Aerogramme from Madagascar

Tuesday 18 April 2003
Lake Ranobe Base Camp, Mikea Region, South-west Madagascar.


A cool breeze is flowing through the great shady Tamarino trees that cast a dappled emerald light over our camp. We are now settled into our camp-life beside Lake Ranobe (“Big water” in Malagasy) though at its deepest it is only waist deep, it is a beautiful, reed-filled swamp that reminds me of the post-card that used to sit on the dashboard of Bianca [Yuki’s Datsun 200B] (the waterlily filled billabong of JABILUKA) where we have lived for a week now, building camp, cooking, washing, exploring and science training in the narrow band of Botanic-park-like Riparian forest that divides the spiny forest (as yet unexplored by our expedition – we start work next Monday) and the lake (unique in this region).

Avenue of Baobabs, Madagascar. (Photo: worldisround.com)

This morning I had my first soapy shower. I splashed out into the lake and collected two buckets of water, then got naked in the forest and had a luxurious wash with my wilderness wash. After 18 days, it’s nice to feel squeaky-clean! I have been keeping a journal since you [Yuki] phoned me in Tana. As you suggested, once I sit down to write it’s easy to write, and in fact it’s hard to stop. So each night when I settle down to sleep in my little home (my mosquito net hung under a tarp roof and no walls, shared with eleven other RA’s [Research Assistants] each with just enough room for a Thermarest and bag, cosy but surprisingly private and comfortable) I seem to write many pages in my little notebook that is now over half-full with my spidery, unreadable scrawl! I plan to rewrite it and send to people, perhaps as reports for Virgil’s Diary.

We just had lunch (Rice and Beans- truly every lunch and dinner is rice and beans, and has been for the last week) on the straw mat that serves as our dining-room, living-room, and lecture theatre. We are 14 RA’s, 5 staff, and 2 Malagasy (a postgraduate from Tulear studying Butterflies, and our “Guardian” – guide and Bush-handyman). While we were eating we spotted a little snake poking its head out of a hole in the nearby tree (the tree that my excellent, much-shared, hammock hangs on). Inside the hole we saw some snake eggs, under careful protection of their friendly beady-eyed owner. Because of the non-venomous nature of everything here (except for scorpions, millipedes, rabid mammals, crocodiles and malaria-carrying mosquitoes), the staff encourage an “IF IT MOVES, CATCH IT!” policy, much to my astonishment! Around my camp I have already caught a one-meter snake, an un-identifiable praying-mantis disguised as sticks and leaves, countess butterflies, a few iguanas (5 to 10 centimeters long) and some fascinating colour-changing chameleons with giant bulbous eyes that swivel in wonky independent directions. Most animals are identified, recorded and set free, while a few are preserved and sent to experts around the globe (previous Frontier expeditions in this region have already discovered many new plant and animal species). While writing just now I looked up and saw one of the common giant butterflies that wobble-flutter through our camp. The pretty, black and white, “swallowtail” was about 10 cm wide!

A "wobble-fluttering" Swallowtail butterfly rests on a flower.

Here in the warm forest, sitting on my bed and bags in the dirt and leaves and insects, I could hardly feel happier. A part of me has always wanted to explore, to be in the bush, to get dirty for days, to “rough it”, to sleep and rise with the sun and to wash in a bucket in the forest, to smell smoke and campfire-bread baking in the coals. As a child I always loved to play with ropes, pocket-knives, matches and fire, compasses, ‘scouts’ and camping. Now all these playthings are part of my daily life, along with the rising full moon, the bird calls of the night and the familiarity of an item of clothing worn for 2 weeks then hand washed by my hands in a bucket of fresh water collected by me among the little fishes and tadpoles of the lake. It hasn’t always been glorious – there have been times when pure exhaustion has numbed my cheerfulness, when I have slept in soaking wet bedding while puddles of rain spilled all night onto my sleeping bag, when an endless number of sloppy visits to the long-drop toilet made me wish I was at home excreting solids again. But this short list of discomforts (tiredness, dampness and diarrhoea) has so far (at 2.5weeks into my trip), ALWAYS been massively out-weighted by the HUGE enjoyment, excitement, amazement and fascination that I am experiencing as I go about these travels like a wide-eyed child, soaking up every moment with wonder.

Houses in Madagascar. (Photo: worldisround.com)

[21-4-03] Yesterday was Easter Sunday. We had a camp holiday to celebrate. I made myself 6 delicious flour & water pancakes and had a lovely lazy morning, lying in the sun, reading letters and eating my Easter-egg supply. In the afternoon we trekked to Ranobe village and played a fantastic game of soccer against the village lads. We played on a red sand field in the front of the school house (the only solid building) with zebu, goats, Lemba-clad president and village elders [Lemba’s are traditional sarongs], hunters and gardeners with spears and shovels, women with baskets on their heads, and a massive cheering, laughing horde of brown-faced children who laughed hysterically every time a vazah [foreigner] kicked, missed, fell or shouted. Both the Frontier and the village teams played exceptionally well, and as the last rays of the sun set over Lake Ranobe, it was 4:3, with the Ranobe team victorious. After the game I was immersed in a sea of laughing children, one shook hands with me, and soon all 90 children surrounded me, all saying “Salaam Vazah!” and reaching out to me with friendly little hands. I shook hands with all of them. All the children in the village seem to recognise me now- the bearded vazah with the camera that takes photos they can see straight away, children and adults alike see me and ask me to take their photo, and then huddle around to see the little photo.

A colourful chameleon. (Photo: worldisround.com)

On the walk back to camp after the game, a family of 12 spilled out of a 3X3 metre straw house and posed for a photo. Before I could take it, one of the young men asked me to wait. He ran inside and returned, not with an elderly relative as I’d expected, but an ancient broken ghetto-blaster that he wanted in the photo. I am loving the contact with the village people, I am hoping to spend more time in the little village (no electricity, no cars, no motors) 30mis trek from the camp. They are so friendly, and as amazed by me as I am by them. In the morning and evening a whistling herder strolls past our camp with his spear on his shoulder, taking the villages 30 zebu to graze in the spiny forest. When bathing in the reeds I sometimes come across the dark, near-naked men and women hunting and washing in the lake. We smile and make an exchange greeting in my limited (but growing) Malagasy.

A Zebu cart in Madagascar. (Photo: worldisround.com)

Tonight is a black night with bright stars. I have just had a star-light skinny-dip to wash off a day’s work digging bucket-traps in the prickly forest. Tomorrow the re-supply zebu cart will bring supplies and post from Tulear and I will give them this letter to post. We get re-supplied every 10 days, so post is very welcome! I send my love to EVERYBODY , and think of my dear friends and family often. I hope you are all well, relaxed and happy.

With love, Your John.

PS. I’d like: Hot chocolate sachets, scotch-finger biscuits, licorice& peppermint tea bags, yoghurt/ fruit muesli bars, family news (widge/mooch going overseas? Flex school? Jelly soccer grand final? Mutty, Putty, Marce?, Yukima?) .

Stop Press! Mum’s and Jelly’s letters arrived with the supplies!! Thanks to them both! Love from John in Madagascar!!

FROM: JOHN CAMERON MGF032
FRONTIER MADAGASCAR – BP 413 TULEAR 1
ZONE PORTUAIRE, MADAGASCAR