Maiden Voyages (50 page)

Wife had ladled the rice-bun batter from a rusty tin at Rachel’s feet and was cooking two dozen at a time in a patty-tin used as a frying-pan. The eldest child, a girl aged perhaps six, continuously stuffed twists of grass, taken from a stack outside the door, into the flames. An even smaller boy was boiling coffee on a minute wood-fire in another mud-stove. Every few moments wife deftly turned the buns with a special wooden implement, adding a drop of grease to each “cup” at each turn. We admired the skill with which she overcame all the limitations of her kitchen; the twenty-four buns were uniformly brown and crisp when she slid them onto a wooden tray. But hot rice-buns are only marginally less revolting than cold rice-buns. And the coffee was not coffee, though coffee coloured. If you use grass as fuel, you must know which berries serve best as a coffee-substitute.

Not far beyond Manalalondo a young couple, shy but smiling, caught up with us. When we had convinced them that we were
not
going to Ambatolampy they invited us to follow them on a cross-country shortcut and the next two hours had an endurance-test flavour. Our guides were a handsome pair, small and light-skinned, with compact muscular graceful bodies. Whether going uphill or down their pace never varied and we enviously compared their loads with our own. Husband’s was a zinc bucket containing a litre tin of kerosene and an earthenware jar of honey; wife’s was a head-basket containing two dozen oranges, one packet of biscuits and a small bar of soap.

We crossed three high grassy ridges, separating broad valleys. On the more precipitous slopes the narrow path was treacherous, its outside edge blurred by bushy red grass; a misjudgement here would have meant falling hundreds of feet. On the valley floors mini-chasms were spanned by dicey little bridges of thin sticks supporting loose sods of earth. From
a distance we saw an isolated hamlet, on a hillside far above, and hoped for a brief pause. But our friends pressed relentlessly on, calling cheerful greetings to the inhabitants as we passed between hedges of tall sword-cactus. We glimpsed a six-inch orange and green chameleon while scrambling up long steep slabs of smooth rock, hot to the touch beneath the noon sun. Soon after we met a two-foot brown and green snake and the young woman shrieked fearfully, though no Malagasy snake is dangerous. At the base of another rock-slab mountain Rachel and I admitted defeat and let our guides, who were so evidently in a hurry, go ahead without us. We collapsed under a bush, our arms glistening with crystallised salt. Even in midwinter, and even in the mountains, it is hot at noon around the Tropic of Capricorn.

Five minutres later our friends were back, looking worried. No words were needed to explain the situation. They smiled at us, gently, and when we gestured to them to keep going they sat down instead and insisted on our eating two of their precious oranges. Again the young man offered to carry my rucksack. When I shook my head he picked it up, testingly, and registered comic dismay. On the next stage our pace was greatly reduced.

The granite summit of that mountain overlooked a deep valley holding an ochre track, a green river, many paddy-fields and our friends’ home. Beyond their village the track was a continuation of the motor-road we had followed out of Manalalondo, without then realising that it was meant to cater for the internal combustion engine. Had we not taken photographs, I would now doubt my recollecton of this highway. Where it had been bisected by years of flood-damage, never repaired, the two-foot-wide central rut was four feet deep and accompanied by numerous relatively minor side-ruts. When it abruptly disappeared on a sloping ridge, amidst evergreen bushes and hummocks of brown grass, we circled the area in search of any kind of path—and then, incredibly, found smudged tyre marks between bushes and hummocks. An hour later, in the next populated valley, we were fascinated to see rafts of vegetation, some twenty yards by thirty, floating on a jade-green river—anchored with stones in midstream. These are artificial paddy-fields, created where there is an urgent need for extra land.

During the afternoon we swam in a tingling cold pool, between high
grassy mountains, watched by a pair of ceaselessly circling buzzards. An hour later we were back in fertile country—too fertile, for the sun was declining and we could see no possible campsite amidst the paddy-fields. Snatches of song came from substantial houses above the track, groups of men were sitting around playing the Malagasy version of violins or guitars, children’s laughter sounded loud in the windless evening air. Not everyone greeted us and some chatting neighbours fell silent as we approached. But their reaction was understandable; few
vazaha
^*
pass that way.

