Antipode – Chapter 18
A New Launch
Antipode is a true account of my experiences while doing research in Madagascar from 1993 – 1999; it was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2001. Here is where we started—with the Introduction. And here are all of the chapters posted thus far.
Part III
A year and a half later, Madagascar beckoned again. I had not gone back the following rainy season, choosing instead to live in Panama with Bret for a few months, where he was conducting his own dissertation research on tent-making bats. At the time, before the U.S. turned the Canal back to Panama, the country was an odd mix of first and third world. Most of the trappings of the U.S. were for sale. We lived on a small island in the middle of the Panama Canal, a research institute run by the Smithsonian, which bore almost no resemblance to the small island I lived on when in Madagascar. Here researchers from all over the world gathered to study ecology and evolution, and the facilities reflected the prominence of this island in tropical biology research. Air-conditioned labs, modern sleeping quarters and bathrooms, a cafeteria open all night, public computers with an Email server, and frequent, reliable boat service to the mainland left one with the impression of a well-oiled machine. Nothing in Madagascar had ever evoked such an image for me. In Jamaica, once, a friend of Bret’s, upon being discovered greasing his bike chain with coconut oil, advised Bret that “the wrong lubricant is better than no lubricant.” Such practical wisdom serves people with limited access to resources well, valuable in Jamaica or Panama. But in Madagascar, there is rarely a choice. What do you do when there’s no lubricant at all?
Bret returned from Panama after 18 months, just in time for us to get married, celebrate our nuptials in Turkey, then spend a few months in the U.S. before heading back to Madagascar. I was enjoying the comforts of being home, with our cats and our stuff, but I knew I always appreciated them even more after I had tweaked my universe by living in a different world for a while. I began the months of paperwork, procuring equipment, making travel arrangements, and packing before finally going to the field. As I assessed what I had learned the previous season, and what I hoped to discover on this one, I realized I would have a much better chance if I had with me another Jessica. Bret would be there, and help with data collection for one of my experiments, but mostly his role was to be as intellectual and emotional support, for he would be writing his dissertation while we were there. I needed a field assistant.
Enter Glenn. Glenn was an undergraduate hanger-on at the Herpetology division in the Museum of Zoology, where I was based at the University of Michigan. Glenn had been one of those children who was always bringing home snakes, lizards and frogs that he had captured. As a college student, he had collected several more herps, and was living with them. (By contrast, I had only a couple of frogs at home.) At the time, he was vying for the title of world’s most obscure herpetologist. Since then he’s obtained the lowly rank of graduate student. He jumped at the opportunity to go to Madagascar. He had the time, I found the money, and we were set.
As soon as we landed in Tana, I was Erika again. The officials who occupied various booths at the airport were still there, dressed in military uniforms, receiving money, looking at passports, handing out forms, and conducting customs checks. Something had clicked in me, though, and now I had an easier time accepting the inconsistencies, and swallowing the indignities dished out by these uniformed men who wielded only enough power to annoy unsuspecting vazaha.
We went to our hotel, a clean, inexpensive affair near the zoo in the center of Tana. Arriving well past midnight, there was only one room free, so the three of us packed ourselves and all of our baggage into that room and fell into exhausted sleep. We all woke several times during the night, though, as the tourists in the adjacent room engaged in loud carousing with prostitutes. In the morning, when I went to use the communal bathroom, I found it occupied by them as well. Bleary-eyed from jet lag and the tasks that loomed before I could extricate us from Tana, I went out to the balcony. I was reacquainting myself with the bustle of morning commerce on the street below, and the relative calm of the rice paddies just a few yards further away, when one of the tourists spilled out of his room.
“Oh, we have company!” the young Frenchman, cigarette in hand, exclaimed in French. “I do hope we weren’t too loud last night.” His hand swept over the evidence of the night’s debauchery—an empty bottle of alcohol lying on its side, a pair of pants flung over a chair. I just looked at him. I had no interest in pretending to be this man’s ally. He assumed that we were on the same side, because of the color of our skin; I assumed we weren’t, because of the broken look of the woman in the doorway.
