Antipode – Chapter 23

Cinema Maroantsetra

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.

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If our trash was valuable to the local people, the stuff we brought with us was even more so. I woke up on what was to be the final day of my female choice experiment to an unwelcome surprise. Robbed, again. The dry bag holding all of my frog song playback equipment—several hundred dollars’ worth of scientific gear, including a tape player not designed to play music, though it would function in that regard—was gone. Some other items and cash had been taken as well, but the sound equipment was critical. Given my experimental design, that last day’s data were critical—without it, I could use none of the data I had. I had to get the gear back, or figure out a new way to record the digitized frog calls I had stored on the computer onto tapes.

The theft sent me into a tailspin, not only for the threat to my research. All of the details pointed to an inside job—the careful point of entry, the taking of an opaque dry bag that only people who were familiar with the lab would know contained sound-recording equipment. It wasn’t anyone on the island, either—Lucien, the only conservation agent there at the time, was as trustworthy as they come. The fisher family down at the remote camp couldn’t be thieves. I felt it in my gut.

Bret and I went into town as soon as we could—the radio was broken again, so we couldn’t communicate with the mainland, and had to wait until a boat showed up the following day. We wanted to get the word out, try to retrieve the equipment (the cash we assumed was a lost cause), and figure out how to get the digitized frog calls onto tapes.

Those first few hours in town were riddled with doubt and suspicions. Edwige quickly went into action, took notes on what had happened, and put together a message in Malagasy to be read on the air from the radio station at noon. Later, because we still had to eat, we went searching for le derniere fromage—our final interface with European cuisine. We found success, but before the woman behind the counter would sell us that last bit of cheese that Maroantsetra had, she asked if the radio announcement was about us. Had we been robbed? She wanted to know all the details, and asked probing questions that got to the heart of the matter.

"Who else was on the island?"

"Just the guardian, and a couple of fisher people."

"Are you sure it wasn't the guardian?"

"Yes, quite sure."

"But why? He easily could have done it."

"Yes, but he wouldn't. I can't explain. I'm just sure."

"How about the fishermen?"

"No, it wasn't them either—we have a relationship, you see. We know each other from two years ago. The man," I paused. This was going to sound lame. I sighed, and continued, "The man, he used to bring me mangoes in the forest." She nodded, understanding.

"Were there any boats there?"

"No. No boats. And it was raining." She was asking all the right questions, but was just going to end up as confused by the whole incident as I already was. We bought our cheese and left.

We went back to the Maroa, and were sitting down to order tomato salads when Felix walked by. I told him about the robbery, and he sat thinking for a few moments.

“Sounds like an inside job," he said. Then he sighed. It was the first time I'd seen him look sad. "Maybe Rafidy did it," he suggested. I gaped at him.

"Rafidy? You don't think he is honest?"

"Oh, I think he is honest, but think about what happened, and what he knows. He knows the lab—he was living in it. He knows what you have—he was living with you, and your things. He is a fisherman, and has a pirogue, so had the means to get there." I was stunned. All of what I had come to love about the people of Madagascar and the interactions I had with them was suddenly in doubt. Were my instincts wholly wrong? Could Rafidy, the radio repairman for Maroantsetra and assistant to Vonjy, have done it? The same man who would fish the entire morning, then present us with fried fish as a supplement to whatever meal we were cooking for ourselves. The same man who wanted to see a picture I received from my dearest friend of her family, and asked me about the details of her life.

My mind wouldn't let this one pass. I desperately wanted to be far away, to not have to wonder at every new interaction I had. Then reason kicked in. If it was a Malagasy we knew, it would be impossible not to be disappointed. But anger wouldn’t be relevant. We are the vazaha, with inconceivable amounts of money and resources at our disposal. We seem to throw money around like it means nothing to us—a whole dollar for four immense avocados, and another for more candles, when we already had some. Some of our friends there might, it is possible, steal from us. But only because they perceived that such theft couldn't possibly make much difference in our lives, but would make a huge difference in theirs.

“It definitely sounds like it was done by someone who knows the place,” Felix said, thoughtful. Then he added, without much hurry, and with a laugh, “but it wasn’t me.” The blood drained out of my face.

“No, Felix, of course it wasn’t you,” I agreed. But in my new, post-theft world, perhaps his words should have set off alarm bells. I wouldn’t let myself question Felix, though. It was all swirling in my head. I couldn’t sort it out without more evidence, but there was no more evidence.

