Antananarivo

I got to the airport in Johannesburg a bit early – I wanted to be processed and ready as soon as possible in order to alleviate the added stress of tardiness. It turned out, however, that the queues for international flights wouldn’t even open for another two hours, so I was stranded in the International Departures lounge with nothing to do but gaze at all the meat-laden products that every food stall offered. “Drizzled Ham Snack,” “Baked Offal of Steak Pie,” and such. Thank goodness I had my satchel full of seitan strips.

When the lines finally opened, a desk for Air Madagascar was nowhere to be found. Knowing that the airline is owned by South African Airways, I asked an attendant where I might check in, and she stared blankly. “Antanana-huh?” she said, looking at my ticket. Then, finally, after consulting two other people, she sent me down to the other end of the terminal – way, way, far away. And of course, when I got there, THEY told me to go back. “We don’t do that down here,” they said. “You need to be with South African.” After this went on like a tennis match of idiocy for about 20 minutes, I FINALLY noticed an Air Madagascar sign being put up.

“Thank CHRIST,” I said to the attendant at the desk, who, when he turned around, reeked strongly of booze. Great. “Hey, you can check in with the business class attendant here because I don’t know where the other workers are,” he told me. A good sign. Even better – after I got my boarding pass, the woman behind the counter said, “We board at 12:45, but listen for announcements because we don’t know where the plane is.” Huh? How the HELL can you not know where the plane is?

I immediately got visions of Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone, boarding a bus filled with chickens and pigs, careening into a darkness from which she would return stronger, yet scarred.

With this finally resolved, boarding pass in hand, I went to the Antananarivo departure gate. The flight switched gates twice, neither of which was announced. We’d just look up and see that the staff was packing up and relocating, and then follow.

The plane got there, and we boarded without incident.

Then I looked up – a foul American woman was throwing a tantrum because she had been seated in the back row. “Can you believe it? Oh for God’s sake, I HATE the back row! Why’d he put us here?!?” she was screaming at the flight attendant. “God damn it!” It went on for twenty minutes, reinforcing why everyone hates the spoiled, entitled Americans. Her husband just stood there and nodded as she continued her attack on the world because of the slight she’d been dealt by having to sit in the back.

I was seated next to a charming fellow from Zambia who talked about Sarah Palin and wondered why Americans are so stupid, after stressing to me that I wasn’t “like most Americans.”

“I can’t help you out there,” I told him. “I’ve been wondering why Americans are so stupid since Reagan was elected, and I was ten when that happened.”

We chatted for a long time and he made fun of me for being vegan, doing yoga, brushing my teeth after I had been served coffee. He told me that he had been in New York City on a bus once but had refused to get out because he was scared. “It’s just too big,” he said.

When he fell asleep for a bit, I took out my iPod and, ashamedly, listened to “Africa” by Toto, obscuring the contraption’s window from view lest anyone bust me doing something so completely jejune. It made the flight better, knowing that I was in Africa (or rather, at this point, over the Indian Ocean) doing something that was quite possibly going to change my life forever. I sat back and listened to the lines, “I know that I must do what’s right, sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti” and anticipated the clean, fresh, beautiful air that I would encounter when we landed in Madagascar.

Antananarivo was fast approaching, according to the announcement from the cockpit. I looked out the window but saw nothing. Apparently, it was cloudy. Then I noticed the smell – that smell you get on your clothes after you’ve been camping. Smoke. Foul, filthy smoke. I couldn’t see anything because the air was thick with it.

We disembarked and the air was so filthy that my nostrils immediately slammed shut and I got a headache. I could barely see the airport from the plane, and it was about 20 yards away. The pervasive smell of burning immediately removed all pleasant thoughts from my head – I pictured rain forests around being slashed and burned in order to put in rice paddies or gas stations or some other unpleasantries.

I had thought ahead and gotten my visa months in advance at the Madagascar Consulate in New York, so I thought getting through customs would be a snap. I got in line and was told “the computers are slow,” but when I looked behind the desk, the one officer they had working was pecking at the keyboard as if it were the first time he’d ever seen one. One key… stare… next. I would be in line for hours.

Then, that snotty American who had thrown the tantrum on the plane decided to take matters into her own hands, and gathered all of her group up to the front of the line and started pounding on the counter, making a display. “How long is this going to take?!?” she was screaming at the harried worker. Making yet another good impression for Americans the world over. She had managed to cut in front of a VERY large group of people and she actually got away with it.

