The silence in our posting, dear friends, has been due to "les responsables." All of my energy has been dedicating to discovering who "les responsables" might be, other than a concept. I talked to many a "le responsable" who passed me on to another "le responsable" until we quite literally held the "non responsable" hostage in our house. Then, miraculously, the internet was turned on. Yes, dear friends, one month to the day after delivering 2 hand-drawn maps in duplicate, copies of our passports and residence certificates, and signing a 10-page contract in French that probably promised our first born to the imperial powers, we have internet at home. I think I should leave this story here - I had thought about writing an entire, long post about the joys of dealing with a combined Telma (the landline monopoly) and Moov (the cable internet monopoly), but I already feel my blood pressure rising and it is early in the morning, so I think I might just move on...
In the meantime, though, we have been making great progress organizing and analyzing 6 years of octopus data. The biologists from Andavadoaka have been living with us and we have been pushing them pretty hard to get something done (ah, ha, there is a hostage theme here I now realize!). We have all been learning an amazing amount from Tom - he is a great teacher of databases and the statistical/analytical software "R". There just might be a couple of great papers at the end of this tunnel. It will take another 6 months to see them as the lead author is going back to her beach life in Andavadoaka on Monday...sigh...
Tom is busy preparing for his big expedition - leaving in 3 weeks to go live aboard a 28 meter sailboat. That deserves its own post. Besides, I am green with envy. However, last night a friend of mine invited me to join an expedition to Masoala Peninsula. I leave TOMORROW! I'm dropping my research for a week to go to the park. As Tom said, "this is why we are here" -- I still feel a little odd, but I will put my research assistants onto tasks that don't require my presence. And I'll think of this as a scouting trip - after all, I am considering Masoala as one of my possible field sites so it is totally justified. So radio silence from me until I'm back in a week...
- Kirsten
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Andasibe National Park and Mitsinjo Reserve
About 3 ½ hours outside of Tana by road, or 4 by train, is a delightful national park called Andasibe-Mantadia. Our 2-day adventure began on a whim. Early for a meeting with Sidonie, our language teacher, we wandered into the newly refurbished train station at one end of Avenue de l’Independence. Our impression from the posted guards, chic bistro, and upscale shops was that the gare is for the exclusive enjoyment of those with money. Had we not had 20 minutes to kill, we probably would have avoided the place out of principle for our entire time here. Thankfully, we wandered in because we discovered the train. (Note: K thinks there is a lesson here somewhere.)
Madagascar’s passenger train service has been defunct for a while according to all the reliable sources – indeed our Bradt guide book definitively states “no trains run at the time of writing”. But Madarail has opened a very limited service to passengers with money to spend on comfortable travel. The train we took, dubbed the Micheline, runs on tires specially adapted to railroad tracks. A very soothing – if not odd – ride. While we continue to try to find the balance of authentic Malagasy life versus catering to our limited capacity for severe discomfort, we opted for the high life this weekend. The other option, the taxi brousse (bush taxi), can take a day to make the trip we made in four hours because unfortunately you have to wait for: (i) the taxi brousse to fill up; (ii) random stops along the way to pick up who knows who or what from where; (iii) break downs; and/or (iv) the risk of not finding a ride for the final 25 km of the journey from the brousse station in Moramonga (the end point of the line originating in Tana). Even if we had the time, being crammed into a 15-passenger van with 30 other people for hours, careening down curvy, rain-slicked roads somehow lost out to the luxury train, despite being 5% of the ticket price. “There is plenty of time for bush taxis,” we told ourselves. We’ll see. (K: I REALLY liked the train!!!!)
The blast-from-another-past train experience brought us to the center of Andasibe, a small village in the eastern lowlands (900 m altitude or so). We visited the smaller of two national parks (Andasibe - 800 hectares) as well as a reserve managed by a local NGO (Mitsinjo - 700 ha), leaving the 10,000 hectares of Mantadia for a trip when we have more than just a weekend. The parks are covered by rainforest criss-crossed by rough paths. Jumping off the train, we walked the 3 km to the park entrance, bought our tickets, and arranged for the mandatory local guide. We checked into a hotel with thatched-roof bungalows, grabbed some vary sy tsaramaso (rice n beans, baby!), and trekked for the next day-and-a-half.
We leave it to the photos and videos to help give you an impression of the wondrous natural richness we saw, smelled, heard, and felt (including jumping leeches and vicious mosquitoes!). (See the link to our Picasa on the right for more!) In short, we were some lucky trekkers: 6 of 10 local lemur species, 4 of 6 local chameleon species, an amazingly difficult to see leaf-tailed gecko, endemic boa, endemic birds, loads of endemic flora/mushrooms (sorry botanist and mycologist friends, K groups those all together) and an endemic spider family with reaaaaaaaally long bodies. Wicked cool. And to think, if you come visit, you too could see all of this! (Note that I can't get the videos to load, so they will be forthcoming hopefully!)
Love, Kirsten and Tom
PS Kirsten apologizes for the misspelled scientific names, miscategorizations, lack of reverence to flora and mushrooms, and any other thing at which biologists/ecologists might take offense.
Click on this to go to Picasa:
)
Leaf-tailed gecko during the night walk
Parson's Chameleon
Common brown lemur
Kirsten the Colonial
Madagascar’s passenger train service has been defunct for a while according to all the reliable sources – indeed our Bradt guide book definitively states “no trains run at the time of writing”. But Madarail has opened a very limited service to passengers with money to spend on comfortable travel. The train we took, dubbed the Micheline, runs on tires specially adapted to railroad tracks. A very soothing – if not odd – ride. While we continue to try to find the balance of authentic Malagasy life versus catering to our limited capacity for severe discomfort, we opted for the high life this weekend. The other option, the taxi brousse (bush taxi), can take a day to make the trip we made in four hours because unfortunately you have to wait for: (i) the taxi brousse to fill up; (ii) random stops along the way to pick up who knows who or what from where; (iii) break downs; and/or (iv) the risk of not finding a ride for the final 25 km of the journey from the brousse station in Moramonga (the end point of the line originating in Tana). Even if we had the time, being crammed into a 15-passenger van with 30 other people for hours, careening down curvy, rain-slicked roads somehow lost out to the luxury train, despite being 5% of the ticket price. “There is plenty of time for bush taxis,” we told ourselves. We’ll see. (K: I REALLY liked the train!!!!)
