Sojourn to Madagascar - Part 12 - Queen's Palace and Lemurs

Sojourn to Madagascar Part 12

Queen’s Palace and Lemurs

Wil and Sylvia in Tsimbazaza

I had over a million Ariary. Pam and Gideon had an appointment with an embassy in Tana. After asking if we were interested, they arranged for us to hire a car in Tana and tour some of the interesting sites there. Traffic is so really bad in Tana that you’re lucky to get to two or three places during a whole day. We left home about 5:00 a.m. with the Petersens and made good time up to the edge of Tana. Then we hit the traffic, and it was 9:30 a.m. by the time we arrived La City, a shopping center.

1,100,000 Ariary

Noée and Tantely live in the other end of our duplex. Noée’s brother, Matio, and Tantely’s shirt tail relative, Lova (say Loova), met us in an old convertible. They took us out to the Queen’s Palace, about a 4 or 5 mile drive and a little over an hour away in the stop and go traffic. At one point we were stopped dead for a while on a very narrow one-way street. We could see that a car had stalled about ten cars ahead of us, and no one could get around it. Finally all the drivers ahead of us got out and went up to the stalled car. They bounced and manhandled the thing sideways far enough so that we could put one set of wheels up on the very narrow sidewalk and squeeze around him.

A Game with Dark and Light Stones at the Gate

We got up to the gate of the palace and squeezed into a non-parking place. Lova stayed with his car. Matio got into the palace free since he’s Malagasy. We paid 40,000 Ariary for entrance and a guide. You have to pay for a guide everywhere you stop. I think they are provided to keep an eye on you more than to provide guidance. Matio was horrified about how much we had to pay. He kept saying, “I’m sorry.”

At the Gate into Queen’s Palace

Our guide, Tefe, was a young man with a very pleasant disposition. His English was almost not understandable. He apologized to Sylvia and told her that he speaks perfect Italian—fat lot of good that does for us. We walked through the stone gate and into the courtyard. Beyond us lay a fairly impressive square stone structure about three stories high. On each corner was a square structure another story higher.

Arivo Ariary

The guide told us that a warrior king had moved a thousand soldiers into Antananarivo in the 1700s. The word arivo is Malagasy for a thousand; just look at the 1000 Ariary banknote. So the city name means the place of a thousand warriors. The main reason that Malagasy words are so long is that their meaning is a whole sentence. The warrior king, Andrianampoinimerina, had built a simple palace about 20 km (12 miles) north of Tana. But his queen liked the Rova, or highest hill in Tana, so she built her own more elaborate palace on the Rova.

The Queen’s Palace With the King’s Palace on the Left

 The Queen’s Palace was designed by a Scottish missionary by the name of James Cameron, and was built of beautiful rosewood. Rumors have it that there was a certain romantic tryst between the two of them. The guide said nothing of that. In the late 1800s a Frenchman (and the rumors of a romantic tryst are more probable with him) built the beautiful stone structure to completely contain the rosewood palace. In 1995 a fire totally destroyed the wooden palace and damaged the outer stone palace. They are allegedly restoring the inner palace, only they are creating it in concrete and then coloring the concrete the dark color of rosewood. So with our outrageous entry fee, we never got into the palace itself. They are a long way from getting anything done.

To our right as we walked in lie hundreds of stone blocks from the part of the stone structure that collapsed in the fire. To our left are two square burial structures, tombs. The closer one is more highly decorated, although built out of cement block, and contains the remains of four queens. The further tomb contains the remains of the three kings, including Andrianampoinimerina. By the way, the Merina part of the name is that of the warrior tribe that has kept control of the other 18 or 23 tribes (depending who you listen to) of Madagascar for hundreds of years. Even now, in the Republic of Madagascar, the Merinas hold the best positions in the government.

Looking Back and the Gate

Turning around and looking back, north, at the gate we just came through, you can see a great stone eagle perched atop a short pillar. The stone eagle is a gift from Napoleon Bonaparte. To its right is a 2 or 3 meter tall, erect, circumcised phallus. The circumcision is characteristic of the Merina tribe, who regard circumcision as the source of their superior power.

In those early years the Merina regarded wood structures as comfortable and worthy of human habitation. Stone structures are regarded as inferior and the reasonable home of their zebu (cattle or oxen with a hump on the front shoulders). It was only after several disastrous fires that they were persuaded that stone was indeed fit for Merina habitation.

On the east side of the Queen’s Palace is a 25 or 30 foot (10 meter) Kings Palace made of rosewood. I think it is a replica of the actual palace about 20 km north of town. We were allowed to walk into the King’s Palace as long as we stepped over the threshold with our right foot and backed out of it when we left. The palace has a tall ‘A’ frame structure. On the north wall there is a wooden ladder going all the way up to a platform about two feet (65cm) wide and the length of the building immediately under the peak of the roof.

