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A Madagascar Finale, Part VI: Rhum arrangé, vanille, noix de cajou and gratitude

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A trip to Madagascar would not be complete without a seeing where its world-famous vanilla comes from. And so, on the way back from the north to Nosy Be, where I’d spend my last two nights, we stopped at a small locally-owned vanilla plantation. Here, the owner showed me his cacao trees – he opened a ripe pod, from which I tasted the surprisingly sour and custard apple-like fruit. He played the “guess the spice” game with me: peppercorns (red and black), cinnamon, lemongrass, and turmeric among others (I think I surprised him). I hadn’t ever seen any of these plants in their original state before, so it was fun to see where what I cook with comes from. And although I think this little show-and-tell was the smaller version of the larger spice sowing/growing/reaping enterprise, the experience at the vanilla farm felt a little more authentic than the one the French tourists were paying 50000 Ariary to enter just down the road. Needless to say, I left there with an armload of cocoa, vanilla, pepper and other spices, and felt like I was contributing to the livelihood of a local family.

Another curiosity on the road to the north: a certain section of the road is lined with tables. The tables are stacked with recycled tin cans. The cans are filled with roasted cashews. You go up to a stand, and for 5000 Ariary, you get roughly 250g of cashews, the equivalent of about $2 a pound here in the US (for the record, an unexpected amount of math went into writing that sentence!). We stopped at the house of a cashew guy my driver knows, and met his wife/sister/daughter who showed me how they roast and hull the cashews. Earlier in the week, we had found some cashews still on the tree. As with the spices, I had never seen a cashew in the wild, so it was another fun learning experience seeing it end-to-end. The amount of manual labor we take for granted here while consuming little luxuries crossed my mind.

Of note: raw cashew nuts contain urushiol, the same enzyme that makes poison ivy a terrible plant (or villain). This is why, even when we purchase raw cashews in those clean and tidy plastic packages back home, they are still roasted or boiled to remove the toxins. Also of note: freshly-roasted roadside cashews are about the best road snacks one could ever ask for (and if you know me, you know I like road snacks!).

I felt a little like cattle again, being shuttled from car to port to boat to island, and I was feeling sad to leave the mainland, to have left Bush Camp and the tsingy (ooh, that could be a great band name!). I landed back in Nosy Be hoping I could come back one day, but also knowing that going back to a place is never like experiencing it for the first time with beginner’s eyes.

Nevertheless, we dodged tuk tuks and people and bikes and road construction as the taxi wended its way through Hell-ville* and the other towns on Nosy Be en route to my final destination, a weird beach resort near the town of Madirokely. I would have 2 days here before flying back home.

*Hell-ville is the holdover French name for the main city on Nosy Be. Locally, it is called Andonay.

As perfectly-suited Bush Camp was to who I am, the cushy beach resort where I was booked for these two nights seemed like an ironic joke. This is no fault at all of the resort – it was lovely by resort standards: a salt water infinity pool overlooking the beach and the cove. An open-air restaurant overlooking the bay. A masseuse and a spa and a beauty salon. But on arrival I experienced a moment of sort-of culture shock, coming off a couple of weeks spent in nature and amongst much less-curated wildness.

So as I lay on a chaise lounge next to said saltwater pool and read a book while I waited for my room to be done up, I thought this for my final days: I wanted to see the town and also bring home some of the local rhum arrangé, I had planned to visit with Stella to hear about what the Madagascar Whale Shark Project is up to next, and I felt that some time to decompress a bit before transitioning back to the real world would be in order.

A rhum mission and the ugly side of paradise.

If you read only sensationalist reporting, you may hear that Madagascar is unsafe for foreigners, that human trafficking is rampant and that crime is pervasive. While I felt entirely safe during the whole of my stay, and I would recommend Madagascar as a destination 1000%, back in Nosy Be I wasn’t UNaware of the number of older European men in the company of very young local girls. I was to learn that prostitution is legal in Madagascar. According to Wikipedia, the prostitution here developed around the Japanese fishing industry; and as tourism flourished, so did sex travel and human trafficking. Because of this, Europeans, and mainly French and Italian men, are drawn to Nosy Be. During the day, they swim and snorkel and do the touristy things. By evening, they visit the bars and clubs and easily find companions. Many of the resorts here (including the one at which I was staying) have pledged against the sex trade, especially child sex trafficking which is apparently and unfortunately rampant here.