The blast-from-another-past train experience brought us to the center of Andasibe, a small village in the eastern lowlands (900 m altitude or so). We visited the smaller of two national parks (Andasibe - 800 hectares) as well as a reserve managed by a local NGO (Mitsinjo - 700 ha), leaving the 10,000 hectares of Mantadia for a trip when we have more than just a weekend. The parks are covered by rainforest criss-crossed by rough paths. Jumping off the train, we walked the 3 km to the park entrance, bought our tickets, and arranged for the mandatory local guide. We checked into a hotel with thatched-roof bungalows, grabbed some vary sy tsaramaso (rice n beans, baby!), and trekked for the next day-and-a-half.
We leave it to the photos and videos to help give you an impression of the wondrous natural richness we saw, smelled, heard, and felt (including jumping leeches and vicious mosquitoes!). (See the link to our Picasa on the right for more!) In short, we were some lucky trekkers: 6 of 10 local lemur species, 4 of 6 local chameleon species, an amazingly difficult to see leaf-tailed gecko, endemic boa, endemic birds, loads of endemic flora/mushrooms (sorry botanist and mycologist friends, K groups those all together) and an endemic spider family with reaaaaaaaally long bodies. Wicked cool. And to think, if you come visit, you too could see all of this! (Note that I can't get the videos to load, so they will be forthcoming hopefully!)
Love, Kirsten and Tom
PS Kirsten apologizes for the misspelled scientific names, miscategorizations, lack of reverence to flora and mushrooms, and any other thing at which biologists/ecologists might take offense.
Click on this to go to Picasa:
 |
| Madagascar! |
Leaf-tailed gecko during the night walk
Parson's Chameleon
Common brown lemur
Kirsten the Colonial
Thursday, February 4, 2010
A Brief History of the most Notorious Suppliers to Plundering Pyrates, Literal and Metaforical
Happy Thursday All! Our week continues with extended morning Malagasy lessons and afternoons spent planning our next few months and catching up on the thread of of lives that followed us over here. In between, we managed to throw together another Malagasy history lesson -- we hope you enjoy it. Oh, and sorry for the walls of text and so few photos. We're hoping to get out into the "field" this weekend -- we'll bring back some photos!
[All credit for historical information herein goes again to Mervyn Brown’s A History of Madagascar, from which we’ve lifted the vast majority of the historical material. The more modern information mostly comes from a series of reports by Rhett A. Butler & Rowan Moore Gerety that you can find at mongabay.com and wildmadagascar.org. Other tidbits spring unreferenced from either Tom’s memory (unlikely) or the all-knowing series of tubes (highly likely).]
In our recently departed homeland of Northern California, it’s common wisdom that when the goldrush comes, the smart money is in the service sector. As the hordes are racing to “them-thar-hills”, the best bet is to skip out on the sluicing yourself and get rich supplying the ambitious forty-niners with the all the picks and beans they’ll need to waste their lives in search of the Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
In 1848-49 in San Francisco, even with all the thousands of goldminers digging for the American dream, the first million to be made from the goldrush didn’t go to a lucky strike, but instead to Mr. Samuel Brannan, an enterprising excommunicated Mormon. Brannan learned of the original gold strikes at Sutter’s Mill first-hand when a millworker in Brannan’s drygoods store paid for his purchases in gold dust. Instead of rushing to the mill alongside the growing stream of hopefuls, Brannan quickly bought every shovel in San Francisco. The city still has a street named in his honor.
This same lesson comes to us from the early days of European involvement in Madagascar, when the large, remote island was a pirate paradise. In the late 1600s all the pieces fell into place to make Madagascar an ideal location for pirates to exploit “local resources”. Such resources included: highly profitable trade routes passing from India to Europe around the nearby Cape of Good Hope; a refreshing lack of a far-reaching European naval presence, given the paucity of permanent European settlements; and plenty of water, anti-scorbutic fruit, large wild game, and accommodating women. Add easy access to guns and booze and you’ve got heaven on earth for a murdering, sea-going bandit looking for R & R.
Some of the stories sound as if they were plucked from the pages of A Princess Bride. Writing under the pseudonym of Captain Charles Johnson, Daniel Defoe (of Robinson Crusoe fame) penned A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates. In his non-fictional account, the fictional Capt. Johnson describes the utopian community of the Republic of Libertalia. Set in the world-class Bay of Diego Suarez (now Antsiranana) in northern Madagascar, this pirate’s republic prided itself on a far-ranging liberal egalitarianism. One hundred years before the United States began their bumpy experiment with equality, Libertalia was philosophically founded on “democratic representative government, equal sharing of profits, abolition of slavery, and equality for all races”, and economically founded on murder and theft. This paradise was not only eventually overrun by less-philosophically inclined Malagasy natives, but was, sadly, also probably entirely fictional.