Tefe Standing Next to the Eunuch Statue at the King’s Palace

The king who built this structure would climb all the way to the top and lay hidden from view on this platform anytime visitors would come. No one explained the right-foot-first principle to visitors. If a hapless visitor stepped into the palace left foot first, he was received cordially enough but there was absolutely no chance he would ever see the king. On the floor of the palace were five short stone supports for a giant pot. Around the pot were a dozen or so rounded tiles for diners to sit at. They would all eat out of this giant pot. A wooden fire would be under the pot to cook the food and later keep it warm. The left-foot enterer would be seated at the dishonorable (south) end of the pot (only he wouldn’t know it was dishonorable). After eating he would be ushered outside with apologies that he hadn’t been able to see the king.

When a person came in right foot first, he was seated at the seat of honor on the east side of the pot. Then if the king actually decided to meet with him, he would drop a pebble down onto the floor. The wife (wives) would know the king’s desire and leave the north seat open for him to come down the ladder and eat with the guest.

In the northeast corner of the King’s Palace, there was a depression in the dirt floor. This was where the king and others communed with the ancestors and the spirit world. The animistic philosophy and religion still strongly influence the people, even Christians, in Mada. Sylvia has been putting together several experiences from her students that illustrate this phenomenon. We backed out of the king’s palace, as required by protocol. On the outside of the King’s Palace is a statue of a Frenchman who was in charge of the King’s harem. The king turned him into a eunuch so that he would not molest the women. This is told along with all the stories of the Merina’s fixation with the male organ and its source of their power.

Tefe, Sylvia and Matio in the Church

We walked on around to the church built next to the palace and in the Rova complex. It was started by the British before they traded Mada for Mauritius with the French. So the church is a Protestant church, probably also due to the influence of Cameron. The king continued to build the church. It is built of cut stone. Since the Merinas had no cement at the time, they used a mixture of sand and egg white as mortar. This placed a very high value on eggs, and citizens were taxed highly for any eggs they used personally. According to Tefe most Malagasy don’t eat eggs for this reason. This mortar doesn’t last as well as cement based on lime, so they’re having to replace some of the mortar. The church has stained glass windows and resembles a miniature cathedral in many ways.

From the Rova we could look down on the Tsimbazaza National Park, a forested region, immediately at the base of the southern edge of the Rova. In spite of the officious name, Tsimbazaza is merely a zoo. Although it is more in the spirit of many modern zoos where some of the animals appear to be able to roam the park as they wish, it is that in appearances only. They use the fact that most lemurs cannot swim and will not cross a body of water and other restraints that don’t appear as restraints to us. We certainly could not walk into the Lemur’s area.

Looking Up from Tsimbazaza to the Queen’s Palace at the Top of the Rova

Although the Tsimbazaza was literally only a stone’s throw from the Rova, we had to descend the mountain (really a hill) and that must have taken at least a half-hour. Remember the proverbial Tana traffic must move on extremely narrow roads where every house is also a shop for various items not carried by its neighbor. Parking at the main entrance to the Tsimbazaza consisted of a slight widening of the road in one spot in which roughly ten cars were crammed so tightly into the space that it was almost impossible to open the car door simply to exit the car. We paid the usual 10,000 Ar. apiece to get in, and the guide demanded 30,000 Ar. Bruno, it turned out, was worth every bit of the $10 we paid him. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of both the fauna and flora of the park. Furthermore, he had a wealth of stories to tell about everything. One had to listen closely because he spoke English using the only four or five vowels of Malagasy, but he was much easier to understand than Tefe had been. For example, it is usually impossible to tell whether they are saying live or leave.

Gray Bamboo and Crowned Lemurs

Bruno identified the tan eagles we saw near our home a while back as yellow-billed kites. There was a rather moth-eaten one in a cage in the park. We saw about a dozen different species of lemurs. About half of those live in clumps of trees in the center of the park without cages around them. We spent about two hours in the park, about twice as long as we did at the Queen’s Palace. I enjoyed both places, but I definitely like the Tsimbazaza more. Malagasies get in for about a tenth of what we pay to get in, and there are a lot of them that just go there to play a few of the limited sports available or to lounge on the uncut lawns. Lawns are a great rarity in Tana.

Green Gecko

When we left Tsimbazaza, Pam and Gideon suggested we meet them at the Waterfront Shopping Center, an island of modern shopping in a vast sea of street side vendors. Matio and Lova said they knew exactly where it was. I didn’t. I did feel they were taking us the long way around when they went through a permanently deadlocked tunnel toward the center of Tana. I said something, and they assured me this was the best way to go. After “parking” for an hour on the street, we finally pulled up next to La City Shopping Area, another island of modern shopping. It was evident that neither of them had any clue how to find the Waterfront. I phoned Gideon; Pam answered, and they said they would come to us. So we got Lova and Matio to drop us off at La City. (That is where they had picked us up, after all.)

