Those damned people making charcoal!

barge carrying charcoal on the Pangalane 

We are currently in Madagascar and recently had an opportunity to venture into the more remote areas on the east coast of this huge island. Leaving the inland port in Toamasina, also known internationally by it's former french colonial name of Tamatave, we made our way down the top end of the 600km long canal Pangalane to spend a day with two communities that are being supported by the great work of Love'nCare.

After visiting the first village, where the children were scared of us, having not interacted with 'white' people before, we enjoyed a lunch of fresh sea and river fish cooked over a charcoal fire in the other village. It was early afternoon and we wanted to explore a little further, upon hearing the distant crashing waves of the Indian Ocean we made our way through the bush to see if we could glimpse a view for ourselves.

The journey by foot was hot, the paths were sandy and we crossed through a couple of streams as we made our way through the dense undergrowth. The trees that covered the land were low and windswept, the tallest were gum trees introduced from Australia probably by the British, but most were indigenous including guave of which we sampled a few of it's delicious fruits.

An Indian Ocean view

After around 30 minutes we came to a clearing in the path and were greeted by an awesome view of the ocean which stretched out to a reef which we could see more white horses breaking nearer the horizon beyond a lagoon where the local fishermen store their traditional pirogue, a dugout canoe made from huge trees.


After stopping to cool down we ventured back via a loop path the to the village, again the vegetation made it hard to see too far but then again we came to a wider open area where the signs of wood cutting were evident with stripped bark laying on the path and simple 300mm deep mud pits measuring about 4 meters x 2 meters where pieces of blackened burnt wood were still smoldering.

Maz cooling off

We hadn't seen a soul for near on an hour since leaving our host village so were somewhat surprised at the sight of two men, one older the other in his late teens or early twenties, a mother, and four children standing under the shade of a tall stand of trees. The men were hot and sweaty and what stood in front of them were a total of 9 large bags of fresh charcoal, each weighing perhaps 25kg.

These were simple folk wearing nothing but shorts, the mother in a sarong. We chatted with them for a couple of minutes, our local translators and us each taking turns to try to lift the pole on which each of the men had tied four of the bags. I couldn't lift the pole more than a few millimeters off of the sandy ground but as we turned to leave the men hosted them onto their shoulders and wondered off towards the village without a thought.

Our charcoal making friends

Although we managed to set off before the group our swift pace wasn't enough to keep us ahead and we were quickly overtaken by the men who almost ran with a bandy gait, the mother, who carried the other bag of charcoal on her head with the younger child on her hip and two of the younger children, not more than five years old walked alongside with the older child carrying a simple charcoal stove and the rest of their belongings, followed on just behind the men.

During our earlier light hearted conversations with the group, where smiles were a plenty and banter exchanged, we asked where they were taking the bags, 'to the river' the older man replied, himself not more than thirty years old, 'where they will be sold and collected by a large barge that will take them up the Pangalane into Toamasina'. We had seen such a barge sitting low in the water, heavy ladened with several hundred such bags of charcoal on our way down the canal that morning. 

As the conversation grew we asked how much would each one be sold to the man with the barge, oh 4,000 Ariary (around $1 or 80 pence) was the answer that came from a now glum looking face, the smile gone as he looked around at his band of travellers, wife, friend and his four kids all dressed in shorts, no shoes and now soot blackened sweaty bodies with the dog close at hand.

All this to say that for all their hard work, the finding, cutting, stripping of the right trees, the digging of the pits, lighting the fires, collecting, bagging and now delivering these 9 bags of charcoal would bring a total of $9 or just over £7 to this family of seven. One would imagine that all that work would take longer than a day, of course it would, but that is the meager income for all that hard work.

Many people have commented to me as we travel to Madagascar about the awful issues around the local Malagasy cutting down the indigenous forrest and turning it into charcoal which has been brought to the attention of the western world often turning simple folk like those we met into people who should be ashamed of their actions, wanting them to be taught a lesson or at least made to feel less human by their awful crimes. 

But what to do in a nation, which has recently topped the table of poorest nation in the world and has a population of over 25 million, who are spread out on the fourth largest island in the world, this is no paradise love island bliss, this country is larger than France and twice as big as the UK, where over 80% of the population have no access to electricity. Cyclone, drought, the plague are some of the many issues that have already bought misery to these wonderful people and cooking food or keeping warm at night is as natural a human action as it comes. To do that these people have no other means of boiling a kettle for a simple meal of rice and soup, so without any other option using charcoal is required undertake this basic need.

Our flight over this island bought me a better understanding of the issues around charcoal production with vast swaths of forest that capture your eye for kilometer upon kilometer, home to the lemurs that have made this island famous, little villages dotted around on hill tops with red soiled paths leading to rivers or to larger roads. The devastation isn't on the huge scale that I was led to believe and I'm not condoning their actions, but these people aren't criminals and behind every western news story are real people such as those we met in the middle of the rural Panglane, us on an afternoon stroll, them just trying to eek out a meager living to put food in their bellies, remembering the fish we had just eaten for our lunch was cooked over a charcoal fire!