The Power of Words

I’d perhaps almost forgotten just how powerful words can be, but I had a reminder at the end of last month. I was invited by a good friend to give a talk in the fine market town of Hadleigh in Suffolk. The subject was the Crocodile Caves expeditions to Madagascar. It is quite a while since I revisited those experiences, and this time thought I’d read a couple of snippets from LEMURS OF THE LOST WORLD. One was light-hearted, capturing the Malagasy capacity of games and laughter, while the second was the sting in the tail. Reading it out loud brought back some really nasty feelings of an agonising 36 hours, and I was surprised just how powerfully the emotions affected me. I’ve heard it said that people don’t remember pain – maybe that’s true, unless you write about it.

You’ll be pleased to discover that the scorpion didn’t kill me although the sensation in my stung finger STILL isn’t normal. I also survived the experience of the reading and, more importantly, so did my audience. What made them squirm more, in fact, was a story contributed by Claire Verlander who was in the assembled company; she described an unfortunate ring-tailed lemur being swallowed by a boa constrictor. The saddest part was that the victim was a mother, and her infant was left screaming in the treetops.

This weekend I have returned to editing A GLIMPSE OF ETERNAL SNOWS. My new editor at Bradt is helping me to tighten the original writing a bit – reducing word-count is almost always A GOOD THING but this too is a painful process. A local GP colleague who is also an author, Mary Selby (aka Joanna Bell) describes the process as like scooping teeth out with a spoon. It really hurts. So far I’ve managed to cut 6500 words from what was a 141,000 word book, but I suspect more must go. The problem is that this memoir covers our years in Nepal and this was the time when I’ve experienced the very best as well as the very lowest points in my life. The challenge as an author though is to entertain my readers. Glimpse is a joyous book and what I’m working towards is making it even more uplifting than the original read.

Mad Reunion

There has just been a significant anniversary of the CROCODILE CAVES OF MADAGASCAR EXPEDITION and t'other weekend six of the original team gathered. Our expedition yielded a clutch of academic papers, a fine spread in BBC Wildlife magazine, a book - Lemurs of the Lost World, and most important of all we also achieved proper protection of the crucial Ankarana Reserve in the north of the island. So what did we talk about most?
Food... We reminisced about the awfulness of rice and bean stew dinners; we spoke of breakfasts of left-over cold boiled rice - topped with sugar or if we were feeling particularly decadent - tutti-fruitti jam, and we recalled the glorious moment (after the dried bananas had run out) when Sally Crook arrived at base camp with Mars chocolate bars for all.

Anne reminded me too of the Puke-bird. I didn't immediately recall the species but it called an increasingly frenetic caw-caw-caw-Caw-CAW and climaxed - unappetisingly - in a sound resembling someone retching. Then story reminded me that we'd been compiling lists of all the animals of the reserve and recorded seven of the fourteen members of the endemic Vangidae family. Rather like Darwin’s finches, each Vanga species has a bill of different size and shape, designed for different feeding strategies. They also seemed to have very different calls. One wolf-whistled. Our puke-bird was a striking black and white bird, the size of a raven, with a long curved slender beak which gave it its common name, the Sicklebilled Vanga. They flew around in disorganised rowdy flocks, often egged on by an attendant Drongo. When at their most excited they broke into paroxysms of caw-caw-caws, followed by a disgusting noise like someone vomiting. If we imitated their call, they became all the more excited and every member of the flock of twenty or so Sicklebills would all start to Caw-caw- caw ... puke! It wasn’t only us that wound them up. One morning a rabble of Sicklebills landed in a tree close to a troop of resting lemurs and an amazing shouting match broke out. The lemurs became terribly agitated and all started grunting frantically and penduluming their tails. The Sicklebills stayed put, so the lemurs let out a shrill volley of ear-piercing shrieks which upset the Sicklebills enough to make them fly away.

Sharing time with people on expeditions, you see people at their best and at their worst (retching for example). Small thoughtfulnesses are long-remembered. Lasting friendships form. So, comfortable in each others company even after years apart, we spent a wonderfully no-airs-or-graces relaxed and enjoyable weekend together. It was a good reunion; well I thought so anyway. It was only sad that the team remain so intrepid that others were away in interesting places. Take a look at Paul's website for example http://www.paul-d-stewart.co.uk/

Taking a break from clinic work in the primary schol at Morondava