It was about 3:30, and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. Our knees were feeling a bit weak. So we went inside and ordered a passable vegetable pizza—if you regard broccoli on pizza as passable. Pam and Gideon got Telma to fix my phone so I could send text messages. I had paid to be able to, but no one around UAZ could figure out how to tell the phone it could. It’s amazing. This little phone cost us $8, and for another $3 a month I have virtually unlimited voice and text. In fact, my plan even has some data capabilities. However, the simple little phone has no plans of letting me use that feature. A big difference in the developing nations is that everyone has a phone and phone coverage is available practically everywhere, even in most remote regions. And all of this is available for significantly less than I’m paying!  In the U.S. I pay more a month for less service than I pay a year out here!

We did some shopping in ShopRite, similar to a small supermarket in the States. Then we piled into Gideon and Pam’s Peugeot and “parked” our way for well over an hour going up and over a couple of Tana’s many hills until we arrived at the national road, RN 7, going south out of the city. Lest you get an expanded idea of a national road, it is a simple two lane road usually with no shoulder. Everybody drives in either direction on whichever side of the road they find fewer potholes or simply more convenient. At times you are sure they are going to hit and kill you. Ah, sweet release! But we missed again. And it took us only about four-and-a-half or five hours to go the 134 km (82 miles) home. That’s just about keeping up with the old pony-express. It’s almost as bad as the L.A. Freeway system during rush hour.

Don’t think I am complaining! I loved a great day away. I enjoyed everything I saw, and I would drop everything and do it again at the merest invitation.

On Friday, we started out for Antsirabe with Pam to see our students perform in a drama competition with their own original work. En route the fan quit working. So it took us about 4 hours to limp about 10 km home. Our students did magnificently without our support, carrying away both the first and second prizes! We were duly proud of them.

On Sabbath Pam was asked to preach at the little church in Sambaina that we attended our first Sabbath in Madagascar. It had been women’s week all week, and this was the culmination. She was given a sermon written originally at the General Conference. The Mada church feels it must follow every directive from the headquarters to the letter or they will follow the damned into perdition. The sermon she received had been translated into Malagasy. She figured out what the texts were and did a great job of weaving them together.

The sermon was based on Ephesians 5:33, a text which has upset feminists for the last I don’t know how many years. The husband is to love his wife and the wife to respect her husband, according the translation Pam used.  The King James Version states “Let every one of you … love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.” Pam read dictionary definitions for “love”, and “respect”. These used lots of synonyms for the terms—which drove her game little translator just about bananas. Kudos to you Pam! We walked about 4 km to get to church and about 3km home, along a steeper shortcut. We were steaming sweat from every pore, both when we arrived at church and when we arrived at home. Humidity was, as usual, about 100%, and it started raining about the time we got home and continued into Sunday.

I got up this morning, Thursday, February 25, at 5:15 and went outside. This morning was the first morning since I have been here that I have been able to see the sky all the way to the horizon in the east. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and the Moon stretched three-quarters of the way across the sky in that order. They were all clearly visible against a beautiful dawn sky. Actually, the Moon was half covered by a cloud that soon enveloped Jupiter. What a rare sight. If you’ve got clear morning skies, go out about three-quarters an hour before sunrise and see the sight. It will be quite different in just a few days—both Venus and Mercury are moving very rapidly right now.

#MADAGASCAR, #UAZ, #MALAGASY, #PREACHING, #ANIMISM, #ROYALTY, #PLANETS, #TRAFFIC, #ANTANANARIVO, #LEMURS, #GECKO, #PHALLUS, #CIRCUMCISION, #MERINAS, #ZOO, #CELLPHONE

Sojourn to Madagascar Part 05 - Year End

Sojourn to Madagascar Part 5

Year End

While we were at Domaine Saint Francois (DSF), we asked the manager, Fanja, Parany’s sister, what the purpose of the institute is. A large poster explaining their operations hung on the wall, but all of the writing on it was in Malagasy which is still as mysterious as ever to me. DSF is financed mainly by lay people in France. It takes 20 destitute families in Tana each year into the institute. They test them for eligibility and aptitude. As soon as they are admitted into the program, then both parents must work full time for DSF for a year. During this time they are intensively trained with classes for parents and schooling for the children.

DSF Mission

The second year these families learn and practice farming on the DSF campus. If they pass these two years, they are provided with a brand new home in a remote area about 200 km (125 miles) west of Tana. They are financially set up for farming and housekeeping for the full year. They can use the proceeds of this third year to finance themselves for subsequent years. The Catholic Church gains 20 new self-supporting families in a region that is semi arid and has no one living in it. The families develop a loyalty to the church and have the drive and capability for independence, living on their own and becoming responsible members of the community.

DSF has very nice rooms that they rent out to people like us to help raise funds for their program. Fanja thanked us personally for our support for their program. She is 10 years older than Parany. I guess she is in her forties. The institute has a small dairy where the cows are still milked by hand. They have a model garden with a variety of vegetables and fruit and not a weed. Lovely warblers and some flashy red birds graced the garden.

We were told when we checked in at DSF that there was an American woman from California who was staying there. She was quite sick and hadn’t eaten anything for several days. I wondered if that were a tummy bug that she got as a result of eating the food served at DSF. When we got to supper, our first meal in the institute’s dining room, she showed up and sat at a nearby table. We invited her over to sit with us, and she complied weakly.

She looked to be in her sixties and rather frail. They brought her a salad plate before they brought any of our food. I suggested that we could pause in the conversation if she wanted to say grace. She demurred by saying lightly,” Oh it’s all right. I’m sure he understands,” and she pointed vaguely upwards.

She had flown down to Toliara, a coastal city south west of Tana. There she had spent a few days then joined a tour that was coming back to Tana over land. The group spoke about a certain mountain that was very interesting, and she joined the group to tour it. When the group started up the slopes of the mountain, she went along. Apparently the group didn’t speak English, so there was a major lack in communication. She said, “If I had known they were going to the top, I wouldn’t have gone!”

However, as they climbed higher and higher, she said she felt as though she was going to die. Finally she made it to the top with them. From the symptoms she described, I’m sure she was suffering from heat stroke. Her symptoms sounded very like mine did when I had a stroke as a teenager from working all day in the tropical sun outside of Bulawayo in the tropics in what is now Zimbabwe.

We eventually introduced ourselves. She told us that she is Dr. Diana Prince, with emphasis on the Dr., from San Diego. She has published a number of books and is working on a travel book, Adventure on Planet Earth. She toured much of Southern Africa a while back and now is working on her last two chapters on this trip—Namibia and Mada. She planned to fly out of Tana for home before the new year.

While we were talking about everything, our food arrived. The other eight of us at the table stopped for grace before starting to eat. She then apologized for not praying, but it was obvious that it was not her custom. From her conversation I concluded that at best she is a skeptic.

At one point I mentioned that something we had seen was so old it must have come out of Noah’s Ark. Her eyes lit up, and she told us that four years ago she had published, through Amazon, a book called A View from the Ark. In it she reports on a find on a mountain called something like Chudy or Judy in Turkey about 2 miles (3 km) from the Iranian border. A structure has been pushed up partially out of the ground that has the exact measurements of Noah’s Ark in Genesis. Some device something like an ultrasound has revealed compartments in the structure. The mountain is within sight of Ararat so fits the Genesis account well. She has written another book on Mary Magdalene which follows her travels including her sojourn in a cave in France. I think she says she has published about 12 books.

We saw Diana at breakfast the next morning. The food and sleep seemed to have revived her considerably. I may have to revise my estimate of her age downward to upper 50s or close to 60. I asked her if she had family that she notified about her being so ill. She indicated that she has friends who were shocked about where she went. I took it that she is single and may have been single all her life.

I had told the group about my experience on a two-night-three-day bus ride from Ikizu to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in about 1967. The bus stopped away out in the plains so that people could get out and take care of their biological needs. The group all filed out and formed a large circle on the open plain and relieved themselves. I was too self conscious or too proud to do so. A couple hours later I need to go so badly I was almost blowing bubbles. When the bus finally stopped at another barren spot like this, I joined the circle! I asked them why they stopped in such an open area where there was nothing to provide privacy. They were afraid of snakes and lions. In an open area they didn’t have to worry about these dangers. Privacy is highly overrated anyway. After I told him this, Gideon called stopping in the bush to relieve ourselves “going to Tanzania.”

On our way back from Andasibe National Park, we took things a little easier. We stopped at a couple of the falls and took some pictures and “visited Tanzania”. Some of these beautiful spots were on a steep climb from about 3,340 to 5,570 feet in altitude according to my watch, which measures altitude by sensing barometric pressure. It is seldom accurate about the altitude of a spot unless it has been recently set. It is, however, reasonably accurate when measuring the change in altitude. So the road went up some 2,240 feet (680 m).

While we were eating breakfast in the Parany’s unit at the Hotel Le Guayave, their five year old Valerie sat next to me. She is a sweet little girl who speaks a fair amount of English and is both well trained and well behaved. She sat looking wonderingly at my naked forearm. Finally she looked into my face and saw that I was amused by her interest. I nodded approval, and she gently touched the hair on my arm. Satisfied, she removed her hand and continued eating. Here the people’s arms are hairless as if they had been waxed. Mine, on the other hand, are closely akin to those of Esau. Obviously in their eyes I am proof positive that at least my race descended from apes.

On our way home from Andasibe, just before entering the terribly narrow streets of Manjakandriana, we turned south on an unmarked dirt road that leads to Mantesoa, the site of a large man-made lake created to help in the generation of electricity. It was built in the 1930s and called the Reservoir de Mantasoa. An English couple who used to work for the Scripture Union, an international missionary organization, has lived there for 21 years now. They are Martin and Mary Barb (spelling?). He has built a large campus for the Scripture Union. On the other side of one arm of the lake he has built several lovely rooms with space to house various conventions or for people to rent for rest and relaxation. His buildings are very carefully built to his exacting standards and completely finished, unlike anything at UAZ or other places we have stayed in Madagascar. They are built almost exclusively of local material so are not very expensive.

Main Building on Scripture Union Campus. Martin at the door

Mary has set up a factory staffed with the local people who produce handicrafts, also to exacting standards, like homemade shopping bags which she ships to England where they are sold in the better class of shops for very good prices. Martin says they have twice yearly furloughs back to visit their relatives in England. This has, I’m sure, benefited their finding ways to market their handicrafts and earn hard currency.

Vadette in Mary’s factory

Peter and Vadette Delhove run ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Agency) in Madagascar. He and his wife were staying in one of the “homes” Martin has built right at the edge of the high water mark of the reservoir. The water level was way down because of a severe drought they have had over the past couple years. Peter remarked that the water had come up several meters in the last couple days, so I think the rains are helping solve their problem. Delhoves find it very restful to take the two hour drive out from Tana and spend a weekend there. Peter claims he does it in an hour. It took LaLane almost an hour to drive from the Scripture Union campus back to the tar road. LaLane handles the nasty traffic in Tana much better than he handles rough dirt roads.

Martin’s latest “Home” L to R: Peter, Gideon, Pam, Sylvia’s back, Vadette

We stopped short of DSF, and Harimalala got 3 pizzas—two “grand” size vegetarian and one personal size with meat for LaLane. He was very happy. That evening we ate back in the DSF dining room. They made us boiled potatoes and a quiche. Harimalala had suspected that that wouldn’t be enough, so she purchased the Pizzas to supplement dinner. The dessert was pineapple slices as it had been two nights previously.

I got up about 5:30 Wednesday morning (December 30) and sat out in their outdoor dining area and wrote in my journal for about two hours. Breakfast was the same white bread, “chocolate” croissants (a big croissant with a minute dab of chocolate inside somewhere) and tea. This time, at our request, they brought Sylvia and me a couple eggs each.

After breakfast we packed up and were on the road by 9:30. Gideon phoned Mr. Manda, who lives in Tana, and found out a route that he reported was clear of traffic. We took it, but by the time we got there, it was stopped dead with traffic. It took us 3 hours to do 17 km. (10 miles)! At one intersection it took us ten minutes just to move one car length. I timed it. We bought a bunch of groceries at Shop Rite.

We sat at this intersection for about a half hour

Pam had been feeling quite sick for the previous two days and was feeling even worse by Wednesday. At the Seventh-day Adventist Indian Ocean Union Mission they have a medical clinic that is open 24/7 to help locals as well as workers and missionaries. This is where they have promised to take us if we get sick. We got there about 2:30 and found the place closed for the year and locked. I’m praying that we don’t get sick! Apparently the doctor on duty wanted to do some shopping before New Year’s Eve and simply went AWOL as did his whole staff! So much for 24/7! Pam went into the nearby dental clinic and found Hanitra who joined us in the car and guided us through a maze of streets to a Doctor Etienne (Steve in English). He felt Pam for a fever, chatted for 20 minutes or so, gave her a malaria shot, 4 more vials to be given at home over the next two days, an antibiotic, and some ibuprofen pills to keep the fever down. Pam was sure this had been a misdiagnosis because “there is no malaria at UAZ.” However, she started to feel much better by the next day. She figures she may have gotten it when they stayed overnight at the ADRA compound the time they picked us up at the airport. We’re taking our anti-malaria medicine faithfully!

Indian Ocean Union Mission Headquarters

Adventist Medical Clinic

Here people greet friends they haven’t seen for a while by leaning in towards each other and touching right cheek to right cheek, then they touch left cheeks, and finally touch right cheeks again. It is done with either sex and at times with people whom they have only recently met. I don’t know enough about when it is done it initiate myself.

