Antipode – Chapter 8
Maybe Tomorrow
Antipode was originally published in 2001. Here is where we started—with the Introduction. And here are all of the chapters posted thus far.
Town life does not prepare one for forest life. After two hours of lovely boat ride across the Bay of Antongil, we arrived at the mouth of the river that Andranobe (“big water”) is named for. The last hundred feet of the trip to Andranobe is accomplished in an unstable pirogue piloted by Solo. He paddled out to the boat, where we sat bobbing in heavy surf, and his face broke into a wide grin when he recognized me. Finally, someone who knew I was coming, and was glad to see me.
Before sinking into that comfort, though, we had to get ourselves and all of our stuff into the small dugout pirogue and to shore. Malagasy pirogues are particularly prone to tip, and even the calmest voyages are precarious. It took seven trips, each one likely to tip and deposit our gear at the bottom of impossible waters. Great white sharks had been spotted in the rough, unswimmable sea. Transporting heavy equipment in that pirogue, through high surf, was one of the most arduous parts of the entire journey.
Once safely on land with our gear, I admired Andranobe anew. The Masoala peninsula, on which Andranobe sits, contains the largest tracts of lowland rainforest still standing in Madagascar. The world’s remaining rainforests tend to be in inconvenient places—extremely steep, or remote, or both—and the Masoala peninsula is no exception. This is no accident. It is precisely their inconvenience that has protected them from being cut by people needing to plant crops or wanting to harvest wood. These inconvenient places are not immune, though, just lower down on the list. The whole region, including the Masoala and the island of Nosy Mangabe, had recently been named a national park, which is named for the peninsula on which it sits.
Andranobe hadn’t changed much in the five months since I’d been there last. There were still a few roofless tent platforms, five small cabins measuring perhaps eight by ten feet each, a pit toilet, some laundry lines, and an old fence which had sprouted, becoming a living fence. There were two different Malagasy Peregrine Fund employees living there now, mist-netting for birds. Wood smoke drifted out of the kitchen cabin. Within hours of our arrival, Solo transformed the porch of his cabin into a tiny area in which we would eat.
When I had gotten back to the States after my previous trip, I wrote the people who made my jacket, Helly Hansen, and described the situation: Andranobe, Solo, his desire for a jacket like the one I had, and included with it some photographs that Bret had taken of the place. They sent me a free jacket to give Solo, in exchange for the negative of one of Bret’s photos. Solo had apparently been talking about my return for months, and when I arrived in Andranobe, rain jacket in hand, Solo was rewarded for his patience. Though silent, his eyes grew bright, and he received the gift with obvious gratitude.
