By now you’ve probably all heard me talk a lot about travel by taxi-brousse, but you probably don’t have a full sense of what that entails. Never fear, that’s why I’m writing this post – to detail everything you need to know about this uniquely Malagasy form of transportation.
First of all, the name: what does taxi-brousse literally mean? Answer: “bush taxi.”
Next, what kind of vehicle are we talking about here? Well, usually it’s a van with seating for two or three people besides the driver in the front row, and then at least three rows behind, each of which is meant to accommodate three to four passengers, but can often greatly exceed this limit, plus small children and babies on laps.
[This is not a hard and fast rule, however: when we returned home from Ambohimahamasina this last week we rode in a taxi-brousse that was actually a station wagon – and a rickety one at that! The sides of the inside of the car were re-covered with rough wood planks, there were no door handles (only holes where they used to be), and the transmission was actually a household light switch hanging from the end of a wire! Five people were piled into the front seat: the driver, two women, and two boys. We drove in this vehicle down the mountain from Ambohimahamasina to Ambalavao (the halfway point between Ambohimahamasina and Fianar) after a rainstorm: the roads were unpaved, muddy, and deeply rutted, and, as the windshield wipers didn’t work and the windshield gave you a view of the world that looked a lot like Monet’s paintings from the end of his life (when his eyesight was failing), the driver had to drive with his head out the window in order to see. In order to get the car moving (and periodically again throughout our drive) the driver and boys had to jump out and give the car a good push as the driver jiggled the makeshift transmission switch until the motor started running on its own. Nevertheless, we made it down the mountain, all in one piece!]
So who rides in a taxi-brousse? The answer: everyone! There is no public transportation here in Madagascar, so unless you own your own car or motorcycle, chances are, you’ll be using taxi-brousse for any travel that involves moving from one city or town to another. Men, women, children, babies, rich or poor – they all pile in, along with all their belongings. Large bags and cargo are strapped to the top of the van, covered with a tarp and tied down with rope. This cargo can include animals – don’t be surprised if you see ducks or chickens poking their heads out of a basket being loaded up or down from the top of your taxi-brousse! And also don’t be surprised if these birds ride inside the vehicle, too; women will often sit with their newly-purchased duck or chicken in a basket on their laps – squawking may ensue. But the noise goes so well with the screaming babies and too-loud music being blasted!
That’s another thing: the music. I have yet to ride in a taxi-brousse where the driver didn’t have the music on at full blast. Either from CDs or radio, It’s usually Malagasy music, which sounds very island-y, sometimes with lots of influence from American pop, rap, and hip-hop. Occasionally you’ll hear an American song thrown into the mix: on our first taxi-brousse ride from Tana to Fianar we definitely heard some Lady Gaga and Jay Sean’s “Down” (shoutout to Fall Breakout 2009 Pine Ridge team! Miss you guys!). If you’re sitting in the driver’s row at the front (which are usually the most coveted seat because of the extra leg room), you may experience temporary hearing loss!
This is why Francesca and I tend to favor the seats directly behind the driver – sometimes there’s a little ledge where you can put your bags directly in front of the row. Of course, watch out – the driver may put extra passengers (off the books, of course) on this ledge, leaving you awkwardly face-to-face with a complete stranger, his legs in between or on either side of yours!
In our experience this little ledge area has been problematic. Take, for example, our excursion to Ambositra, a few hours north of Fianar. Ambositra is known as le cœur de l’artisanat of Madagascar (the heart of artisanal crafts) and is known for its woodcarving and intricate marqueterie using precious woods. We decided to take a little overnight trip there, taking off one Friday from work, returning to Fianar the following day. The drive there was relatively painless: a mere 3 hours, as expected. But on the way back the next day that same drive took 5 (yes, FIVE) hours. Traffic? you ask. Ha, hardly! It took us five hours because even though all the seats of the taxi-brousse were technically filled up with people who had made reservations at the taxi-brousse station (on the books), the driver kept stopping and picking up and letting off people along the side of the road who just wanted to travel short distances along the way between Ambositra and Fianar. He pocked for himself all the money that these people gave him – none of it went to his taxi-brousse company. But I thought the taxi-brousse was already full!, you protest. Well, all these new passengers sat on the ledge just behind the driver, squashed in facing the people who had paid for their seats on the books.
