Pink Boots and a Machete (6 page)

After several hours we arrived at a spot where fallen trees prevented the vehicle from going farther, so we jumped out and unloaded our gear. We began walking. Where to exactly I had no real clue, but I was happy to be on my way there.

For days on end we trekked, set up camp, ate, slept, broke down camp, and trekked some more. The area was in large part devoid of trees, and where trees did stand, there were barely enough leaves for shade. Steep cliffs rose in the distance above two rivers. Small streams flowed toward the Irodo River in the north, fracturing the plateau. Rice grew on the Irodo plain, flooded by a reservoir. In the valleys and well-watered areas
stood deciduous dry forest, with canopies 50 to 65 feet high. The area looked nothing like the dense jungle vegetation I had grown accustomed to. It was difficult to imagine that anything could survive in this dry and desolate environment.

The absence of trees made it difficult to escape the sun. That would have been tolerable if we were seeing animals along the way, but we had not set eyes on a single one. It wasn't just the lemurs we hadn't seen. I would have been content to spot a snake, or chameleon, or even one of those freaky long-necked weevils. I was beginning to think the island dubbed the “most biologically diverse place on the planet” was a sham. Was it too late? Had all the animals gone extinct already? I asked our ranger to show us where we were on the map. When pressed about where exactly he'd seen the sifakas, he admitted he'd never actually been there before. The man whose job was to protect this critically endangered animal's territory and on whom we were relying to take us to them
had never been there
.

We needed a Plan B.

Clearly, the guide was less than enthusiastic about the pilgrimage. He did not appreciate the outdoors the way you'd expect a park ranger to. Besides not liking to be there, he pointed out that the area was far too vast for one man to cover. Built like a runner, he did like to do one thing. This man could eat. As a result, we were running out of food two weeks earlier than expected. Where he might eat one bowl of rice in his town, he was eating five bowls of rice with us. The expedition was beginning to rip apart at the seams, and the only man who
could help us was hungry and in no mood to do so. His hunger pangs finally prevailed, however, and he agreed we'd take a detour to a village, a three-hour detour, as it turned out.

The village was small and rudimentary without any electricity or wells, only a few thatched houses and no sign of a market. We could hear thumping like a giant's footsteps from the huge mortar and pestles villagers use to remove the chaff from the rice. Clotheslines aired tattered yet sparkling white shirts. However lacking in financial means, the Malagasy are very conscious of cleanliness and appearance. Like human washing machines, women beat clothes against rocks by the rivers, often becoming prey for crocodiles. I have yet to figure out how they get muddied clothes to look so clean. I have tried beating my clothes, too, but all I seem to do is injure myself.

Dr. Handsome and I were immediately besieged by children. Their parents followed. Then the parents' parents showed up. Soon we were surrounded by no less than a hundred people, none of whom said a word, only stared at us the way zoogoers observe the gorillas mating. I stood there feeling much like an extraterrestrial, wondering whether they were expecting us to break into a song and dance and whether I dared dig to the bottom of my backpack for my last granola bar. The fact that I could say hello in their dialect probably gave them something to talk about all week. It made them laugh for minutes.

One of the little girls finally broke out of the circle and ran up to me. I stood very still. She reached out, touched my arm, and then ran back to the circle screaming as if she'd pressed her finger to a hot stove. The little girl next to her then ran
up and touched my hair. This prompted the rest of the kids to run forward and touch any exposed part of me and then run away howling with laughter. Turns out, this wasn't some strange Malagasy ritual. This would mark the first time this village had seen a white woman.

I was a hit. Or so I thought.

Malagasy in remote areas learn from their folktales that white-skinned
vazas,
or foreigners—also called
mpakafo,
meaning “heart-takers”—come to the island to kill them and eat their vital organs, especially those of women and children. I thought perhaps I should eat my granola bar and try to ease their fears.

