Adventures of Vazaha Ampela and Spiny Man in the Spiny Forest

Tratrany Taona! Happy New Year!

Over Christmas, I was fortunate to see a new part of Madagascar (the Spiny forests of the deep south) and had some crazy, to the point of almost unbelievable, adventures along the way.

The journey was made with my lovely Malagasy friend, Yvon. On the 18th, we arrived at the taxi-brousse station bright and early (okay, not even bright...it was 4am). Two hours later, when there were enough passengers to fill the seats, we hit the road. After a long and bumpy but scenic ride, we arrived in the relatively large village of Ambovombe where the taxi-brousse broke down and caused us to wait there for numerous hours. By the time it got dark, we lost hope that the brousse would be going anywhere that night so we ventured across town for a bowl of soup. Upon finishing the soup, locals told us that our ride was about to leave. After a quick sprint, we caught the brousse as it was pulling out and had a whole camion full of Malagasy people laughing at the white girl crawling up through the window. So after 17 hours and a mere 175 km, we finally made it to the town of Tsihombe where Yvon's family lives.

Baby Baobabs

We spent a day there and then caught a market bound camion at 3:30 am to the village of Faux-Cap. I wish I took a picture of this trip. The covered camion was mostly full of bags of rice, beans,

and many other goods to be sold. I can't acurately describe just how crowded, hot, and smelly the ride was. At one point, there were literally seven people touching me at the same time. What can you do but smile, and hope that your foot really is still attached to your leg despite the fact that you can't feel or see it.

Faux-Cap

We took a spin around the market to buy some fruit for the day and jelly shoes (yes, jelly shoes)for Yvon. We walked 4km to the beach where we spent the day in the ocean and then camped in the little village. Yvon spent some time reminiscing about his childhood as a mighty tortoise hunter and showed me tracks and informed me that the tortoise was walking in that direction....yesterday. We spent the next morning waiting for a car that was apparently supposed to arrive and be heading for our next destination of Cap St. Marie (the most southern point of Madagascar). Not shocking news, the car didn't show up. And this is about the point where the trip got very interesting....

We met with the vice mayor of the village, who graciously gave us food and helped us find a zebu cart driver to take us 15km to the next village as it was too late in the day to make it all the way to Cap St. Marie. He also wrote a note of recommendation to the mayor of the next village saying that the vazaha ampela (foreign woman) and lelahy (man) are friends and they should treat us as family and help us on our way. We pulled into the village of Amboatry and attracted a fair bit of attention. This is a part of the country where white people are very few and very far between and literally the entire village emerged from their huts and formed a wall around me. The president read the note of recommendation, and once again we were served bowls of rice and treated as family. Gradually the villagers drifted off and moved on to the next distraction.... a naked man running through the village. Apparently the villagers were convinced he was a ghost and formed a chanting mob trailing after him.

Lambosoa's zebu cart in the vice mayor's yard

After a very long, but typical Malagasy negiotiation, we agreed on a price for the next leg of our zebu cart journey. We were to leave at 3 am, and so were given a flea filled hut to stay in for a few hours sleep. Between the biting fleas and the drunken zebu cart driver Lambosoa (Good Pig) trying to break into the hut, I got approximately 0 hours of sleep. And I emerged with about 70 flea bites all over my body.

We travelled 40km by zebu cart and stopped in a village only about 15km from Cap St. Marie where the drivers refused to take us any further unless we payed fees which they had just hiked up by 500% On top of this, Yvon was suddenly ill. But once again, some amazingly gracious villagers gave us some rice and fish and a place to rest in a hut built with sisal stalks and zebu dung. Eventually we convinced the drivers to take us back to the larger village of Marovato where we thought we might be able to find a ride back to Tsihombe for Christmas.

From Marovato, we found two guys with motorbikes to take us the 45 km back to Tsihombe. We made it just in time for Christmas Eve where we caught the last 2 hours of the 4 hour long Christmas Eve service at a local church. We spent a relaxing three days with Yvon's family and even had fried turkey (heads included) for Christmas dinner.

We journeyed back to Ambovombe via 4x4, where I was crammed into the back with five sweaty bush men, two frightened turkeys, a pile of luggage, and a partridge in a pear tree. We were speeding down the terrible Malagasy roads with a guy who was using this as a way to learn how to drive. Yikes. We arrived in Ambovombe for market day, where we checked out the zebu market and had people trying to sell me goats. We found a taxi-brousse going back to Fort Dauphin which had about 150 chickens tied to the roof by the ankles. It was a bit unnerving having chickens staring at me through the window and one wrapped around each ankle for the entire journey.

There was an unfortunate zebu cart/camera accident that has resulted in only half of this adventure being photo documented. I have been waiting for about an hour for 5 of them to finish uploading. Enjoy!:)