Lacking the ability to decipher the crime, we tried to fix some of the problems it had caused. We made arrangements to record my frog calls at the radio station. The radio station, we’d been told, was across from the bank, in a store (magasin) next to the building where they repair boat motors. Bret knew the boat motor place, and there was only one magasin near it. There were five young Malagasy men sitting on the sagging stoop.

"Is this the radio station?" Bret asked in good French. The men looked confused. Bret tried again, with more gusto. They talked amongst themselves, then asked us, in perfect French, what it was, exactly, that we were looking for.

I repeated the question. The men resumed discussing amongst themselves. Two of them pointed down the street, back from where we came. Two others literally scratched their heads trying to figure out where this elusive radio station might be located. They grew animated, then stopped and asked Bret again what he had said.

"We are looking for the radio station. Do you know where it is?" he repeated.

"The what?"

"The radio station."

"You mean, the radio station?" they asked.

"Ah, yes," Bret agreed, "the radio station." The young men suddenly erupted in laughter, and gestured to the steps under them.

"Ah, the radio station, of course. It is right here." They were sitting on the stoop of the radio station. And now that they understood, they found the whole thing very funny. They laughed at themselves for being thick-headed, and stood up to let us go up the stairs.

Inside was the usual assortment of goods: Nosy soap, mosquito coils, crackers. The smiling woman behind the counter welcomed us, and told us that Monsieur Philippe, the man who ran the radio station, would be back shortly. When he returned, I identified us as the vazaha about whom the radio announcement had been made, which he seemed to know already. I then explained the predicament this left us in—that we had everything we needed to make new tapes, except for a tape recorder. He was eager to help. He led us back through the store, through a room containing bags of rice and a barrel of cooking oil with a slow leak, back to the room that was the radio station. Four stereo components, one of which was a fairly high fidelity tape-to-tape deck, comprised the equipment. One wall was full of tapes, another half full of CDs. A replay of the Peace Corps volunteer Angela's Friday night radio show in English was just finishing. The man unhooked the tape deck from the other components and brought it around to a table with two old microphones on it. Shortly, the DJ, a pretty young Malagasy woman, came in and began playing Malagasy pop. In the background, we recorded frog calls. Everything went smoothly, and within an hour we were off, with many profuse thanks to Monsieur Philippe. Now Maroantsetra had two copies of tapes with male frogs deet-deeting endlessly. The thief, who had probably been hoping for American music, may have wondered at what strange music the vazaha listen to. But he must have continued listening, for we never did see the equipment again.

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Pascal showed up at our bungalows at the Maroa, looking for conversation. Bret and Glenn were on their way out to find crackers and kerosene, and Pascal accompanied me on my quest for small plastic cups to replace some in an on-going experiment. As dusk fell, we walked back to the Maroa. Bret, who wasn’t yet back, had the key to our bungalow, so Pascal and I sat on the porch and talked. He asked me if there weren't frogs in the United States. I told him yes, but not so many, and not so interesting, and already quite well-studied.

"Besides," I added, "Part of the reason to do biological research, for me, is to experience different cultures and ways of living. Being in Madagascar is part of why I chose to work on Madagascan frogs." He was surprised at this assertion, just as Emile, Rosalie, and many others had been.

A beautiful young woman strutted by. She had on tight black short shorts and white platform shoes. As Pascal and I watched her pass, he said something to her in Malagasy, in a tone that sounded pejorative. She answered in French, and was gone.

"Why did she address you in French?" I asked Pascal. He sighed.

"She likes the vazahas and their ways very much. She is always going with the vazaha." This seemed like my opening, so I pursued.

"After Malagasy women ‘go’ with vazaha men, do you, or do any Malagasy men, ‘go’ with the women as well?" He shuddered at the very thought.

"No, no. Never."

"Why?" I asked him.

"Oh, hers is a dangerous life. Also, once they have been with the vazaha, all they want is money. Malagasy men can't offer them money the way the vazaha can."

"Why do they do it then?"

"Because sometimes, very rarely, a vazaha marries a Malagasy woman, and then she is taken care of."

"But that doesn't happen very often, right?"

"No, hardly ever. And even if it does, the vazaha usually still has a family back in France, or wherever, and he is not here much of the time."

"So what happens to these women who ‘go’ with the vazaha? What happens when they age, and are not desired by the vazaha anymore?" I was asking questions that made him sad.

