by Mary Morris
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 g
one 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.
While ascending the multi-spurred mountain we met many descending zebu-carts, which frequently left the track because the ground on either side was less difficult to negotiate; they were covering no more than half-a-mile per hour. The introduction of the wheel to this region was perhaps a mistake. Why, since horses flourish around Tana, has equine transport never become popular in Imerina? A similar returning-from-market scene in Ethiopia’s highlands would have contained many speedy horsemen and nimble pack-mules.
At 4:30 Rachel rejoiced to see Ambohibary in the centre of a wide flat paddy-plain far below. But mountain distances are deceptive and I had my doubts about reaching it before dark. Three linked wooded hills still stood between us and the plain and our progress was being slowed by all those pauses to exchange courtesies. Yet the traffic also helped; we took several short-cuts that would have seemed imprudent, or impossible, had we not seen people using them. On such severe slopes, tiny children were carried up or down. Otherwise they walked sturdily for miles, hand-in-hand with a parent or older sibling. It was an odd sensation, being the only people—among all those hundreds—going towards Ambohibary.
As the foot-traffic thinned the slower cart-traffic increased and our imaginations boggled wildly at the thought of zebu-carts crossing these mountains by night. The town still looked very far away when sunset came as we were descending the third hill. In the twilight we passed an elaborate tomb on the edge of a pine-wood; its porch-like façade offered shelter from the probable nocturnal downpour but Rachel declined to share accommodation with corpses. I did not argue, her feet being my only reason for proposing this risky intimacy with the local razana. Here we were briefly able to follow the glimmer of wheel-marks, where the earth had been compacted and polished. Then total darkness came. Not a star shone through the heavy clouds and as all our batteries had been victims of the tent-flood we were reduced to cart-speed by the deep ruts and high tufts of grass. The blackness of the plain puzzled us; even from a non-electrified town one expects some faint glow after dark.
Without warning we were in a hamlet, astray amidst houses and trees occupying various shelves on the hillside. As we stumbled between the dwellings, none showing a light, one door opened and the oil-wicks flickering within seemed brilliant. Three men emerged, laughing loudly, and we decided to show them Samuel’s letter. Unfortunately they were drunk; not very, but too much so for us to communicate in sign-language in the dark—not a particularly feasible scheme, when you come to think of it, even had they been sober. My query—“Ambohibary?”—loosed a torrent of Malagasy from all three simultaneously. Then an elderly man appeared at the open door, shouted, “Route Nationale No. 7!” and pointed downhill. This was not helpful; we already knew our way led downhill. As the door was closed, and firmly bolted, the trio surrounded us, exhaling fumes reminiscent of the cheapest grade of Russian petrol. Gripping our arms, they led us down a twisting path apparently criss-crossed by tree-roots, all the while continuing to address us animatedly in Malagasy. On level ground they triumphantly chorused, “Route Nationale No. 7!” Then they groped for our hands, regarding impenetrable darkness as no excuse for a breach of etiquette, and having completed their farewells left us to make what we could of Route Nationale No. 7.
“This can’t be a national highway!” said Rachel ten minutes later. Already she had tripped over three chunks of rock and I had turned an ankle in a cavernous pot-hole. We continued with linked arms, for mutual protection.
The clouds parted slightly at an opportune moment. We were only ten yards from a rubble-filled chasm that had to be climbed into and out of—an exercise for which meagre starlight provided unsatisfactory illumination. By this time we had covered at least twenty-eight miles and I suggested sleeping by the wayside. Rachel however was determined to make Ambohibary, and food, though she admitted to needing a rest. I pointed out what seemed a suitable boulder-seat but unhappily it proved to be a prickly-pear cactus. For some reason (unclear in retrospect) this provoked us both to uncontrollable mirth and we sat in the middle of the road and laughed until our ribs ached as much as our shoulders.
The cloud gap closed as we continued and instinctively one listens more keenly when unable to see; otherwise we might have ended up in the wide, fast irrigation channel that soon after crossed the road. It took time to find a bridge of wobbly planks in an adjacent field.
Fifteen minutes later we became
aware of tall houses on both sides of the track—Ambohibary, we presumed. It was only 8:15, yet there was no sound, no light, no movement. A Merina proverb advises: “Do not arrive in a village after dark for you will be greeted only by the dogs.” Here not even dogs were registering our presence; the place might have been abandoned a century ago. “Let’s keep going,” said Rachel, “this is just a suburb.” As she spoke five men materialised nearby, their leader’s flaming resin-torch swaying like the mast-light of a ship on a stormy sea. They were much drunker than our three guides. When I asked, “Hotely?” the leader belched (more Russian petrol fumes) and the other began to giggle and sing. “We’d better push off,” said Rachel impatiently, “before they all feel they must shake hands.” But she was at the end of a tether that for hours had been stretched to breaking point. Although the spirit was still willing the flesh had to be supported by me as she hobbled the next few hundred yards—which took us back into open countryside. We had merely passed through a village.
“That’s it,” I said. “Here we sleep, come hell or high water—probably high water. Even if we could get to Ambowhatsit, it’s too late to find food.”
Starlight revealed a roadside trader’s stall: four crooked branches supporting a sheet of corrugated iron. Beneath it I cleared a space of loose stones and spread our flea-bags on the bumpy iron-hard ground. Less than five minutes later Rachel was asleep.