For a pirate society that rests on more solid historical ground, we have only to look a few hundred miles to the southeast, along the coast of eastern Madagascar, to find Ile St. Marie. This small coastal island became a favorite retreat for the gleaners of the East India trade, and an excellent place to restock water and food, as well as powder, shot, and booze. These latter commodities did not spring forth from the earth, but were instead provided by enterprising merchants like New York’s Frederick Phillips. As the then-governor of New York, Lord Bellamont, reported to the Admiralty in 1699:
"'Tis the most beneficial trade, that to Madagascar to the pirates, that was ever heard of, and I believe there’s more got that way than by turning pirate and robbing. I am told this Shelley (a captain of one of Phillip’s ships) sold rum, which cost but 2s per gallon at N. York for 50s and 3 pounds per gallon at Madagascar, and a pipe of Madeira wine, which cost him 19 pounds at N. York he sold there for 300 pounds. Strong liquors and gunpowder and ball are the commodities that go off there to best advantage.” –A History of Madagascar
One Mr. Adam Baldridge of New York lived for just shy of ten years on Ile Sainte Marie and served as Phillip’s local representative. Baldridge grew rich on his trade, built himself a heavily fortified house on a small island within Ile Ste Marie’s lagoon, and began trading locally in cattle and slaves taken from the native populations. In 1693 one ship of many arrived with a great diversity of goods to trade, ranging from “6 dozen of worsted and thread stocking”, to “some books, catechisms, primers” etc, and of course “5 barrels of rum, 4 quarter casks of Madeira wine, … 3 barrels cannon powder.” From this single ship Baldridge made “1100 pieces of eight and dollars, 34 slaves, 15 head of cattle, 57 bars of iron.”
However, Baldridge’s Malagasy estate was not to last. After years of suffering their herds to be stolen and their people captured and sold into slavery, the local Malagasy violently took Baldridge’s island and all the possessions he stored there. Baldridge himself happened to be away trading, but upon hearing the news, he left his island behind and headed home to New York without his horded wealth.
In more modern times, the metaphorical guns and booze take the form of harvest permits and loans, which, given the right political winds, can easily be had. Madagascar’s few remaining forests (less than 10% of original stands) hold not only a host of highly endangered organisms only found in Madagascar, but also tropical hardwoods easily worth upwards of 100s of millions of dollars. The trade of those hardwoods represents a potential bonanza for timber companies, but such trade has been heavily regulated due to very valid fears of over harvesting. Until recently that is:
“The transitional authority led by president Andry Rajoelina, who seized power during a military coup last March, today released a decree [dated 2009 Dec. 31] that allows the export of rosewood logs harvested from the Indian Ocean island's national parks. The move comes despite international outcry over the destruction of Madagascar's rainforests for the rosewood trade. … More than 200 containers — worth at least $40 million — are said to be awaiting shipment. The first pick-up may come as early as Friday.” (Madagascar sanctions logging of national parks; wildmadagascar.org; Jan 11, 2010). “Immediately following the decree, reports on the ground indicated an upswing in logging activity in Masoala and Makira National Parks. In the midst of a cash-crunch, Rajoelina's government was apparently selling out Madagascar's forests to finance an election that it hoped would validate its seizure of power.” (Coup leaders sell out Madagascar's forests, people; Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com; Jan 27, 2010) An American diplomat here confirmed that cash flowing from hardwood exports are “funding the current government.” Some funding source had to fill the gap: after the coup, most international finance pulled out.
The current ‘transitional’ government holds the exclusive power to grant permits to specific timber interests and aggressively punish unpermitted operations. But like a 49er’s shovel in San Francisco, such permits are unlikely to come cheap. Cautionary tales in the form of unpermitted shipments seized by government enforcers have recently flashed across Tana’s daily newspapers, reminding logging interests that they need to get their permits. While no evidence of explicit bribery has been exposed, the power plays around rosewood exports strongly suggest a pay-to-play environment. Similar tales are emerging in the marine world. We have heard of permits granted to international fishing giants to trawl Malagasy seas. Internal and external critique rained on the previous president’s plan to lease an immense swath of agricultural land to Daewoo, a South Korean company. Perhaps divesting land evokes a more visceral reaction than fish, but both result in the export of Malagasy wealth for pennies-on-the-dollar.
Unfortunately, it’s not only the local government that appears to be one-degree of separation away from the current plunder. Just as a successful pirate needs to be well capitalized in balls and powder, logging efforts start with a pretty hefty price tag. In an uncertain regulatory environment, access to capital is crucial to finance these operations, and apparently a number of French and Dutch financial institutions were more than happy to oblige Madagascar’s illegal logging operations.
“Down payments for illegal lumber exports are seldom more than 50% of final sale value, making cash flow a problem even in such a lucrative industry. With so much capital tied up in existing stock, timber traders have come to rely on banks to finance their exports and their ongoing logging operations. … Even as foreign governments condemned the surge in illegal logging last year, many--either directly or through institutions they support--are shareholders in the very banks that have financed the export of illegal lumber from Madagascar's SAVA region.” [The article goes on to specifically name the World Bank, and both French and Dutch governments as part-owners of banks that have financed Malagasy timber operations]” (World Bank, European governments finance illegal timber exports from Madagascar; Rowan Moore Gerety, special to wildmadagascar.org; January 11, 2010)
In short, today’s lesson is, if there’s risky pillaging to be done it’s best not to get one’s hands dirty, at least not directly. There’s safer money in selling the means to plunder than in taking part in the questionable activity itself. With first-world funding and explicit assent of the currently unelected government, Madagascar’s natural wealth is being stolen from the nation’s people to enrich the Adam Baldridges of the world. And, with law of international economies being not unlike the navy-less expanse of the seventeenth-century Indian Ocean, it's a pretty safe bet that these 'Notorious Suppliers' will sail safely home when it's all over.
- Tom and Kirsten
[All credit for historical information herein goes again to Mervyn Brown’s A History of Madagascar, from which we’ve lifted the vast majority of the historical material. The more modern information mostly comes from a series of reports by Rhett A. Butler & Rowan Moore Gerety that you can find at mongabay.com and wildmadagascar.org. Other tidbits spring unreferenced from either Tom’s memory (unlikely) or the all-knowing series of tubes (highly likely).]
