Madagascar’s
Because the “patron” is out, we are allowed in to take a brief look. About 60 young women in lightgreen aprons and hair nets are sitting at long tables in the warehouse, grading, sorting and bundling sundried black vanilla pods into small packets. The bundles — worth tens of thousands of dollars — are placed in large boxes in the hall.
Max is visibly nervous and ushers us quickly out of the door. “The people are afraid,” he says.
It is clear that something shady is going on behind those pink walls. It is January now, and the last harvest was in June. If this mass of vanilla hasn’t been processed, prepared and sold right after harvest time, does it mean that this is stolen vanilla? Or has the boss illegally “vacuumed” the pods for speculation?
Vacuum cleaners, stolen spice
Dominique Rakotoson, the passionate old-school trader, speaks with anger about the “vanilla speculators” who hoard large amounts of unripe, often stolen, beans in vacuum-packs to preserve the spice.
“They put the beans into Chinese plastic bags and then just suck the air with a household vacuum cleaner,” Dominique says, raising his voice. “Then these guys wait for prices to rise.”
The “vacuuming” and speculation with unripe vanilla is harmful for the Sava region’s reputation as producer of the world’s highestquality “bourbon” vanilla — praised for its sweetness and intense taste. The practice of vacuum-packaging green beans delivers a product with a lower vanillin content or even a mouldy flavour.
With limited government control and high levels of corruption, Dominique finds “the climate here just perfect for speculators”. And, he says, it is not only the little criminals in Sava who earn “vola mafana [fast money]” in trade. There is a much bigger crime behind the speculation. “Just go to Antalaha,” he says, “and you’ll see for yourself.”
White city, dark secret
With its palm-lined avenues, white beaches and grand houses overlooking the Indian Ocean, Antalaha — the second “vanilla city” in the Sava region — has a colonial feel to it. Big vanilla business giants like Henri Fraise and Ramandriabe have been here seemingly forever. The longestablished exporters are fighting for market share with the influx of new competition, especially from China, India and Pakistan.
The city is clean, posh and very quiet. Yet we have been strongly cautioned not to stay here overnight. The beautiful and sunny facade of the city is hiding a dark secret: it is known to be the “heart of the rosewood trade”.
Three-quarters of Madagascar’s remaining rainforests are located in this region, in three national parks: Marojejy, Macolline and Masoala. These forests are being plundered for threatened “bola bola” hardwoods: palisander, ebony and rosewood.
The trees are illegally exported to China and made into traditional “hongmu” furniture, an age-old style that is becoming increasingly popular with the growing Chinese middle class.
A recent report estimates that illegal rosewood operators have collectively made more than $1-billion over the past 20 years. To launder these enormous sums of dirty money from environmental crime, the so-called “timber barons” invested heavily in vanilla — buying up pods at any rate, further distorting prices.
Trader Dominique recounts that “cash wasn’t counted in value any longer, but in weight — in stashes of 500kg bills. They bought at any price. Crazy. So the price went up and up, they didn’t care. The farmers profited. The local speculators profited. They raised the prices, every day a bit more.”
When we ask Solfi, the young president of Ambohimanarina, a small village next to Marojejy National Park, about the rosewood trade, he abruptly gets up from his chair, his eyes suddenly no longer friendly.
“That does not happen here anymore,” he says — a reaction similar to those of so many others who uncomfortably smirk and look away or silently shake their heads.
A villager, who asked for anonymity, paints a different picture when he explains that the rosewood trade is one of the best-known “secrets” of the region: “Everyone in the village knows, but since everyone benefits, nobody says anything.”
Big trucks are frequently heard starting at about three o’clock in the morning. “What other reason than rosewood would there be for people For farmers, vanilla cultivation has in recent years finally paid off.
“Last year was very good for me. All my children can go to school now. And if I’m not robbed, it will be even better,” says Zafihavama.
He proudly shows us his house, a tiny wooden hut with one bed. The modest space displays his new prosperity: five shiny plastic chairs, two glass cabinets and a computer with a substantial DVD collection — almost all the Kung Fu movies that are so popular in Sambava.
But the trade flourishes at the expense of one of the world’s most precious rainforests. Madagascar’s unique, geographically isolated location makes the island home to a large number of indigenous animal and plant species that don’t exist elsewhere.
According to Dasy Ibrahim, programme manager of CARE, an international NGO that is training farmers in climate change mitigation, this is a toxic combination.
Laundering large amounts of illegal “hardwood money” combined with high unemployment and poverty is causing the situation in the vanilla sector to spiral out of control.
He says, with a bitter expression: “The trade here — it is worse than cocaine.”