What's inside this crater in Madagascar?

January 26, 2024 4:13 PM

What's inside this crater in Madagascar? Vox went to insane lengths to discover who lived in a remote village in a remote extinct volcano in Madagascar they discovered on Google Earth and satellite images.
posted by peacay (15 comments total)

That was an interesting watch, thanks. I hope those folks get to keep their seemingly happy life mostly unspoiled, even if their area gets more developed and gets better roads.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:28 PM on January 26 [3 favorites]

I thought for sure it was going to end with Vox paying for some road work, but I guess that's a lot. I can't even imagine living that far away from everything, but it's an incredible result of that long migration.
posted by rhizome at 5:48 PM on January 26 [1 favorite]

It was a fun video, and the people contacted for their science research were so interesting to listen to. This is a wonderful place. I hope these folks can keep their way of life as unspoiled as possible while still being able to develop the road needed to sustain their economy and have access to health care and education. The lemon groves are beautiful, as is the undeveloped area around their very tidy and picturesque village. It sounds like that the Vox contact was done in a positive way and too invasive. The elderly gentleman filmed seemed to be happy to talk to the interviewer. With luck, their next contact with the outside world will be positive rather than some asshole TikTok influencer.
Being the nosey parker I am, I immediately went to google to investigate more. The impression I got from the video was that the village had only farmed a small area immediately surrounding. But if you trace the up various streams, there are many, many small individual fields and plots that show fairly extensive cultivation from rim to rim. It's a small village with a fairly good-sized footprint. There is some suggestion of two-track roads--whether or not the primary transport is some sort of 4wd vehicle or ox cart, it's hard to tell.
Unfortunately, after thinking about it a little more, I realized the video, while fun, left me with a sort of icky feeling--civilized white man uses vast technologic know-how to discover a primitive tribe nobody had ever even heard of. I'll bet if they'd started with a teacher in the Epp Ambohimamory, which is the Ambohimamory elementary school, someone could have given them the gen on the place. Starting from Ambohimamory, it looks like a 6.5-mile hike as the crow flies, with an elevation change from 800m to 1500m. Basically, they're neighbors.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:24 PM on January 26 [4 favorites]

I was glad when, after the first attempt for the local film crew to reach the village failed, this didn't turn into, "white guy hops on a plane and does it himself."
posted by thecjm at 8:33 PM on January 26 [3 favorites]

Hey welcome back, peacay!
posted by dhruva at 9:05 PM on January 26 [5 favorites]

[this is good]
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:40 PM on January 26 [1 favorite]

The post title reminds me of my childhood adventure, “What’s inside the thorn bushes behind the overgrown barn?” Spoiler alert: it’s a dirty mattress and a stack of wet Playboys!
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:31 PM on January 26 [3 favorites]

Is there a reason he didn’t use Facebook? I found what looks like a dozen Facebook groups in the area. Would have started by messaging all of the members.
posted by iamck at 12:55 AM on January 27 [1 favorite]

I'm curious about the aspect of how land usage is organised - this area is obviously quite remote, but were there any prior claims to the land? Did they have to negotiate with anyone to settle there? If so, whom? Or if not, what do the neighbours think about their settlement?

Coming from a country where every square foot is used and registered, with records of ownership often going back at least a thousand years, I'd like to understand how things work in places where there's still unused space.
posted by automatronic at 8:39 AM on January 27 [2 favorites]

I usually just can't with video, I prefer to read - but this sucked me in. How neat! This was really interesting. Thanks so much for posting.
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 3:01 PM on January 27

This was interesting, but to me it seemed like an odd decision to focus so much on the narrator guy. Visually, they had lots of nice footage and well-edited visuals, yet spent a lot of time with him at his desk talking to the camera. Story-wise, most of the stuff about the narrator was how he didn't really know how to search beyond Google and social media. I understand it was a way of creating a narrative of discovery, but a lot of the other parts, like the team in Madagascar, the villagers themselves, and the experts interviewed were just much more interesting.
posted by snofoam at 3:29 AM on January 28 [2 favorites]

I'd say that this ball came right down the middle of the plate, squarely between "insufferable white guys mansplaining stuff" and "truly unique and fascinating documentary coverage of a new topic".

In the vein of the actual scientist interviews that some of you all appreciated, I found parts of the villager interviews in the video extras piece interesting, especially the farmer who starts at 7m16s and talks about the early days of shaping the land to fit their purposes.
posted by intermod at 1:10 PM on January 28 [2 favorites]

That was wonderful and fascinating.


bibliodyssey4ever!
posted by gwint at 7:47 PM on January 28 [1 favorite]

I hope the team bought a car full of citrus on their way out.
posted by Sublimity at 6:48 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

I'm curious about the aspect of how land usage is organised - this area is obviously quite remote, but were there any prior claims to the land? Did they have to negotiate with anyone to settle there? If so, whom? Or if not, what do the neighbours think about their settlement?

I wanted to know this as well. The land was obviously used for grazing/ranching previously, from whenever people changed the landcover from forest to grassland so at least some decades.

That, and I wanted to know more about the internal organization of the settlement, since it is clearly not an ad-hoc affair. The houses are quite uniform, and the citrus plantation was laid out in rigid order. (And, they are clearly able to keep grazing stock out of their fields.)
posted by Dip Flash at 7:02 PM on January 31 [2 favorites]