Madagascar. Part III

January 6–14, 2012

The main cities are connected by a fairly decent paved two-lane highway. Once you turn off of it, of course, it’s all dirt roads. Cars are only rented out with drivers for some reason.

Mahajanga (Majunga)

Rickshaw pullers sleep in their carts in all kinds of weather, tired after working or drowsy from the heat.

They also work in all kinds of weather.

Although public transportation exists here, rickshaws are more convenient. People come from the villages to earn extra money.

Mahajanga is the second largest city in Madagascar.

It used to be beautiful, probably.

It has a baobab tree that’s over two thousand years old.

And a tradition, just as old, of dumping trash on the ocean shore.

Ankazomborona

Let’s take a look at how a rural town lives.

A woman at the market takes out fruit from a basket and arranges it on her counter.

There’s sludge everywhere.

A typical back yard in a private rural home.

A drunk passed out in front of a video parlor.

Life’s not too bad here.

Antananarivo (Tana)

The city used to be charming and cozy while the French were here.

If you look at it from a distance, it seems all right even now.

But if you get closer, it becomes apparent that it’s less and less cozy these days.

All the waste goes into the rivers.

If there’s no river nearby, the capital’s residents don’t despair—they simply throw their trash out into the street.

Trash dumpsters and bins only exist up on the hill, in the more or less respectable neighborhood where there are still some charming old buildings left.

There are also five or so trash cans up on the hill. In terms of their capacity, they’re more like the ashtrays you’d find in front of an office building.

For the most part, everyone lives somewhat like this:

Car traffic lights don’t work.

The Chinese installed some fancy pedestrian traffic lights in one area. They’re not being used either.

An old French prawn.

An old phone booth.

A drinking fountain.

A fire alarm box. None of this stuff actually works, naturally.

The Malagasy level of skill and craftsmanship is well illustrated by this monument. Something about AIDS. Even I could probably do a better job if I was commissioned to make a sculpture.

All the utility poles are decked out with warnings of some kind.

Most houses either have no electricity at all or only get power intermittently. For this reason, everyone cooks on coals. For this reason, one window in every apartment always looks like a chimney.

There are CDs hanging from power lines everywhere. Attempts to decipher the meaning of this phenomenon proved unsuccessful.

Local residents.

Mysterious graffiti.

Stalingrad

Toliara

Rickshaws are banned in the capital. But not in any of the other cities. Toliara is a southern city, it’s even hotter here than in the rest of the country. And there are tons of rickshaws.

Heat, semi-dry sludge and rickshaws.

The carts don’t have pneumatic tires, they use strips of rubber that are cut from old truck tires and glued onto the wheels.

A bicycle rim is being used to boost the TV signal.

Traffic signs have sponsors.

A wonderful invention: a cactus fence. It’s eco-friendly, and no one will ever want to climb it.

Half the city lives in little brushwood houses on plots of land separated by one-meter-wide passageways.

A butcher’s stall.

A concrete billboard.

Noon arrives. The heat is so intense that all the stores shut until two o’clock. The salespeople put away their meat and colanders and lie down in the shade to take a nap.

“It’s better in the Bahamas.” That’s for sure.