The river crossing at Andranondambo took forty-three minutes. We left the vehicle at 5:47 AM on a Tuesday in late February, and the water temperature was 16 degrees Celsius. Not cold enough to stop us. Cold enough to notice. Three miners stood on the opposite bank, waiting. Their names were Rakoto, Jean-Paul, and a younger man whose name I did not catch clearly the first time. They had been mining that section of the Vohemar riverbed for seventeen years collectively. Between them, they had sp...