Amazed in Mada

Four: A Lesson in Logic

 

From the house on a rise of land behind Ancoba beach in Fort Dauphin I can see a Maersk container ship, berthed at the new port on the right hand headland, belonging to the mining company QMM.  I know where one of their old freight containers is hiding, camouflaged as a dwelling in the town, complete with a pitched timber and thatched roof constructed on the top and reached by a ladder.  For days I had passed by it, unsuspecting, mistaking the stencilling on the sides as old wooden planks: just one example of the ingenuity and the resourcefulness I observed, so evident everywhere I went.  Here is another – an industrial building on the edge of town, painted only where necessary; that is, a patch as big as the wall of a room, enough for the company name and the advertisement, the rest left as grey concrete.  Cost and restricted availability of materials make careful use, priority.  Almost every item can be repaired, recycled, re-used – even sandals, which I saw two young people fitting with new rivets along the roadside near the market.  Returning from the market, I heard the sound of hammers just off the street and glanced in, to see three men busy modifying the bodywork of an old car.  The same spirit was evident even on the flight to the island – drinks on the aircraft were served from litre bottles, rather than individual ones, and the paper napkins offered did not pretend to be linen - no extravagant wastefulness. 

From up here, the sound of the sea is ceaseless, like a factory working round the clock; I hear it constantly, this huge wide Indian Ocean – white rolls of its surf rhythmically crashing towards the land, to peter out in innocent frothy wheels upon the sand, overlapping then retreating.  I hear close by, the rattle of coconut palm leaves, the clatter of workmen’s tools on the road, bird calls, squeals of children playing on the track, and around my feet, the high-pitched cheeping of five chicks following their hen.  Along the road come students with backpacks; they must be older, lycée pupils, since they wear no coloured shirt.  A shooting break carrying two enormous speakers, goes by, blaring out news of tonight’s concert on the green above the port, the music still audible for some minutes afterwards. 

Below the house here, there is a warehouse and in the yard behind, a tiny hut where the guardian lives.  A woman stands at the doorway there, tidying a row of shoes with her toe.  She wipes her feet as she goes back inside.  Outside in the dirt, her small child is bathing in a large plastic basin.  A black cockerel pecks the ground nearby, there are two fat tractor tyres where the woman has laid out her washing to dry.  Two goats are trying to graze higher up the steep leafy bank but slide back down at each attempt.  Now, the woman takes the baby from the bowl and tends the tin stove, adding some charcoal.  She will cook on this.  She will wash her baby, herself and her endless laundry in a couple of basinfuls of water. She may wear sandals but is just as likely to be barefoot like many of the children.  It is fady, that is, taboo to step onto a sitting mat with shoes on or put feet up on a seat or table, so shoes must be slipped off when entering any home, however poor looking.  There is a strict protocol in using water: taking it from the container with a large cup to fill a bowl or bucket, then using the cup to pour water for washing, and then rinsing the same way, ensuring that used water does not spoil the clean container.  It is customary to rinse plates from one bowl to another to conserve water. That is sane.  It seems perfectly normal to add three drops of ‘sur’eau’ to a re-filled bottle of water for drinking; or otherwise re-use the bottle for another purpose.  Rubbish left lying has for certain been sorted through a number of times before being discarded.  I soon learn that it is advisable to cross the road when walking past the section of beach reserved for defecation in a town with no sanitation, and it is fady to walk through these areas.  One of the NGO’s initiatives is working to encourage, via a video shown to villagers out in ‘la brousse’, the digging of earth closets, which would improve the health of all and be within their means, requiring only their labour.

I walked through the back lanes, barely wide enough for one person and fenced all along.  It is early evening and food is being cooked on these stoves.  It seems normal now to watch a friend’s mother prepare a meal of several dishes squatting on the floor.  And if, after quite a short time much of this seems natural, it is because of the universal similarities.  I see that just as elsewhere, the family and the community are important.  Women strive to keep their families clean and healthy, they wash endlessly and sweep the floors of their shelters, they prepare food on the ground on tin charcoal stoves bought in the market; the people are friendly to strangers and hospitable with whatever they have.  They work long days at the stalls which stay open after dark to earn enough for the day.  In the bush, which is all the land outside of a town, villagers understand the medicinal properties of the plants.  On the remote south coast, in the harsh and arid terrain of ‘the people of the thorns’, I had seen a woman returning to the fishing village with a bucket filled with a fat-leafed succulent plant, which can be used as a powerful antiseptic.  Once nomadic, they have found ways to survive in their isolated region.

True, just as in other countries there is a road in this town with big houses, fine villas with climbing bougainvillea, and gardens – somehow these are invisible to me: there is no activity to observe.  Who can say where those people work and what their business is.  It is where these houses give way to clusters of tiny dwellings, filling in the spaces between grander buildings closer to the centre that animation is visible, revealing people’s lives.  These present striking contrasts however: – continue past the small shelters built of timber and tin and then come to a giant insurance and pensions building.  This notion is way beyond the lifetime means of most of the population and stands there at odds with the lack of social services and the many old persons left with no support, obliged to beg for small notes.  Yet still, much is offered; no matter if the building is a battered shack, it advertises Training Advice, Business Management, Personal Life Skills, Secretarial Diplomas: promise of advancement.  Two friends, both talented athletes, run a cycle repair shop, and hope to set up a sports club in spite of the difficulty of acquiring good bicycles.  On a back street, a team of workers craft and assemble sturdy wooden furniture.  A lorry is being repaired with welding equipment in a yard behind the market.  Teachers at the Lycee set up a music group for their students on a free afternoon – and the room is full of eager faces.  Fort Dauphin, the former French town now known as Taolonaro, is a long way from the capital, in the extreme south east of the island.  Here the reported political fervour surrounding the current presidential elections seems of less importance to daily life than the visit of two well known singers, Nina and Dada from Antananarivo, during their tour of Madagascar.  This town is full of energetic and enterprising people, ready to smile at strangers, share what they have with a visitor, dance and rejoice in life, family and community, sing out in their best finery on a Sunday morning at one of the many denominational churches.

In the market one busy day, with people filling the streets, a taxi-brousse and other vehicles pushing through, and when it was frequently necessary to step out into the road to pass, I saw a lone figure, taller than most, having a much darker skin and matted hair, dressed in sombre cloths.  He seemed to walk in a space of his own.  His eyes did not engage with the people in the street, nor invite a greeting; eyes more used to deep water and hunting.  Over his shoulder he carried a bundle of spears such as the pirogue fishermen use, wrapped in sacking, and a carved wood paddle.  He had one gold earring and he walked in the roadway on his broad, calloused feet.  Suddenly, in spite of the mobile phone shops, the bright clothing and plastic gadgetry for sale, the radios, the vehicles, the television screens in the food stalls offering, as everywhere, the illusion of being connected with the world, here is a human image which may not have changed since Robert Drury was shipwrecked on this coastline three hundred years ago and lived among the native tribes for many years serving a headman who very probably closely resembled this passer-by; a present day link with the ancestors of these people.  I can only guess at his way of life.  And yet, as I saw so often, appearances can be so deceptive.  How true.