MADAGASCAR

[Martin Hash]

Madagascar.JPG

Madagascar doesn’t get enough press. We’ve all heard of the Galapagos Islands – they’re famous. Everyone knows that Galapagos is where you go if you want to see a bit of evolution carved off and put under glass in a museum. Darwin made them fashionable but those islands have entered cultural mythos. Not to slight Galapagos but I’ve got to say that if biodiversity and strange and wonderful creatures are what you’re looking for, Madagascar is a better choice. It’s home of 5% of the world’s plant and animal species.

It’s not that people have misconceptions about Madagascar – we just aren’t well informed about it. To begin with, Madagascar is part of the African continent but its people are ethnically Malaysian: they call themselves “Malagasies,” speak Malagasy, and look Malaysian. The “pure” Malagasies live in the interior of the island. Our guide, whom we met in the capital city of Antananarivo in the center of the island, told us that the “Africans” lived on the coast but when we got to the coast, all I saw were darker skinned Malaysian-looking people. I asked our guide if she’d ever been to “black” Africa but she hadn’t.

Madagascar has jungles, deserts, white sand beaches, volcanic mountains – all on the same island, and it hasn’t even been properly mapped yet. The land area is larger than France. Important sections of the country are only connect vie airplane, “Air Madagascar,” that leaves when it wants to and arrives sometime after that. When we got to the Tulear airport the only people there were the beggars.

The wildlife is exotic in the extreme: cuddly lemurs, cute chameleons, colorful butterflies. Eighty percent of its creatures are found no place else in the world. The rain forests are dense, the deserts expansive, the coasts humid, the population friendly – and there are comparatively few tourists. We stayed at top-end resorts during the high season with only a few other fellow travelers.

Even the culture is exotic. Twice we were caught up in “exhumations” – a celebration that involves digging up the bones of recently dead relatives, parading them overhead through the streets, then serving a giant feast in the deceased’s honor, the “parading of the bones.” Afterwards the human remains are permanently interred in a giant crypt-like burial plot surrounded by walls covered with paintings that depict the departed’s life, including movies they liked and musicians they enjoyed listening to. One tomb had the “Titanic” movie poster paint on it; another had a picture of the rapper Tupac.

With all the unique attractions, culturalists and evolutionists alike should be flocking to Madagascar to soak it up. It’s got everything Galapagos has plus an armed rebellion.