“So, when you were a taxi-brousse driver, how long did it take to get from Toliara to Tana?”
“About 24 hours – we’d drive overnight with breaks just for lunch and dinner.”
Wow.
“We’ve heard that it’s unsafe to travel at night. Did anything ever happen to you?”
“Oh, yeah”, he nodded in a matter-of-fact way.
“Really?”
“Yeah, and there was one time that the bandit held a gun to my head. He wanted the passengers to give him money.”
“Oh my God, that’s horrible.”
“Yes, but now taxi-brousse travel with four or five in a group. And sometimes they have an army vehicle behind.”
“And so the attacks don’t happen anymore?”
There was a rather unnerving pause, and then “Not so much.”
“But they still do?”
“Well, if there are, say, 40 bandits, then one army vehicle is not much of a help.”
The man’s got a point.
Very suddenly, the well-used road became smooth and there were the first road markings we’d seen since leaving Tana. Jimmy explained that the road had been paid for by the Chinese.
“But why? Why would they pay?”
“Environment.”
“Err…..?”
“They won the contract. In exchange for mining rights.”
“Ah right, so they built a road in exchange for plundering your natural resources.”
“Yes.”
“How kind.”
Rice is the staple food of the Malagsy – they consume 140 kg each every year. Paddies could be seen left and right for miles and miles and miles and this used to supply all the rice they needed. Population increases mean this is no longer the case, and rice is imported to plug the gap between production and demand.
Regional specialities being sold at the roadside today included:
- Fire wood
- Tapioca (which we tried, but the fleshy inside was minimal compared to the tough skin and three pips)
- Geranium (used for medicinal purposes)
- Fowl (ducks, geese and turkeys)
In addition to these passing phases, charcoal and clay bricks could be found along pretty much the whole route. To prevent logging of the endangered native hardwood species, other trees such as pine and eucalyptus have been imported to give the natives an alternative. Charcoal is packed in long, round strong bags and the top is stuffed with twigs and branches to protect it from moisture and prevent it falling out.
It’s transported by truck, if you’re rich and on the back of your bike if you’re not:
Clay bricks are shaped by hand and baked in batches constructed with distinctive holes at the bottom to take the firewood:
Each structure takes about 3 days to bake and requires the fire to be kept constantly burning.
Hundreds and hundreds of men, with only the odd female – but it wasn’t clear from where they were walking, nor why.
A local lunch of rice with zebu. I should point out that the zebu is good – and judging by everyone else’s choices, it’s by far the best and most consistent quality (whereas the chicken is mostly fat, grizzle and bone). Note the ratio between meat and rice, and the copious amounts of the latter:
After seeing a taxi-brousse come swerving round the corner, I asked Jimmy if there was a limit to was could be carried on the roof. Thirty or fifty centimetres, he replied… unless you bribe the police (in which case, anything seems to go).
The earth changed from red to white and the clay houses followed, from red near Antsirabe to beige after Ambositra (am-boos-tra):
And there was occasionally the odd show-off:
Landscape changed to forest when we got near Ranomafana, but there was a rather worrying line of fire burning across the valley.
Apparently the forest is partly owned by the village and partly NP.
A long, but interesting travel day, topped off by a local dinner of soup (delicious) with zebu kebab (also delicious) and about three tonnes of rice (this is only a slight exaggeration).
And we’re starting to turn native:
Random stuff from today:
Bucket coffee is the way to go. He’d made a big batch of coffee, put it in a bucket with a spout and was serving it on the street for the princely sum of 5p a cup. There’s no fresh milk, but an option of condensed milk (you can see the cans stuck to the top of the bucket!):
Like the Asians, Malagsy aren’t camera shy – when he realised Rudy was taking photos, this performer couldn’t resist becoming star of the show:
Rudy often walks round a place taking photos. People spot him and play to the camera. This morning he changed tactic: he stood in one place and photographed life going on around him. He captured some incredible images of people going about their daily lives:
And these pictures give a sense of the place much more than words ever could:
