Madagascar: The Triumphant Return

Today marks the fact that I am three weeks away from a much-anticipated return trip to the amazing island of Madagascar. I first visited this indescribably beautiful nation over a year and half ago, with Angie and Paige, two of my dearest friends. We all came back changed. We had seen life, death, and the world more vividly than ever before. I am lucky in that I have had the chance to travel widely throughout my life, but Madagascar is truly the trip of a lifetime.

Flashback to June, 2005: It's four-thirty A.M., and the sun hasn’t yet appeared on the horizon. My eyelids are heavy from lack of sleep after three international flights over three continents to get here, but I’m trying as hard as I can to keep them open as we leave Ivato International Airport. Through the backseat window of my taxi, interspersed between vast fields of rice paddies, the villages we pass aren’t more than a bunch of rickety thatched huts and a few shops selling meat, milk, and sundries. But the bumpy two-lane highway is anything but quiet as my first morning in Madagascar begins. Our taxi driver hits the brakes, honks, and slowly weaves the car through crowds of people whose day is already well under-way despite the early hour. Groups of women carry five live chickens by their feet in each hand and huge woven baskets brimming with fruit and vegetables on their heads; there are men riding bicycles, men on foot, teenagers with backpacks, armies of barefoot children and packs of stray dogs are everywhere, to say nothing of the taxi-brousses. It is not yet five o’clock in the morning. What’s a taxi-brousse, you say? Mora-mora. I’ll get to that.





Madagascar is the fourth-largest island in the world. Cast adrift in the Indian Ocean by plate tectonics many eons ago, it’s about the size of the state of California and possibly the world’s most bizarre experiment in evolution. Many, if not most, of the plant and animal species on the island are endemic only to Madagascar. Formerly under French rule, both the people of Madagascar and their native language are called Malagasy (pronounced “ma-la-gosh") and the Malagasy have a saying, mora mora, which means, slowly, slowly. “Slowly, slowly” sums up both the general attitude of the Malagasy and the mind-set that you had better adopt if you want to travel here. On the bush-taxis, or taxi-brousses as they are called, "slowly, slowly" is the unofficial name of the route through the jungle on roads so rugged you will be expected to get out and push if necessary. As it is, it takes over an hour to drive the twenty miles from the airport to our hotel in the capital.



Built on two intersecting ridges in the central highland mountains of Madagascar, Antananarivo, or “Tana” for short, is a capital city of narrow, steep, cobble-stone streets and steps. Lots of steps. There are no stoplights. The streets are named but the signs have long disappeared since the French colonials first built the city, rendering the maps in our guidebook virtually useless. We came to Madagascar knowing that there has been a long history of western visitors here, the least significant not being the French, as well as the recent modern influx of biologists, geologists, missionaries, tourists, and Peace Corps workers. However, judging by the reactions we get from passers-by, three twenty-something, tattooed white girls from California riding in the back of a taxi is still something of an unusual occurrence here. Some people smile broadly and wave at us. Others just stare in amazement.



On our 4-week trip we visit tiny tropical islands, dripping rainforests, empty white sandy beaches, and vast, silent deserts. In the colorful gardens of the hotelys, we dine on delicate meals of carpaccio poisson et salade de calamar, washed down with passion-fruit juice or a grande bottle of Three Horses Beer; a dessert of creme brulee brings the bill for 3 people to a whopping $5. In the tiny villages we make ten friends just by exchanging smiles and the friendly Malagasy greeting: "Inan Vao Vao!" ("What's the news?") Our cameras capture fuzzy lemurs, colorful chameleons, eroded ruins and terrible poverty in equal measure. All of it has captured my heart forever. In some ways, the things I witnessed in Madagascar were more heartbreaking than I would have imagined before I left; in other ways, it was more surprisingly sophisticated and wildly beautiful than I ever could have dreamed. If there is a tangible definition of “off the beaten track,” Madagascar is it.



On a side note, today also marks the fact that I will likely be quitting my job to go on this trip, as my boss continues to beat around the bush regarding my request for a six-week leave-of-absence. Though I do not particularly like my boss, and I often send secret thoughts of hatred across the office towards her in the hopes that one of her 6-inch heels will break and she will fall on her smarmy face, I do believe her reasoning in working me like slave whilst vaguely denying me freedom is not truly malicious and more due to her general airheadedness. I think she does not really understand that she is in charge here and people are depending on her to make decisions. And so I am at a crossroads of sorts, because when I return to San Francisco from this trip, I will likely be unemployed and free to work on that secret and strange thing, called Writing The Big Something. I do not know what this Something will be. Perhaps it will be the first draft of a novel, or a collection of short stories. Perhaps it will be a big waste of my time and my family's generous financial support. Perhaps it will be a bunch of the bull-crap, the pen-poop, la mierda de la perra de nada; I just don't really know.


I do know that I will return from Madagascar in December with a tan that will be the envy of my fellow San Franciscans, a lot of amazing pictures and even more brilliant memories, and four of my favorite people: Angie, Debra, Parita, and Paige, who are not just friends but true sisters; and, of course, my mom, who was my first traveling companion and continues to be my inspiration to see the world.


The countdown to October 23rd begins...