out there,” confirms Cécile. “I go out once a month. The Veso, who you will stay with, have recently moved from the south where fish stocks have depleted. Before they were living there eight months a year, coming ashore for the cyclone season. But they now stay all year, so educating about marine conservation is really important. There are 4,000 Veso in the archipelago spread across ten islands. You’ll stay on Nosy Andrano. It’s mostly self-sufficient fishing in pirogues, lakanas – dugout canoes – and spearfishing. They are great free-divers. They do sell some dried fish, and unfortunately there is a trade of sea cucumbers and shark finning to Asian traders which we are trying to tackle.”

We pick up the pace for the afternoon, preparing the kit to camp. We have our own tents, but need food, water, gasoline, generator, tarpaulin. Check, check, check. Dinner. Sleep. Check. Repeat.