In our recently departed homeland of Northern California, it’s common wisdom that when the goldrush comes, the smart money is in the service sector. As the hordes are racing to “them-thar-hills”, the best bet is to skip out on the sluicing yourself and get rich supplying the ambitious forty-niners with the all the picks and beans they’ll need to waste their lives in search of the Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
In 1848-49 in San Francisco, even with all the thousands of goldminers digging for the American dream, the first million to be made from the goldrush didn’t go to a lucky strike, but instead to Mr. Samuel Brannan, an enterprising excommunicated Mormon. Brannan learned of the original gold strikes at Sutter’s Mill first-hand when a millworker in Brannan’s drygoods store paid for his purchases in gold dust. Instead of rushing to the mill alongside the growing stream of hopefuls, Brannan quickly bought every shovel in San Francisco. The city still has a street named in his honor.
This same lesson comes to us from the early days of European involvement in Madagascar, when the large, remote island was a pirate paradise. In the late 1600s all the pieces fell into place to make Madagascar an ideal location for pirates to exploit “local resources”. Such resources included: highly profitable trade routes passing from India to Europe around the nearby Cape of Good Hope; a refreshing lack of a far-reaching European naval presence, given the paucity of permanent European settlements; and plenty of water, anti-scorbutic fruit, large wild game, and accommodating women. Add easy access to guns and booze and you’ve got heaven on earth for a murdering, sea-going bandit looking for R & R.
Some of the stories sound as if they were plucked from the pages of A Princess Bride. Writing under the pseudonym of Captain Charles Johnson, Daniel Defoe (of Robinson Crusoe fame) penned A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates. In his non-fictional account, the fictional Capt. Johnson describes the utopian community of the Republic of Libertalia. Set in the world-class Bay of Diego Suarez (now Antsiranana) in northern Madagascar, this pirate’s republic prided itself on a far-ranging liberal egalitarianism. One hundred years before the United States began their bumpy experiment with equality, Libertalia was philosophically founded on “democratic representative government, equal sharing of profits, abolition of slavery, and equality for all races”, and economically founded on murder and theft. This paradise was not only eventually overrun by less-philosophically inclined Malagasy natives, but was, sadly, also probably entirely fictional.
For a pirate society that rests on more solid historical ground, we have only to look a few hundred miles to the southeast, along the coast of eastern Madagascar, to find Ile St. Marie. This small coastal island became a favorite retreat for the gleaners of the East India trade, and an excellent place to restock water and food, as well as powder, shot, and booze. These latter commodities did not spring forth from the earth, but were instead provided by enterprising merchants like New York’s Frederick Phillips. As the then-governor of New York, Lord Bellamont, reported to the Admiralty in 1699:
"'Tis the most beneficial trade, that to Madagascar to the pirates, that was ever heard of, and I believe there’s more got that way than by turning pirate and robbing. I am told this Shelley (a captain of one of Phillip’s ships) sold rum, which cost but 2s per gallon at N. York for 50s and 3 pounds per gallon at Madagascar, and a pipe of Madeira wine, which cost him 19 pounds at N. York he sold there for 300 pounds. Strong liquors and gunpowder and ball are the commodities that go off there to best advantage.” –A History of Madagascar
One Mr. Adam Baldridge of New York lived for just shy of ten years on Ile Sainte Marie and served as Phillip’s local representative. Baldridge grew rich on his trade, built himself a heavily fortified house on a small island within Ile Ste Marie’s lagoon, and began trading locally in cattle and slaves taken from the native populations. In 1693 one ship of many arrived with a great diversity of goods to trade, ranging from “6 dozen of worsted and thread stocking”, to “some books, catechisms, primers” etc, and of course “5 barrels of rum, 4 quarter casks of Madeira wine, … 3 barrels cannon powder.” From this single ship Baldridge made “1100 pieces of eight and dollars, 34 slaves, 15 head of cattle, 57 bars of iron.”
However, Baldridge’s Malagasy estate was not to last. After years of suffering their herds to be stolen and their people captured and sold into slavery, the local Malagasy violently took Baldridge’s island and all the possessions he stored there. Baldridge himself happened to be away trading, but upon hearing the news, he left his island behind and headed home to New York without his horded wealth.
In more modern times, the metaphorical guns and booze take the form of harvest permits and loans, which, given the right political winds, can easily be had. Madagascar’s few remaining forests (less than 10% of original stands) hold not only a host of highly endangered organisms only found in Madagascar, but also tropical hardwoods easily worth upwards of 100s of millions of dollars. The trade of those hardwoods represents a potential bonanza for timber companies, but such trade has been heavily regulated due to very valid fears of over harvesting. Until recently that is:
“The transitional authority led by president Andry Rajoelina, who seized power during a military coup last March, today released a decree [dated 2009 Dec. 31] that allows the export of rosewood logs harvested from the Indian Ocean island's national parks. The move comes despite international outcry over the destruction of Madagascar's rainforests for the rosewood trade. … More than 200 containers — worth at least $40 million — are said to be awaiting shipment. The first pick-up may come as early as Friday.” (Madagascar sanctions logging of national parks; wildmadagascar.org; Jan 11, 2010). “Immediately following the decree, reports on the ground indicated an upswing in logging activity in Masoala and Makira National Parks. In the midst of a cash-crunch, Rajoelina's government was apparently selling out Madagascar's forests to finance an election that it hoped would validate its seizure of power.” (Coup leaders sell out Madagascar's forests, people; Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com; Jan 27, 2010) An American diplomat here confirmed that cash flowing from hardwood exports are “funding the current government.” Some funding source had to fill the gap: after the coup, most international finance pulled out.
The current ‘transitional’ government holds the exclusive power to grant permits to specific timber interests and aggressively punish unpermitted operations. But like a 49er’s shovel in San Francisco, such permits are unlikely to come cheap. Cautionary tales in the form of unpermitted shipments seized by government enforcers have recently flashed across Tana’s daily newspapers, reminding logging interests that they need to get their permits. While no evidence of explicit bribery has been exposed, the power plays around rosewood exports strongly suggest a pay-to-play environment. Similar tales are emerging in the marine world. We have heard of permits granted to international fishing giants to trawl Malagasy seas. Internal and external critique rained on the previous president’s plan to lease an immense swath of agricultural land to Daewoo, a South Korean company. Perhaps divesting land evokes a more visceral reaction than fish, but both result in the export of Malagasy wealth for pennies-on-the-dollar.
