Maiden Voyages (51 page)

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.

I was too hungry to sleep; the lack of food for sale en route had taken me unawares. I reproved myself for being so illogically inhibited by the peasants’ refusal to
sell
food to travellers—I often enough condemn the transfer to other societies of the standards and principles of our own. On the previous evening we should have sought hospitality instead of camping; we could then have eaten our fill and started the day with substantial breakfasts. Again, at the foot of the escarpment we should have explained that we were very hungry; no Malagasy peasant would have to go without to feed us. Yet my inhibition was not entirely based on a reluctance to cadge. Another factor was the extent to which, in rural Madagascar, daily life has a fixed and formal pattern governed by
fady
. It is a friendly and generous but not a relaxed or spontaneous society. And the complexity of local inhibitions about
vazaha
reinforces the
vazaha
’s own inhibitions.

To outsiders the Malagasy submission to ancestral decrees can seem absurd—even neurotic—yet that afternoon we had been impressed by some of its effects. If an old man is heavily laden, any young man catching up with him insists on carrying his load for some distance,
though they may be total strangers. And young people ask permission before overtaking their elders on the track. Is it a measure of the uncouthness of the modern West that we marvelled so to observe these courtesies?

At that point in my ruminations a dog approached, sniffed curiously around us, then took fright at the
vazaha
smells (as anyone might have done, that evening) and ran away yelping shrilly. Otherwise nothing moved until 4:50
A
.
M
. when two men passed, chuckling and chatting. They did not notice us. It rained lightly for a few hours: harmless straight-down rain—we were only dampened around the edges. I might have slept eventually but for the decibels of a corpse-turning party obviously intended to summon ancestors from Outer Space. This ceremony began at 8:45
P
.
M
. and was still going loud and strong when we left the area. Luckily Malagasy music is pleasing to the ear, if a trifle monotonous.

An overcast dawn showed Ambohibary scarcely a mile away. Most windows were still tightly shuttered as we hastened towards the town centre, through lanes piled with morning-after-market refuse. Malagasy litter is ninety per cent edible and scores of truculent ganders, pompous geese and bumptious goslings were on garbage-disposal duty. Never have I seen so many geese in one place; at that hour they seemed to own the town.

A few café-stalls were open in the market-square and we devoured so many rice-buns so quickly that the attractive young woman who was serving us called her mother to watch. As we ate, other stall-holders began to light their charcoal-stoves and display rice-buns—to be bought in bulk and taken home for breakfast, a habit perhaps picked up from the French.

A short-cut over a eucalyptus-planted hill took us to the real Route Nationale No. 7 and we realised why Ambohibary’s market is so important. A link road that once was tarred is still capable of taking truck traffic to Ambohibary from Route Nationale No. 7, the Tana–Antsirabe highway. Our bizarre “road” of the previous evening is a continuation of this link, going to Arivonimamo via Manalalondo. But it is not, as we had seen, conducive to a free flow of goods throughout the Ankaratra.

The junction is marked—and marred—by a pretentious new “bar”-stall
of pale varnished wood, designed to attract passing motorists. Sadly, the beer bottles lining its shelves were all empty. Here we relished a second breakfast of slightly sweet crisp fritters, fresh from the pan, while a plump gentle dog sat hopefully at our feet—his girth proving that his hopes were often fulfilled—and minuscule ducklings splashed ecstatically in a nearby puddle. Opposite the bar a barely legible kilometre-stone said “Antsirabe 33” and we decided to walk on but take the first available bus out of consideration for Rachel’s feet.

During the next four hours withdrawal symptoms afflicted me: inevitable on exchanging mountain-tracks for a motor-road, however light the traffic. I could not agree with our Air Mad guidebook—“The Tananarive–Antsirabe road is bituminized, and the trip very nice.” But that was sheer prejudice; by normal standards the trip
is
“very nice,” as Route Nationale No. 7 undulates through miles of mature pine-plantations or densely populated farmland. Our guidebook explains:

In the woods government foresters were manhandling trimmed trunks onto decrepit trucks. Private enterprise was also active. Youthful entrepreneurs had gathered small branches into neatly bound bundles for sale to passing city-dwellers. And larger branches were being loaded into motor-vans by Antsirabe fuel-merchants.

In the “rich agricultural region” traditional Merina dwellings were interspersed with colonial bungalows or dainty two-storey residences half-smothered in flowering shrubs. Yet even along this motor-road there were symptoms of economic collapse: rows of recently abandoned wayside market-stalls (the local equivalent of a supermarket), and derelict
petrol-pump stations, and two colonial restaurants now used as vegetable depots.

Light showers refreshed us during the early forenoon but by midday the sky had cleared, the heat was brutal and Rachel was limping very badly. We sat in a wooden glen, overlooking a narrow river in a wide river-bed, and waited for a bus. From afar we could see a ludicrously sophisticated skyscraper flour-mill, to cater for the “harvest of wheat”; we later learned that it is having severe (though hardly surprising) problems to do with maintenance and fueling.

During the morning three buses had passed us, all preposterously overloaded. The fourth was no less so but two men gave up their seats to the
vazaha
. Large baskets of vegetables and small children standing on laps restricted our view of the approach to Antsirabe. Most of our fellow-passengers were well-groomed, wearing clean, brightly coloured
lambas
over neat shirts and pants or blouses and skirts. Their appearance did not match the state of their conveyance; I have never travelled in a more beat-up vehicle. As there was no door remaining, and not much floor, the dust-intake from the “bituminized” road was considerable and both conductor and driver wore scarves around their noses and mouths. The driver sat crouched and tense and frowning, using accelerator and brake equally violently. Every few hundred yards he swerved acrobatically to avoid either straying livestock or a mini-crater. Mere pot-holes he took as they came and each jolt jarred us breathless. At the end of the ten-mile journey Rachel mused, “What are we going to feel like when we’ve covered a few thousand miles in Malagasy vehicles?”

(1934–)