Words Marlon Deckard
Photographs Michele & Marlon
All I have to go on is a hand-drawn map and a dodgy alias. Greg couldn’t pronounce the name of the surf spot he discovered, so he drew a cross on the map where he thought I might find it and labelled it
I named it Venom Bay, Greg shrugged, but I can’t be sure of the location. It was a long time ago. But the wave, man, the wave is just awesome. You can’t see it from the road because it’s behind a dune. Find the dune, and you’ll find the wave.
Two days later, sitting on a beach in Fort Dauphin, I unfold the map and try to orientate myself. Fort Dauphin is a small, peninsular outcrop of human reef at the south-easternmost corner of Madagascar. North of here, the coastline is all thrusting green foothills and tropical coves. To the west, along the southern coast of Madagascar, it is dry and spiked with cacti. This whole south coast is where the surf is.
In 1643, the French established a colony at this strategic corner of the world’s fourth biggest island. They built a modest fort and named it after their king’s heir, the Dauphin of France. While similar English settlements quickly succumbed to belligerent natives and tropical disease, the men of this particular French outpost went so far as to marry women from the local Antanosy tribe.
In 1672, a ship carrying fourteen orphaned French women arrived in Fort Dauphin. Needless to say, this caused quite a stir among the men in the settlement. Fourteen of them immediately divorced their Malagasy wives to marry the French women. Bad move.
On Christmas eve, 1672, Antanosy warriors attacked the settlement and killed the fourteen men who had divorced their Malagasy wives. They also slaughtered all but one of the French women before laying siege to the settlement. In 1674, a ship was sent to rescue the 30 surviving men and one woman.
The original fort is still around today: a decaying pile of mostly mortar perched on a cliff on the east side of the town. But my wife and I are not here to indulge in colonial history. We are in Fort Dauphin to scout for surf. One of us is taking this mission seriously. The other has gone shopping.
According to Greg’s map, Venom Bay is on the other side of the sweeping bay I now sit facing – a distance of about twenty kilometres. Under normal circumstances, getting there would be a matter of hailing a taxi or enquiring about public transport but this is Madagascar. More importantly, this is southern Madagascar. The north is where tourists throng to idyllic resorts in Nosy Bé and Ille Sainte-Marie, and taxis abound. But the south is still off the tourist radar. This both simplifies and complicates matters.
As I sit on this palm-fringed beach, contemplating my lack of options, Bob Marley sits down next to me. This is remarkable for several reasons, chief among them being the facts that I am completely sober, that Bob has been dead for 26 years, and that he is carrying a rather dilapidated surfboard.
Bonjour, says Bob.
Hello.
You be English?
South African.
Bob nods and I blink hard at the resemblance. Most Malagasy people are distinctly Asian in appearance because the first settlers of Madagascar were from Indonesia, not Africa. But Bob Marley – the real Bob Marley, I mean – had a black mother and a white father. This alone is a rare combination in Madagascar. As we chat, it dawns on me that the resemblance is not coincidental. My new friend – his real name is Alain – has cultivated the Bob Marley image meticulously. His speech is so spiced with Rasta slang as to be barely intelligible.
Praises, says Alain. I-and-I go surf now.
I also surf, I tell him. Can you show me where?
Alain looks at me for a moment. Then he leans in and says: Surf here today is Babylon. I-and-I know eyrie place. You want to see?
Sure. Where is this place?
Alain points to the other side of the bay, precisely where Greg’s map indicates Venom Bay would be found.
What is it called? I ask.
He pronounces a Malagasy word I am not at liberty to make known to the world.
Sounds strangely familiar, I chuckle. Let’s go.
So it is that I find myself sharing a Toyota Land Cruiser with Alain Marley, a driver, and two French surfers called Tony and Freddie. As we rattle and dodge through Fort Dauphin, I notice that the town is literally crawling with children. In Madagascar kids must outnumber adults at least five to one. They are everywhere; a few under adult supervision but the majority are quite feral. Ten year olds carry five year olds. Five year olds lead two year olds by the hand. Two year olds grab crawling babies by the ankles, preventing them from chasing scrawny chickens across the road.
Needless to say, the roads are deplorable. What little tarmac survives the rainy season serves only to give the potholes worse bite.
Our Land Cruiser sticks out like a manicured thumb. Most of the other cars on the road mainly ancient Citroens look like they are being held together with telephone wire, shoe glue and fervent prayer. Before our time in Madagascar is over, Michele and I will end up pushing one of our taxis to get it through a bank of sand in front of our hotel. (Yes, I still left a tip.)
Just beyond the outskirts of town, we are waved to a detour by a man in a reflective jerkin and a hard hat. The air is hazy with dust. This is the ilmenite mine to the west of Fort Dauphin. Ilmenite is a black powder that, ironically, produces white pigment for expensive paints and plastics. The mine belongs to the Rio Tinto Group, whose headquarters are in London and Australia, but most of the managers and engineers are South African.
The mine is the only reason why there is a direct international flight between Johannesburg and Fort Dauphin. It is also the reason why most of the hotels in town – and some of the best restaurants – are permanently reserved for the exclusive use of foreigners who are contractually precluded from mingling with the local population.
The try to keep us as separate as possible from the locals, a miner from Pretoria told us at the airport, to keep the cultural and economic impact down to a bare minimum.
I don’t think he realised the true implications of that statement. I certainly didn’t at the time.
They are building a new harbour for the mine. When it is complete, Fort Dauphin will be the biggest exporter of ilmenite in the world. The bay that I had started from contains the old harbour, to the north of Fort Dauphin, and is littered with the wrecks of six or seven ships. These did not meet their salty demise because of storms or treacherous topography. They were scuppered to defraud insurers.
Babylon, says Alain as we drive around the a giant rock formation. I just nod. I sense that Alain is wary of my nationality. The longer I spend in Fort Dauphin, the more embarrassed I am to be associated with the ubiquitous miners and their booming egos. All they ever do is complain about this amazing place. While they destroy it.
Just two or three kilometres more and we pass through a village on the edge of a beautiful lake. The people here are subsistence fishermen. Their reed traps punctuate the water’s edge.
The driver veers back in the direction of the ocean now. The road becomes a trail, then a barely discernible track through the long grass. I am looking out for a dune, but is just a continual sandy ridge. Then I see it. A hump.
We leap out of the car, race to the top of the hump and let out a collective whoop. I have literally dreamt of this scene: a vast, deserted beach. In the corner made by a small, protruding bluff, a perfect, hollow left-breaking wave forms and peels, again and again. Right in front of us, an A-frame breaks left and right. It is a rare phenomenon. A series of perfection.
And we are the only four people in the water.
We surf until we can’t anymore. We surf until the current overpowers our arms. I have been to Bali, Reunion and both coasts of North America and it doesn’t get better than this. It just doesn’t.
A week later, I give Alain one of my surfboards. It’s not that he is too poor to buy his own. There are simply no surfboards for sale in Fort Dauphin. Part of me also wants to vindicate South Africans in his eyes. He lifts his arms into the air and throws his head back. We hug.
Alain still sends me text messages. The last one read: One love. Venom very perfect yesterday. And I smile as I think of him riding my board at my favourite spot in the world.
For more information about surf trips to Fort Dauphin go to www.truebluetravel.co.za, email info@truebluetravel.co.zaor phone 021 462 7706 or 031 573 2171. True Blue Surf Travel