On our way out of Tana we stopped at Jumbo Scores. It is a large department store something like Walmart or Target. There is one in Antsirabe, but it is much smaller, rather like the two other grocery stores in town. Sylvia had brought her electric curling iron from the States. When she plugged it in to the standard 220v, without thinking, there were a lot of popping noises. This brought her to her senses, and she unplugged it immediately. I don’t know whether she has ruined it or not. My guess is that the 110v she brought with her is no longer worth carrying back to the States to see if it works. Anyway, we found another one at Jumbo.

We left Tana in the hot late afternoon sunshine but quickly ran into heavy rain. The valleys that are carefully bisected into hundreds of rice paddies that are carefully supplied with enough water to keep about 6 inches of water in them while the rice grows were covered who knows how deep with the yellow-red water that had rushed off the surrounding hills in floods. The rivers came up almost to the bottom of the bridges. I felt really badly for the thousands of peasants who plant the rice as their only income for the year. They use a hand cultivating device that is a six or seven foot long steel rod with a handle at one end and two multiple star wheels, each placed one foot and two feet (30 and 60 cm) respectively from the other end. They run this up and down between the rows. Of course with everything flooded like it was, cultivation is also impossible. Fortunately the rivers went down as suddenly as they had come up. As I write this, two weeks later, we are again getting a lot of rain, so they may rise again.

Rice paddies from the road

We arrived home close to 7:30 p.m. in the dark. Short of a few chips and a couple pieces of broken bread, I ate nothing other than the white bread breakfast for the day. Much of the day had been spent in the terrible Tana traffic—no traffic lights and few if any traffic police.

#UAZ, #MADAGASCAR, #ANTANANARIVO, #SAINTFRANCOIS, #ZURCHERUNIV, #TRAFFIC, #RICEPADDY, #FLOOD, #TOLIARA, #NOAHFLOOD, #SCRIPTUREUNION, #ADRA, #MALARIA

Sojourn to Madagascar Part 04 -- Lemurs

Sojourn to Madagascar Part 4

Lemurs

Where I grew up the day after Christmas was also a holiday called Boxing Day. Every time I heard the term, I imagined guys with big, fat gloves try to punch the other guy in the nose. However, it apparently came from the idea that wealthy people would receive a horde of gifts from well meaning or favor seeking people. They would then box them up and pass them on to the poor and underprivileged. I have never witnessed this generous event; instead it was simply long lines of disgruntled recipients trying to cash in on the unwanted gifts at some store or other.

Our Boxing Day also just happened to be a Sabbath. Neither Sylvia nor I could stomach sitting in church for another 5 or 6 hours listening to long speeches in a language we could not even distinguish a single word, one translated by someone sitting two or three people away with a very unfamiliar accent whom I could barely hear. I could sense that the quality of translation varied considerably by the various people who did it. I am very aware of the problem of translating when the speaker pauses to give the translator time to do it. But running a continuing translation from a continuous speech is an almost impossible task. I have tried it many times, just to myself, to see if I could do it. So I have deep appreciation for anyone who tries.

In consequence we decided to go to the University Church connected with UAZ. Most of the service was done in French. I don’t understand spoken French although I can often make out the meaning of written French. The trouble with French is that it has a lot of English words in it, but they are pronounced extremely incomprehensibly. So it is a puzzle to understand and a puzzle I enjoy doing. We always had volunteers ready who would sit down and do their best to translate for us. I found that often I could supply a word that the translator was groping for.

Sylvia has more trouble with these translators. She often sits and writes her thoughts about the snatches she does catch from the translator or the French itself. She catches a lot of the French as well.

We attended the English Sabbath School lesson. Both the former president and the current president of UAZ were in attendance. Their theologies don’t quite match, especially on the position of “grace” in a Christian’s experience. So they were both very restrained in what they said. From a certain amount of inductive thinking, it appears to me that the former president had been slated to teach the lesson but at the last minute insisted that one of the female theology students do it. (They have several female theology students, but there is no way in the present local church policy that they can ever become a pastor in Mada.) From my glance at her quarterly, it was evident that she had studied only 20% of the lesson, so she stretched out that part for the whole time. The lesson tended to drag on account of that.

UAZ Church

They have a sermon between Sabbath School and church that used to be called lay activities years ago. This was done in Malagasy. Church had three women on the platform (no men), which is apparently very unusual at UAZ. There was another sermon for the offering. (I’ve found that this is standard for churches in Mada.) Finally they had the sermon of the day labeled a “homily”, although the label is misleading. The woman who did that had a Power Point Presentation to go along with it. As usual, I found that I could understand her PPP much better than I could her spoken French.

