Antipode – Chapter 7
Reentry
Antipode was originally published in 2001. Here is where we started—with the Introduction. And here are all of the chapters posted thus far.
Beginning of Part II
Five months later I returned to Madagascar, unnerved and excited by what awaited me. Jessica had been exuberant about the opportunity to be my field assistant, and was waiting for me in Tana.
For this trip, I had to pack research equipment, in addition to my usual collection of field clothes, tent, pharmaceuticals, and gifts. Assuming that nothing would be available to buy, I second-guessed what I might need; since I didn’t yet know what the animals did, I couldn’t predict what experiments I would design. So I took scales, a dissecting kit, calipers, rubber bands, a hacksaw, stopwatches, sound-recording equipment, tiny beads and needles, paracord, Tupperware, turkey basters, and epoxy. This list is not exhaustive. Were there turkeys in the field? No. But most of the specialized objects of our first world existence have uses far beyond their names.
I also put together a small solar electricity system, to power my laptop computer. The energy output of such a system is dependent on weather conditions, and it is impossible to predict how often the sun will actually shine in the rainforest, so none of my calculations were certain. Most of the components for such a system are straightforward, but the battery that I would use to store energy coming in from the sun, before it would be discharged to my computer, proved more difficult.
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of batteries in the world—those that “like” to be discharged, and those that do not. Car batteries fall into the latter category—when fully drained, they tend to need replacing. Rechargeable NiCad (Nickel Cadmium) batteries, which come in AA, C, and D—these need to be discharged regularly to function at top form. They develop a memory if you top them off frequently, and stop holding as much charge in the long run.
Given the job I was trying to do, I needed a battery that could be discharged regularly, as my demand for electricity, though small, was going to be fairly constant, while my energy source, the sun, would not be. Deep cycle, 12 volt, absorption glass matte (AGM) batteries are designed to be discharged regularly, and are fully sealed, so the acid in them cannot escape. Superficially, they look like car batteries, but they are functionally very different. They were also, at the time, the only kind of 12 volt battery that was legal and safe to transport on a plane.
So I embarked with a 50 pound AGM battery, connected to countless wires of various gauges and ominous looking switches, and a digital multimeter that flashed incomprehensible numbers when turned to the wrong setting. I feared my bag would get torn apart by overzealous bomb-seeking dogs as soon as it was out of my sight.
Landing in Tana 35 hours after I left home, I was bedraggled and unhappy. But I was whisked through the normal protocol by virtue of being accompanied by Jessica and her father, Peter Metcalf, who was then the Resident Representative for the UN’s Development Program (UNDP) in Madagascar. This would have taken my stress to an all-time low in Tana, but for one snag. The small plastic crate containing my AGM battery, inverter, and most of the hardware for the solar electricity system didn’t come off the plane.
After some discussion with the airport employees, the lid of the crate appeared, and the workers were astonished that this wasn’t satisfactory. I had hand-carried the solar panel from the States, and could piece together the rest of the system with the redundant hardware I had packed, except for the storage battery and inverter. Without these things, I had no system. Clearly, some lucky Malagasy airport worker was now the proud owner of a brand new AGM battery. Even with Peter’s intervention on my behalf over the next several days, Air Madagascar (usually aptly shortened to Air Mad) refused to take any responsibility. American FAA guidelines dictate that Air Mad, as the final carrier, were responsible for the loss, but not even the UN could convince them to do the right thing.
The Metcalfs, Ros and Peter, took good care of me. As I was slipping into incoherence and panic, they were contacting a friend of theirs who was in New York and coming back to Madagascar shortly, and she agreed to bring me another inverter. Inverters turn the 12 volt DC energy stored in a battery into the 110 volt AC energy used by computers and other tools. Thankfully, they are light—just a few pounds.
The battery was another issue. I had no chance of getting an AGM battery, with their high power ratings and impenetrable cases, in Madagascar. The Metcalfs’ driver took Jessica and me to a row of shacks in town selling 12 volt batteries. I picked one out, blindly. There was no indication of amp-hours; I had no idea how much battery I was getting. I assumed it was a car battery, and designed not to be discharged. So for the use I intended, I was sure to destroy it. Hopefully it would last four months.
On the box my new battery came in there were Chinese characters, and a single English word, in large red letters, on the side. EXCELLENT. I had to buy the lead acid separately. I toted the toxic liquid, along with my new EXCELLENT battery, away, bitter at the fates for smashing my plans to have a smoothly running solar electricity system in the field.
