Day 1: Met at Aisha’s in M. for corasol juice, pineapple, and left-over spice (birthday) cake at 6 this morning. Bought some last minute supplies, was tracked down by R, my village counterpart, at the departure dock and talked through funding details for the V. community center’s new outhouse and corrugated tin roof grant money from the US Ambassador’s Self Help Fund. In his funding request, R included a last-minute claim for 10 ducks and 12 chickens (or some such numbers). I had no advance knowledge that the library and meeting space needed ducks and chickens, but I trust R knows what he is doing and so gave my blessing to the request—which he didn’t need but had asked for anyway.

The boat left M around 7:30 and it took about 2 hours to reach A, where I got out and trudged through the mud to a PC friend’s village to drop off a goodie bag of water filter screws, mail from M, and a birthday card I had made for her. Then we hustled through her village back to the river bank and the boat headed for Mar., where we met the two WCS animateurs and our own field team of Malagasy porters, cooks, and tree specialists, for the 11-day transect ahead of us.

Started off hiking to the riverbank where we planned to catch a ‘lakana’ (dugout canoe) to take us and our gear across to the opposite bank. I trudged through the riverbank mud (thoroughly trampled by zebu every day, so that it is really a thick sludge of mud, cow poop, and river water), wearing jelly shoes borrowed from S. That’s what all the Gasy (the word the Malagasy use for themselves) wear. Hiking boots are useless in mud up to your ankles or shins! After losing the jelly sandals twice in the suction of the mud, I opted to go barefoot and fared much better. The feeling of muck squeezing through your toes is actually kind of fun.

When we reached the riverbank where the canoe should have been, it was gone! We sat around on the bank for a while with our gear, then the porters started taking off their pants and shorts. Some of them had underwear; others had shirts just long enough to cover the necessary. Packs held up above their heads, one by one, they waded into the river. Phil took out his old Canon for a photo of this train of bare-bottomed and US/UK flag print underwear sporting Gasy men, wading across the river with our supplies.

At the deepest point, the water was up to their waists and the current was manageable, so Phil, A (woman ‘animateur’ with WCS, also Malagasy), and I proceeded to hike up our shorts and step into the cold, flowing water, our packs raised so as not to trail in the dark river behind us. As we waded carefully across to the opposite bank, I thought about the zebu we saw being herded across the river to Mar. by a man in a dugout canoe. All that was visible of the huge, humpbacked beasts, above the water’s surface, were their horned faces. I had never seen cattle swim before, especially these massive African ones, but they did amazingly well—sticking together, a little team of faces above the water, wet horns glistening and noses spouting water with each breath. They made me think of our Pooka [Russian spaniel] swimming along side our canoe in New Hampshire, making the same little breathing noises through her wet nose, eyes fixed determinedly on the water in front of her.

As soon as we were across, we proceeded to cut through rice fields to reach a village nestled at the foot of the mountains near our first transect point. The village was home to one of our team members, and we were invited to stop and rest at his home for a few minutes. Banana leaves were laid out on his little veranda and a long line of rice spread, steaming, on the leaves, a few stray pieces of boiled chicken on top. We all made spoons out of strips of banana leaf. The fresh rice tasted heavenly after the hike. Very kind of him and his wife to feed the team as we passed through. The Betsimisaraka are such wonderful people!

A few hours of hiking up and down mountainsides, the men in front hacking paths out of the vegetation with their machetes, and we reached a site to camp. As we started to put up our tents, it started to rain—hard! Bags and tents got soaked. It was a damp night of sliding downhill in my sleep because the spot where we had found a water source and made camp was on a mountain slope.

Dinner, also to be breakfast, was rice with a sauce of dried fish and the occasional lentil swimming in the salty fishy broth. It was good to have something hot to fill my stomach, though. Am learning to tolerate the taste of sun-dried fish—kind of like fish-jerky strips on bones in the sauce. I daresay I will like it by day 12 of this transect mission.