At last we spotted a low scrub ridge; the sun set as we pushed upwards through dense bushes, seeking tent-space. Suddenly an enormous ancient tomb loomed out of the dusk. Obviously it was no longer in use; equally obviously it housed
razana
^†
of some consequence and
vazaha
camping in its vicinity might not be amiably regarded. We hastened on and five minutes later—it was then dark—reached a level site carpeted with some powerfully scented herb. But the
razana
were still too close for comfort; a zebu-cart on a nearby track prompted us to switch off our torches and (feeling more than slightly foolish) lie doggo by our half-erected tent. “Better to be undignified than got at by some
ombiasa
,”
^‡
remarked Rachel as we stood up. For supper we enjoyed Nomad Soup, poured onto surplus breakfast-rice smuggled away in our plastic bag.

A new two-(wo)man tent for the Malagasy expedition had cost only £15 but was alleged to be waterproof. However, within an hour of the rain’s beginning at 9:30
P
.
M
. pools were accumulating all around us. It was heavy rain, and steady. Rachel slept until midnight, muttering and squirming miserably as the chilly lake deepened. After that neither of us slept. My companion expatiated on the folly of parsimony at great length and with bitter eloquence. I curled myself into a soggy shivering ball and listened humbly, making occasional penitent noses. Wistfully I remembered the good old days when Rachel uncritically accepted the vicissitudes of travelling with a not very practical Mamma.

Towards dawn the rain dwindled and soon there was silence, apart from nasty squelchy noises caused by our slightest movement. As I unzipped the entrance the herbal aroma, intensified by the rain, acted on us (or at least on me) like a strong stimulant. Crawling out, I saw that we were in a slight hollow on the ridge-top, which restricted our view of the immediately surrounding terrain and emphasised the immensity of the sky. I stared in wonder at the still starry purple-violet zenith—a tinge belonging to neither night nor day. The stars vanished as I gazed. To the east lay distant chunks of mountain darkly colourless below a magnolia glow. To the west drifted royal-blue banks of broken retreating rain-cloud. I held my breath, waiting. Then the sun was up, behind the chunky mountain, and purple-violet changed to powder-blue—magnolia to the palest green—royal-blue to gold and crimson.

That was, I think, the most magical dawn I have ever attended. But when I remarked to Rachel that one wet night was a small price to pay for such an experience she merely grunted and went on wringing out her flea-bag. Perhaps at fourteen one’s aesthetic sensibilities are still latent.

We set off at 6:15, our loads perceptibly heavier, sucking glucose tablets for breakfast. Pathlets on which we met nobody led us for four hours through pine-woods and eucalyptus plantations, around bare red hills, over grassy ridges and across a wide cultivated bowl-valley where the soil seemed poor and the few inhabitants were timid and illiterate. Their illiteracy emerged when we produced Samuel’s letter as a preliminary, we hoped, to acquiring food by purchase or barter. It did not work in this area, serving only to increase the local fear of tough-looking
vazaha
.

While we rested in a tamarind glade, lying on feathery green-gold grass, the sun undid the rain’s damage. Its power astonished us; within thirty minutes even our thick flea-bags were dry. Here I heated our last Nomad Soup for Rachel and refuelled myself with our last fistful of peanuts.

“How are we getting out of this valley?” asked Rachel as we repacked.

Through binoculars I studied the apparently pathless southern mountain-wall. “There must be a way over,” I decided, “even though we can’t see it yet.”

“Why must there?” demanded Rachel. “Who in their right mind would ever walk over
that
?”

“People have to go from here to Antsirabe,” I pointed out in my parent-being-patient-with-silly-child voice.

“I’ll bet we passed the Antsirabe track ages ago,” said Rachel, “at the junction where you
would
take this dotty little path. Maybe you thought your day would be spoiled by meeting one vehicle if we took the right track.”

I ignored this deserved taunt and persisted, “I’m sure there’s a path—we’ll ask.”

“Ask who?” enquired Rachel, sweeping the deserted valley floor with her binoculars. “Even if we do meet someone we won’t be able to understand them.”

Luckily this prediction was wrong. At the next hamlet a group of laughing women retreated into their hovels as we approached, then cautiously peered out when they heard me rather desperately shouting—“Antsirabe?”

“Ambatolampy!” yelled the eldest woman, pointing to the north-east. (Behind me Rachel muttered a word that was not in her vocabulary before she went away to school; is it for this that we court destitution to pay school-fees?)