While in Tana, I also had to go through the usual rigmarole of obtaining research permits. The various offices are scattered widely throughout the sprawling capital city, and it can take half a day to get between them. The employees at the various government bureaus that administer the lands and waters of Madagascar see no reason to hurry unless there is evidence of a deadline. The vazaha’s diminishing sanity is not viewed as an immutable deadline. A plane ticket is.
At the Department des Eaux et Forets, we were told to come back the following day, with four copies of my research proposal in French. The next day Jessica and I were back, and they told us they needed six copies. Come back tomorrow. The next day there was nobody there to help us. The day after…well, by then I had bought us plane tickets. I told them we had a flight to Maroantsetra in three days, and they gave me my proto-permits. From there, it was another several days of wrangling with a different government office before I was finally handed the actual permits, which were made of flimsy brown newsprint, and covered in official red stamps.
Meanwhile, Ros and Peter showed me all possible hospitality. I stayed in their house, made use of their car and driver, and had several doors open for me that otherwise would not have. Out the window of the room in which I slept, I looked across a lake, on the shores of which clothes were drying in the summer sun. Children bathed and ran naked at each other, and errant rice plants grew out of their paddies, into uncared for waters. Past the shimmering lake were mountains that turned pink at sunrise and sunset. In this house, books lined the walls, the conversation was stimulating, and the people deep, warm, and comforting. This was a Tana far more peaceful than one I had ever imagined.
Jessica and I flew to Maroantsetra, gateway to the Masoala, where the airport was still without a door. Bret’s legacy lived on.
In town, little had changed but the season. The people were still walking barefoot, or in plastic sandals, through the sandy streets. The dirt roads were now spotted with dark puddles, which took over when the rains persisted. Despite the lack of road connections to the rest of Madagascar, Maroantsetra is a port, and boats often come in from Tamatave to the south. The Masoala is the primary supplier of spices for Madagascar’s export business, so the marine traffic usually consists of spice boats, come to pick up a cargo of cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, or vanilla. There are a few pickup trucks in town—a few more than there had been only months earlier, it seemed—though one wonders how they got here, and if they stayed only because there is no way out. The single road running through town, a strip of two or three miles, turns to dust and rocks as the hustle and bustle of the rice market of Maroantsetra recedes. Bicycles are increasingly popular, and two of the Indian-owned shops have gleaming new Huffys for sale on their patios. A few young Malagasy men have little motorbikes, as do the of couple of vazaha in town, which their slinky young Malagasy girlfriends sometimes ride.
The best bet for a night’s lodgings in Maroantsetra was still the Coco Beach, where Bret and I had stayed the year before. Coco Beach’s grasp on electricity is somewhat tenuous. I specifically requested a room with electricity, but found, when I plugged my computer into the single outlet, that I got no response. My voltmeter told me there was no current coming out of the wall. I went to the main building to ask if it could be fixed, or if we might get a different hut, one with juice. Monique yelled for a small barefoot man to come back with me to investigate the problem. He brought a fork.
When we got to our hut, the man went straight for the socket, looking at it inquisitively. I explained the problem, then produced my voltmeter as evidence. I put the two leads into the socket, and it read zero volts. The small man wasn’t convinced by my electronic answer. He took off his shirt, and wrapped it around his left hand. Placing that hand firmly on the wooden bed frame, he then grabbed the fork with his right hand, and jammed it into the socket. I was shocked, though I knew he wouldn’t be, as the socket was dead.
The man came to the same conclusion I had, and motioned for me to follow him. I took my voltmeter with me, and we went to the bungalow next door. He found the socket, and began to arrange himself in a similar manner. I tried to stop him, suggesting that I could again test it with my voltmeter. He would have none of it, however, as he had been called on to do a job, and he was going to finish it. So, this time in horror, I watched as he wrapped his left hand in his shirt, grasped the wooden bed frame with his mummified hand, then, grabbing the fork firmly in his right hand, jammed it into the socket. A small spark, and the man flew backwards onto the bed. 220 volts could easily have killed him. He got up, retrieved the fork, which had flown to another corner of the room, welcomed me to my new room, and left.
Our next task was to visit Projet Masoala, the regional office of both the Wildlife Conservation Society and CARE. Between them, these two non-governmental organizations are largely in control of administering the protected areas of northeastern Madagascar. There are several such NGO conservation groups in Madagascar, and they have divvied up the island, each taking some region so as not to step on each other’s toes, and plans. I had gone by the WCS office in Tana, where they had approved my research permits, and assured me that the employees at the office in Maroantsetra knew I was coming.
Projet Masoala is headquartered on the eastern side of the Masoala, in the comparatively rich, vanilla exporting town of Antalaha. The vazaha who runs WCS Madagascar, Matthew Hatchwell, lives in Antalaha, at the eastern edge of the new national park. The Maroantsetra office, at the western edge, is but a poor cousin.