"They have a very difficult life,” he said. “The vazaha give them money when they are here, but much of the time there are no vazaha. The women must eat every day. So the money disappears. And when the vazaha are no longer interested, because the woman is getting older, and her family does not help very much, because she has turned her back on them, she has difficulty finding enough to eat. Usually, these women die young." And then he said, in a tone that suggested that I might be surprised by the revelation, "There are many different types of vazaha. Some are like you, curious about the Malagasy, and interested in talking with us. But many are rude, mean, and disrespectful. They come here with their money and expect to be able to do whatever they want. Often it’s the French who act this way."

"You think the French are worse than the other vazaha?" I asked.

"We have a history with the French, you know. They colonized us, and still think they own Madagascar. We threw them out almost 40 years ago, but still they act like we are theirs. When they come here, they do not respect our culture or humanity."

We drifted through various topics. I asked him about his work, and whether he wasn't spending more time waiting now, since there were more people on Nosy Mangabe who needed to get back and forth. He said that yes, he waits for us, sometimes, but that he enjoys the work, and there is nothing he would rather be doing.

"Aren't you also waiting for other things? Like to get married?" I asked. Our earliest conversation had revealed that he had a sipa, and that they were engaged to be married, he hoped next year. Now he was more clear with me.

"No, I hope to get married someday, but I don't wait for it, because it will be a long time before it can happen. Until then, she and I live together, and may start a family. I want only two children, because more is very expensive. But we cannot afford to get married now."

"What is the expense?"

"To get married, we must have all of our family with us. Much of my family is here in Maroantsetra, but hers is up north. Until we can afford to transport everyone here, we can't get married." Pascal wasn’t straining at the hurdles, at the time passing—he was a content, curious man with the love of a woman and the sea, and little else mattered.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked. I thought about it. At that moment, there was nothing. I, too, was content to sit on our little porch, under a deepening night sky, and talk with Pascal. As long as I was in town, though, I did want to get some more vanilla.

“Vanilla, I guess,” I said, and he laughed.

“I know a vanilla seller,” he said, “a friend. I’ll take you to him tomorrow.” And so the following day we were led into another Maroantsetran’s life, that of a vanilla merchant, who presented “only his finest beans” to us, huge piles on a big wooden table in his home. The whole place smelled rich and pungent. Pascal, standing in a corner watching our transaction, wrinkled his nose. Like most Malagasy, he didn’t like the smell of vanilla.

Looking at Maroantsetra as an outsider, the economic reason for its existence seems primarily to be as the spice growing epicenter of Madagascar. Most of the spices now grown in such profusion in Madagascar are not native, but this doesn’t seem to have adversely affected their ability to be cultivated. Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and vanilla are the primary exports, and the Masoala peninsula produces much of the world’s supply. When the spice boats come in to this small port town, everything smells of spice. After a while in the region, it’s hard to tell by smell if a boat is carrying mainly cloves, or cinnamon, as the aromas begin to mingle in the head as well as the air.

Sometimes spices are for sale in the stores, before the bulk of them get taken south to the larger port of Tamatave. In Maroantsetra, sweet and potent cinnamon is still in its freshest, natural form, thick pieces of tree bark, and costs 5,000 FMG per half-kilo. About a dollar for more than a pound. The store-keeper invites me to taste her wares. It’s like candy, and I realize I’ve never known cinnamon before. The cloves are the same, but even cheaper. So cheap, in fact, that I buy them by the kilo and distribute them throughout my clothes and shoes as the persistent wet of the rainforest begins to mold everything I have. The cloves don’t keep the rot away, but they help cover the smell. After returning home, I found cloves for months, falling out of pockets, backpacks, field notebooks, every nook and cranny.

Vanilla isn’t for sale in the stores in town. To get vanilla in Maroantsetra, I must only make my wishes known—to Solo, at Andranobe, or to Pascal, who knows someone in town. Everyone knows someone. If you wonder what on Earth I’m buying vanilla for, you’ve never been close to this fantastic bean. Vanilla is pure luxury. There’s a Gary Larson cartoon I laughed at, but never fully resonated with, until I started going to Madagascar. The caption reads: Same planet, different worlds. It’s a split frame, a man in bed at top, a woman in bed at bottom. The man is thinking, “I wonder if she knows I exist…Should I call her? Maybe she doesn’t even know I exist? Well, maybe she does…I’ll call her. No, wait!..I’m not sure if she knows I exist…Dang!” The woman is thinking, “You know, I think I really like vanilla.” Well, I’m sure I really like vanilla.