Again I shouted “Antsirabe?” The women conferred, then summoned a youth from within. He reluctantly advanced a few yards, pointing to a steep bushy slope rising above the hamlet. “Antsirabe!” he affirmed, repeating the word while gesturing towards a distant cleft in the mountain wall directly behind the steep slope. There was no mistaking his meaning; to get to Antsirabe we had to climb that escarpment.

We found no path until reaching the top. Evidently those who use this route (perhaps not many, as Rachel suggested) have their own favourite ways up and down. One would not have chosen to tackle such a gradient on an almost empty stomach after a sleepless night and we often rested, collapsing where there was some boulder or ledge on which to lean our loads. At each halt the view was more spectacular, encompassing all of Imerina—and much more besides.

From the top we could see miles of undulating golden savannah unbroken by bush or tree or boulder, with mountain summits peering
over the distant edges to remind us that we were, by Malagasy standards, at a great height. The faint path divided occasionally and sometimes an even fainter branch path seemed to be going more directly south. But we were following a trail of “ecological litter,” as Rachel called it—white wads of sugar-cane fibre spat out by villagers returning from market. At the far side of the plateau, after two hours fast walking, we might well have gone astray but for these clues. Here pathlets proliferated bewilderingly amidst hills, glens, spurs and ridges, some thinly forested, some entangled in thorny scrub, a few supporting potato-patches.

In the deepest glen we filled our water-bottles and bathed our feet in a rapid sparkling mountain stream that might have been Irish. Before replacing her boots, Rachel wordlessly extended her feet towards me. I looked—and recoiled. Uncooked steaks is the obvious simile. None of our plasters would cover the affected areas.

“Why didn’t you say something earlier?” I demanded, as though the whole thing were somehow her fault.

“Well,” said Rachel, “you can’t piggy-back me any more and we couldn’t just sit starving on a mountain.”

I gave minimal medical aid while repenting my earlier bitchy thoughts about the feebleness of modern youth. You have to be tough to carry a load for twenty miles on flayed feet. Luckily we did not then know how many more miles lay ahead.

Beyond the glen, several isolated houses and tombs stood out against the sky on far-away ridges. Fat-tailed sheep, small and dark brown, nibbled unattended beside the path in the shade of ancient, tall, unfamiliar trees: a sad fragment of Madagascar’s primary forest. Soon we had to cross a tricky, unexpected marsh and then came an anxious fifteen minutes; our fibre-trail disappeared, leaving us to the mercy of our compass on pathless green grassland—the only green pasture we saw in the Ankaratra. Here zebu were being tended by two small boys wrapped in
lambas
and holding sticks twice as long as themselves. They fled from us, abandoning their herd, and hid in bushes.

Sullen clouds filled the sky as we climbed to a broken plateau covered with brown scrub, like winter heather. Our spirits rose when we saw a café-shack in the distance—but it was deserted. Then, without warning,
we were on a wide cart-track, deeply eroded yet unmistakably going somewhere of importance. It began (or ended) just like that, in the middle of nowhere, for no particular reason. “This is the maddest country I’ve ever been in,” reflected Rachel, intending no pun.

Moments later we met three men returning, as we later realised, from Ambohibary market. One carried a new iron blade for his plough, another carried a can of kerosene, the third carried nothing but was wearing a pair of brand-new blue jeans. Rachel deduced optimistically, “If they sell jeans it’s a big town, with lots of food!”

Soon the track could be seen for miles ahead, dropping into a broad valley before climbing high on the flanks of a long, multi-spurred mountain. The whole wide expanse of countryside beneath us was thronged, as people turned off the main track to go to their hamlets in the fertile valleys to east and west. After walking in solitude for ten hours, this bustle of humanity seemed quite urban.

We developed a guessing-game: identifying various improbable head-burdens from a distance. An empty tar-barrel—a pair of new shoes—a wooden bench—a ten-foot roll of raffia matting—a tower of dried tobacco leaves—a Scotch whisky crate full of vociferous fluffy ducklings—a basket of long French loaves. (Our mouths watered as we caught a whiff of that fresh crustiness.) Only cocks and hens were not carried on heads but tucked under arms. We were moved by the number of poultry-owners who were talking soothingly to their burdens, sometimes stroking them gently with one finger. Even more moving was the fact that almost everyone stopped to shake hands with us and murmur a greeting. They were all chewing cane and soon our hands were as sticky as theirs. No one tried to question us about our identity or destination; those greetings were brief, gracious—and unforgettably heart-warming. Apart from the Tibetans, I have never travelled among a people as endearing as the Malagasy.