Madagascar Summary

 Notices in French about the plague outbreak.

The only one I saw in English.

Thanks Patrick!

Here are my random observations, reflections and facts about Madagascar. Some are from what I learned from Patrick and other local people and guides, some I sourced from the internet and the rest is general observations.

The diversity of the island is seen everywhere. Madagascar is home to more than 25 million people with a wide array of faiths and customs. The Malagasy are descendents of settlers from Borneo and East Africa and draw their cultural heritage from Southeast Asia, India, Africa, and the Middle East.

More than 20 ethnic groups coexist on the island. Their common language, also called Malagasy, is most closely related to a language spoken in southeast Borneo. The other major language and the one tourists use is French from the colonial days. A majority of the population—80 percent of which is estimated to live below the poverty line—depends on subsistence farming for survival.

Located off the east coast of Africa, Madagascar is the world’s fifth largest island; at 144 million acres, it’s almost the size of Texas. Madagascar’s climate is tropical along the coast, temperate inland, and arid in the south. The island harbors lush rain forests, tropical dry forests, plateaus and deserts. Its more than 3,000 miles of coastline and over 250 islands are home to some of the world’s largest coral reef systems and most extensive mangrove areas in the Western Indian Ocean.

A dizzying range of plants and animals make their home on the island. More than 11,000 endemic plant species, including seven species of baobab tree, share the island with a vast variety of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and others. From 1999 to 2010, scientists discovered 615 new species in Madagascar, including 41 mammals and 61 reptiles.

People visit different countries for different reasons, some for history, culture, natural diversity, or geographical features. Most people come to Madagascar to see the lemurs and chameleons and see the natural beauty of the island. We saw lots of lemurs and chameleons and found that the vast majority of them are now in national parks. The natural beauty of the country in the form of its rainforests and forests are being cut down at an alarming rate to make room for the waves of people. The population is growing by leaps and bounds and the people need places to live and cleared land on which to grow their food. Although it is discouraged the people practise slash and burn agriculture. The island is covered in many hills and highlands and many have been reshaped by people into terraces on which to grow crops. From the air it is easy to see how the land is used and how there are few forested areas left.

Poverty in the country is not as ugly as poverty in the city. Patrick told us that Tana used to have and should have a population of about 500000 but in recent years it has grown to three million. There is no space for all the people and many are living in slums in flood plains where they shouldn't build and they get flooded out every wet season. As in much of the developing world the people are coming from the countryside feeling that there is more opportunity for them in the big city. But there are few opportunities for uneducated, unskilled people. As a result they live in shanty areas or on the street. In Madagascar when someone goes to the city they are supposed to send money back to their village to help others, but when they fail they are ashamed and cannot go home as they would lose face.

The nickname of Antananarivo is Tana which is just so much easier to say for everyone. Many of Madagascar's cities and towns start with A 'which means in the place where' as most names tell something of the place. In the place of the big rock, or in the place of the great river.

There are 18 different tribes of people on the island. 55% of the people practise the traditional religion, 40% are Christian, and about 5% are Muslims. The people look more like people from the east rather than Africa. They are small in stature and brown as opposed the African black. There is very little obesity and people tend to be very fit and thin from all the hard labour they do in the fields or fishing.

Patrick spoke to us at length about the population. He said that talking about sex or birth control is taboo. He said some of the rural uneducated poor don't realize that sex and birth are related, they believe that babies are gifts from God. Therefore, birth control is tampering with God's will. Many of the rural areas of Madagascar have no electricity, so there is no TV, or internet or video games to keep people occupied. So when it gets dark there is nothing to do. As he said all they have is a mattress. The people believe that their wealth is visible in the number of children they have. People judge others by the size of their family. Patrick is 31 and has one child and is content with that, but he has been told, even by his own family, that he and his wife are selfish for only having one. But, in reality a new baby is another mouth to feed that is unproductive for a number of years. So with the population of Madagascar already at 40% below the age of 15, you can see the pressure this puts on the country in terms of resources and space. It comes back to the biggest problem the world faces, simply too many people.