Vanilla is extremely expensive in the developed world, so most things labeled “vanilla” have such trace amounts that you can hardly detect any flavor. Foods proclaiming to be vanilla-flavored aren’t usually vanilla at all, but synthetic attempts at vanilla that manifest as neutral, to which you can add flavor. Americans use the word “vanilla” derisively, to suggest blandness, ordinariness, an utter lack of intrigue. When I was a little girl, I mocked my father for choosing vanilla ice cream—the real stuff, flecked with tiny black seeds—and he would just smile and nod. How did he know I would come to see the wisdom in choosing vanilla?

The edible vanilla bean is the reproductive product of a rare orchid, the only species of orchid among more than 30,000 that yields anything edible. Native to the New World, it is produced in abundance in Mexico, and has been introduced to Madagascar, as well as Indonesia. The pollinator required to fertilize the orchid flower, a stingless bee, is found only in the Western hemisphere, in the native range of the vanilla orchid. Even where it exists, the bee is quite rare, so vanilla farmers must hand-pollinate each flower individually to produce a single bean. The bean, or seedpod, matures on the plant for several months before being harvested, dried in the sun, then cured for several more months. The beans have no odor when harvested, developing their signature scent during the long curing process.

In the developed world, where vanilla isn’t grown except by orchid enthusiasts, consumers usually buy vanilla in extract form—alcohol that has been infused with vanilla beans, then strained. Beans are also available at specialty stores, and increasingly at supermarkets as well. They cost almost $2 each. If you want to make real vanilla ice cream, or better vanilla extract than you’ll ever find in a store, or just smell the wondrous smell, the beans are the only way to go. I can say that. I pay less than ten cents per bean in northeastern Madagascar, and I get enough vanilla to keep me in raptures, the deep, faintly sticky beans exuding their power for years.

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Theft took us to the one-room radio station in town, and Pascal led me to a vanilla merchant with deeply polished wood floors. Town it seemed, was full of items not immediately apparent to the outsider. When dogs started showing up dead in great numbers, though, it was hard not to notice.

Operation Chien had hit Maroantsetra. When we arrived in town for our last provision run before leaving Nosy Mangabe for good, we found dogs lying dead in the streets. First one, then two, now a pile of three over behind that shack, another one under a palm tree. On every path we turned down, there were more dogs, motionless. It seemed, at first, that they were merely lying, perhaps sleeping, as many dogs do, stretched out and relaxed, but these dogs were different. Their eyes were open, and flies hung about their heads.

It was raining. As we approached the center of town, the carcasses grew more dense. The zoma was vibrant, rice and fish and vegetable vendors all set up in the rain, with people roaming about with children on their hips and umbrellas over their heads, nimbly avoiding the corpses of dogs that littered the marketplace. Chickens pecked at them. The dogs did not move.

In one of the outlying villages, there had been three cases of canine rabies identified. Maroantsetra responded by mounting an attack on stray dogs, which is probably a reasonable response. Dogs with a rare vaccination certificate for rabies were spared. Beginning the day before we had come to town, and for the following month, there was a human curfew from 11pm – 3am. During that time, the veterinarian and his crew would deliver poisoned meat to the streets of Maroantsetra. Dogs (or, presumably, any mammal) who ate this meat would die within minutes. We did not know what poison was so effective and quick at killing animals. We did know that the second, important part of the plan was not being put into quick action. There was no clean-up crew.

After the dogs were killed, they were left where they died. That first morning, at 9:00 am, there were corpses littering all the streets of Maroantsetra. Rain fell onto the poisoned bodies and ran off, into the streets, where the children ran barefoot, where the food in the marketplace sat, where the chickens, ducks and geese drank, where it ultimately seeped into the water table. By 11:00 am, the dogs in the central marketplace had been cleaned up. By 3:00 p.m., we saw no more corpses anywhere in town. But that night, they began again. The next day, corpses again littered the market and streets of Maroantsetra.

On one level, this was clearly a great mistake on the part of the government of Maroantsetra, to have allowed half of a gruesome plan to take place, without securing the other half. But why was it so disturbing to witness this scene? The remaining dogs wandering about might be killed over the next few nights, and it was hard to look the survivors in the eyes. They see dead others in the streets. Do they have fear? Do we care for those who are still living, or are we primarily reacting to the vision of those that have been killed?