That morning we began the arduous task of getting research permits, visa extensions, internal plane tickets, and air freight arrangements, all of which needed to be done before we could leave Tana. Benjamin Andriamihaja, who had helped me with logistics on earlier trips, was a godsend. The organization he ran was now independent. It had changed its acronym from ICTE to MICET, to include a reference to Madagascar in its name, and was largely devoted to helping researchers such as myself wade through the morass of rules and requirements necessary to work in Madagascar. I had taken Benjamin a small gift, a Leatherman-type tool, but had qualms about it, for “gifting” was a standard euphemism for bribes, which were rampant in many government agencies. Benjamin had previously worked in the government, and had apparently been disliked by many of his peers: his rigorous refusal of bribes made them look bad. Mine was a true gift, but the last thing I wanted was to insult his integrity.
We spent several days engaged in the cat-and-mouse game of contrition demanded by the system. But I was getting better at this, and as my frustration diminished, the interactions went more smoothly as well. The Department des Eaux et Forets (DEF), the first of two agencies requiring input on the permitting process, made us wait for several hours the first day we showed up, then told us to come back the following day. The next day we received the same treatment. Occasionally, we were called up to someone’s office to sit in front of their large desk and answer questions that seemed unrelated to the task at hand. “Are you Americans?” “Do you like Madagascar?” At the end of the second day we were dismissed again, and told to return in the morning. Glenn, unfamiliar with the schedules and red tape of the developing world, voiced to us his concern that we wouldn’t get our permits at all. He hadn’t bargained on the long delay between leaving for a field season and actually getting to the forest, and was annoyed with the people in charge. Each trip to these offices was an adventure unto itself, a long winding taxi ride through remote Tana neighborhoods that often took half the morning.
The next morning we returned, but the group mood was deteriorating. I knew we needed to keep up the appearance of eager hopefulness, so encouraged Bret, who understood the importance of the façade, to keep Glenn occupied and out of view. I had suffered through my own intolerance with the system for years, and didn’t want the bureaucrats reacting to Glenn’s, which was still in its early stages.
A few hours after we showed up, I was invited into yet another office. A smartly dressed young woman told me that our permits had been granted. I voiced my approval of this outcome, and thanked her for all her help, though I had never seen her before. Then she explained that the permits were in a locked room, and the man with the key was not here. In fact, he was on vacation. Perhaps I should come back tomorrow. All acquiescence and smiles, I thanked the woman again for her efforts on our behalf, and promised to return the following day.
I did, but the man with the key did not. By mid-afternoon on that fourth day, another copy of the key was discovered, the room was opened, and the papers were delivered to us. Now we had to take them to ANGAP, the second of the two agencies, to be processed, in order to receive the actual permits. After four days spinning our wheels at DEF, ANGAP gave us our permits within five minutes of our arrival. The weird calculus was apparent again—the permitting agencies take precisely as much time as you have budgeted, whether that’s three weeks, or three days.
Arranging to get our bags to Maroantsetra was similarly complex. Air Mad had changed its rules somewhat, and the 400 pounds of gear that we could not carry with us on the plane had to go by freight, a service operated by Air Mad.
“We can’t guarantee when your freight will get to Maroantsetra,” we were told at the Air Mad office in Tana, “but if you want to go to Sambava, we can promise it within a week.” This is rather like being told, "We don't know when we can get your wedding dress to Poughkeepsie, but we can get it to Boise by Friday." As my research program was based in the rainforests outside of Maroantsetra, this option did not appeal.
The woman at Air Mad thought it “likely” that our freight would get to Maroantsetra before it was time for us to return, three and a half months later. Not comforted by this, we went instead to the airport, several miles out of town, to talk to the Air Freight people directly. The problem, they explained, was that the planes to Maroantsetra are so small that it is impossible to know when there will be enough room to get the freight on board. The man in charge, though, seemed convinced that it would not take more than nine days from when we left our freight with them. In fact, he guaranteed it. And he repeatedly refused my offers of monetary incentive to smooth and speed the process. Somehow, we’d entered a wholly different Madagascar.