My turn came and went without issue, and I collected my bag, making my way to the currency exchange counter. I had decided to change 400 US dollars for ariary since I had been told that Mastercard wouldn’t work in the country (which turned out to be a LIE) and I therefore wouldn’t have an ATM card to use (the major bank in Madagascar has just finally gotten with it and now accepts Mastercard – so those of you traveling there, do not despair – your cards will work). I gave the man 400 dollars, and he handed me a HUGE stack of money – 680,000 ariary to be exact. I threw them in my bag and locked it, before turning to see a swarm of taxi drivers hurtling toward me in an attempt to get my business. I pushed through them to the one who was holding a sign with my name on it, and scrambled toward him thankfully.

“Welcome to Madagascar,” he said – the only English he knew. I climbed into the brand new Toyota SUV he was driving, and we were off to Antananarivo, the sunset burning a bright red through the haze of filth and smoke that hung deathlike in the air.

To say that I was in culture shock is a deep understatement. I had never seen anything like this, not even in photographs, and I doubt my description of it will do it justice. Wooden shacks lined the streets through which we sped haphazardly, dodging chickens, children, cows, and dogs. There was little to no electricity, so fires burned openly in the street or, even more frighteningly, in “lanterns” made of 2-liter soda bottles that had been cut in half and had a candle placed inside. Kiosks sold huge chunks of meat that was hanging in the open, covered in flies. Sausages, pig heads, halves of cows – all just out there, exposed. “Hotelys” offered a variety of foodstuffs from baked products to soda and candy.

The streets were packed to overflowing with people walking in what appeared to be a random shuffle, though I assume they must all have been going somewhere. Women were balancing huge baskets on their heads.

The buildings behind the wooden shacks were all burnt out, wooden shutters covering whatever lay within. The edges of the windows were black from where smoke had exited. I wanted to take pictures, but something held me back – I couldn’t possibly sit in this car snapping photos of this poverty. I would have felt as if I were exploiting these people, taking these images away only to look at them and say, “no matter what, at least I don’t have it THAT bad.”

We passed through this shanty town onto a road that split fields of rice paddies. The banks on both sides were covered with clothes that were drying, and people in the rice paddies washing themselves. Cows commingled freely with the people, as did chickens and zebu and dogs and cats. That gave way to more shanties and people.

All the while, my head felt as if it were going to explode. The fumes and smoke that shot out of cars’ exhaust pipes created a noxious, thick stench that got worse each time a car accelerated. My heart sank each time I saw a black cloud puff out of a tailpipe sending carbon dioxide skyward.

We finally reached the Hotel Chalet des Roses, which was on the same street as the American Embassy. We had to pass a bomb checkpoint to get to the hotel. You know your country sucks when the Embassy in Madagascar is in danger of being bombed.

I checked in without hassle and went to my room, which was delightful. The bathroom had a bidet. I’ve never understood these things. If the French are so hyper about being clean, why don’t they start with their armpits and move on to their cracks once they’ve figured the top part out?

Since I had just the next day to myself before joining my group, I had set it aside as my personal private time to spend with the Aye-ayes at Tsimbazaza Zoo – I knew my chance to see them in the wild was almost nonexistent, and I refused to leave Madagascar without seeing one.

I decided to brave the world outside the safety of my hotel room and went down to the front desk. “Bon soir,” I said tentatively. “Je voudrais aller a Tsimbazaza demain et j’ai besoin d’un taxi a neuf heures.”

The clerk smiled – at least I was trying to speak French instead of screaming the words in English slowly as if that would help him understand them any better. “Neuf heures?” he said, holding up eight fingers. Wow. “Non, NEUF” I said, holding up nine. “Ah, neuf!” I don’t know if he was kidding, or retarded – but I can tell you this much – his breath smelled as if he had gargled with a mixture of coffee grounds and ass. “Ya, okay!” he gave me the thumbs up. Apparently, I had hired a cab for nine in the morning.

“Are you with G.A.P.?” an Australian accent said to me. I turned and saw a charming couple standing behind me who were reviewing the list of G.A.P. travelers (G.A.P. was the ‘adventure tour’ company I had booked my vaykay with, and I would be traveling with strangers). “Yes, I am,” I said, thankful to be speaking English. This couple, Bob and Di, had been on tour in Africa for several weeks and were winding their trip up with two weeks in Madagascar.

I talked to them for quite some time and then invited them to go to the zoo with me in the morning, letting them know that I THOUGHT I had a car coming, but we’d have to see. They were enthusiastic about seeing the Aye-ayes, so they said they’d accompany me to the zoo and we said goodnight.