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| Volume 51, Number 3, Summer 2002 |
TOUGHING IT OUT IN MADAGASCARby Peter Tyson I'm hard pressed to think of the biggest challenge in my five trips to Madagascar since 1993. Unless, of course, you count the time my life was threatened by a spear-wielding tribesman. I was in the country of the Bara, reputed to be the fiercest warriors on Madagascar, researching a travel piece for the Atlantic Monthly. I decided to hike out to the edge of a giant massif to see what I could find. What I found were tombs tucked in the cliff face overlooking a plain.
Now, the Malagasy--as the island's people are known--revere their ancestors, and don't like strangers hanging around their tombs, especially with a camera around their necks. Far below, I could see two men talking in a field. Just as I began to wonder if they could see me, one of them suddenly appeared over the cliff edge. He'd scaled the 500-foot wall in a matter of minutes. He was carrying an eight-foot spear in a threatening manner and had a face of stone. "Oh, shit!" I thought. I'd told no one where I was going and imagined my body would never be found.
Just then I had a brainstorm: I pointed my camera at a plant at my feet and took a picture. I looked up at the angry tribesman and smiled expectantly. Amazingly, he got the message: just another crazy foreigner interested in weeds. The muscles in his face relaxed, and I knew I'd escaped a close call. But, just to be safe, on the hike back to the road I used up an entire roll of film on plants. On another less harrowing but completely frustrating occasion, I traveled 10,000 miles (the last 100 miles an expensive ride in a hired Land Rover) to a remote field station in the spiny desert to find that the Malagasy scientist, with whom I'd arranged to spend a fortnight, wasn't there. I'd met him a month or two earlier at Yale, where he was doing a postdoc. It's devilishly hard to find Malagasy researchers who have the means to conduct their own fieldwork, so he would play a crucial role in my book on Madagascar. He knew exactly when I would arrive. When I asked about the scientist's whereabouts, a man simply said, "--gone Tana." (Tana is short for Antananarivo, the capital.) I later reached the scientist by phone. He had no explanation as to why he'd left. Other Westerners have told me the same thing happens to them all the time in Madagascar. It's a cultural disconnect. The opportunity lost, I had to restructure my entire book. Then there was the time my computer died my first day in the field. We were in the Ankarana, a cave system with 60 miles of underground passages and the world's only cave-living crocodiles. I was doing an "Online Adventure" for NOVA, in which I use a laptop and digital camera to report back live, through the Web, on science taking place in the field. Without my computer, I was sunk. Desperate to give something to our audience, I played Alex Chadwick and did radio-style dispatches using my satellite phone, something I did not find comfortable. A scientist-friend from the States later brought me a new laptop. But it was a harsh reminder of the importance on back-up systems when it comes to technology in remote locations.
Nor is the Third World a good place to get sick or injured. Later on that same trip, I joined another expedition into the new Marojejy National Park. Marojejy is one of the most beautiful rain forests I'd ever seen, and I'd received permission to visit parts of it usually off limits to outsiders. On the hike in, I noticed that a tiny cut on top of my right foot had become infected. I cleaned and rebandaged it throughout the day, but by nightfall my right foot was twice the size of my left. It was raspberry red, hot to the touch, and the infection was starting to inch up my calf. We were a five-hour hike from the nearest road, a two-hour drive from the nearest town, and an hour-long flight from the only decent hospital in the country. If the infection made a serious dash for my heart, I was in deep trouble. I got on my satphone and inquired about helicopter evacuation. Fortunately, I had the antibiotic cipro with me and, by the following morning, the infection had begun to subside. But I had to spend an entire week in my tent, unable to walk and, worst of all, unable to get the stories that were my reason for coming all this way in the first place. What have I learned from these and other experiences in Madagascar? Go with the flow. So you can't take pictures of tombs or meet a researcher you traveled halfway around the planet to see. Big deal. Work around it and save yourself the aggravation. Grab opportunities. I once had only three days to get a story from a paleoecologist studying ancient environments. For the first two days we were jammed in the dusty, rear compartment of a crowded Land Rover. So that's where I got the story. Keep an open mind. With so much going on and so many challenges to
face, it's essential to take everything in. You never know what's
going to be of use in telling the story. In fact, the hurdles often
make the trip and the story. # Peter Tyson is author of The Eighth Continent: Life, Death, and Discovery in the Lost World of Madagascar (Perennial, 2001). |