Child labour is still an issue here and we saw kids working in brick factories, shops and fields. Technically it is illegal but the government knows that if families cannot afford to send their kids to school (which they legally have to do) they have to do something, so they are put to work wherever they can. It is a really catch 22.

The people of the Bara tribe in the south are polygamous and supposedly related somehow to the Maasai. They have very different views of women's place in their society than the other tribes. They say that the men in other tribes are weak because they treat their women more equally. The Bara people are also rustlers. The cattle of the island is zebu. Shipping the cattle by truck from the south to Antananarivo is expensive and most cattle are still driven by 'cowboys' 800 km from the south to the city. This is part of their culture and it is normal to see zebu in small herds regularly walking along the roads and through the valleys on the way to market. They sell for about 300 Euros per head. This makes them an irresistible target. Patrick says that up to 40% of cattle in the country are stolen. For some reason they do not practise branding. He told us that the government built a large meat processing plant in the south which they had to close, at least temporarily, because the people were upset because it gave the rustlers a place to sell the stolen cattle and they would be processed and disappear. There are two major zebu markets and they are crazy chaotic venues where cattle are bought and sold. Many rural people still judge their wealth by the number of Zebu they have. It is their form of money in the bank. Patrick told us the city of Tana uses about 800 zebus a day, (which is not a lot for 3 million people) so there is a never ending procession into the markets.

The lady in the house in the village where we had lunch with the family (on Nov 12), told us that her village was robbed by rustlers the previous month and they took all the village zebu plus their geese and chickens. Patrick says that the cowboys put there lives in danger because if they resist the rustlers will shoot them. So most cowboys simply run away when rustlers arrive.

He also told us most Malagasy don't eat eggs, they prefer to let them hatch and eat the chickens. Chickens are more valuable than eggs. We saw zebu, chickens, ducks and geese everywhere. Very few sheep or goats and no donkeys, which is strange because this is often the beast of burden in the third world. There are some cats and lots of dogs, but they have the homogeneous look of the generic mongrel.

The houses in the highlands and the drier areas tend to be made of locally made mud bricks, whereas the houses in the wetter areas and along the coast tend to be up on stilts and made of wood and plant leaves. We saw many local businesses making bricks from clay along the road. The brick houses don't seem to have any internal structure and supports and I saw many that have fallen apart. Some are two or three stories tall and tend to have small footprints and very small rooms inside. There is virtually no glass in any windows or screening, except for more affluent houses in the cities. They use wooden shutters, which make the houses dark and don't protect them from mosquitoes and malaria.

The schools I saw are very basic with few materials in the way of furniture or supplies. There are so many children and they can't afford to build more schools or hire the teachers, so the kids go in shifts. Many children do not go to school at all because their parents cannot afford to pay the school fees. They keep them at home to work on the farms. The country has a 50% illiterate rate and only 1.7% of students go to university.

The average Malagasy person eats between 400grams to 1 kg of rice per day. As one of our local guides said: a mountain of rice per day. They eat it as soup, boiled or fried and mixed with meat or vegetables. The price of rice keeps going up and the poor people are having trouble affording it and have to supplement it with cassava and corn. Apparently they are exporting good rice, which drives up local prices, and importing inferior rice from China.

60% of houses have no water. The average person in the rural areas walks 6km average per day to get water. Toilets are often just outside, especially in the rural areas and we saw men relieving themselves everywhere. When we were driving there were no places that Patrick felt we would be comfortable using, so we always had bushy bushy stops and judging by the paper laying around, so did many other people.

They majority of households cook using charcoal, very few have gas. Making charcoal is a whole other labour intensive local industry that requires burning down trees. Burning charcoal adds to the pollution, global warming and burning it inside adds to respiratory health problems.

There are no stop lights anywhere. I saw a few stop signs, but no traffic lights, even in Tana. Traffic is chaotic and congested but somehow they get around. Sometimes you will see a policeman with a whistle trying to organize the flow.

