Antipode – Chapter 19

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. Here is where we started—with the Introduction. And here are all of the chapters posted thus far.

Pascal took us out to Nosy Mangabe in the little motor boat, and Lebon and Fortune, on shore, smiled widely as they recognized me coming in. Two years earlier, Rosalie had told us that she thought they were terrified of Jessica and me. I wondered at their apparent pleasure now, and thought these may have been fear grins, of the sort known in other primates.

If they were, it was warranted. The island had gone to seed, a sour, wildly sprouting seed which left its foul odor on all it came in contact with, and a lingering smell of helplessness. The physical structures of camp were basically unchanged—three tent platforms still prominent, the conservation agents’ small cabin, the dank, cement-floored lab, the tiny structure housing the toilets—but all was in chaos. In 1997, one of the toilets never worked, but the other one usually did, albeit with a lot of leakage from the tank. There was always an inch or two of water on the floor of the dark room where spiders went to die. The PVC pipe which ran from the waterfall to the wooden shower, and from the shower to the toilets, had been wobbly, but secure. When we arrived this year, though, someone had walked into the pipe and knocked it off its connection—no adhesive had been used in its construction. Now a waterfall’s force of water was flooding camp, constantly, and reattaching it seemed impossible with the huge amount of water now flowing out the pipe. From the channels the water had formed, it seemed the PVC had been broken for at least several days. The noise was deafening. There were no shower or toilets as a result. The pit toilet was even less appealing this year, for the boards on which you squatted were rotting, lending a very precarious air to the endeavor.

Furthermore, the little pool in which I had been attacked by the lemur, the pool closest to camp, where we got our drinking water and, just downstream, brushed our teeth and washed our faces, had been polluted. It was being used to clean fish, the unwanted parts left ...