After a couple of nights sleeping beneath my full mosquito net, feeling an odd sense of security within its lightweight mesh, I became used to the noise of wind and night time rain on the tin roof above me, and the ‘donk’ of stiff, dry leaves dropping and slithering down the steeply pitched metal sheeting. It is light by five o’clock. Though warm, the sky that day was still a dull grey but we walked anyway down the track and along the road for ten minutes to the beautiful curved Libanona beach and swam in the ceaseless breakers pounding the steep sand, then, for breakfast bought fried banana mofo buns from a shack behind the beach; it was still early but not soon enough to enjoy them hot. We drank our sweet coffee while school children in various coloured shirts walked past us, out from the lanes and tracks which meet on the main road, by now full of people walking to work, school or already passing by with bicycle loads of goods. I am to borrow a bicycle today and ride out-of-town on an adventure. The bicycle I borrow belongs to Valerie, an English teacher. The rear tyre needs some air if I am not to ruin it on a rough ride so now I meet Seraphin and Christian, who run a bike repair shop in town. They discover the valve is damaged and, without a moment’s hesitation, remove the rear wheel from a different bike so that we can set off. As we rode out of town Kate called back over her shoulder, "This is where the real Madagascar begins".
We leave the town in the direction of the mountain, the Pic St Louis which dominates the northern view, and soon pass the last market stalls, then the taxi brousse depot, where two battered blue trucks are filling with people, then a petrol station and at a crossroads see that ahead is unknown country. The road surface is very sound here, for one way leads to the QMM mining workers’ bungalows. We pass the last of the tall trees and quite suddenly the scenery changes - here is a red road of beaten earth, stretching ahead, fields of maize, short palms with huge floppy leaves, green, green fields of rice at various stages, in small odd shaped patches, none too small to be worked. In each one it seemed, a person bent over labouring. Morning rain has left red mud and puddles to skirt round on the bicycles. We are not alone on this road - people call out ‘Bonjour vazaha’. In truth, we are an odd sight - two tall pale-skinned women, riding for no discernible reason; the notion of riding for sport has perhaps little meaning here. Bicycles are the most common transport on the road, ridden by men and boys and piled high with goods, and sometimes with a friend seated sideways. Women walk, each bearing a high cloth-wrapped load on her head, yet still managing to turn to another to speak. Others evidently come from market and carry their produce, in the same manner, in patterned woven baskets. They are a striking sight, in their full length coloured lambahoany and bare arms and feet. The land opens more and offers a wide view of cultivation, palms, the occasional distinctive fan-shaped traveller’s palm, and always the mountain on the right. Main roads which are not metalled, changing from red hard-packed earth to light and sometimes deep sand, are a whole new adventure. We continue riding, ever left and then right trying to stay on firm ground. This is child’s play on a bicycle. On a later trip in a 4X4 I discover that you roll left and right, tipping up and down, in a swinging motion, like a small boat on the sea in a fair to moderate swell. It is normal to take two hours to travel ten kilometres. People therefore may make only annual trips to visit family in other parts, probably in a ‘taxi-brousse’, a converted cattle truck affair, painted bight blue and crammed with passengers and their bags. I never saw one but completely full and with a boy or two hanging on at the back.
We take a left turn and immediately find ourselves in a village. A number of thatched reed huts are grouped together but each is in its own place; chickens, washing on lines or draped on bushes, men seated in a circle beating with sticks what looked like cassava root, but here is space, unlike the town with its cramped shacks and yards. Children come running to stare and call out. A ruinous concrete building has been robbed of its roof materials, but otherwise ignored - villagers have preferred to build in palm leaves. Tightly packed together, the spines of the leaves create a very sound roof, and the fronds of the leaves make the thatch; walls are constructed the same way. Many are built on a low platform and are small, each only the size of a garden shed, yet all the family will sleep there. We ride on this day until we reached the Nampoana Lemur Reserve and are met by Tecla, the guide. Leave your bikes here with mine, he says in English and leads us across the road and through a tunnel of tall green bamboo, an arbour of pliant fingers, interlaced over our heads. We continue through an avenue of elegant traveller’s palms, so-called for the water they hold where the leaf bases overlap, needing only a knife blade slid between to release it.