I also had to check in at the Wildlife Conservation Society, which meant getting to their offices. Getting there by taxi always involved describing to the taxi driver what part of town it is in. The driver, predictably, scratched his head, not quite understanding my pronunciation, and never having heard of WCS. Finally, inevitably, I succumbed, and admitted what I knew all along, but didn’t want to say.
“It’s near the paint store, Gamo.” At which, the driver’s eyes lit with recognition, and we were off. Paint stores are rare, and precious. Conservation organizations, on the other hand, have no apparent function, at least to taxi drivers in Tana.
Finally we flew to Maroantsetra, and found the airport much changed. It still consisted of a single, weedy airstrip, one windsock, and a shell of a building, with no equipment inside but a large scale. But there was glass in the windows, and the roof that had caved in was again at ceiling level. Most significantly, the single door, the door that Bret had knocked off its hinges three years earlier, had been replaced.
Upon arriving at the airport, we were bombarded with men asking us where we were staying, and didn’t we want to stay at their hotel? Matthew Hatchwell at WCS had told me that a new hotel had opened in town, the Maroa, and that it was clean, cheap, friendly, and a short walk from Projet Masoala. The Coco Beach had raised its rates, and though $20 for a bungalow is cheap by first world standards, the rather decrepit huts on the outskirts of town didn’t warrant the price. Furthermore, Projet Masoala had turned the room Jessica and I slept in in 1997 into storage. I certainly couldn’t afford the Relais de Masoala, the luxury hotel outside of town that had opened its doors for Jessica and me. There were two other, extremely cheap hotels in town. One, the Vatsy, charged by the hour. The other, the aptly named Hotel du Centre, is directly across the street from the market, and in desperate shape. With so much money tied up in equipment, I didn’t want to risk staying in a place without some expectation of security. Besides, in years past, when Bret and I had traveled as backpackers through Central America and Madagascar, we had stayed in such places, and had, I felt, done our time. We had graduated to the next level. Glenn, who had never before traveled in the developing world, would get to skip the bottom few rungs entirely.
I engaged the men vying for our business. The most persistent of the lot was a fat man, sweating profusely. I thought it a bad sign.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked, sly.
“I don’t know. Projet Masoala at the moment.” I didn’t want to be tricked into some hotel I wanted nothing to do with.
“Relais de Masoala?” he repeated in error back to me, taking us for wealthy tourists.
“No, no. Projet Masoala. We are researchers.” He looked blankly at me. There wasn’t any money for him in Projet Masoala.
“What hotel? I have bungalows for 25,000 FMG.” About $5 dollars. I was exasperated with this guy, and wanted the decision to be over with.
“Give me ten minutes.” I told him. He laughed in my face. Then he scuttled over to the only other vazaha in the place, a smarmy French guy, mid-30s, who had a slinky young Malagasy woman draped over him. The foul hotel man repeated what I had said to the Frenchman, and they both had a good laugh. The Frenchman grabbed his sweet young thing by the ass, causing her to topple off her platform heels. I called the sweaty hotelier back over.
“What’s the name of your hotel?” His mumbled answer came back sounding like Maroa.
“What?” I persisted.
“Look it up in the guide book. Very recommended. You will see.” I knew he was lying, but didn’t have the strength to resist.
“Okay.”
“So, you will come stay at the bungalow for 35,000 a night?”
“You said 25,000.”
“There is one for 25,000, one for 35,000.”
“What’s the difference between them?”
“No difference.” Of course.
“There is electricity? Outlets?”
“Of course.”
“And a private bath?”
“Yes,” he lied.
“Hot water?”
“Everyone asks about hot water, everyone thinks it is good.” It wasn’t an answer, but I didn’t care. I now remembered where I was, and realized that hot water was, to say the least, unnecessary. I was tired of the discussion, and just wanted to be going.
“Okay, we’ll take both.” So, we collected our bags, stuffed ourselves, barely, into his car, and trundled into town. We passed the sign for the Maroa, and just as I was going to protest, pulled into the Hotel du Centre.