I would learn that night that despite their poverty and fear of whites, there is no more generous people. We feasted on an authentic Malagasy meal, a
sakafo,
consisting of
ravitoto,
a pork stew with ground cassava leaves, and the ubiquitous rice and washed it all down with
ranon 'apango,
a watery drink made from burned rice. The latter is an acquired taste. Over the next weeks I would also learn that trekking was only part of the challenge of an expedition. Every visit to a village required a rum-soaked meeting with tribal elders that lasted through the night, occasionally for days. The rum, a home-brewed jungle concoction, burns the throat like jet fuel. So not only was I hiking under a scorching sun for hours on end in my lemur search, I was doing it sporting a king-size hangover.

From this village we added members to our expedition. Zaralahy was the village elder, with more than 20 grandchildren. A sweet, soft-spoken man weighing no more than 90
pounds, Zara seemed to have more energy than a Duracell bunny. He was also nimble and had a fantastic, toothless grin. He uttered the words we so needed to hear, “I know where those sifakas are,” and, with an elfish laugh, jumped up to gather a few belongings.

The villagers helped us gather food to take on our journey, and Zara offered his son Bendanalana's services as camp cook and guard, an offer we happily accepted. Trying to make up for lost time, we rented a zebu cart to help transport our gear and waved goodbye to a group of new folks who had trekked out to see the crazy white people. Seven hours into the forest and not a single animal later, I considered us crazy white people, too.

My feet were swollen, sore, and close to quitting. I jumped on the back of the zebu cart to give them a break but jumped quickly off; with no suspension, the ride was too hard on the rear end. While my body kept urging me to quit and call off this failing expedition, my stubborn Cuban genes told it to shut up. I asked Zara how far we were from our destination. He pointed to a small clearing on the map between two even smaller forest patches. “Antobiratsy,” he said. I looked up the meaning in the Malagasy dictionary. My heart sank. We were headed, if literal translation was to be believed, to “bad camp.”

Several hours later, Zara gestured to us to drop our packs, as we had finally arrived at the clearing. No sooner had our bags hit the ground, putting them at the same level as our morale, than little black faces peered through the branches and stared at us like the villagers a day before. Here at last were Perrier's sifakas!
Immediately, I whipped out my camera, before they could disappear into the forest. But they were in no hurry to go; the photo session went on so long, I actually started to get bored.

I couldn't understand it. How was it that there were no photographs of these animals, when they were quite clearly not camera shy? Amid beaming smiles around the campfire, I asked Zara how this marvelous place could have been given the name “bad camp.” He explained that villagers came here to mourn the death of a family member. It was considered a holy ground, and many local people believed their ancestors were there in the form of my beloved lemurs. This reincarnation had been the lemurs' saving grace, as locals deemed it
tavy,
or taboo, to hunt them. After experiencing generations of mourners, the lemurs in this spot had become habituated to human presence. “Bad camp” was the best camp ever. That night my spirits lifted, and I went in search of chameleons and mouse lemurs. Wouldn't you know it? They were there, too.

This wondrous, lemur-filled place, Antobiratsy in Analamera Special Reserve, is protected on paper but still encroached on by villagers, miners, and hunters. Over the next several months in Antobiratsy, passing miners would stop to show me gorgeous sapphires bunched in handkerchiefs from their pockets. Sapphire is my birthstone, and not so long ago I would have leaped to buy one. But having learned that those precious stones are the source of deforestation and the destruction of entire ecosystems, I would tell them to get lost.

Each day began at 5 a.m. with a bowl of mushy rice doused with sugar, which mimicked the texture and taste
of oatmeal, and coffee sifted through Bendanalana's sock. I convinced myself it was a new, unused sock. After breakfast we would split up into teams. Zara and I would follow one group of sifakas, while Dr. Handsome and the ranger went after another. The goal was to take down as much behavioral data as we could on the various groups. Since forests in that area are sparse and trees often completely devoid of foliage, lemurs have little protection. The area is so dry that the sifakas come down to the forest floor to drink from the river, exposing themselves to predators, especially fossas and birds of prey. Observing this behavior at the river was a scientific first. Each day the lemurs would travel extensively, making our days very long. Often we would not reach camp again until dusk, when the sifakas had finally settled into a sleep tree for the night. By the campfire we would sit and talk, the only other sound our forks scraping against metal plates as we ate to a serenade of frogs and geckos.

