Antipode – Epilogue

Antipode is a true account of my experiences while doing research in Madagascar from 1993 – 1999; it was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2001. You can start at the beginning with the Introduction, move into all of the chapters, and finish here, with the Epilogue.

Leaving Madagascar in 1999, I didn’t know when I might return. Our friends wanted to know if it might be next year, or the year after that? I couldn’t say. I had scheduled our departure such that by the end of April, on my 30^th birthday, I would be back home. This was my birthday present to myself. By the end of that trip, though, I had finally fallen in love with Madagascar, and I didn’t feel the predicted urgency to leave.

Then Air Mad decided not to send the plane that flew between Maroantsetra and Tana, a flight for which we had had tickets for months. The plane simply didn’t arrive. Our international flight out of Tana was only 72 hours later. In the ensuing 24 hour dash to get out of Maroantsetra, we tried hiring a boat, a taxi-brousse, and even tried to charter a plane. A fast boat, we had heard, existed in town, captained by the mayor’s son, and perhaps he would take us. Heloise, the chauffer, took us to the weird outskirts of town where we had never been, dense with forest and broken down shacks. Here the son of the mayor lived on a small estate. He was a corpulent man surrounded by fawning women. He agreed to take us to Tamatave on his boat, for the astounding price of 5,000,000 FMG, almost $1,000. I didn’t have that kind of money with me. On the way back to town on the muddy rutted road, deep forest tangling in from both sides, we ran into one of the guides, who jumped into the Rover with us as we tore through town, trying to figure out what to do next. Perhaps we could hire a taxi-brousse.

There were no taxi-brousses equipped to make the long trip south, and besides, many of the roads were impassable at that time of year. We couldn’t count on reaching Tana in three days, even if we had found a vehicle capable of the trip.

Two vazaha who were staying at the new hotel had also been put out by Air ...