“You said we were going to the Maroa.”
“No, no, this is the Hotel du Centre.” Yes, I thought, I know what it is, but it’s not the advertised product. But we were here, and had taken his car, so we had to look at the place. The sleazy French guy and his sweet young thing were already camped out in one bungalow, door open, mostly naked. The sweating proprietor showed us to the one next door, drowning in filth and stagnant, fetid air. In the tiny room was a torn and stained foam mattress, over which a crusty sheet had been partially thrown. The wood floor was rotting. There was no fan, a critical element in the tropical stillness. Through an open doorway was the private bath: a closet sized enclosure with a spigot hanging loosely from the ceiling, a rusted drain in the cement floor. There was no sink or toilet. He led us outside, and motioned to the building next door, out of which was oozing something akin to water, but wasn’t, quite.
“Voilà, la toilette.” I was not pleased. This was hardly an auspicious reentry into Maroantsetra. We told him we would stay one night, left our stuff, then headed into town. We went immediately to the Hotel Maroa. It was miraculously clean, with eight or ten individual bungalows. The bungalows had thatched roofs, bamboo walls and wood floors, electric fans, porches, and private bathrooms with sinks, toilets, showers. Simple by first world standards—as usual, there was no hot water—it was paradise after the Hotel du Centre. There was the usual complement of geckos and bugs sharing the space that was, after all, basically open to the air, but nobody expected hermetically sealed quarters. Soon we would be living in tents.
The family who owned the Maroa was accommodating, friendly, and eager to help or leave us alone, depending on our mood. There was a restaurant serving mostly faux-Chinese dishes in the main building, where the owners lived. The bungalows surrounded the main building in a small dirt courtyard, in which the chickens ran free. A wooden fence separated the Maroa from the rest of town, and I felt that our things would be safe here, and that we would be content. We went back to the Hotel du Centre, and engaged in a short argument with the owner over exactly how much we owed him. He wanted full price for the two bungalows, as if we had spent the night, plus an “inconvenience fee,” so named for the inconvenience we had caused him by leaving early. Finally we came to an agreement, retrieved our things, and moved to the Maroa the same day.
We had several days to kill in Maroantsetra, as we waited for the bulk of our baggage to arrive via Air Freight. During this time we habituated the new employees at Projet Masoala to our presence, and made some new friends. The office staff now comprised two women, Edwige and Laurence, who had not been there in 1997. Our relationship, like mine with their predecessor, Clarice, began on a hostile note, and had to be massaged into harmony. As in previous years, the local staff had not been alerted to my existence before my arrival. I had completed all of the paperwork required of me by WCS, and we were to be the only foreign researchers in the area for months, but nobody had thought to tell these women we were coming. Understandably, they were a bit suspicious, and set out to make my life difficult. Finding Clarice gone, however, and having brought a few pretty items of clothing for her, I distributed them to Edwige and Laurence, which smoothed some of the distrust away.
The captain, too, had been replaced. The little boat with two outboard motors was the same, but Yves, who had always had a frantic look in his eyes, and seemed none too stable, was gone. Pascal was the new captain. Shy, intelligent, and curious, Pascal was a beautiful man with rich insights into life, and those he saw around him.
“I love the sea,” proclaimed Pascal early in our acquaintance, adding that there was nothing he would rather be doing than driving the little boat across dancing waters.
Projet Masoala had also acquired a vehicle, an old but not decrepit Land Rover. Heloise was the only person authorized to drive this beast. As such, he was the chauffeur. Maroantsetra is a small town, and there are neither many places to go, nor many people authorized to go anywhere, but it was Heloise’s job to be at the ready, should someone need to go someplace.
My friends Felix, Armand, and Emile were all still around and working, and there were several more guides we quickly became familiar with on this trip. To a person, all were skilled, personable, quick-witted and full of humor and good will. Whenever we were in town, I sought out the guides, and they sought me out, identifying kindred spirits, I think, in our shared love of the forest and its inhabitants.
