Dispatches From The Field

4 June 2003 -- Ted Gilliland

The road back to Antananarivo is a windy one, and if ever there were an understatement, that would be it. The road twists and turns what seems like an incessant, obsessive amount. The curves cause one to have to hold on to the seat, door, or any thing else solid to keep from sliding across the seat and squashing the two other people in the back of the car. Just after you round one of these companion-squashing turns and you’re thanking your lucky stars that the turn has squashed the person on the other side of the car, the car then quickly turns the other way and it is your turn to be squashed. Multiply that by seven hours.

Also, much to the amusement of the other riders in the car, if you succumb to the hum of the engine and fall asleep, which we often did, your head is tossed about like a rag doll at the rounding of every turn. Honestly though, you get used to it and I even managed to get some reading done.

More discouraging than the unforgiving windiness of the road was the view we saw from it. Inquiring about the landscape, I asked Luke about the vegetation that we were seeing on the hillside and in the valleys. He replied, “In the past” and then correcting himself, “in the recent past, all the land from Antananarivo to Tamatave was thick rainforest.” We drove for seven hours and all I saw was sparsely vegetated hillsides, eroded gullies, and plant species that are not naturally found in the country (also known as non-natives or exotics. These plants species in many cases harm the environment by out-competing the natural vegetation.). I found it appropriate that we drove through so much destroyed land and spent only a short time in the healthy, natural vegetation at Ivoloina. This is certainly the proportion of degraded or destroyed land to healthy land within the entire country of Madagascar. The view was humbling, but motivating.

Ted Gilliland