One night I suddenly felt a sharp pain on my right foot, and off the dim light of my headlamp I saw a small, black scorpion scuttling away. I let out a yelp. The ranger calmly placed a mug over the perpetrator and continued eating. Dr. Handsome helpfully pointed out that scorpions with small claws have the strongest punch, as they rely on the potency of their venom to kill their prey. I looked: It had small claws. The pain was unreal. My foot felt like it was being attacked with a jackhammer, and it was rapidly swelling. As sweat streamed off my forehead, I worried that I was going to lose consciousness. I remembered hearing somewhere that if you're stung by
a scorpion, you should crush it in a mortar and pestle and rub it into the wound. I wasn't sure if this was for medical purposes or revenge. All I could do was treat the bite with antiseptic cream from my first-aid kit, shove painkillers down my swollen throat, and pray for the best.

Despite my miraculously brief incapacitation, followed by an equally traumatic encounter with swarming wasps, the project was going well. We collected data documenting every morsel the sifakas ingested, their proximity to other group members, and the distance they traveled. We would sometimes spend hours looking up into the trees, a task that I found rather painful, given a neck injury I'd suffered as a cheerleader. I had opted not to have it surgically repaired and still had a bulging disk in my upper spine.

Other times these acrobatic monkeys put us to the test; they may have found it humorous to watch us struggle up the rocky terrain as we chased after them. The area was covered in
tsingy,
razor-sharp peaks of limestone, demanding slow and deliberate climbing or else suffer the bloody consequences. The sifakas, which made their way across the treetops, often paused to stare at us below as if to say, “What's taking you so long?”

Back at camp one day I discovered we were out of food. Not
almost
out of food…completely out of food. That we were
suddenly
out of food came as a shock (how could we have even run low without anyone noticing?) but it's been my experience that the Malagasy will not come to you with a problem until you have discovered it. It turns out that our park
ranger had been cooking up extra portions while the rest of us were out chasing lemurs. With more than a month to go, we were in trouble. The following morning we set off bright and early to trek ten hours back to Zara's village for more food. On the way we stopped in several other villages but came up with nothing more than six tomatoes, a few potatoes, and less than a kilo of rice. There was a drought and crops were sparse, leaving everyone worried about where the next meal was coming from.

Desperate, we asked the ranger if he would be willing to head back to Diego Suarez. Not surprisingly, he was thrilled. The rest of us would continue to starve until he returned. I gave him money, some tomatoes for the journey, and a note to be delivered to Dr. Patricia Wright, who was hours south of us. In addition to being my advisor and now lifelong friend, Pat is a housewife turned world-renowned lemur expert, creator of Madagascar's Ranomafana National Park, discoverer of two primate species, a diplomat, and a proud Jimi Hendrix fan. In fact, she had been on her way to a Hendrix concert when she ducked into a pet shop to escape rain and saw an owl monkey, a nocturnal South American primate that would become her passion. Having endured criticism for wearing miniskirts as a social worker and, after being a housewife, struggled to be accepted in the Amazon to study owl monkeys, she could not have been a more appropriate mentor for me. Pat in many ways is very much a cheerleader herself.

In my letter I explained to Pat the hardships we were encountering, as well as our successes in finding and follow
ing the lemurs. I also explained that besides food we needed men. Not just any men, but George and Loret, the two top Malagasy lemur capturers who worked with her. Our experience with Perrier's sifakas convinced us they were more than a mere subspecies of other sifakas. Their distinctive appearance, peculiar behavior, and geographic isolation led us to question the conventional wisdom that they were only a color variant of the species. With starvation setting in after weeks of an inadequate food supply and several days with no food at all, I wondered if we would ever find out.

Later that week our ranger returned with food, George, Loret, and a letter from Pat. In the note she wrote, “Congratulations on your success! Enjoy the sausages and cheese. They are a gift from Michael Apted!” I was stunned.
The
Michael Apted, director of
Gorillas in the Mist,
the movie that had inspired me to follow in the footsteps of Dian Fossey, had sent
me
sausages and cheese?! What a fateful turn of events, I thought. This would be the second time the film director had rescued me. The first time was back at home with the film that changed my life. This time, with sausages.