From another world

It has been some time since my last post and for good reason. I have been deep in the brousse, far from any computer connected to the internet. In my last post, I was looking for a way to get out of Morondava, the capital of the West but a bit of a hole in itself. I eventually settled on a motorboat to Belo sur Mer, the last of my technological forays in ten days. In two hours on the sea, I made a third of the way to Morombe. The other two thirds took me three days, or four if you count the day with no wind. But I am getting ahead of myself; first Belo.

A tiny village with two main attractions. The first involved an 8 km walk inland past saltines, to a baobab forest. The West is full of baobabs, these magical trees better suited to witch forests than to the incredible biodiversity of Madagascar. Among the trees stood a village, empty for its inhabitants were working the saltines. So there I was, in a witch forest and a deserted village, walking around as the sun set. And the sunset across the saltines turned them to gold!
The other attraction is shipbuilding; they build boutres, pronounced boutchi, boats coming from another age, which of course I had to take. I arranged to go with a cargo boutre to Morombe, a village (some would say a city) on the West Coast. None of the crew spoke French and I didn’t speak Malagasy. After a difficult negotiation, I was picked up at five in the morning Malagasy time, or 6.30 am our time. We spent three hours trying to get out of Belo but failed, the wind not being good enough. I was ferried back; the next day we managed to leave, taking three days and two nights to reach Morombe. Two nights at sea, my first two, but on what a ship!
I wonder what you imagine when I say boutre. Understand that boutres could have been built five hundred years ago. The only aspect of modern technology is the plastic of the two on-board buckets. Everything else, from the metal (pig iron) to the ropes (some natural thread), and the masts (almost straight trunks) speaks of an economy that hasn’t seen either the first or the second industrial revolution. To climb up a mast, crew members take hold of ropes and cables, and pull themselves with the strength of their arms, using the gap between their big toe and the second toe to push with their legs.
The crew was friendly, rarely asking me for cadeaux, instead intent of keeping me happy. Food was perfect for a shock diet: rice with water in the morning, rice for lunch, and rice with water at night. No condiments, no salt, no pepper. The water had more taste than the rice. I ate half the food as the rest in twice the time. Ten meals like this and I wanted anything but rice.
But I was in the brousse; there wasn’t much but rice.
Once in Morombe I went down to Andavadoaka where an English charity, Blue Ventures, does conversation work on the reef. Volunteers, all English speak, dive every day, so if diving is your thing and you need to help the world, look them up. Did I say most of them were English? That entails one thing: massive binge drinking, on an Australian scale. It was pitiful; we went out to a bar; to dance, the English needed to drink. Compare that with the Malagasy pulling the weirdest move (wonderful in their way) after no alcohol…
Once back in Morombe, I went to a ball, another great display of Malagasy dancing. It was grand in a poor way. The next day I caught a taxi brousse to Tulear, hoping to make it for the fete de l’Independence. After all, Tulear was only 280 km away and it was 10 am. The fete was the next day. Error! I made it to Tulear in 28 hours. We drove through villages with nothing; a few huts, no well, a couple of zebus, and a few chooks. We stopped for a few hours sleep in such a village; there I met an Indian man, probably the richest in the village. He took me to his house; wobbly concrete walls, fragmented cement floors, three rooms, and a TV with satellite reception. He offered me chocolate and some water, together worth more than people earn in two days, and he told me: “We have it good here. We live like kings.” I agreed, kings among beggars. He needed my company because his wife and baby had gone to Tulear. The baby had started vomiting and had diarrhoea, the signs of cholera. Kings, indeed!
I am in Tulear, recovering from some hard days, enjoying a big city (some would call it a large village). Soon I will be heading inland, towards national parks and hikes. I hope to catch the France-Brazil game.