Everything is done by manual labour – sawing logs, plowing. I saw very few machines for anything. Grass cutting at the hotels is done by people squatting and using machetes. Even road construction is mainly manual. We saw a few people trying to repair potholes with shovels and dirt or hot asphalt that was heated right on the side of the road. I only once saw a steamroller. Mixing of cement is done in buckets.

There are vendors everywhere selling everything and anything. I saw one man sitting by the road selling used dirty and rusty car jacks... where did he get them? Did he steal them, are they from the wreckers? Everything is recycled, nothing goes to waste, except waste which is everywhere. They don't seem to have pride in their environment and there is litter, especially plastic and glass everywhere. I never saw any government run garbage collection.

There are many stalls selling used clothing imported from other countries. This is much cheaper for the local people and explains why so many people are wearing western clothing and with brand names and sports teams logos that they probably know nothing about. I saw a little boy wearing a lacrosse t-shirt. Patrick even said that he buys all his clothes and shoes used, as they are still good, much cheaper and will last a couple of years.

Madagascar has problems with invasive species too. Europeans and Asians have brought many different plants here and some have caused problems just like we have at home.

Malagasy currency is the Ariary. One Canadian dollar is worth 2525 Ariary. The largest note they have is 20000, but we saw very few of those. We always got 10000 Ariary notes ($4), which made for a very fat wallet when you took out 300000 or 400000 from the ATM. Gas is about the same price as back home, around one to one and a half dollars, but of course the income here is much less, so it is very expensive for locals. I watched Henry fill up the van one day and pay 350000 Ariary for the fuel. They do have coins, but they cost more to produce than they are worth. Graham managed to get a set from one of the guides. I got a 50 Ariary coin because it has baobab trees on the back.

There are many modes of transportation in the rural areas, but the main one is still by foot, carrying whatever you need on your head. People are often barefoot or in flip flops. There are a few bicycles and some scooters but not many. In the towns or surrounding areas there are whole fleets of rickshaws, some pulled by men and others peddled by bicycle, to move people around. In larger towns they also have tuk tuks, the three wheeled little vehicle famous in Asia. To move goods they use carts pushed and pulled by men, or larger carts pulled by zebu. In the cities, there is all of that plus taxi cars and some private cars. As there is no public transport they also have hundreds of privately owned taxi 'brousses' which are vans that they cram with people and take over designated routes. Add to that mix a huge number and variety of beaten up old trucks and you have some idea of the chaos of the traffic.

The National Roads (NR) are the Malagasy highways, but really they are just country roads with no shoulders and plenty of potholes. They are never two laned and some are dirt. They have no official speed limit and there is only posted limits when there is an especially dangerous section. So driving anywhere is daunting as you have to dodge people, animals, motorcycles, trucks, carts and potholes as you negotiate the roads.

This whole trip for the last three weeks, not counting the west coast portion, was about 2500 kms. But there were hours and hours of driving because the roads are terrible and very slow. The average speed was probably about 30 km/hr.

When I arrived in Antananarivo the air pollution in the city was evident. Vehicles have no emission controls and people are burning charcoal. The poverty is in your face. The poor people are filthy and dressed in rags. They look at you with hands out and expect help. Many women use their kids as a means to try to soften you up. It is very hard to see and there is nothing you can do to help.

All through the countryside that we drove through we saw small fires as the people continue to slash and burn the forests. Most of the countryside has be stripped of old growth forests and the only trees that remain are short, young, stubby ones or bushes. They burn the undergrowth in order to generate new grasses for their zebu, or to make room for new crop land. When we saw the extent of the forests and the biodiversity within it made us realize what Madagascar must have looked like before the hordes of people. There is simply no forest left in much of the country for wildlife and the iconic lemurs. Birds are mostly absent as well as they are hunted and eaten.