I mention this, and provide this link to the International Justice Mission, to say two things: if we don’t go to these places, these kinds of activities will continue to exist but only with fewer eyes on them. If we do go, and in the process bring practices of responsible tourism, and in doing so support local businesses that care about change, and give to charities such as the IJM, we can move the needle and help drive a better future for the girls who may have no other choices today.

I walked down the beach that afternoon, replaying the past couple of weeks in my head: the vibrant greens and blues and terracotta hues; the sea and land creatures that exist nowhere else on earth; the geologic marvels that seem to have been painted in place.

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Sharks discussed and rhum arranged, I wandered around the little town. The rhum shop looked like an apothecary of sorts, shelves lined bottles of amber liquid and myriad mystery objects suspended in each. It is a local tradition here to distill rum and infuse different fruits and spices. I watched the shop owner wrap the bottles of lychee, vanilla, and ginger rhum arrangé I bought, all the while hoping the tape on the tops would hold until they arrived at their final destination. It’s a bit sad, and possibly a tad judgey, but I couldn’t help to also wonder which of the single men at the various little beachy bars were there for nefarious purposes. I didn’t stick around to find out.

It was nice to have time on my own here, with no itinerary to keep to or particular sites to see. And so I followed my own advice: relax a little, let the trip sink in. I walked on the beach, dipping my toes into the last warm tropical water I’d see for a while. I read by the saltwater pool, doing my best to ignore the pompous loudmouth nearby filling up the air with his words. At dinner, I stayed a while to listen to the local music. At breakfast the next morning, I watched in amusement as a guy drove a herd of zebu across the beach. Later, I cheered on as local school kids played football on the same sand.

And like that I was in a taxi to Nosy Be airport, nearly 3 weeks flown by like I was about to. The trip back was uneventful, but included some highlights to help the trip end on a high note: A long stopover in Addis Ababa gave me time to enjoy some really great Ethiopian food and tej, their honey wine (airport food, no less!). A night in London made me grateful for decent tea and the luxury of indoor toilets (with seats!). An aisle seat in Premium on Virgin into Boston made me want to fly this way whenever possible.

The world is an amazing place and every time I return from a trip, I feel such reverence for the natural world and such disdain for those who want to pave it in the name of modernization or turn it into a theme park under the guise of tourism.

Here’s to all the heroes I met on this trip: those who are promoting sustainable tourism and working hard to save the natural treasures; to the ones doing small acts each day to reduce plastic and educate youth and reform outdated practices and bring wonder and joy to those who come to visit.

Thank you, Madagascar.

(OMG the little feet…I can’t even!)

Morocco, Part IV: an ancient curse, the dark side of Marrakech and the magic of street food

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[Morocco, Part I] [Morocco, Part II] [Morocco, Part III]

When we last left our intrepid traveller, she had been deposited at the busy end of the Fna, desperately in need of the loo (and a shower), an hour late and quite eager to meet her co-adventurer back at the riad…

Truth be told, I navigate better by gut than by map, so after a quick pit stop at the nearest café (NB: it is a fact that in any ladies’ room on the planet, it will always be occupied by someone having a vivid argument on her mobile, and the intensity of the conversation will be in direct proportion to how badly you need to pee), I trust my instincts (and cheat with Google Maps only once) to guide me back to the riad. Briefly revelling in my triumph, I arrive with barely half an hour to spare before C appears. Our reunions are always nice, as was the tagine dinner and Fna-gazing from the rooftop. It’s a different world up there; the din of the music and the drums and the crowds are near-silent within the walls of the riad.

Explorers-ho!

The mission for the weekend is to explore the souks and The Medina. I hadn’t ventured too far my first afternoon, and by the next morning I was excited to see the sights. With company, I figured, it wouldn’t be as daunting. I must report that the bazaars I’ve been to in India and in Istanbul pale in comparison to the ferocity with which the souks here in Marrakech do their souking. Hundreds, non, milliers, of stalls fan out from the Jemaa el Fna square in semi-organised lanes, lined floor to ceiling with wares, some sections carry general themes: cuir, olives, cuivre, vêtements, textiles, lampes, épices… The rest of the stalls, piled high with pottery and scarves and shoes and crafts and rugs and…I’m confident that one could find literally anything here.