It was two in the afternoon, during the daily sieste, when everything and everyone shuts down. We looked inside, found nobody, and climbed the stairs to the second floor, where a balcony looked out over the center of town. Dogs wandered by. Two year old children ran past, exuberant and bow-legged, followed at a distance by their older siblings, seven or eight year old caretakers. The air did not move.
By a quarter to three, things began to pick up. Vendors in the market emerged from underneath their wooden tables where they had been napping. Even the chickens seemed more energized. Soon we heard rustling downstairs, and went down to look. At the desk, a dark wooden affair with a grimy rotary phone on it, sat a woman with a hostile glare. She eyed us with suspicion. I wasn’t sure exactly what I needed from her, but knew I was supposed to check in, find out what the boat schedule was, and ask when we could go to our first site.
“Hi,” I stumbled, “I’m Erika, this is Jessica. We are here to study frogs. On the Masoala. The WCS office in Tana has approved all of my paperwork.” I stopped. The woman just looked at me.
“Well,” I continued, “we would like to go, with our provisions, to Andranobe as soon as possible. When will the boat be available?” I asked.
“Not today.” She said.
“Okay. Fine. But when…?”
“The boat is busy. For how many days do you want to go?” This was a question for a tourist.
“We will be here for four months.” She exhaled sharply, a sort of hiss. I had surprised her with this bit of news. I tried another tack.
“I have been told that, as a researcher, I can use the boat for the price of gas…?”
“No. The boat is very expensive.”
“But…” I stammered, and looked helplessly at Jessica, hoping for some fluent French to bail us out.
“We were told by the office in Tana that we could use the boat to get to our sites for the price of gas. If you would like, you may call them.” Jessica gestured to the phone.
“The phone is not working,” said the woman, without batting an eye. “The phone only works occasionally.” She was probably telling the truth. Phones rarely worked in Tana. They would be even less likely to here. I remembered that, upon arriving in the Maroantsetra airport, I had seen a sign for the Coco Beach. On it was a phone number—incongruous enough given that there were no phones with which to dial the number. But odder still was the number itself: 57. A two-digit phone number.
“Perhaps you can radio Tana,” Jessica continued. With her experience in Ranomafana the year before, Jessica knew that radios were the usual mode of communication. The woman looked at her with some interest.
“No, the radio only connects to other places on the Masoala. Sometime the phone will work. Until then you pay the tourist price.” I didn’t have the funds to pay tourist rates, and ultimately she conceded. We scheduled a boat for three days hence.
“Now, why are you here?” she asked me.
“To study frogs,” I told her again, “I was here last year, too. Didn’t WCS tell you I was coming?”
“No,” she seemed irritated, but not, for the first time since our conversation began, at me. I had a glimpse of the frustrations of being a small town administrator, the sort whom nobody tells anything, even information of direct relevance to her job. I decided then and there to win her over, though I had no idea how I would do it.
“Would you like to see our permits?” I asked, eagerly, thinking that all of those red stamps might impress her.
“No,” she waved her hand dismissively. “Later, before you leave town.” It seemed she wanted us to leave her alone.
“Well,” I said brightly, “can you tell me one more thing, before we leave?” She looked skeptical.
“What, please, is your name?” A slight smile. Recognition of humanity behind the desk.
“Clarice,” she said.
“It is a pleasure, Clarice. Thank you for all your help. We’ll come back tomorrow.” And we left.
By the time we left Projet Masoala, word had gotten around that two vazaha had arrived in town. As usual, this had the effect of attracting old friends, and the merely curious. Patrice, one of the guardians whose job it is to guard the Projet Masoala building against theft, began talking to us in his unique blend of Malagasy, French and English. When Emile and Felix arrived—the guides I knew from the year before—Patrice spoke to them using the same garbled language. For once, I wasn’t the only one having trouble with the native tongue. Emile was looking better now—probably his chronic malaria was latent—and Felix, as always, was cheerful. After opening pleasantries, I asked Felix about Clarice. He indicated that the two most important things she did was make the programme—the boat schedule, which meant I relied on her to get to my research sites, and back to town to replenish provisions—and she manned the radio. There was a radio on Nosy Mangabe, and one in the village of Ambanizana, five miles from the site at Andranobe. The phone in the office, Felix agreed, rarely worked. It was connected to the phone at the post office, the central phone in town. It, too, rarely worked.
A slight man, paler than most Malagasy, approached. Emile introduced him as Yves, the boat captain. His eyes skittered across our faces, landing briefly on Jessica’s. Then, without a word, he left. By way of explanation, or apology, Emile told me that Yves’ father, whom he had never met, was French. Emile, book-educated man that he was, knew that differences existed between the vazaha. Though he didn’t know what it meant to be French, or American, he understood that we were divergent, somehow.