It was raining very lightly when we left church. By the time we had walked the 1.2 km (.75miles) home, we were fairly wet. The jacket I brought with me is dry clean only, but it seemed to stand up okay to the mistreatment. So we changed clothes as soon as we got home.

Sylvia fixed lunch, and I helped make the Spanish rice. We also had some potato salad that I had made for our Christmas Eve supper. Pam and Gideon joined us for it. We had a great visit. Then they went home, and we all took our afternoon “lay activities.” Whoever coined that term for church missionary outreach needed his (her?) head read!

That evening we met with Pam and Gideon and Parany and Harimalala Razafimahafaly about six o’clock to plan a four day trip to see Lemurs. I also finished the second part of this Sojourn, but when Gideon took me to his office, the Internet was down, so I couldn’t send it until after our trip.

About 4:00 a.m. something on my bedside table started making a steady beep about once every 2 or 3 minutes. I didn’t want to awaken Sylvia, so I tried to figure out what was making the beep while lying quietly in bed. There was a phone and 2 Lumix cameras on the table. Finally, after at least 10 minutes, I sat up in bed and placed one camera on the foot of the bed, one on the floor at my feet, and the phone on my bedside table. It was the camera on the floor. I pulled it out of its case, and the back was all lit up with the error message saying that the zoom was working right on the camera. I tried to switch the camera off, but it was already off! I switched it from photo mode to view mode. It dropped the error message and showed the last picture I had taken. I switched it back to photo mode, and the lens came out this time since it was not in its case. I pulled the battery out of the camera, and it died as expected. As soon as I reinserted the battery, it switched on. All of the functions seemed to be working--except the on/off switch.

 We left UAZ at precisely 8:00 a.m. the next morning. Well… that was the plan anyway. It was closer to 9:00 by the time we got out away. Our first destination was the Domaine Saint Francois (DSF) institute west of Tana. Parany’s sister Franza runs the institute sponsored by layman and the Catholic Church in France. So we were trying to follow him. However, he seemed to be able to get around the big trucks on the road more easily than we did. So they would pull over and wait for us every so often. We noticed that the rivers were considerably higher than they were nine days previously when we drove south from Tana upon our arrival in Mada. We ate lunch under a roof in DSF. While we ate, a rain squall caught up with us. If you are ambitious enough to look up our progress on a map, we came north on NR-7 and then west on NR-1.

Rear L to R: Wil, Sylvia, Gideon, Pam. Front: L to R  Parany, Veronica, Harimalala, Adriana, and the Manda family

After we cleaned up from lunch, we deposited our cases in our rooms at DSF. Our room was called Orchidee, I’ll let you guess what that means. Then we headed to Lemur Park sandwiched between NR-1 and a river that was definitely in flood. They have about 10 or 12 families of different species of Lemurs. Each family lives in its own tree. Because the Lemurs are very territorial, they don’t move away from their tree as long as they are fed. The staff feed them well, and we had the privilege of seeing them feed several families. Also because they are terrified of water, the lemurs don’t try to cross the river. So there are no cages about the lemurs. They’re free to come and go any time they wish. We paid 20,000 Ar each to get into the park, about $7 US, which included our guide, Heri. We walked around the park for well over an hour and saw many of lemurs. Fortunately the rain had stopped by the time we started walking.

Ring Tailed Lemur and twins

We had arranged with a rental company to provide us with a nine seat vehicle and driver for two days. The driver was supposed to arrive at DSF at 9:00 in the morning to pick us up. This included, besides Sylvia and me, Pam and Gideon and Parany’s family: wife Harimalala, Veronica at 5 years and Adriana, a babe still at breast. When he hadn’t arrived at 10:00 and we had received no communication from the company, Harimalala got on the phone and phoned for about a half hour. At first she tried the company and driver. She could get no response out of the driver. Then she phoned around until she had found a new company that offered us the same service for 60,000Ar less.

Our goal had been to get to the Andisabe National Park in time to tour it that day. Then we would find a place to sleep and come back the next day to DSF. We had a distance of about 200km (125 miles) to go. The worst part was to get through the south end of Tana and out on NR-2 going east. Tana has terrible traffic and no expressways or traffic lights.

We finally left DSF about one o’clock in the afternoon. Our driver, LaLane (I have no clue how he spelled his name), was a nice soft spoken young man and an excellent driver. His only English was “I’m sorry, I do not speak any English.” The road went through gorgeous mountains almost immediately after leaving Tana.

