Archive for November, 2008
The Smell of Fairytale in Progress
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
It so happened that close to the time of our arrival in Madagascar Perfume by Suskind has fallen into my lap. Thus my own nose, although not as supernaturally sensitive as Grenouille’s, was now sharper and more aware – ready to sniff about my new destination. Which, I was surprised to discover, did not smell to me like anything at all.
What I mean is that I couldn’t even say what a stereotype of Madagascar smells like. Mexico, for example, already smells spicy, even before you get there, the Amazon smells of rain, and all of Asia (which I haven’t visited yet) smells to me of pure tasteless white starch of rice and plastic made-in-China. Madagascar is such a basketful of bright primary colors – you never even start thinking about how the whole package, a picture perfect lemur hand in hand with a chameleon plus people and all that comes with the civilization, how all that together might smell.
It hits you soon enough though. If diversity in smell is what you look for in Madagascar – Antananarivo’s (Tana) bus station will have the biggest diversity… but not the best quality. Piss, rotting food, a pungent sour smell I could only guess came from old cheese, though I was yet to see any, and stale everything, even the stuff that already reeks enough on its own, like a wet cigarette butt in the rotten teeth of an old man. It’s not that I hadn’t inhaled the wonderful bouquet of odors of a third-world bus station before, it’s just that somehow I was not expecting it here.
Yes, this is why fairytales are never meant to be smelled. Vivid colors on pages and screens never imply something that truly stinks. Even that green smoke coming off the witch’s cauldron always means something mean is brewing – and even if somewhat stinky, as potions should be, it is never revolting. There is no room for the unpleasantness that comes with stink in fabled myths. That’s why they are what they are – enchanting, flawless, and just far away enough for most people to see only the colorful cover. But if you stood close enough to Prince Charming, you’d notice his breath stank. In a hurry to save the fairy princess he had forgotten his toothbrush, not to mention he had been wearing those skin-tight tights for days on end. He is sweating profusely, encapsulating every testosterone-drenched drop of perspiration and leaving it to decompose under his shiny suit of armor until the day he rescues his damsel from that high tower where she had been held captive for years without access to a shower or flush toilet.
I wouldn’t describe Madagascar an unadulterated fairytale. It’s more like a children’s book that had many, though not all, of its masterfully illustrated pages replaced with mind-numbing grease- and sweat-stained documents about sanitation and rural development. The price and sacrifice for progress is sad but unavoidable.
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The Smell of Fairytale in Progress
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
It so happened that close to the time of our arrival in Madagascar Perfume by Suskind has fallen into my lap. Thus my own nose, although not as supernaturally sensitive as Grenouille’s, was now sharper and more aware – ready to sniff about my new destination. Which, I was surprised to discover, did not smell to me like anything at all.
What I mean is that I couldn’t even say what a stereotype of Madagascar smells like. Mexico, for example, already smells spicy, even before you get there, the Amazon smells of rain, and all of Asia (which I haven’t visited yet) smells to me of pure tasteless white starch of rice and plastic made-in-China. Madagascar is such a basketful of bright primary colors – you never even start thinking about how the whole package, a picture perfect lemur hand in hand with a chameleon plus people and all that comes with the civilization, how all that together might smell.
It hits you soon enough though. If diversity in smell is what you look for in Madagascar – Antananarivo’s (Tana) bus station will have the biggest diversity… but not the best quality. Piss, rotting food, a pungent sour smell I could only guess came from old cheese, though I was yet to see any, and stale everything, even the stuff that already reeks enough on its own, like a wet cigarette butt in the rotten teeth of an old man. It’s not that I hadn’t inhaled the wonderful bouquet of odors of a third-world bus station before, it’s just that somehow I was not expecting it here.
Yes, this is why fairytales are never meant to be smelled. Vivid colors on pages and screens never imply something that truly stinks. Even that green smoke coming off the witch’s cauldron always means something mean is brewing – and even if somewhat stinky, as potions should be, it is never revolting. There is no room for the unpleasantness that comes with stink in fabled myths. That’s why they are what they are – enchanting, flawless, and just far away enough for most people to see only the colorful cover. But if you stood close enough to Prince Charming, you’d notice his breath stank. In a hurry to save the fairy princess he had forgotten his toothbrush, not to mention he had been wearing those skin-tight tights for days on end. He is sweating profusely, encapsulating every testosterone-drenched drop of perspiration and leaving it to decompose under his shiny suit of armor until the day he rescues his damsel from that high tower where she had been held captive for years without access to a shower or flush toilet.
