Mananara Nights

Ah Mananara! How can a town with no roads, no phones, and only a few thousand people, throw down so hard? I arrived in Mananara less than admirably, on a cargo boat (rice) named The Red Rose that left Isle Ste. Marie at 8 PM (I had just sat down to dinner when someone came by and told me it was indeed going to set sail) and arrived at Mananara at 7 AM the next morning. The ride was choppy (it’s a route that’s only traveled a couple months of the year due to nasty currents) and I was seated on the floor of the ship, in a corner, wedged between the side of the boat and a drum of gasoline. I’m not sure what was toughest to endure – the water splashing on top of me every few minutes, the smell of the gasoline, or the rumbling of the engine just beneath me – but suffice it to say, it was an adventure. And Mananara was lovely. It’s one of the few places where you can see Aye-ayes, a nocturnal lemur that uses its bizarrely long middle finger to scrape the meat out of coconuts and ants out of trees. (Being nocturnal, it was hard to capture on film, but hopefully this image give you some idea. It was really very strange looking, in the grotesque way that only a nocturnal animal can be.) Mananara was also a stop on Lola’s country-wide tour. This was certainly the event of the season in Mananara, and everyone whom I’d met in the town was there. That night, perhaps in Lola’s honor, was the opening of a new discoteque, Snack Bar Jim, and, being a good Mananarian, I decided to go. Although there are no pictures, thankfully, of the dancing, I bring up the event because it involved something quite curious. After an hour or so of dancing to strictly Malagasy music, I heard a familiar opening come over the speakers. Everyone in the bar recognized it too, and some dancers threw up their hands and, citing the dance’s difficulty, left the floor while others rushed to up to the front. The song, of course, was Boy George’s Karma Chameleon, to which there is, apparently, a very specific, swing-style dance. For the rest of my time there, my appearance at the club was mentioned by everyone I met, including my future fellow-traveler, “Charlie.”