It’s just over ninety miles from Tana to Andasibe National Park on RN2, the highway to Toamasina, the main port on the east coast. If the weather is clear and the traffic light, you can reach Andasibe in two hours; our outbound and return trips both took three hours, an average of thirty miles per hour. Trucks hauling fuel and containers wheezed up the hills; every few miles, we came across one stranded by the roadside, its driver sprawled across the open engine, or the trailer precariously jacked up, teetering on the edge of a cliff. Almost all freight to the capital and highlands is transported on this road. The single-line railroad the French built along the route could carry heavy freight, but the truck owners’ cartel has put pressure on the politicians to withhold funding for maintenance, and the track has fallen into disrepair. We saw only one train.
From Tana’s so-called ring road, the surreally named Boulevard de Tokyo (built with Japanese aid), RN2 rises through the hills. It’s a similar landscape to the Imerina region west of the city, with most land devoted to rice cultivation. The paddies stretch out over the bottom lands and the lower slopes of hills where farmers build terraces; water flows from springs into the terraces and then to the lower paddies through channels or pipes, where flow is controlled by sluice gates. In the fields, wood-fired brick kilns stand like sentries, and large stacks of rough red-mud bricks line the roadside; in several places, the granite outcrops have been gouged to quarry stone for road and home construction.
In 1817, the Merina king Radama I led an army of twenty-five thousand along this route to subdue the Betsimasraka and capture Toamasina. The Betsimasraka (the “many inseparables”) was a loose confederation of clans that ruled a large stretch of the eastern seaboard and had long-established trading relations with Europeans. The kings periodically processed through their domains to remind the kinglets of who lived in the largest rova, who had the troops and cannon, and who had the support of the British Empire. The royals and other andriana were carried up and down the hills on sedan chairs by teams of bearers. Depending on the royal weight, there were two or four bearers up front and at the back. It was an exhausting but prestigious job carting around the royals and, later, French colonial officials and missionaries. According to Luke, those at the front of the sedan needed different strengths from those at the back, so they developed muscular specialties. You can almost hear the negotiation. “OK, I’ll go back right on Monsieur, le colonel. My rate is ten francs a kilometer on flat stretches, fifteen up hills, and three meals a day. An extra charge if he’s more than eighty kilograms.”
As RN2 descends from the highland escarpment, the hills on either side are clear cut or covered with second-growth eucalyptus forest. A hundred years ago, old-growth forest extended over much of the highlands and northeast, but most has been destroyed by slash-and-burn agriculture and the cutting of timber for charcoal, firewood, and home construction; perhaps as much as 90 percent of the island’s original forest has been lost. The French planted the fast-growing eucalyptus to provide fuel for the railroad and steam engines used on plantations, and today these trees are the main source of charcoal. It is estimated that 95 percent of Malagasy households, including those in urban areas, use firewood or charcoal for cooking and heating. Along RN2, the trees are cut down to their stumps, and the wood is slowly burned in earth ovens to produce charcoal. Sacks are piled by the roadside; the local price is about $2, making it worth the trip to transport charcoal to Tana, where it fetches $6 a sack. The eucalyptus stumps soon sprout again, but it is a stubby new growth. Any wildlife that once lived in these forests has fled or been hunted. Only in the protected areas of the national parks do the eucalyptus trees and native varieties grow high, providing shelter and food for wildlife.
Today, mining poses a deeper threat to the environment. For many years, foreign investors shied away from Madagascar, deterred by political instability, corruption, and poor infrastructure. What was the point in building a mine or factory if the politicians were going to nationalize it or grab the profits? Or if there were no roads, reliable power supply, and skilled workforce? Recently, multinational mining companies have started to exploit the vast and largely untapped resources.
Since 2005, the British-Australian company Rio Tinto has invested almost $1 billion in an operation near Fort Dauphin (Taolagnaro) on the south coast to mine ilmenite, which is used to make titanium dioxide, the white pigment commonly found in paint, toothpaste, and cosmetics. Global demand has been growing, especially in China and India, and the Rio Tinto mine—20 percent owned by the government—was expected to give a major boost to the economy and provide jobs in one of the poorest regions of the country. From the start, the project was mired in controversy. No agricultural land was available to compensate those who gave up land for the mine, so the company paid them in cash. Construction created a temporary employment boom, but when production began in 2009, few jobs were available. Critics claim only 10 percent of employees are locals; Rio Tinto says it’s 70 percent. Whatever the real number is, mining transformed the local economy. Hotels sold out for two years, ruining the local tourist business. Sex workers spread STDs. And people who had been living on less than $1 a day suddenly had more money than they would previously have seen in a year. Some used it to set up small businesses, but most failed. “People were buying cars, TVs, generators, drinking,” one construction worker recalled. “It was like a party every day.”
The party ended violently in January 2013 when several hundred protesters armed with spears and slingshots blocked the mine access road, complaining about high unemployment, corruption, and inadequate compensation for landowners. For a time, the company’s chief executive and 178 staff were trapped inside the compound. Eventually, troops using tear gas dispersed the crowd. The protests made Rio Tinto wary of future investment; it shelved plans for a second, and larger, mine in nearby St. Luce.1
Madagascar’s other major mining operation is off RN2 near Moramanga, the site of the massacre of prisoners during the 1947 rebellion. The Ambatovy nickel and cobalt mine, built by a Canadian-Japanese-Korean consortium at a cost of $8 billion, claims to be the largest-ever foreign investment in the country and one of the largest lateritic nickel mines in the world. The ore is strip-mined and sent to a preparation plant; the nickel and cobalt ore slurry is then piped underground for 136 miles to a processing plant and refinery south of Toamasina, where it is separated and loaded onto ships.
Critics say the government granted the mining license with minimal study of its potential impact. Rather than employing and training local people, the company brought in a foreign workforce (mostly South Asian and Filipino) to build the mine and pipeline. The influx of foreign workers and money transformed Moramanga, a regional market center, into a boomtown, its streets lined with import shops, hotels, restaurants, and karaoke bars. Rents soared, forcing local people to move out of town. Crime and prostitution levels increased, with teachers reporting that most teenage girls had dropped out of school. There was more money to be made working the streets than working the rice paddies. That went for the men as well as the women. The streets of Moramanga are crowded with brightly painted pousse-pousse bicycle rickshaws. The drivers, who rent their machines by the day, must hustle hard to make money.
The tourism industry, while less destructive than mining, is changing the country in other ways. There are two types of tourists. One heads for the beaches and tropical islands; there are direct flights from Paris to Nosy Be (Big Island), the largest and most developed resort area off the northwest coast. The tourists never see the urban sprawl and poverty of Tana, or the rural central highlands. The second type comes to see the lemurs and other wildlife in the national parks. They stay at tastefully designed lodges with manicured gardens where diesel generators provide backup power, the showers always have hot water, the juice is freshly squeezed, and the buffet offers a mix of European and Malagasy dishes. Andasibe National Park has half a dozen lodges catering to foreign tourists who come in small parties (no large buses) and sit at dinner tables reserved for “Wild Madagascar” or “Jungle Adventure.” Then they go off to see the lemurs.
We did too, on an afternoon break from the workshop. You don’t have to venture too far into the jungle to find your photographic prey. At the Wakona Lodge, most lemurs live on a small island in a river (a thirty-second canoe paddle from the parking lot). They do not hide in trees but bound out of the undergrowth to greet you, climbing on your head or shoulders in the hopes you brought bananas. This is wildlife at its most accessible. Most of these lemurs were donated