I wouldn’t describe Madagascar an unadulterated fairytale. It’s more like a children’s book that had many, though not all, of its masterfully illustrated pages replaced with mind-numbing grease- and sweat-stained documents about sanitation and rural development. The price and sacrifice for progress is sad but unavoidable.
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Ah, Madagascar
Monday, November 24th, 2008
Ah, Madagascar. When we mention places we visit, it is often met with question marks or that sucking sound accompanied by a tense wrinkled spot between the eyebrows. But Madagascar always gets an “Ah”. An “Ah” and a dazed dreamy smile only the purest of fantasies get.
People think Madagascar is magic, and in many parts, it is. In the right spot, it’s a colorful heaven – dancing lemurs with big curious eyes jumping high in the branches, and skulking chameleons catching due drops on the swirls of their tails at night.
Our flight to Madagascar was also magic – even though it didn’t seem like it first. In fact, we should be thankful we had a flight at all. When we came to the appropriately nicknamed Air Mad (Air Madagascar) to check in, it turned out they knew nothing of our booking. To make things worse, it was only an hour before the flight, so the tickets were a few hundred dollars more expensive.
“Can we speak with the manager?” – “I am the manager.” – “You lost our booking…” – “I didn’t loose your booking, the company did.” – “But you represent the company! Can we speak to whoever is in charge?” – “I am in charge…” Thus it continued, until I uttered the magic “J” word. “Journalists you say… Aha… Guidebook…Aha…” Click, click, click… “I hope I don’t get fired for this… Oh, and you have been upgraded to business class.” Voila!
Three glasses of wine and a firm decision not to pocket the miniature Air Mad salt and pepper shakers (so adorable, but my backpack, or rather – my back, could not tolerate another gram of excess weight) later, we were on an island that might just as well have been a tiny continent of its own – a country whose unspoiled forests, both tropical and dry, are famous for the quirkiest wildlife one could ever hope to see on this planet – Ah, Madagascar.
It was useless to go find a place to spend the night only to get up at the break of dawn to pile up into a dusty taxi-brousse and drive endlessly to our first destination – Andasibe-Mantadia.
We decided to sleep in the airport terminal, but not before getting online where Shurik found out his credit card had been charged for a flight to India he never took.
“Hello, yes, I have a fraudulent charge on my card… Yes, cancel it… I am in Madagascar… Madagascar… Ma-da-gas-car… Like in the cartoon… It’s a country… Yes, really! … In Africa… Ok, ok I’ll be in Johannesburg in a month so you can send it to me there… Johannesburg? It’s in South Africa… No, South Africa is a country too… No, Africa is not a country, it is a continent…”
Ah, Madagascar – the stuff of fairy tales for sure. A fantasy few dare to imagine, let alone consider as actuality.
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The Great African Zoo
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
Being a member of the humankind, I can find enough good reasons to justify our control-hungry parasitic need to grab the land for our crop and cattle, shoving animals out of their dwellings, and shooting at them for trying to come back. We then incarcerate meek and mighty flora and fauna for their own preservation.
When it’s done in vast national parks and spacious private reserves where the inhabitants live more or less in the wild, I can rest easy and even enjoy visiting these animals in these protected areas, respectfully keeping to the safety of a vehicle (most of the time). What I can’t do though, after witnessing the cruel but necessary circle-of-life – the fascinating and endlessly enlightening way of coexistence in the animal kingdom, is to find an explanation and need for an African zoo.
Conservation projects – sure. Breeding programs – of course. Africa doesn’t lack quality organizations with truly profound and concerned projects open to the public, doing what they do, and how they do it, for good reasons. But zoos, for the sheer sake of profit from voiceless hostages, many not even close to being natives of the continent? Absurd and depressing to say the least, and some of the reserves we’ve visited around Johannesburg were pretty much that.
I have decided not to photograph non-African nature in Africa. In my archives, but not in the photo gallery online, you might find a west-African pygmy hippopotamus, sadly grazing next to a cement pool, but there is no trace of the Bengal tiger who nervously paced behind bars, nor of the mortified-looking black jaguar cub miserably crying over a tin bowl of milk that will never come close to replacing its mother’s tit.
