Prime Magazine September 2023

travel
The landscape is stunning – I’ve been through plains
and high plateaus. I keep lifting my eyes to the vast
dome of sky which is now turning little by little from
pale to deep blue. The mountains are shrouded in
hazy distance and I feel a great liberty as I ride towards
them, free at last. The delicate green of rice fields is
everywhere, on the plains, in clefts in the hills, on
terraces stepping up the mountain.
There are dangers on the trip that often force you
to ignore this beauty. There are huge potholes and
one-time sealed roads that have taken on strange and
grotesque shapes as if minor volcanoes were alive
under them, many bridges with missing pieces, skittish
or uncontrollable zebus with huge pointed horns, the
swish of an occasional huge lorry on a narrow road, a
sporadic snake.
I stop on the high plateau and switch off the noise. The
silence is broken by an infrequent gust of wind. I watch
a kestrel hovering before a strike. I can see, far away, the
highest point of the highest mountain in Madagascar.
I am riding through the heart of the Sakalava Kingdom
in north-west Madagascar – once independent, they no
longer have their kings or queens but have their pride.
Dark-skinned and curly-haired, they are one of the many
ethnic groups on the island with different cultures and
taboos. Taboos differ wildly among ethnic groups – a
pregnant Sakalava woman should not sit in a doorway or
eat fish. Some of the taboos stretch the imagination further.
I take a break. I sit in a local market and have a cold
drink. I am happy to watch these people from my corner.
A man with oxen is delivering charcoal to the little
shanty restaurants, a woman is carrying some coals to
light her neighbour’s charcoal, an old man plies bottles
of honey. A girl of six or seven comes to where I sit, gazes
at me intently and says, “I’m going to dance vahaza, [a
friendly term for foreigner], watch me.” And she does.
There is no existential questioning of the meaning of
life. There is the daily struggle for survival but there is
some grace and dignity in that struggle. Add much good
humour and stoicism, laughter and banter – an envious
mix. It is one of the reasons I travel to these places, a
gentle going back to a less complicated time
When I reach the tip of The Big Red Island, as the
inhabitants call it, I feel a sense of achievement as I
admire the three-pronged beautiful Diego bay.
I was nervous starting out, my first three-day trip
on a motorbike. I pat my machine affectionately, then,
optimistically, I take out my map of the island and
began to look at another line on it, a more challenging
line perhaps.
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