If it is primarily the latter, we must remember that, in our country, such activity goes on in much greater quantity, but behind closed doors, quietly. Thousands upon thousands of dogs and cats are killed—we may say euthanized or put to sleep, but euphemisms do not change the facts—because we have no room for them in our streets. We do not want stray animals roaming our streets for the same reason that people worked through a month's nights to eliminate them from Maroantsetra. Dense populations of strays are a hazard to us. We refer to our control efforts as "humane" societies, emphasizing our compassionate nature. They unrepentantly call it Operation Chien, highlighting its true character: an attack on dogs, by people, initiated out of real and carefully calculated self-interest. Confronting dead dogs is nothing compared to facing rabid humans. We tell ourselves it is better for the animals, but of course it is not. It is better, perhaps, that they never were born, if only to be killed. But stray animals at risk of spreading a disease that may easily be passed to humans are a real threat, and no human society will tolerate it. In the U.S., we are perhaps more sanitary, and certainly more discreet. How much of our despair at seeing these corpses is hypocrisy, much like worrying over the death of cattle while salivating for a hamburger?

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Except during Operation Chien, one of the strangest and most obvious facets of life in Maroantsetra is the movies. On several of the dusty streets near the middle of town, wood framed chalkboards announce the movie that will play inside the nearby shack that night on the poorly working VCR and television. The videotapes are probably poor-quality bootlegs from Asia, but because there is no television reception, this is the only visual media most Maroantsetrans have ever been exposed to. In 1999, Titanic was the clear winner in terms of popularity, starring on several of the 10 or 15 television sets. The rest were dedicated to typical Hollywood adventure schlock, or earlier movies of possibly higher quality. Usually a star or two was listed on the boards—Jackie Chan, Steven Segal, Arnold Schwarzenneger. Sometimes the movie’s name (translated into French) and star were so remote from my experience that my only clue to the gist of that night’s promised entertainment was the genre, assigned by the author of the sign. Accion Kung Fu. Aventure dance suggestif (for Dirty Dancing). And the much maligned Aventure Gran Monster (Godzilla).

It occurred to me that, in the States, we might better avoid films that were never targeted at us by careful application of the Maroantsetran “chalkboard-genre” system. There would be Alien Invasion Adventures, and Brilliant Lunacies (Rain Man, Pi, Good Will Hunting). Incomplete Voyage would attract several applicants, the subgenre Almost Incomplete Voyage attracting fewer (say, Apollo 13). For the geek biologists among us, Hollywood could sort films by evolutionary relationships. Birds, crocodiles, and dinosaurs are all closely related to each other, in a group called Archosauria. The diverse genre Archosauria might represent Hitchcock’s The Birds, Crocodile Dundee, and Jurassic Park.

While trying to decipher a particularly complex chalkboard-genre one day, two policemen in dainty pillbox hats bicycled past me, waving cheerily. It was mango season, and there were men hanging from trees all over town. Maybe the policemen were out making sure nobody had fallen, or erupted into fights over mango rights. On that long lazy afternoon, Bret and I took a frisbee out into one of the wide roads punctuated by large puddles and chickens, but little else. Quickly we attracted a crowd of 30 or 40 children, intensely curious to see the vazaha flinging a plate at each other in the heat of the day. They retreated en masse when one of us threw them the frisbee, moving like a wave, but after a few attempts at engaging them, some of the braver boys gave it a shot. On the island, we had been teaching Lucien to play frisbee in the restricted space of camp, and were amazed at his intuitive grasp of the physics involved. These children, too, caught on very quickly. They learned to catch the spinning disk almost immediately, although throwing took a bit longer. Their less intrepid friends were more than willing to howl with laughter at these early attempts, but every time a new child tried his hand, there was one fewer person to laugh at the rest.

Two little girls stood apart from the rest, one dressed in ancient black lace, a party dress from a different time and place, probably donated in Europe with the best intentions, now worn as the sole garment in a child’s wardrobe. Unlike most of the children, and all the rest of the girls, these two did not hide and giggle when the frisbee came near them. The participating boys tried to wrest incoming frisbees from the two girls, but they stood their ground, and learned to throw, too. Perhaps we sparked a love of frisbee in Maroantsetra that day. If so, I feel we did our country proud.

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Next week: Chapter 24 – Frogs in Paradise

Morning on the river on the outskirts of Maroantsetra, 1999