Unfortunately, it’s not only the local government that appears to be one-degree of separation away from the current plunder. Just as a successful pirate needs to be well capitalized in balls and powder, logging efforts start with a pretty hefty price tag. In an uncertain regulatory environment, access to capital is crucial to finance these operations, and apparently a number of French and Dutch financial institutions were more than happy to oblige Madagascar’s illegal logging operations.
“Down payments for illegal lumber exports are seldom more than 50% of final sale value, making cash flow a problem even in such a lucrative industry. With so much capital tied up in existing stock, timber traders have come to rely on banks to finance their exports and their ongoing logging operations. … Even as foreign governments condemned the surge in illegal logging last year, many--either directly or through institutions they support--are shareholders in the very banks that have financed the export of illegal lumber from Madagascar's SAVA region.” [The article goes on to specifically name the World Bank, and both French and Dutch governments as part-owners of banks that have financed Malagasy timber operations]” (World Bank, European governments finance illegal timber exports from Madagascar; Rowan Moore Gerety, special to wildmadagascar.org; January 11, 2010)
In short, today’s lesson is, if there’s risky pillaging to be done it’s best not to get one’s hands dirty, at least not directly. There’s safer money in selling the means to plunder than in taking part in the questionable activity itself. With first-world funding and explicit assent of the currently unelected government, Madagascar’s natural wealth is being stolen from the nation’s people to enrich the Adam Baldridges of the world. And, with law of international economies being not unlike the navy-less expanse of the seventeenth-century Indian Ocean, it's a pretty safe bet that these 'Notorious Suppliers' will sail safely home when it's all over.
- Tom and Kirsten
Friday, January 29, 2010
Kung-Fu vs. The Despot
As ma femme did an excellent job catching you all up on the week’s news, I thought I might share a great story that got churned up in our week of getting to know our new city.
A few nights ago, Kirst and I were out to dinner with the local British Boy’s Club (BBC) – an unofficial group of erudite ex-pat brits (with one white Zimbabwean to spice up the mix). Present were Rich Lough, our neighbor the Retuers stringer, who, after covering last year’s political crisis, is currently moving his family to Nairobi; Ryan Walker, a tortoise biologist headed south to Tulear to map the populations of two species of endangered tortoise, both of which turned up living happily in our landlord’s garden; Garth Cripps – our Zimbabwean – who’s just completed the traditional 1000 mile seasonal migration with the Vezo fisher-folk of the west coast; and finally Mr. Billy Head, a colorful raconteur working on the great Malagasy novel.
Billy, in bursts of notebook scribbling, was trying to capture our first impressions of the city as outsiders. Kirst spoke of the chaos of the main drag and markets, contrasted by the relative refuge of Andohalo, our neighborhood on the hill. I mentioned watching a lady-like ex-pat’s flash of horror as she noticed a man lying unconscious on a downtown sidewalk, displaying his genitals to the world. What really impressed me, though, was the speed with which her horror was immediately banished by the clang of her iron-clad wall of composure snapping back into place.
We talked about the TaxiBes (Big Taxis) – the hundreds of jitney vans that serve as the city’s public transportation. They all have specific numbered routes, some of which are twice as long as others, but all fares on all TaxiBes are the same: 300 Ariary, or about 15 cents. Gas costs are really high in Madagascar (higher than the UK), so the longer and hillier routes have got to be vicious to one’s profit margins. As the TaxiBes appear to be an entirely self-organizing system with little governmental control, we wondered about the ‘negotiations’ among the teams of drivers and their fare collectors (they always seem to be two-man teams). We can only imagine that the lobster gangs in Maine got nothin’ on the TaxiBe teams of Tana.
It might have been this speculative imagining of TaxiBe on TaxiBe violence that spurred someone’s recollection of a hero’s story from Madagascar’s political past. I’m still trying to collect details, but there might be a hell of a movie in this one. (Chris or Erik are you listening?). Actually, we’d have to work pretty hard to find a happy ending, but I’m sure the addition of a fictional American youth and focusing on the eventual fall of the despot might work… The version I’ll lay out is a mix of well-supported fact from Mervyn Brown’s History of Madagascar, strongly asserted hearsay from a collection of half-drunk ex-pats, and my own romantic rendering.
The year was 1984, and the USSR-supported ‘president’ Admiral Didier Ratsiraka (Rat-seer-ak) was entering his most paranoid period of his long reign. His secret police, the Direction Generale d’Investigation et de Documentation (DGID), was given clear instructions to root out and punish anti-government “plots”. To fulfill his charge, DGID’s headman (the president’s brother-in-law), hired gangs of unemployed youths with a history of violence but some loyalty to the repressive socialist government. This collection of thugs actually had a ‘union’ at the time: the Unemployed Youths of Central Madagascar – locally called TTS. In the name of ‘securite’, the DGID and the youthful storm troopers of TTS began a violent campaign of extortion, assault, and political repression.
Enter the story’s ill-fated hero. My research has yet to uncover a name, but my sources assure me that this humble Malagasy spent 20 years studying Kung-Fu under the direct tutelage of the Shaolin masters in a monastery in deepest China. After returning to his country, he left behind the village of his birth, and headed for the capital – Antananarivo (Tana). There he founded the Tana Centre de Kung-Fu and began teaching the youth of his country the great tradition of Chinese self-defense.
To counter the rise of the secret police and their well-paid thugs, the Tana Kung-Fu center organized vigilante groups to patrol the streets and defend the downtrodden. These bands were at first primarily comprised of incensed and romantically inclined sons of bourgeois families. But as news of these defenders spread around Tana, the movement gained attention and more and more folks began showing up for both Kung-Fu instruction and patrol duty.
