Madagascar Diary : December 30 Madagascar is known as the Red Island. We could see why driving through the highlands. The earth is red, red, red. A lot of iron deposits. Even the houses made of compressed mud bricks are rust red. En route to Fianarantsoa met Theodore. He wanted to send litchis to his girl friend in Ihosy. Alann took us to his place : new houses in the village, probably the government built them when they shifted the tribe from the Reserve. The drive was again through rolling hills dotted with villages, picturesque countryside as ever. In Fianarantsoa we walked up the path made of stone steps to have a bird’s eye view of a town full of churches set up by every European denomination. It is the second largest town after Tana and is as attractively placed : on rolling hills, small single or double-storeyed houses predominate and an easy going people stroll its streets. Ambalavao was described in our tour plan as a “beautiful quaint town”. We don’t know why as it was a dilapidated, even squalid little place after we had driven through the magnificent African countryside which produces wine. At Anja Park, there is a restaurant where we stopped for lunch : Aux Jacarandas. It is a total rip off joint. The prices are twice that of any tourist set-up. And the food is a disaster, especially since we had been looking forward to it during the long drive. My steak was delivered with a small lump of rice, Priya’s boiled sausages with stale bread. The mustard had to be asked for, then the pepper, thereafter the salt. And each item took a long time coming. By the time they arrived, the food had already become cold. I had half a mind to get the waitress to get the food warmed up. All she did was to swing her ass around. Nothing else. In the circumstances the warming up process would bite into our tour time, and the tour of the parks where ring-tailed lemurs awaited us….. as well as the Norwegian tourists and French who we had met at the national reserves we had visited earlier. No sooner had we entered the small privately managed park overlooked by the huge rock surfaces of mountains that we could spot from the road before our arrival at the park, the ring tailed lemurs were spotted, almost as if they were waiting for us. John, our guide who belongs to the Betsileo tribe, began his long speech on lemurs. They are monogamous, matriarchal, territorial and move from one spot to another with a family of 10-25. They are found in the southern region only…. We stopped him from further commentary, saying we had visited several lemur reserves already. So next he took us to the chameleons, a large one was sitting placidly on top of a branch near his head. He had not bothered to change colour, I suppose because he had become used to tourists. Like us, all the visitors did was to take photographs from every angle, making sympathetic noises which they found a nuisance but put up with it for these did not last more than a few minutes before the tourists went off to the next photograph… As we emerged out of the reserve John drew attention to the peanut and cassava (manioc) fields, which was the green sauce I had been having with zebu meat in all the restaurants whenever I ordered the traditional Malagasy fare. Many medicinal plants in the reserve; one small tree growing out of a bowl-like bulb. For skin problems one rubbed the skin of the bulb and applied it to the sick part and the rash or whatever got cured. At one point I asked John why the Betsileo tribe was well known for being invincible. With a twinkle in his eye he replied “Because we have the longest spears”. I suppose size does matter. He also informed us that Madagascar has its very own martial art, the moraingy. Although karate etc. is popular in Madagascar, the moraingy is being revived and hopefully will gain many practitioners. A few miles out of Anja Park, the landscape changed, the undulating nature of the land gave way to flat green stretches. The land lay fallow. Untouched. For miles on end. With not a single person. Or a bird. Not an insect stirred. Alann said it was government land. It had untapped mineral wealth. Ilmenite, precious stones, perhaps petroleum deposits…. The Chinese had moved in on some of it, striking deals with the President and his cronies. It is the Chinese century after all. When would it be India’s turn I wondered? I will not be around to witness it. Photos by Priya Sen
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 08:18:06 +0000
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