Before Emile and Felix left us, disappearing into town to pursue their normal lives, I asked them how much rice Jessica and I would eat. We needed to shop for provisions. They assessed us, couldn’t quite get a fix on how the vazaha differed from the Malagasy in this regard, and finally concluded that since the Malagasy eat three kapoks of rice a day, we should plan on doing the same thing. A kapok is a medium sized tin can, a standard measure in Madagascar, used by vendors to measure out uncooked rice. Three kapoks cooks up into more than ten cups of cooked rice. Ten cups of rice, per person, every single day for four months. Rice was to be our primary, and often only, source of nutrients, but we couldn’t possibly have eaten that much. We didn’t know that, though, and began the long process of buying rice, beans, cooking oil, candles, and scant other provisions in the market, and hauling them away.
The shops in Maroantsetra—true shacks, with walls and ceilings, as opposed to the open stalls in which rice and other staples are sold—fall into three categories: food and sundry shops lining the market; drinking establishments; and general stores. The food shops lining the market offer brightly colored plastic cups and bowls, candles, mosquito-repellent coils, biscuits, salt and cooking oil. The oil is spooned out of a large, dirty vat swarming with flies into the container you bring; if you don’t have a container, you don’t buy oil. Stores selling liquor offer beer, toka gasy (local hard alcohol), and Coke. There are few bars in Maroantsetra, and even these seem like family establishments, not places for men to go when they want to escape.
The general stores, unlike the rickety food stalls at the market, sell rare specialties that come in on boats—mustard, chocolate, vinegar, and Lazan’i Betsileo wine, the one and only Malagasy vintage. Each shop has some item that is not available elsewhere in town. One of the general stores has chicken wire. Another sells screwdrivers. A third offers brooms, with hand chiseled wooden handles, for 1500 FMG, 35 cents. I tried to buy one of these, but there were no more. I had to put in an order for one to be made.
“How many do you want?” they asked me.
“Just one,” I said, before I knew how inexpensive this act of labor was to be.
Everything centers around the zoma, the marketplace. The stalls and commerce are there every day, but on market day, when people come in from the countryside, it teems with life, and then becomes truly the zoma of Malagasy legend, rich with activity and commerce. A sand road broadens, and narrow cement platforms, poured into place in the ground, identify the marketplace. The covered part of the market consists of a large cement floor, covered with a corrugated zinc roof. Under this roof are tables with slabs of meat on them, swarming with flies, and small piles of onion and garlic, waiting to be purchased by discerning but parsimonious buyers. Women sell baguettes and baskets, pineapples and brede, a local weed boiled into a broth and then eaten. As potential customers walk by we are plied with their prices, though sometimes what we want to hear is an explanation of what they’re selling.
“500 per kapok,” offers a rice vendor.
“One thousand each,” as I walk by neat triangles of golden brown.
“What is it?” I ask. I am intrigued.
“One thousand,” the seller repeats, “one thousand.” He is eager now, pursuing a sale as best he knows how, iterating the price until it becomes a mantra, until the consumer can do nothing but buy it, for fear the price will suddenly change. If I guess at what the product is, he will agree even if I am wrong, for he is eager to please. These crisp golden triangles smell like honey, but maybe they are soap—the vendor nods in agreement to both possibilities.
Buying rice is the central activity of provisioning yourself in Madagascar. It would be an absurd understatement to suggest that rice is the staple of the Malagasy diet. The Malagasy are intensely proud of how much rice they eat. Every meal that a Malagasy eats consists primarily of a plate piled high with slightly sticky rice. The market in Maroantsetra is dominated by the rice vendors at rickety tables, neatly lined up, with umbrellas overhead.
There are so many rice vendors, it is difficult to make a choice. There are slight variations in price, but vast differences in quality, if you believe the experts, which is every Malagasy who has eaten the many subtly variant forms of white rice.
Questions from the vazaha are gross, tactless, uneducated.
“Is there any brown rice?”
“How can you tell the difference between the rices?”
“Does it really matter?”
Brown rice, with the husk still on, increasingly the rice of choice among gourmands in the first world, is low class, not pure, somehow sullied.
If you have to ask about the differences between rices, you are perhaps not fit for the job of choosing your own rice.
And finally, of course it matters, for rice is central; if one does not care about rice, what is there left to concern oneself with?
Next week: Chapter 8 – Maybe Tomorrow
The door...
And
"He brought a fork."
I had tears streaming!
Hysterically funny omg thank you!
Where was the photo at the end taken?