By this point we’ve spent some time haggling for trinkets, and I’m beginning to get my sea legs back – in French! We’ve spent an hour or more in a gorgeous lamp shop, genially negotiating, finding C the one thing (actually, three) he’s wanted to get here: some filigreed copper lamps, and I’ve even chosen one for myself as well. We’re feeling accomplished but hungry, maybe a little haggle-weary, and on our way back through the chaos we run into the super-nice Puerto Rican couple from my jaunt in the desert. We’ve decided to have lunch together in a café overlooking the square, so we’re en route when we’re accosted by a very insistent woman, babbling in nursery rhymes, keen on hennaing me. She’s not as keen on C’s brush off and looks him squarely in the eye as she invokes the ancient and potent Berber curse. Every hair in C’s scrappy beard stands on end as she says, finger pointed in warning: Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy wuzzy wasn’t very fuzzy, was he? It’s clearly lunchtime.

Jemaa el Fna at lunchtime on a Friday, just before the afternoon Adhan

The Adhan, or call to prayer, sounds haunting from above – 3 minarets broadcast the muzzeins’ calls in unison, lunchtime din mixes with the prayers.

Running amok…

After depositing our souk winnings and a siesta, we embark on the next check-box for the day: completion of C’s RunStreak. You see, he’s an ultramarathoner in recovery from a frustrating injury so he’s challenged himself to a 20 minute (and >1.6 km) run each day for the month. I’m an incidental beneficiary (??) of the challenge. And so we set out this afternoon, not entirely sure how it will play out – even with all the European influnce here it is still a very conservative Muslim country. I’ve covered myself head to toe; but still, in running tights and a long-sleeved/hooded sweatshirt, I feel a bit exposed in this place where the sight of a woman’s legs sans frock is near blasphemy. We run through the Fna square and across to Koutubia mosque, with its orange trees ripe for picking. It goes okay, I haven’t gotten berated or stoned, so I’m feeling a little better about the next day’s plan for an even longer run in these streets.

Street food for dinner in the largest open-air cafeteria on the planet

If rigid ideology is what divides us, food is what unites. Jemaa el Fna is a mélange of sound, smoke and smell; an open-air cafeteria for all the senses. There are the food hawkers of course, but also the drumming and other instruments (the gimbri or the oud, Moroccan versions of the lute), the insistent clapping of the two-sided Moroccan maracas; there’s a resonance of flutes in the air…not to mention the snake charmers and storytellers and singers, all swirling their words, in Arabic and Tamazight and French, with the smoke from the cooking fires. The smell is something I’ll always remember as warm and spicy and rustic and elemental.

In the evening, the stalls go up: dozens of pop up restaurants selling variations on a theme, organised into rows of similar foodstuffs. One row is snails, one row soups, one row meats, one row kebabs, one row desserts. We choose a stall on faith – they’re numbered, and representatives from each stall go out into the crowd to entice hungry-looking wide-eyed lingerers to their tables. It’s an amazing visual, a well-choreographed nightly ritual.

Our first experiment is snails. We’re served a small bowl of the critters from a giant steaming pot, and use toothpicks to pluck them out. They’re a thinner, more peppery version of escargot, sans the butter and garlic. So they’re nothing like escargot at all really, but I’m glad to have tried them.

Bread is a staple at every meal. And mint tea. I order olives and Moroccan salad (something like ceviche without the fish); C orders an entire lamb’s head (because, of course you do) and has way more food than he can possibly eat, so we share an entire plate of meat, plus some of the bread, with the sweet, chatty family sitting next to us; they’re clearly grateful that we’ve shared our dinner.

Dessert is a thick tea; a ginger, anise and cinnamony mix of spices (there does not seem to be any actual tea in the tea), served from massive copper urns, accompanied by dense, crumbly cake that is something of a cross between halvah and gingerbread. I think I could stand here at this stall for an hour, sipping this luxurious tea and watching the Fna go by. Grand total for dinner: 150 dirhams; approx. 15€.

We’re quite good at getting lost together, C and I, but usually it’s in a forest or on a mountain, not on the narrow alleyways of an ancient city. We’d stumbled around The Medina that morning, deeper into the souk streets, finding the old slave market that now houses olives and textiles; exploring old caravanserais (fondouqs), old lodging houses for traders on the caravan routes – the bottom floors wide open to accommodate camels, the rooms on the upper floors for travellers. Only 140 of these fondouqs remain in The Medina; they’re gorgeous old buildings now home to artisan workshops.