Our time was primarily spent lounging in the small yard at Projet Masoala, or at our bungalows at the Maroa, watching people come and go. But we also wandered through town, acquainting ourselves with the expanded lot of consumer goods now available. PVC pipe was being sold in a limited number of sizes, though most of the connectors were not. Metal files and soldering irons were available. And, as always, the diversity of hand-woven products was immense. Malagasy artisans are highly regarded, the products from various regions including intricately carved wooden furniture, handmade papers, batiks and other fabric arts, and semi-precious stonework. In Maroantsetra, the artisans work in straw.
Bret decided he needed a hat, to protect his fair skin. From the women who sell straw baskets in the market, it is possible, for about 70 cents, to commission a hat. The hat lady, sharing no language with us except those few words of Malagasy we knew, measured lengths of raffia around his head. The next day we came back, and picked up a hat that perched nicely on top of Bret’s head, as is the Malagasy custom. Unfortunately for Bret, it is not his custom. So he commissioned another one, specifying with hand gestures that he would like it a bit larger in every dimension. The following morning, he picked up his sombrero. It came down to his eyes, and would act as an umbrella in a downpour. He and the hat lady were developing quite a rapport, now, so when he went back, somewhat abashed, desiring a third hat, some middle ground between his two existing hats, she was ready to comply. That third hat would last him several months.
Wandering around town during those slow days, I found a greater diversity of flip-flops than had been available two years earlier. Desperately cheap, these were rejects of the first world. Some bore a picture of a fat, jolly animal on the instep, with the words “Friend Mole.” Others, with an improbably thick sole, carried a tag that said, in fancy script, “MODREN.” When typos or other errors in the prediction of consumer desire happen to products designed for the first world, they get shipped to people without choices, people in places like Maroantsetra.
We were still in town on Sunday, a special day in Maroantsetra. Missionaries had once been here, so even many of the locals who retain their animist beliefs go to church. Everybody strolls through town in their Sunday best after going to church. Some stores close entirely, but most just close during the hottest part of the day, the sieste, as during the week. Glenn was suffering his first bout of tropical indigestion, so Bret and I went looking for food alone. We found a building with a sign reading “Lebon Cap,” but it didn’t seem to be open. A young boy carrying a bucket of eggs on an immense, rusty bike pulled up to the gate. He saw us standing at the closed door, looking confused, and gave a shout. A heavy-set, smiling woman let us in with apparent pleasure. And, unlike many restaurants that have open doors in Madagascar, this one had food. And juice. In the developing world, products sold as juice are primarily sugar and water, with a hint of fruit. Jus natural is the magic phrase in Madagascar, and the mistress of the Lebon Cap had two kinds: coroçol—sweet sop—and grenadelle, the exquisite passion fruit. Ah, sweet heaven.
The food was no less inspired. Malagasy tomato salads, when you can find them, are made with simply sliced rose-red tomatoes dressed in vinegar and black pepper, sometimes with slices of tiny raw onions. In Maroantsetra, my preferred entrée is “substrate of the day” with sauce au coco, poured over mounds of rice. The coconut sauce is rich, savory, complex, and bright orange. Usually the substrate available is scrawny chicken, heavy on tendons. Today they had fresh tuna steaks, the fishermen having come back early out of deference to a Christian god. I celebrated the tuna who gave his life for my gustatory pleasure.
After lunch, we wandered through town, stopping to sit on the shaded stoop of a store that was shut up tight. We engaged in the exhausting activity of being vazahas in public, saying “Salama” to everyone who passed. A few children stopped in front of us, touched us, smiled big perfect smiles. We were like dolls on display.
“Sali vazaha!” other children cried, streaking past in a furious run, using the shortened form of salamaemployed by children across Madagascar.
“Salama Malagasy!” Bret responded, causing mirth and confusion among the children. “You are vazaha,” the logic seemed to go, “but we are individuals, with names.” Referring to them as Malagasy, although it seemed parallel to calling us vazaha, had never occurred to them.