Like any good repressive, paranoid government, in September of 1984 Ratsiraka’s administration banned the practice of Kung-Fu entirely. With the ruling, the battles between the thugs and “Kung-Fu” reached a fevered pitch, resulting in the December 4th Kung-Fu riots. What were minor skirmishes between small knots of thugs and Kung-Fu patrols became a single broiling war as the crowds of youths engaged in hand-to-hand combat took over the Avenue de Independence and the Gare, the crumbling colonial train station. By the end of the day, 50 young men were dead. As my history book is not specific, I leave it to artistic license to decide which movement suffered more.
Whatever the relative body count, Kung-Fu’s battling produced results that peaceful demonstrations had not. In February 1985 the head of TTS was removed, and soon followed by the head of the DGID. Apparently, even the president’s brother-in-law was not immune.
That success was short-lived, however, as Ratsiraka’s paranoia was further inflamed by these very public concessions to an opposition group. Seen as a “serious threat to the regime’s authority”, Kung-Fu needed to be destroyed. On August 1 1985, Ratsiraka directed police and army units, all heavily armed and supported by tanks and artillery (!!!), to attack the Tana Centre de Kung-Fu. In the fighting that followed, the building was razed to rubble, over 20 youths were killed and over 200 arrested.
The historical account does not include the personal story of our Kung-Fu instructor, but my ex-pat sources insist that our hero fought bravely in the face of rolling tanks and artillery shells, and managed to evade capture by his enemies. He returned to the small village where he was born, to hide out and regroup. Tragically, Ratsiraka’s assassins tracked him home, and soon after the brutal attack in Tana, they shot the Kung-Fu master down.
The attack on Kung-Fu brought to an end to Ratsiraka’s public support in Tana, and he was forced to move out of the city, retreating to a heavily fortified villa, built by North Koreans (!), referred to as “The Bunker”. I’d love to write that the uproar following the attack brought his regime to a swift end, but he held on for seven more years, and wasn’t ousted until 1992. The events did end any fantasy that he was a well-loved leader and fed his self-reinforcing paranoia. After the events of 1985, Mervyn Brown writes, “his political strategy could be summed up in one word – survival.”
That’s the story – if you’re sitting down with the execs any time soon, you could pitch it as “Enter the Dragon” meets “Last King of Scotland.” Or maybe “Karate Kid” meets “Red Dawn” if they’re not Bruce Lee fans.
I'm dying to hear more details of this story -- if anyone knows more, please email at tom.andrew.oliver [at] gmail.com.
--Tom
A few nights ago, Kirst and I were out to dinner with the local British Boy’s Club (BBC) – an unofficial group of erudite ex-pat brits (with one white Zimbabwean to spice up the mix). Present were Rich Lough, our neighbor the Retuers stringer, who, after covering last year’s political crisis, is currently moving his family to Nairobi; Ryan Walker, a tortoise biologist headed south to Tulear to map the populations of two species of endangered tortoise, both of which turned up living happily in our landlord’s garden; Garth Cripps – our Zimbabwean – who’s just completed the traditional 1000 mile seasonal migration with the Vezo fisher-folk of the west coast; and finally Mr. Billy Head, a colorful raconteur working on the great Malagasy novel.
Billy, in bursts of notebook scribbling, was trying to capture our first impressions of the city as outsiders. Kirst spoke of the chaos of the main drag and markets, contrasted by the relative refuge of Andohalo, our neighborhood on the hill. I mentioned watching a lady-like ex-pat’s flash of horror as she noticed a man lying unconscious on a downtown sidewalk, displaying his genitals to the world. What really impressed me, though, was the speed with which her horror was immediately banished by the clang of her iron-clad wall of composure snapping back into place.
We talked about the TaxiBes (Big Taxis) – the hundreds of jitney vans that serve as the city’s public transportation. They all have specific numbered routes, some of which are twice as long as others, but all fares on all TaxiBes are the same: 300 Ariary, or about 15 cents. Gas costs are really high in Madagascar (higher than the UK), so the longer and hillier routes have got to be vicious to one’s profit margins. As the TaxiBes appear to be an entirely self-organizing system with little governmental control, we wondered about the ‘negotiations’ among the teams of drivers and their fare collectors (they always seem to be two-man teams). We can only imagine that the lobster gangs in Maine got nothin’ on the TaxiBe teams of Tana.
It might have been this speculative imagining of TaxiBe on TaxiBe violence that spurred someone’s recollection of a hero’s story from Madagascar’s political past. I’m still trying to collect details, but there might be a hell of a movie in this one. (Chris or Erik are you listening?). Actually, we’d have to work pretty hard to find a happy ending, but I’m sure the addition of a fictional American youth and focusing on the eventual fall of the despot might work… The version I’ll lay out is a mix of well-supported fact from Mervyn Brown’s History of Madagascar, strongly asserted hearsay from a collection of half-drunk ex-pats, and my own romantic rendering.
The year was 1984, and the USSR-supported ‘president’ Admiral Didier Ratsiraka (Rat-seer-ak) was entering his most paranoid period of his long reign. His secret police, the Direction Generale d’Investigation et de Documentation (DGID), was given clear instructions to root out and punish anti-government “plots”. To fulfill his charge, DGID’s headman (the president’s brother-in-law), hired gangs of unemployed youths with a history of violence but some loyalty to the repressive socialist government. This collection of thugs actually had a ‘union’ at the time: the Unemployed Youths of Central Madagascar – locally called TTS. In the name of ‘securite’, the DGID and the youthful storm troopers of TTS began a violent campaign of extortion, assault, and political repression.
Enter the story’s ill-fated hero. My research has yet to uncover a name, but my sources assure me that this humble Malagasy spent 20 years studying Kung-Fu under the direct tutelage of the Shaolin masters in a monastery in deepest China. After returning to his country, he left behind the village of his birth, and headed for the capital – Antananarivo (Tana). There he founded the Tana Centre de Kung-Fu and began teaching the youth of his country the great tradition of Chinese self-defense.