We wandered until we found ourselves near the tannery, where, before we knew it, we were being handed Berber gas masks (sprigs of mint) against the smell, and guided into the lieu. There are two tanneries, we’re told: the Arabic one, where they use machines and chemicals to cure the hides (typically cow), and the Berber one, where they use natural ingredients (including “pigeon poo”) to prepare the leather (the more durable camel, and also goat). It’s more fascinating than stinky, and for that fact alone I’m grateful it’s not 10° warmer. And I’m not surprised as we’re then guided into a shop to haggle for more goods (I score a pair of handmade leather shoes) before meandering back out into the maze.

It’s here that we become frustratingly lost and ask directions – we’re aware of the scams so we ask to be pointed the way back. This was the diciest moment of the trip: the guy who initially pointed out the directions began to lead; the streets grew quieter and we were lead into an empty courtyard where he pointed to a minaret (not the one we were looking for, I realised) and demanded money to lead us to it. We said no (again) and began to walk back the way we came. Just then, 3 or 4 of his friends appear from out of nowhere. There are no other people around and we are surrounded by these guys in a really narrow alley, demanding to be paid for their, erm, services. I don’t think I had time to be afraid because when I saw how angry C was, the don’t fuck with me look in his eyes said all the guys needed to know. They backed off just moments before it could have come to ugly blows.

Crisis averted, Google maps gets us to more familiar territory, and we let the adrenaline die down over a fantastic rooftop lunch. It’s times like this I think of that Charles Schulz quote, “In life, it’s not where you go, it’s who you travel with.” We toast, with mint tea, to this very moment in time.

The afternoon is more wandering, more haggling (argan oil and scarves), more running – this time through the magnificent Cyberparc Arsat Moulay Abdessalam, its manicured gardens and meandering paths a striking contrast to the din of the souks. And finally, after the long day, dinner redux at Jemaa el Fna.

Because food is half the adventure of travel, we first try soup from one place (the ubiquitous harira, which I’ll try to replicate when I get home), then seek out some other vittles for the main course. “Number 55 is stinky food,” we’re told by a guy representing a virtually empty stall. We choose number 55, of course, as it is packed with many more locals than tourists – always a good sign.

The lamb tangia is cooked in earthen pots over an open fire. We’re seated at a long table with sheets of paper for mats, Berber bread plunked down in the middle, Berber whiskey (mint tea) served alongside the meal. Next to us sits a family of 3, excitedly awaiting their dinner. It is served with fanfare, and we watch in equal anticipation as the waiter unfurls the dish. The meal, barely enough for two, is placed in front of the family. But before they begin, we are offered the first taste with a warm gesture.

We’re enjoying the food (C’s got the tangia; mine is a really good roast veggie plate), revelling in the gregariousness and absurd hospitality of the cooks/waiters, welcoming the kindness of strangers. We share bread, we share our meals, we eat in the din of the night amongst thousands of strangers. This is nice, I think…What is it that we’re doing wrong in the West, when welcoming foreigners is discouraged, as if we’d lose something of ourselves if we were to gain new perspective or new friends. It pains me that if the tables were on this soil, this scene wouldn’t likely have played out.

 

We wake the next morning and it’s already time to go. A quick riad brekkie and C is off to the races, almost literally, as the Marrakech Marathon has snarled traffic and, ironically, he has to walk part-way to the airport. I get a few hours more, the first part of which I spend drinking mint tea in a sunny café in the quiet of the morning Fna, watching the day (and the vendors) unpack. I had wanted to see the photography museum, but after our ordeal in that general vicinity yesterday I decide I’d better not get lost with just hours before my flight. Instead, I set a goal of getting the most for the last dirhams in my pocket and venture back into the souks. And I feel pretty good, parting with my last 100 dirham bill and some coins in exchange for some hand-painted bowls. I feel an even more an accomplished haggler when the shopkeeper, laughing, calls me a Berber. For that I take back a one-dirham coin (roughly 10 cents) from the pile I’d placed in his hand and say, jokingly, pour un souvenir, and leave the shop with both of us still laughing.

The ride to the airport was uneventful, and it was on the walk to the car that I realised we were lost the day before mere blocks from the riad. Oh, the labyrinthine rues of Marrakech…The sounds and the smells and the sights of a whirlwind week in Morocco fill my head as I check in and board my flight.