The Peace Corps had arrived in Maroantsetra the year before, in the form of two American women. We had dinner with them, for as soon as vazaha arrive in town the scant other vazaha hear about it, and we had quickly found each other. Angela was teaching the naturalist guides, and some others, English. Linda’s job was less clear, but she had an interest in conservation and ecotourism on Nosy Mangabe.
When we returned to the Maroa that night, a small party was in process. Four large tables with tablecloths and matching glasses were set up in the dirt courtyard, with people milling about. Occasionally they erupted in applause. Then a round of singing, with clinking of glasses and outbursts of clapping. A whistle. Much appreciative shouting in response. Laughing. More clinking of glasses. I listened through the window of our bungalow, wooden shutters open but covered with a sheer fabric drape. Scattered female laughter punctuated the singing and talking that drifted in. A pleasant, constant, rising and sinking hum of content human voices. Never before had I been privy to such a party in Madagascar. I wonder, at such times, why I am still embarrassed about my own curiosity with regard to the Malagasy, when they make no attempt to conceal their curiosity about me. The difference, I guess, is that I am in their home, and they are not in mine. Their curiosity—even hostility if they have it—is acceptable, but I must be deferential. I owe them everything, and they owe me nothing.
We checked every day for evidence that our freight had arrived. I was anxious, convinced that we would never see our gear again, feverishly coming up with alternate plans—how long do we wait until we assume that our bags are lost, how do I try to conduct my research without tents to sleep in or equipment to measure parameters, how will I explain this to my doctoral committee back in the States? We wandered through Maroantsetra for those first three days fiercely focused on our bags, and their possible location within the system. We were not waiting; we were scheming.
And then, on the fourth day, I woke up in my thatched roof bungalow at peace. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, probably sometime—what do the specifics matter? In a small dusty town with little to offer the outsider, I was suddenly content to laze about on the porch of my bungalow, entertained by my companions or my novel of the moment, but most often just to gaze into the middle distance. I had left the world of precious time, and entered that of passing time. I strolled through the market assessing the rice vendors’ baskets of rice, admiring small piles of potatoes, onions, pineapples. I recognized that sometime, I would be called upon to return to the market and buy enough food to last the three of us two or three weeks, to plan and organize, but felt that, this responsibility not being immediate, it wasn’t very real. I wandered back to my bungalow, where the proprietors of the Maroa had recognized my change of attitude and supplied me with a raffia mat on which to sit. When I sat on that woven mat, watching chickens chase each other around the yard, listening to the yells of children splashing through puddles as the rainy season began, I didn’t worry about equipment and research and time. I found myself there and, there being no plans to leave, would remain until something else came along. I had finally begun to learn how to wait as the natives do.
No wonder the raised voice and irritated demeanor of a vazaha desiring an immediate research permit or plane ticket fails to produce anything but mutual frustration. In my current trance, I would not have been compelled by someone else's insistence that his needs were paramount either. It will happen when it happens. I began to take the early afternoon sieste, when everything closes down, and even the dogs move into the shade. I was getting twelve hours of sleep every day, and why not—what else was I going to do?
Then our bags arrived. All of them, unscathed. Edwige told us that the boat could take us out to the island the next morning, but if we missed that window of opportunity, it would be several days before another came. Jolted out of complacence, suddenly time mattered again. Damn the sieste anyway—how do we plan around those two and a half hours when nobody will conduct business with us? We need to get the bags from the freight office today before they close; we need to have the permits I so meticulously acquired in Tana glanced at and approved by Projet Masoala; we need to buy provisions, which involves multiple trips, hauling heavy baskets of rice, beans, and charcoal through the sandy town. Each one of these activities could take an entire day. Why, my newly rediscovered discontent screams, why must things be so inefficient and slow? Why? Because nobody else here has deadlines of such an immediate nature. People live, people plant and harvest rice, people sit in the market under umbrellas and sell their wares, people sleep and eat and flirt and take care of children. Again, I am the vazaha with strange ideas about time.
Next week: Chapter 19 – Observer, Observed
I admit I was surprised to read that the door at the airport that Bret had 'broken' had been replaced! I wonder just who was bothered enough to get the job done!?!
I feel like I'm home again ;-)