To make matters worse, not only did we keep stopping to let these passengers on and off, we also stopped any time any passenger felt any bodily urge. One person was hungry and wanted chicken (if you’re traveling around noon and slow to a stop in a village a bunch of women will approach the vehicle with platters of cooked chicken, which passengers buy through the van’s windows and eat with their fingers, replacing the bones on the platter when they’ve finished!) – we stopped. Ten minutes later, another person was hungry for chicken – we stopped. Why couldn’t that guy just have eaten the chicken when the other guy did?! Then someone had to go to the bathroom – peeing in the open air on the side of the road. Sometimes women will even squat along the side of the road if they’re really desperate – you can see them right there, hiking up their skirts to do it. I don’t know what they use for toilet paper. That’s why for long taxi-brousse rides I try not to drink anything all day (that’s the plan for this Sunday’s drive back to Tana! Wish me luck!).
Oh, and another thing – NEVER expect to leave on time. EVER. You may make your reservation days in advance and be told that your taxi-brousse will leave at 7am. But this is the country of mora mora, remember, where the notion of time is a very flexible thing. Each time we’ve traveled by taxi-brousse we’ve waited between one and three hours for our taxi-brousse to leave the stationnement.
What am I to do during that time? you ask. Well, never fear, dear friends – there are a variety of shopping pleasures for you to indulge in during this wait of indeterminate length. You can buy a snack from any of the innumerable vendors who will undoubtedly approach you, even if you’re sitting inside the vehicle with windows and doors closed, ready to go (they will tap on the window to get your attention – may even try to open it from the outside!). For sale, you’ll have your choice of fruits (bananas, tangerines, little mysterious orange fruits whose identity I still have yet to determine), breads (sold out of huge sacks with a container of margarine and a knife on top of the bag, in case you’re so inclined), cakes (piled on trays and carried endlessly by men, women, and children around the stationnement – beware, Francesca saw a guy drop one of his cakes, pick it up off the ground, and replace it on the tray!), mofos (fried dough, often like beignets or donuts) and samosa-looking things (with dipping sauce). In Tana someone shoved a platter of sausages in my face – gross!
In addition to these food vendors, there are people selling cheap electronics, watches, sunglasses, belts, very ill-made baskets, and small toys. And then of course some people are just begging.
At some stationnements de taxi-brousse there are little hotelys and gargottes which are like quick-service restaurants/snack bars. Some are quite suspect-looking, and I advise you to proceed with caution. However, there’s a great little hotely at the stationnement in Ambalavao which we’ve eaten at several times. We were introduced to it by Malagasy friends, who assured us it was quite clean and safe to eat there. We took the gamble and fell in love. Vary sy loaka – traditional Malagasy rice (huge portions!) and sauce (chicken or zebu in broth; I ask for just peas or beans and des breds and they always oblige) – for very cheap, along with the complimentary mug of steaming ranon'ampango (which, strangely, I don’t mind drinking now). On the table you’ll see a strange dark brownish-greenish stuff – that’s piment, a super-spicy paste not for the faint at heart! I love putting it on my rice – keeps my stomach warm for hours afterwards – but the one time I put too much I ended up with tears streaming down my face!
Alright, so let’s assumer you’ve made your reservation, you’ve waited the indeterminate amount of time, all the passengers have piled into the van, the music is blasting, and you pull away (finally!). What do you expect next? The rules of the road – are there any?
Most roads here are about the width of a lane and a half by American standards. So when two vehicles approach from different directions it seems to be a rule of might is right: the smaller vehicle moves to the side a bit and slows. There is always lots of honking, any time another vehicle is approaching, or if the driver sees pedestrians or herds of zebu on the side of the road. Also, any time you approach a blind corner (of which are many on these winding mountain roads), the driver will honk a lot.
There are police checkpoints any time you enter or leave a town. The taxi-brousse will have to stop, the officers will salute and the driver will salute back before handing over some papers to the police for them to verify. Also, if you’re going into or out of a rural area the police may check the van for toaka gasy (TOE-ka GAHsh), which is “artisanal rum” – moonshine, that is – brewed in the woods, so strong it will burn your nostrils from across the table.
