The Lexus and the Lack of Tree
Yesterday was spent comatose in Tana. This could be the most boring sub-Sahara Africa city. Nothing bad, just a bit of a snoozer. I suppose anywhere is a bit slow compared to Egypt. I did solve a mystery about why I thought this city looks like somewhere in Maine. Most of the rooftops are peaked, steeply peaked. I found some German immigrant burial plots from the 1880s at one of the fifty local churches so I guess that is where the steep roofs came from. But there is no snow here so why go steep. Today I paid a taxi driver to take me to Lemur Park and Rova, the 1800s royal palace. Both are about 20-30 kilometers from the city in different directions. I was a bit hesitant about Lemur Park thinking it could be quite zoo-ish, but my choices for nearby entertainment are few. Plus, I already went to the local zoo yesterday (there for the botanical garden, but I had to peak at the poor animals in small cages) so a park can’t be worse.
While waiting for an English-speaking guide I watched a hammerkop bird near its huge nest. These duck-like/heron-like birds build a nest equivalent to what Bill Gates lives in. A human can stand on its roof and jump up and down and the nest will live on. Supposedly they decorate the inside with things like CDs and other shiny objects. Like humans, they are known to increase the size of the nest the longer they stay in it. I watched him fly into the hole on the bottom which is quite a feat.
The guide showed up and his English and knowledge were impeccable. He showed me nine different kinds of lemurs all of which live outside on their own except the two small nocturnal types (no one would find them if they were outside). The first one was a sifaka, but it is also known as the dancing or leaping lemur and it is the one that stands verticle and bounces on its hindlegs while running sideway. The staff made some noises and four of these lemurs plus an infant came out of a tree and ran in this manner on top of a wood pole fence. It was the funniest thing I have ever seen with an animal. I knew I had seen this before on television and probably really did not believe it. I’m not sure I believe it now. Hopefully some good pictures, but I have not checked and maybe I was laughing too hard.
The rest of the lemurs were beautiful and I was able to get very close because they are used to humans and being fed by the staff regularly. It was a very nice place with some chameleons and tortoises, too. As far as the nocturnal species, the brown mouse and grey mouse lemur, they lived in little huts and they are very tiny. Imagine, a primate the size of a mouse! Mouse lemurs are the smallest members of our biological order.
We then made a slow 75 minute drive to the royal palace even though it only covered less than 50 kilometers on well-paved roads. The traffic around Tana is really bad although there isn’t a lot of cars. I guess it is just narrow roads with no lights filled with everything without engines such as people and oxcarts. The oxcarts are right out of a different era. They are made completely from wood except the axle, the rod that connects from the front to a brake system and the nuts and bolts holding it all together. The yoke, the spoke wheels and their hubs, the bed and everything in between is wood. The wheels don’t even have a metal rim around the outside or a rubber tread. I have not seen anything this primitive (unless you count not even having oxen!). The power, performance and comfortability looks well behind the American pioneer wagons.
Speaking of wood. There is no forest as far as the eye can see around Tana. For the most part, all of the trees look non-endemic including the always present eucalyptus from Australia. Madagascar is suppose to be a heaven/hell ecological wonder. It is probably one of the greatest ecological treasures on earth yet it is also probably the most abused. It is an ecological nightmare from what I have read with huge erosion problems caused by deforestation and many of its endemic species are endangered as well.
One of the many over-uses of the wood is charcoal. As seen last year, charcoal is a major economy and problem in Africa. It creates a lot of air pollution and the forests in many places cannot keep up with the demand. The charcoal I have seen here is being used to fire bricks. This is the biggest brick making center I have seen. Fields surrounding Tana are being dug for their clay. The bricks are formed right there and the first structure they build with each is its kiln. In the center of the newly formed bricks’ structure charcoal is piled and lit. Just about everything is built from the bricks around the capital and it appears building is going on at a fast pace. Kiln-baked brick or sun-dried adobe is also a major economic component to the third world. I would never have imagined seeing so much charcoal and brick making in my life. By the way, you can get forty bricks for one dollar in Madagascar.
The royal palace was a bit ho-hum. Let’s be serious though. It would have to be Versailles to impress me at this point after seeing the Egyptian royalty digs. The property around the home was quite nice and afforded wonderful views over the surrounding countryside being that it sat on a taller peak. A sign at the top said that they used to meet on the large rock located there and overlook the sacred forest. I guess it was not too sacred because it no longer exists.
Speaking of sacred, while going up the stairs to the royal palace grounds, I noticed large drops of blood on the ground. When we got to the top there was a large pool of bright red blood. The locals were gathered and they just slaughtered an oxen to do something sacred with. If I understood it right, it is the last day of their calendar year (old calendar similar to old Egyptian with twelve thirty day months and five at the very end as the short thirteenth month). Odd that it happens to coincide this year with end of Ramadan. They sacrifice only a red colored oxen and I guess leave it for the queen who has been dead since the 1880s. When we arrived, the oxen was dead, the blood had been let, head was removed and the group of men wearing pink shirts (I kid you not) were starting to hack it to pieces. After removing the whole sack containing the innards, four pinkmen took that away. I’m not sure where they went with it. Kids were playing around the whole butchering scene and they made faces at the severed head. It did not make any faces back. I found it to be fantastic, but the butcher scene took longer than I could wait (I was hungry!) so I did not see what they did with the pieces of zebu. Despite the fifty churches and at least a couple of mosques in Tana, the breakdown in religion here is about 45% animism, 45% christianity and 10% muslim. I know nothing about animism and for all I know, I could have been watching the start of a block party barby although that does not explain all the pink shirts.
On the way back to the hotel, we had to wind through streets of double-parked “diplomat” cars. Reserved parking signs had names like European Union and UNICEF. All of these cars were newer, larger luxury and/or SUV models such as the obligatory Mercedes and Range Rovers. I even saw the Pepsi of the luxury cars – Lexus. Mercedes and to a lesser degree BMW are the Coca Cola models found everywhere there is any money. And diplomats and those leading many of the goodwill organizations certainly know Coca Cola Cars!
I got back to the hotel with thoughts of Oxen on my mind so I had a hamburger for lunch.
I’ll be gone for the next 2+ weeks on a kayak tour in a remote place in Madagascar. That’s why I am here! It should be amazing although I am not sure exactly what we will be seeing. I need a real break from hotels and populous places so this should be quite timely. I think between the wilds of Madagascar, the safari and cultures of Kenya, the chimpanzees of Uganda and the cultures and history of Ethiopia, the next 2 1/2 months are going to be really good. I am actually just starting to decompress from North Africa and figure all of this out 🙂 I’ll write again sometime around the end of the month unless there is internet in the woods – always a possibility!
Tags: Africa, madagascar, Travel
vagabondrick
Bon Voyage and Viva La Madagascar (ie the kayak safari trip). Can hardly wait to hear all about it. All my love.
Rick: Saturday I was flipping channels and came to a PBS special on Madagascar! I missed the opening and entered where a photographer was showing rock formations that in my opinion surpassed anything here in Utah. Then went on to a riven that led the largest mountain rainforest in Madagascar. The scenery, geckos, lemurs, etc etc were fantastic. Apparantly since the island had been separated from Afric around 150 Million (or billion) years and from India around 90 Million (or billion) the life form had evolved into independent species. The most amazing part was my cat Peter: he instantly woke up and stared at the TV with great intent, twitching his ears at the sounds, during the section on Lemurs. At the end of this segment he instantly laid back down, sound asleep! I do so envy you having seen the program.