Tecla is happy to display his very good knowledge of the great number of medicinal plants and trees which are native to the island. He is ahead of us at each point, ready with a leaf to crush and sniff. These are the origin of essential oils understood by the ancestors. He calls out for the lemurs to approach and soon they come, white and nimble, an infant clinging to many a back, springing and swinging out to the thinnest branches. They watch us with their bright round eyes as they chew the leaves. Their faces are black, their hands long and soft; their feet, with an opposable thumb, and their tales both curl strongly around any support. On the ground, these lemurs walk on all-fours; others dance sideways on two legs. Later we are surprised by twenty ring-tailed lemurs, rushing past us with their striped tales held erect – a score of belisha beacons. Heavy domed-shell tortoises move slowly about; their radiated patterns stand out clearly on grass but are almost invisible amongst the trees. We visit a section of primeval forest with many varieties of bamboo, the yellow one is used for musical instruments. The giant green bamboo, fully a foot in diameter rises to seventy feet high at an inch per day. Growing close together they resemble a stand of spare cathedral organ pipes and form an impenetrable barrier, which it would take a canon to blast through, says Tecla. The shadow of a large bird passes over the ground – a yellow kite quartering its territory. Tecla shows us camphor, citronella, lemon grass, vanilla, sisal, sharp tasting Madagascan cherry, tall lychee trees with fruit hanging in tresses and a tiny ‘sensitive’, a fern which closes all its leaves at the slightest touch. He has arranged for two boatmen to take us on a ride through a narrow green-water channel, closely pressed on both sides by creepers and elephant ear palms rooted in the water. The fibreglass hull slips along nearly silently, drawing meditation music from the water and the oars. It is impossible to step onto the bank, so close together are the plants. Cycling home with Tecla we pass many people on the road walking back to their village. It is a good feeling to be hacking along on an old bike with no worries, following the rhythm of the road.
Further out in the same direction is the Andouahela National Park and an ancient spiny forest. The journey there by 4x4 is as adventurous by car as by bicycle the previous day. We stop for cakes and slices of papaya at the village of Ranopiso where a cattle sale appears to be in progress and then at the ‘visitor centre’, where we collect the guide, a young man called Jean. While the deal is being done inside the building, outside I am soon surrounded by a group of small children and we begin a game of ‘copy me’ in French. The children catch on instantly and their faces show that they love this as, amid much laughter, we pat our heads, knees, elbows and feet, saying the words in French, the usual language of primary instruction it seems. They crowd round to see their faces in the photograph we take. After the turn off to the park, the road begins to resemble a river bed and does in fact cross the dry beds of several streams. This is testing terrain for the most rugged vehicle and we progress at walking pace at best along the eight kilometres to the entrance. The guide leads us, with information at each step, through the laid out paths of the spiny forest, without which a person on foot would be woefully scratched. We walk between the tangled growth of extremely unfriendly plants and trees, thrusting spikes out in all directions to protect their own water. Nevertheless, we are told, the lemurs descend from the mountain to eat the tiny round leaves of the octopus tree, heedless of the long triple thorns up and down the length of the branches. We climb up the hillside towards outcrops of flat rock which give us a view over many miles of level forest toward red hills on the skyline. We are surrounded by strange trees and bushes most of which grow only on this island and nowhere else in the world: here is the famous bottle-shaped baobab tree, its mortar-shaped seed pods lying all around on the ground, there the rope tree, which starts life as a tree but at a certain height decides to form one stem which falls back to the ground. Here a poisonous plant with finger-like succulent leaves: a park ranger who accidently broke one of these was blinded by the spurt of fluid from the tube leaf. Spikes, thorns, spines, serrated edges, spear tips, these are the ways these plants protect themselves. Large lizards run across the track, freezing to immobility at our approach, raised up on their front legs and finger tips. We reach the edge of a river gorge where below, some water still flows and fills round rock pools with dark water. These are reservoir pools and may not be swum in; it is fady to do so. There is another however upon the other side which has a cascade down to a further pool, where we eat our food and swim.
The market has finished by the time we return; evening activities are beginning in Ranopiso and people are standing at the roadside café stalls or lighting cooking fires in front of the huts. The route back seems familiar now. The daylight is fading though it is only six o’clock and there is no electric light to be seen until we reach the edge of the town again. We have only been a short distance away, a two and a half hour journey, but the silence of the desert forest and the endless land contrast sharply with the noise and animation of Fort Dauphin. The next trip is to a place so remote that you must wonder how the people survive – the most southerly point on this great island.
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copyright Julia Austen 2015