One of the first mountains we encountered was a massive rounded granite boulder towering at least a thousand feet (300 m) above the road, called Slaughter Rock. In the 1800s the Catholic Church sent missionaries to Madagascar, and thousands of people became Christians, especially in the central highlands where we were. A new queen came to power and decided to return the island to its animist heritage. Thousands of Christians were hurled to their death from this rock and many other such rocks up and down Mada. There is a great inscription on the rock that I can’t read. I’m guessing it is in Malagasy. About 80 km (50 miles) further east, the road plunges down about 2000 feet through second growth rain forest and eucalyptus trees. Beautiful cascades and waterfalls are visible on almost every turn. We got Andisabe (pronounce this “and disobey”) NP, but the guard at the gate turned us back and told us the park was closed. They do have night tours, but none of our literature nor the guard chose to mention this.

Slaughter Rock

The park hotel nearby charged over $200 a night per room. But we had noticed a brand new hotel, Le Guayave, with a most delightful architecture just outside of the town of Andisabe. We went back to it, and Harimalala talked the agent down to a total of 220,000Ar (about $70) for all three rooms. I had promised to pay for this night, so I was very grateful for her efforts. Each room was a building in itself, built in Malagasy style: Red brick exterior and porch, all topped by a beautiful thatched roof, and inside all wooden doors, tables, chairs, etc, made of very heavy dark red and black wood. Nothing was nicely finished off. There were holes in the ceiling where lights were not installed, toilets that flushed--sometimes, parquet flooring with pieces missing in the corners, mosquito nets that didn’t close enough to keep the mosquitoes out.

Hotel Le Guayave

Parany was suffering from extreme abdominal discomfort from gas. I had a bit of his symptoms myself. Pam was feeling very uncomfortable and had a slight fever. Fortunately we had brought both charcoal capsules and ibuprofen. So we all got to sleep reasonably well.

The next morning we ate breakfast in Parany’s room. It had been raining lightly but steadily ever since before we arrived in Andisabe the previous evening. We arrived back at the entrance to the national park. Hundreds of people were milling around. A guide came up to us eventually and asked us what we wanted to do. The expensive tours, 3 hours and more, left from this point. The regular 2 hour tour left from a different point, and we probably could have found our night tour there the previous evening. Edwin, the guide, climbed into the van with all of the rest of us, and we went to the second place, paid our 20,000Ar, and started out.

It was still raining but got lighter and lighter as we walked. We were using our umbrellas for the first 20 yards or so until we entered the second growth rainforest itself. Then the path was too narrow, and we closed them for the rest of the tour. The vegetation was a wonderland of an almost infinite variety of different plants. The first thing we saw was a young male Parsons chameleon. There are over 80 species of chameleons in Madagascar. The Parsons is the largest species in the world and is always green. It doesn’t change colors like other species. This one was well over a foot long (30cm). The trails crisscrossed this section of the rainforest in every direction. Visibility was very limited. There were lots of parties out, and the guides would notify each other when they saw something of interest.

Parson’s Chameleon

We crossed over a suspension bridge made of branches an inch thick or less (2.5 cm). After crossing the bridge we ran into some brown lemurs first. The brown lemurs didn’t like our company and moved away, sometimes making flying leaps from tree to tree. We followed them through thick undergrowth for a while, but they had the distinct advantage of speed over us.

Footbridge

Edwin  had promised us he would show us the indris lemur, the largest lemur species. Unlike the other lemurs, its tail is less than 4 inches (10cm) long. I heard the guides talking to each other, and then we took off through the forest, not on a trail, and found a large family of indris high up in a large tree. Edwin and another guide started calling them, mimicking their shrill, piercing cry. We had heard a lot of these cries the previous night while we were at La Guayave. The indris made no move to come down from their tree or to even leave it. We watched them for a long time.

Indris

Eventually Edwin called us to come and see a leaf-tailed gecko. So we walked back to a trail and along it for a while till he stopped, retraced his steps, and pulled a young tree down to reveal a flat grayish lizard the same color as the bark. He took hold of the gecko and turned it crosswise on the narrow stem. It slowly readjusted itself until it blended perfectly with the bark. It eventually grew tired of the repeated man-handling and walked slowly up the stem until it was out of reach.

About this time Sylvia saw a chameleon higher up on the same trunk. The guide identified it as an elephant chameleon. It is named that not from its size but the shape of its ears. Then the guide took us out to the road a long ways from where we started, where our driver had mysteriously appeared with the vehicle.

After driving down the road a little, I discovered a little back leech about 3 cm long (inch and a quarter) on the back of my left hand. It had its head starting to attach when I pulled my left hand up. It then put its tail down and felt all over that part of my hand before suddenly flipping its head up and over its tail and back onto another spot on my skin. It walked all over the back of my hand and onto my wrist watch. Then it tried to find a place on my arm above the watch. But it was distracted by all the hair on my arm.  While this was going on, I pulled my camera out of its case with my right hand and took a number of pictures of it. Finally I took it off of me and gently dropped it out of the window onto the rain soaked highway.

Leech on the back of Wil’s hand

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