Families torn apart. Parents in cages – crazy with boredom. Their crying children incarcerated only a few kilometers away because human parents would pay for the chance to have their own precious offspring photographed with a white lion cub. Cuteness to die for.
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Swimming with Sharks
Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
If there was anything that could make us forget being duped by the kind of sharks that had sold us Columbus, it was swimming with the real sharks.
We’ve missed out diving with them once before due to bad weather, and for a second there, it looked like we’d have to pass it up again. The sea had been frowning with waves for three days before we arrived, but luckily, the day of the dive turned out to be nice and sunny.
In her dive briefing, Raffa instructed me not to have the strap of my camera tied around my wrist. In fact, she said not to wear it at all. Apparently, sharks enjoy robbing divers of their photographic equipment. They especially like strobes, because sharks can sense the powerful electromagnetic fields generated by the firing strobe. So I just have to be careful not to let go of my camera accidentally, and be ready to part with it if I don’t feel like parting with a few fingers.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to spend as much time as we wanted in the water with the tiger shark. For such a dangerous fish, it is quite shy and does not enjoy splashing two-legged visitors blowing bubbles in its swimming space, so it took off as soon as we got into the water. The rest of the sharks seemed to be used to aquatic tourists and didn’t even mind the bubbles. They came close enough to touch, and sometimes we needed to shove them away, gently, by the nose. Somehow, these sharks were ignorant of the concept of personal space.
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Let’s Go
Friday, November 21st, 2008
I wish I could say our return to Cape Town was bitter-sweet. I wish I could confess that even though we had so much trouble with Columbus it all worked out in the end, and we have nothing but good things to say about his real parents who welcomed him back with open arms and with a light slap on the bumper sent him to his room to think hard about all the trouble he gave us. We all would laugh together over a bottle of fine South African wine sharing funny stuck-in-the-mud-lions-around-failed-starter stories and then part ways as best friends if only… ( If only we could find the bastards! )
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Ostrich Run
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
“If you are ever chased by an ostrich,” said the farmer, “never run. Instead just lie on the ground and just cover your head. This way, it might jump all over you, even break a few ribs, but it will not kill you. But if you are standing, a kick from an ostrich could easily kill. Can you see its feet?” I looked down at its prehistoric-looking toes: one small – for balance, and one enormous – tipped with a big black claw. Occasionally, throughout this trip, I feel like I’ve been jerked back a few million years to the time when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
I walked through the farm trying to avoid the lingering thought that every majestic bird I saw here was farmed to be killed for its feathers, meat, and skin. I picked up a fallen feather and stuck it on the side of my hat. The feather was brilliant white and soft. I could see how one would pay a lot for it, but struggled to understand how one could kill its bearer in cold blood. I guess it’s a question that can be brought to any farmer, but first of all to me, the consumer, who likes her drumsticks and never even considers giving them up.
The farmer fed us breakfast. One ostrich egg is equivalent to twenty four chicken eggs. We three barely finished quarter of an egg. Ostrich eggs are incredibly strong, you can even stand on them, which I tried, and the ostriches themselves are no puny fowl either – to entertain the crowd on an ostrich farm tour special jockeys ride an ostrich race.
ostrich chick
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The Good Life Behind Bars
Monday, November 10th, 2008
In Tenikwa – a wild cat rescue center, life is nice and safe when there is nobody to hunt you down for eating a sheep or a chicken. In the past, the center tried to rehabilitate and release. But after a caracal named Frodo was killed shortly after being placed back in the wild with a radio collar, they only receive and care for animals that need their help.
cheetah cub
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Marine Mammals
Sunday, November 9th, 2008
I love the sea. Sea sickness, on the other hand, I could do without. When we reach a place with yet another whale-watching tour to review, I feel like hurling at the thought of the long hours I’ll have to spend looking thought a tiny viewfinder, trying to balance a heavy 500mm lens in the wind.
This time we were expecting humpbacks, but got killer whales. Apparently they had just eaten a dolphin and were in such good moods that, after splashing around a bit, decided to mate. If you look carefully at the gallery pictures you just might see Willy’s willy.
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Addo Elephant NP
Saturday, November 8th, 2008
So it turns out a place called Addo Elephant has an incredible amount of… you’ve guessed it – elephants! Astonishing. We’ve seen about a million elephants already, but the calves are always fun to watch. The smaller the cuter, and each one with its own personality:
Grumpy
Pushy
Splashy
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