One last stop: Germany. A quick stopover in Munich on a lovely day gives me just enough time to see the Marienplatz glockenspiel do its thing from the 91-metre high Alter Peter. Then it’s Westward-ho into Boston’s late-January chill, where the fernweh takes hold and gets the wheels spinning for the next adventure.

In case you missed these: [Morocco, Part I] [Morocco, Part II] [Morocco, Part III] and read C’s account here. Cheers!

Exit: Saba; Enter: new year’s intentions

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Your last night in an endearing place is always a bit bittersweet. A frog jumped out of the tap when I turned it on to brush my teeth this evening, perfectly punctuating my last evening here on this surprising little island.

I spent my last night with new friends, and in the morning (which comes all too quickly) it’s time to leave and begin that multi-airport hopscotch.

As if on cue, the skies open up in a tropical downpour as I navigate my 17 kilo bag down the (what seemed like) 200 stairs from the heights of my cottage on Booby Hill. Soaking wet and laughing, I cross fingers that the stash of Saba Spice, a local liqueur made from aged rum and local spices (cinnamon, fennel, and others), survives the journey back to the States. I’m certain that the Elfin Forest imps are having fun at my expense…

On a solo trip it’s always a crapshoot, but usually an adventure, in how you spend your evenings. This trip, I fell asleep early a few nights, ventured down to a local restaurant where I took meals with dive boat friends and locals, and the last night, spent with divemasters from different pinpoints on the map talking fish and Western politics and equanimity, yoga, Buddhism and life, was perhaps the most enjoyable (Aside: it is usually at this juncture where I ask myself if I could chuck it all to work on an island somewhere and live the divemaster life). You share a lot with those you meet on a dive boat. Perhaps the fact that nobody looks good in a wetsuit gets people to let defenses down and open up a little more.

The people I met in Saba hailed mostly from Europe, some from the US. Divers, all, as this place is a hidden gem; more than earning her name as the Caribbean’s Unspoiled Queen. Languages on the boat ranged from English to Dutch to German to French to Spanish, making me more intent on improving a foreign tongue in the coming year, as I realise my creaky French now outshines my rusty Spanish. I can read a menu and perhaps have a scrappy conversation with a 7-year-old in 3 languages, yet only one with la bonne confiance, as they say.

benoit
peter & amy
stefen & heidi
luis

And so, after leaving somewhere that has made an impression, I reflect on not only the experiences had, but the things that got me there in the first place. The absurd airfares required for a Big Trip this Christmas; the yearning to get away from the routine back home; the random blip on the radar of this little island, nonexistent to me only 2 months ago yet something made me look into it… So it’s perhaps also appropriate at this juncture to think about what comes next.

I don’t make resolutions. As this wobbly world does its best to leave us wondering what crazy thing is coming next, and as things change along the way (as they are wont to do), I find that resolutions tend to leave one feeling more frustrated and unfulfilled than resolute come March or so. That’s not to say there aren’t things to be learnt and new adventures to be had and unfinished somethings that need finishing; because there are! And so I set intentions at this time of year, focused on feeling well and greeting the days with gratitude and welcoming new experiences into my universe; learning much along the way, finishing what’s been started and ultimately moving forward each day on strong legs and with a bright heart. There’s something about setting an intention that makes the path to achieving it more evident and perhaps the future result more tangible.

I write now, flying over the Atlantic Ocean on my northbound trajectory: a little bit browner than when I left and a little more grateful for the wonders of the natural world, having seen some quite amazing undersea stuff as well as rainforest flora and fauna. I met a few wonderful people and also encountered some characters; hiked in the rainforest, dodged raindrops and lived amongst what I’ve nicknamed the woodland creatures: Coquee frogs, snakes, lizards (the little Saba anole lizards and also giant iguanas), hummingbirds, crickets, grasshoppers, roosters and goats, all moving about on their own schedules, setting a rhythm to each day.

  

But when you return home, to a place where water isn’t a luxury, it makes you think about the scarcity of our natural resources. And it makes you grateful for the little things: the plentitude of bananas when you want them; hot water on demand; hair that doesn’t react so insanely to the humidity; dry stuff (in the rainforest, things only get “somewhat dry”). I ran into a woman on the trail up Mt. Scenery with unless tattooed on her shoulder. Unless, indeed.

So now, as we close the books on 2015, there are places to go and people to see and more potential adventures than there are days on the calendar. I wonder if it’s possible to do one new thing each day or maybe each week? There’s only one way to find out: try.

Happy New Year.