I was talking to Patrick one day and asked him about if he'd like to travel and although he said yes he would love to visit England, he said it would be difficult and very expensive. Plus he has started a family and has a three year old daughter, Patricia, to take care of. He told me the life expectancy here is 56, so at 31 he has to think of the future. There is no social safety net here so he has to prepare. Because he has a good job with Intrepid he made enough money to built a house so that if he dies his family will have a roof and not have to live on the street. He hired people to build it, but there is no credit, so they build as much as you can pay and then they wait until you have more money.

He talked about a disease called bilharzia which is caused by worms in stagnant water that invade your body and cause illness. They can also invade the brain which is especially dangerous. Many people have it from being in infected water while washing clothes or bathing or working in rice paddies. It can be treated by strong anitbiotics and Patrick has received such treatment where he had to spend a few days in hospital because the drugs make you really dizzy.

This country is cursed by many different diseases and very little medical care. They have malaria, yellow fever, typhoid and seasonally they have the plague. Yes the plague. There are two varieties, one spread by fleas, bubonic, and the other like a cold, pneumonic. Every year during the rainy season there is an outbreak of plague. This year there was an World Health Organization alert as the outbreak started sooner than normal and seemed to be spreading. Reportedly there was an infected person on a local bus and that spread it further and faster than normal. I became aware of it through a notification by Intrepid. Denise and I waited to see what would happen but WHO did not ban travel and Intrepid did not cancel the trips. Therefore if I cancelled I'd lose my money. I figured that if Intrepid didn't cancel they must have felt it was safe. So I went. But all of us were aware and slightly apprehensive. Intrepid said they would not go to really congested areas like markets where there could possibly be infected people. All of this added an unwanted sub plot to the trip. We were all a little on edge. Some of us wondered if it would become more of an outbreak as we travelled and if it would create problems for us when we went to leave Madagascar.

When I arrived at my first hotel there was a group of aids workers staying here who were dealing with the outbreak. This was a funny mix of alarming and reassuring. I talked to several of them and the feeling was that it was under control and the trip would be safe.

We got stopped once by health officials as we were driving in one of the national parks in the south and we had to get off and have our temperatures checked by an ear thermometer and we all passed. But that was the only time. When we went to airport there were advisory signs but they were all in French. Thankfully nothing came of it. I just checked now on the internet and apparently the WHO and the Madagascar Ministry of Health have confirmed that there have been 195 deaths. They are still very concerned, but remember that is out of a population of 25 million. The countries surrounding Madagascar have been on alert as no one wants it to get out off the island. But, in my opinion health checks and security were pretty lax on our departure. On arrival at Johannesburg we stood in front of an electronic heat sensor to see if we have a fever. That was it.

He talked about the lack of freedom of expression in Madagascar. He said he loves to talk to tourists because he can freely air his opinions and ideas, whereas he cannot talk to Malagasy people about the same things, especially his political views, without fear of reprisals. He said people sometimes disappear if they speak against the government or the president. So talking to people is dangerous because you don't know who you are talking to and who they know or who they will tell.

I also talked to the young woman who was the manager of Les Lemurien on Isle Aux Nottes. She is educated in tourism but would really like to get out of the country. She is disgusted and frustrated with the government which she says is very corrupt. She says that the government is granted millions of dollars for road improvements by foreign countries, but they build inferior roads for less money, pocket the rest and the roads only last a couple of years. She does not feel that the country is headed in a positive or progressive direction and would like to immigrate to Australia. But even getting a visa has to be done in Mauritius and requires an expensive flight to get there. She does not make enough to afford that flight or the visa or the flight to Australia. She feels trapped with no future.

The people we saw at the hotels work very long hours and most seemed to be there from early in the morning until last in the evening. They worked both shifts. But, they all felt lucky to have jobs in the tourist industry which pays better and they don't have to do the back breaking labour of the farmers and the labourers.

We saw no sign of any recognizable western style fast food restaurants.

And finally, the Malagasy cannot differentiate between tourists, they don't know if we are Canadian, Australian, British, French, etc., so they simply call us 'vazaha' which means foreigner. We had that called to us or at us numerous times by people, particularly children, as we drove by in our van.

Again, if you made it this far, thanks for reading and I welcome your thoughts.