Baobabs

Welcome to the wonderful world of baobabs!



Baobabs are the national tree of Madagascar. And they are awesome. They're sometimes called Monkey Bread Trees. They can grow up to 100 feet. They can store up to 32,000 gallons of water in their trunks, which is why they're perfect for the area around Morondova (where these pictures were taken) in the West of the country, where it rains for a few months of the year with relentless fury and then is dry the rest of the time.
























There are many legends of the Baobab, most centering on the idea that the baobab is somehow upside-down (ie, those are roots in the air, not branches). Some say that all the animals in the world were given trees, but the hyenna planted his upside-down. The more common one is that the tree grew so tall that it threatened God, and so he scooped it up and threw it back to earth headlong. Regardless of origin, they are the only fully protected trees in the country, and therefore the only ones that don't get cut down regularly.

Some things to notice, then, are the way they tower above the countryside, almost like mushroom clouds or those muppets with the long yellow necks and tufts of pink hair; the scale of them as compared to the nearby children and goats (who were playing some version of king of the hill on the stump); the intertwined or "kissing" baobabs; the color changes involved in sundown, as well as the moon; and, more generally, the fact that they are really cool.












If anyone's hankering for more, these 32 shots were culled from about 100...

To be Nosy

Hello Again.
Sorry for the long delay. The truth of it is that I've come back to America. The negotiations were tricky, involving lots of phone conversations and a short sojourn in Nairobi, but it all worked out, and I'm back in New York, eating regular food again and doing things that involve global economies. So far so good. If I haven't seen you yet, though, my apologies. Give me a call. We'll hang out.

Meanwhile, I have a trove of pictures yet to post, and, though it's perhaps disingenuous to maintain the blog of life in Africa, I want the images to exist and to be seen, so, without further ado, here's a post I wrote before leaving about my time on the island of Nosy Komba.
Enjoy.
Abe



The primary tourist destination in Madagascar is the small set of islands (Nosy in Malagasy) just north of the country, particularly Nosy Be (“Big Island”), whose capital, Hell-ville, lives up to its name in terms of being an overrun mess of tourism and its accoutrements. I decided, having had enough tourism in Diego, to go straight to a smaller island called Nosy Komba. Komba is also getting touristy, with new luxury hotels being built all the time, but most of them aren’t finished yet and the beaches are a bit more peaceful. Also, there are some quieter villages, one of which is Anjabe. While there is a massive, euro-charging hotel north of the five building village, I spoke with a woman whose daughter works for the hotel, and she agreed to put me up in an extra room.



This meant having a lovely beach to myself, as well as eating some of the best homemade Malagsy food I’d had yet, flavored with lots of fresh crab from fifty feet away. The two beach shots are from just in front of the house, whose terrace you can see in another shot. There’s also a town at the top of the island, which I visited by pirogue (while callousing the hell out of my hands), that has a ton of black lemurs. Totally cute. I gave one that had a baby a banana, but he didn’t share. The one problem with my residence was flies. Good lord!


If you turned on a light, you were immediately overwhelmed with tiny black bugs. It made eating very difficult (and even more gross). The photo of the candle is from my room there, and it shows how flies basically turned to tar around the wick and also swarmed around the base of the candle like heathens before the golden calf.