If the police see you in the car and you’re a vazaha in some instances they may ask you for your passport. They don’t actually have the right to do this (I mean, really, am I a national security threat to the Republic of Madagascar?), they’re just hoping that you don’t have your passport handy so they can give you hard time and force you to pay a bribe to let you pass. (I actually had a police officer do this to me when I was riding in a rickshaw within a town – absurd! Luckily we had our Malagasy friend and colleague Vero with us and she yelled at the police in Malagasy, definitely something about us being interns with an NGO doing good work for the people of Madagascar. Also, p.s., the rickshaw was not my idea – I hate having someone else do my walking for me!).
As I’ve already explained, you can expect your taxi-brousse to make plenty of stops of snack and bathroom breaks, and you’ll undoubtedly stop at noon so everyone can grab a quick lunch in a hotely.
But all in all, the rule with taxi-brousse is to expect the unexpected. There’s no telling what will happen. It may break down on the side of the road (luckily this hasn’t happened to us yet!). You may be wildly overcharged for your fare, unless you know what the going rate is and refuse outright to pay “vazaha prices.” Your driver may drink – we actually saw our driver on one of our trips of Ambalavao taking swigs of THB (Malagasy beer) as he drove! Although it doesn’t have an extremely high alcohol content, all we could do was sit and pray to make it to Ambalavao safely – no one in the van protested to the drivers’ behavior.
And, if you’re like me, you may get seated next to a drunken man who won’t stop sexually harassing you for the duration of your trip. Leaving Ambalavao once a man (probably in his 40s) started talking to me in broken French and Malagasy. At first I couldn’t understand what he was saying so I listened. Soon I realized he was drunk and getting a huge kick out of talking to a vazaha woman. Lucky me – I was seated right next to him in a cramped van for an hour. As there was nothing I could do, and any sort of interaction would only worsen the situation, I simply turned my head to the neck and started talking to Francesca, completely ignoring him. The disappointing thing was the people sitting in the row behind us started laughing at what the guy was saying to me – everyone thought it was so funny that he could get away with saying whatever the hell he wanted without me understanding. But I did hear the word chambre – “room” in French – so I knew where his mind was. After a while, though, the man got impatient with me ignoring him, kept asking me why I wouldn’t look at him or talk to him. He started poking me in the arm, and at that point I whirled around and yelled in his face “STOP IT!” Finally, people who had been turning a blind eye to the situation took notice. Francesca made a plea to the man sitting next to her, who finally said some things to my buddy in Malagasy. He finally shut up for the rest of the drive, sullen, staring out the window. I win!
[But don’t let that scare you – none of the sexual harassment here really leads to anything dangerous – it’s just culturally acceptable in cities here to call out to women here, whether it’s just a “Salut ma belle!” or “Salama madame!” or hissing sounds to make you turn around. Sometimes they’ll reach out and touch your arm. So you just walk staring straight ahead, not acknowledging anyone. They may persist or laugh, but that’s better than giving them the enjoyment they get out of any sort of response, friendly or angry.]
When you arrive at your destination, be prepared to be swarmed. If people see your white vazaha face through the window of the taxi-brousse they’ll immediately run up asking if you need a porter, a taxi, or even another taxi-brousse! They’ll shout the names of the places they think you might be going, based on your vazaha-y tourist-y-ness. “Ambositra, Madame? Ranomafana! Ambalavao?” (Ha, no – I’ve already been all those places, and what’s more I live here in Fianar!) You can politely say no, or just ignore some of it – you can always pretend you don’t speak French (a good card to play at times. Sometimes someone approaches us asking if we speak English. I reply no. Then they ask if we speak French. I reply no. Out of options, they walk away!). Also, make sure you’re the one that your bag is handed to when it’s unloaded from the top of the taxi-brousse; if not, a porter might get it for you (without having asked you first!) and then will ask for a cadeau (literally “present,” but meaning tip) for what he’s done. I always refuse. As you walk away with your luggage people will keep asking you where you’re going next, hoping you’ll make a taxi-brousse reservation for your next excursion. But, as always, you’re the one in control – don’t get pressured into anything! And you don’t necessarily always need a reservation – you can always just show up the day of!
A lot of tourists rent cars and drivers for themselves, or tour groups will have their own bus. But if you’re a young person up for some adventure and wanting to really experience Malagasy life, then there’s no reason to shy away from taxi-brousse travel – it’s all part of the experience!
Now you know everything you need to know and you’re all set for your taxi-brousse adventure – bon voyage, my friends!
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