To counter the rise of the secret police and their well-paid thugs, the Tana Kung-Fu center organized vigilante groups to patrol the streets and defend the downtrodden. These bands were at first primarily comprised of incensed and romantically inclined sons of bourgeois families. But as news of these defenders spread around Tana, the movement gained attention and more and more folks began showing up for both Kung-Fu instruction and patrol duty.
Like any good repressive, paranoid government, in September of 1984 Ratsiraka’s administration banned the practice of Kung-Fu entirely. With the ruling, the battles between the thugs and “Kung-Fu” reached a fevered pitch, resulting in the December 4th Kung-Fu riots. What were minor skirmishes between small knots of thugs and Kung-Fu patrols became a single broiling war as the crowds of youths engaged in hand-to-hand combat took over the Avenue de Independence and the Gare, the crumbling colonial train station. By the end of the day, 50 young men were dead. As my history book is not specific, I leave it to artistic license to decide which movement suffered more.
Whatever the relative body count, Kung-Fu’s battling produced results that peaceful demonstrations had not. In February 1985 the head of TTS was removed, and soon followed by the head of the DGID. Apparently, even the president’s brother-in-law was not immune.
That success was short-lived, however, as Ratsiraka’s paranoia was further inflamed by these very public concessions to an opposition group. Seen as a “serious threat to the regime’s authority”, Kung-Fu needed to be destroyed. On August 1 1985, Ratsiraka directed police and army units, all heavily armed and supported by tanks and artillery (!!!), to attack the Tana Centre de Kung-Fu. In the fighting that followed, the building was razed to rubble, over 20 youths were killed and over 200 arrested.
The historical account does not include the personal story of our Kung-Fu instructor, but my ex-pat sources insist that our hero fought bravely in the face of rolling tanks and artillery shells, and managed to evade capture by his enemies. He returned to the small village where he was born, to hide out and regroup. Tragically, Ratsiraka’s assassins tracked him home, and soon after the brutal attack in Tana, they shot the Kung-Fu master down.
The attack on Kung-Fu brought to an end to Ratsiraka’s public support in Tana, and he was forced to move out of the city, retreating to a heavily fortified villa, built by North Koreans (!), referred to as “The Bunker”. I’d love to write that the uproar following the attack brought his regime to a swift end, but he held on for seven more years, and wasn’t ousted until 1992. The events did end any fantasy that he was a well-loved leader and fed his self-reinforcing paranoia. After the events of 1985, Mervyn Brown writes, “his political strategy could be summed up in one word – survival.”
That’s the story – if you’re sitting down with the execs any time soon, you could pitch it as “Enter the Dragon” meets “Last King of Scotland.” Or maybe “Karate Kid” meets “Red Dawn” if they’re not Bruce Lee fans.
I'm dying to hear more details of this story -- if anyone knows more, please email at tom.andrew.oliver [at] gmail.com.
--Tom
One week in…
…and what do we have to show for it? Well, first of all, we have a home. We rented a lovely old house in a district called Andohalo (pronounced An-dooo-ah-loo). There is plenty of room for visitors, as promised. Every room has a view; the house is situated half way up the largest hill in the city on a narrow pedestrian walkway. The neighborhood is calm and leafy, seemingly far away from the hustle of downtown, yet within easy walking distance of bars, restaurants, and many street markets. We have some pets: gekkos and golden orb spiders. Luckily, only the former come inside. (One of our friends has a baby chameleon in his garden – about an inch long!!)
We also have a lot of official stamps, with more on the way. The worst of French bureaucracy took firm hold here, including the need for every transaction to require numerous official-looking stamps and signatures of VIP. Our registration with the Fokontany (city district) resulted in three red stamps and one black one; the notary on our lease: one red and one black on each page of the lease and a big blue one on the receipt; the official copy of our passports (handy so that we don’t have to carry the real ones around): a big red one and two signatures; the receipt from the telephone company: a black one; the receipt from the internet company, another black one; even the receipt from the office supply store: a black one and a signature. I think you get the idea…But each receipt represents progress in arranging our lives here, so I am content.
And if you think that is a lot, today we also had out first Malagasy lesson. We now can greet people, introduce ourselves, have a polite (SHORT!) conversation asking about each others’ health and well-being, and say goodbye. Oh yeah, and we can say “Excuse me!” and “Where is a bathroom?” Both very important things for bumbling vazaha. Between 90 minutes of daily ‘gasy class (and at least that much of practice), along with an hour or so of French, our work days are quite full.
Research forges ahead as well. We’ve already had meetings with Blue Ventures, Conservation International and REBIOMA (an NGO with wonderful habitat maps). I’ll let Tom tell you about his amazing junket with CI coming up in March (think: chartered sailboat, diving each day on reefs, all-you-can-drink-wine, getting paid for it…He’ll kill me for posting that it is a junket because of course it isn’t but I am just jealous). Suffice it to say that the first field season is coming up very soon. Tom will be on a sailboat SCUBA diving. I’ll be visiting flea-infested villages doing socio-economic surveys. HOWEVER, I will be speaking Malagasy and learning about the north-western culture, and Tom will be with boring ex-pats, so who has the better deal?!?!
Life feels pretty settled already. Our home (and home offices) are taking shape. We landed in a partially furnished house, so we have some places to sit and to sleep. Aside from good pillows and perhaps a duvet that is the same size as the mattress (Tom and I fight over a single one), I think we brought just about everything we need. Our new neighbor Rich, a Reuters stringer, is moving to Kenya (sadly), so we are buying a lot of his furniture. Luckily, he has a “real” mattress (= Chinese = the springs pop out sometimes). The one we inherited with the house is foam. Our shoulders fall asleep and when Tom rolls over I bounce into the air. Rich also has a cookstove that doesn’t throw flames, unlike ours which ejects gas so forcefully that it blows itself out – not the safest situation in a wood house. In fact, cooking with it is terrifying. So I wouldn’t catch the house on fire or burn dinner EVERY night, I splurged on cooking pots and pans from the immensely over-priced French supermarket. We’ve made regular trips to the immense market downtown (Analakely) to haggle over towels, cutting boards, colanders, woks, etc. Tom likens the experience to ocean bait balls – where a school of fish gets attacked from below by tuna and above by birds. I think we are the lil’ fish in this scenario.
Our social lives are also amazingly active already. The British crew associated with BV and Reuters seem to have dinner and/or beer and/or tea and/or do exercise circuits nearly every day. We have met some of our neighbors, and we hope that as the language barriers diminish, we will have more to say to them! We have yet to meet another American, but our priority is to socialize with some of our Malagasy colleagues/friends (and to make more).
All in all, we’re doing really well. This weekend we are going to explore someplace (maybe even leave Tana) – I’ll keep you posted.
We also have a lot of official stamps, with more on the way. The worst of French bureaucracy took firm hold here, including the need for every transaction to require numerous official-looking stamps and signatures of VIP. Our registration with the Fokontany (city district) resulted in three red stamps and one black one; the notary on our lease: one red and one black on each page of the lease and a big blue one on the receipt; the official copy of our passports (handy so that we don’t have to carry the real ones around): a big red one and two signatures; the receipt from the telephone company: a black one; the receipt from the internet company, another black one; even the receipt from the office supply store: a black one and a signature. I think you get the idea…But each receipt represents progress in arranging our lives here, so I am content.
And if you think that is a lot, today we also had out first Malagasy lesson. We now can greet people, introduce ourselves, have a polite (SHORT!) conversation asking about each others’ health and well-being, and say goodbye. Oh yeah, and we can say “Excuse me!” and “Where is a bathroom?” Both very important things for bumbling vazaha. Between 90 minutes of daily ‘gasy class (and at least that much of practice), along with an hour or so of French, our work days are quite full.
Research forges ahead as well. We’ve already had meetings with Blue Ventures, Conservation International and REBIOMA (an NGO with wonderful habitat maps). I’ll let Tom tell you about his amazing junket with CI coming up in March (think: chartered sailboat, diving each day on reefs, all-you-can-drink-wine, getting paid for it…He’ll kill me for posting that it is a junket because of course it isn’t but I am just jealous). Suffice it to say that the first field season is coming up very soon. Tom will be on a sailboat SCUBA diving. I’ll be visiting flea-infested villages doing socio-economic surveys. HOWEVER, I will be speaking Malagasy and learning about the north-western culture, and Tom will be with boring ex-pats, so who has the better deal?!?!
Life feels pretty settled already. Our home (and home offices) are taking shape. We landed in a partially furnished house, so we have some places to sit and to sleep. Aside from good pillows and perhaps a duvet that is the same size as the mattress (Tom and I fight over a single one), I think we brought just about everything we need. Our new neighbor Rich, a Reuters stringer, is moving to Kenya (sadly), so we are buying a lot of his furniture. Luckily, he has a “real” mattress (= Chinese = the springs pop out sometimes). The one we inherited with the house is foam. Our shoulders fall asleep and when Tom rolls over I bounce into the air. Rich also has a cookstove that doesn’t throw flames, unlike ours which ejects gas so forcefully that it blows itself out – not the safest situation in a wood house. In fact, cooking with it is terrifying. So I wouldn’t catch the house on fire or burn dinner EVERY night, I splurged on cooking pots and pans from the immensely over-priced French supermarket. We’ve made regular trips to the immense market downtown (Analakely) to haggle over towels, cutting boards, colanders, woks, etc. Tom likens the experience to ocean bait balls – where a school of fish gets attacked from below by tuna and above by birds. I think we are the lil’ fish in this scenario.
Our social lives are also amazingly active already. The British crew associated with BV and Reuters seem to have dinner and/or beer and/or tea and/or do exercise circuits nearly every day. We have met some of our neighbors, and we hope that as the language barriers diminish, we will have more to say to them! We have yet to meet another American, but our priority is to socialize with some of our Malagasy colleagues/friends (and to make more).
All in all, we’re doing really well. This weekend we are going to explore someplace (maybe even leave Tana) – I’ll keep you posted.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Voyage part 2: planes
Tom and I are relaxing in the garden of my friend Al's house, overlooking the city of Tana. We have yet to switch from tea and water to beer, but that won't be far off.
The trip was long but relatively easy. We managed to check in 340 pounds of luggage while only paying $400 in overweight. Not bad. (The trick: a SCUBA bag costs $200 and can weigh up to 70 pounds. As opposed to a normal bag, which costs $250 and can only weigh 50.) Our 11 hour lay over in Frankfurt was spent visiting with a lovely friend (Christian) touring Mainz. On all our flights, we had multiple seats so we could lay down to sleep. All in all, not bad!
We are thrilled to be here. Tomorrow at 10 am we will meet with our potential new landlord. But for now, I just wanted to let you know we are safe.
We (and our bags) arrived!
Tom and I are relaxing in the garden of my friend Al's house, overlooking the city of Tana. We have yet to switch from tea and water to beer, but that won't be far off.
The trip was long but relatively easy. We managed to check in 340 pounds of luggage while only paying $400 in overweight. Not bad. (The trick: a SCUBA bag costs $200 and can weigh up to 70 pounds. As opposed to a normal bag, which costs $250 and can only weigh 50.) Our 11 hour lay over in Frankfurt was spent visiting with a lovely friend (Christian) touring Mainz. On all our flights, we had multiple seats so we could lay down to sleep. All in all, not bad!
We are thrilled to be here. Tomorrow at 10 am we will meet with our potential new landlord. But for now, I just wanted to let you know we are safe.
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