Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Taxi-Brousse Travel

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!

Meet Tsiky!

This is Tsiky (pronounced “TSEEK”), the daughter of Lala, one of our colleagues. She is three, and sometimes she graces us with her presence here at the office. Her name literally means “smile,” which is just one of the many charms she uses to get what she wants. She is a beautiful child, and she knows it! As her mother puts it, “Elle est très coquette!” and quite vain; she loves looking at herself in the mirror and making faces by raising her eyebrows up and down. Lala says Tsiky will cry if she doesn’t put coconut oil and beeswax in her hair so that it’s nice to touch. She wears cute little outfits, and carries around a tiny purse that’s often filled with biscuits – cookies! She’ll munch on them in the office, shamelessly leaving crumbs everywhere!

One day, when Tsiky was running around keeping us from getting any work done, Francesca and I had an idea: knowing how much she loves looking at herself, we decided to show Tsiky Photobooth on our computers. As expected, she was enchanted, fascinated by the various colorful and morphing effects. She would jump out of the frame and ask “Où est Tsiky?” (“Where is Tsiky?”), in a kind of peek-a-boo game with herself. Now every time she comes to the office she runs up to us, asking with a false pout “Où est Tsiky?” asking to play with Photobooth.

Alright, so we may have created a little monster. But she’s a cute one, no?

There Are No Ovens in Madagascar, and Other Mysteries

The picture shown is of our humble little kitchen, showing all the applianced we have to work with (with the exception of our tiny Toshiba fridge, which was behind me when I took the shot). The little camp stove has two working burners, and is attached to a little propane tank (cost of a full tank is a little over 40,000 Ariary). We have a set of low-quality (the screws sometimes come loost and the handles fall off – very dangerous!) pots and pans of varying sizes, which, ironically, came in a box with the slogan “Ideas and innovations for luxurious lifestyles.”

Everyone in Madagascar either works with a gas tank and camp stove or cooks outdoors on coals or open fires.

But back to the point of this post: There are no ovens in Madagascar.

How is that possible? you ask. After all, there is bread: cheap little baguettes sold on the street for 250 Ariary a piece. Where does it come from? This is a mystery to us as well. Is there some central location with one giant oven from which all of the bread in town comes? Apparently, yes – by the Soafia Club (where we went out dancing – see previous post) there is a huge central bakery where all the bread you see sold in Fianar, from the humblest street vendor to the most overpriced vazaha restaurant, is baked.

We’ve also heard talk of something called a four malgache (“Malagasy oven”), but we’re not exactly sure what that is, or if anyone has one in their home (as we’ve yet to see one).

One day Francesca and I were doing some shopping in town at Supermarché 3000 and decided to stop into Clair de Lune, a tiny pastry shop and café in the same area as the supermarché, Le Panda, and Chez Dom (vazaha central, if you recall). If you came across Clair de Lune in the US, you’d think it was a pretty rinky-dink little place, but by Malagasy standards (and prices) it’s quite swanky. We ogled the French-style pastries behind the glass: croissants, pain au chocolat, brioches, viennoiseries. They even had a tiny little freezer where they served house-made gelato.

We looked over their menu, and suddenly, a craving came over me – I had to have pizza. That instant. After weeks of cooking at home with no protein but the occasional egg, my body needed cheese. So we sat down and decided to treat ourselves to lunch out. We ordered the pizza margherita (as it was the only vegetarian option) to share, and were told that it would take about 20 minutes. No problem, I was prepared to wait.

We sat at our little table people-watching out the window, until twenty minutes later, a huge SUV pulled up outside. To our surprise, our waitress ran out and the driver passed her a little pizza box through his window. She came back inside and disappears into the back of the shop.

A minute later she returns with our pizza, plated on a tray. By US standards it was a sorry-looking thing: it actually looked like a bad microwave pizza! Did she place a call soon after we ordered for someone somewhere to microwave a pizza and deliver it to the restaurant? Who knows!

But hey, I was hungry, and amused by the whole situation, so the bad microwave pizza and the laughs were well worth the 8,000 Ariary (~$4)!

Fianar After Hours: Vazaha Night Life!!!

After a rough first couple of weeks here, spent simply walking back and forth between our depressing house and the office right next door, we hit a turning point with our trip to Ambohimahamasina. Ranomafana made things even better - we did finally see lemurs, after all! “Well, at least I can leave Madagascar having checked that off my list,” I thought…

But it wasn’t until our first night out on the town in Fianar that we really started to feel at home here. Romain had promised that when he came back to Fianar he would take us out and show us what it’s all about here. We had no idea what to expect, so we put on the nicest clothes we had (in my case, a V-neck shirt from Target, a black scarf, and my one pair of jeans that actually fit me – dismal, I know), put on a little makeup (the first time in 4 weeks!), and set out.

Romain met us outside the office in a cab. We drove to the same area of the town where Supermarché 3000 is (vazaha central, as we tend to think of it). We would start our night at Le Panda restaurant and bar, a vazaha institution here in Fianar.

Picture this: a restaurant painted red inside and out, red chairs, green place mats on all the tables. A slightly rounded bar with high stools around which some slightly-grungy looking Europeans from age 25 to 50 are smoking. Behind the bar, the bartender Hervé (of Chinese descent, but born and raised in Madagascar) is serving drinks out of jars filled with mysterious liquids with suspicious-looking solids floating in them. A huge old crocodile skin stretched across one of the walls. And on another wall – Le Panda’s iconic piece de résistance – a painting of two copulating pandas, one humping the other.

Take a look at the menu. Inside you will be informed that the restaurant specializes in gibier – game. Indeed, you look at the dishes offered and, alongside the usual pork, zebu, and chicken…past the slightly more exotic calamari and frogs’ legs…you will find dishes with crocodile and bat meat. That’s because Hervé is also the owner and a passionate hunter – all the meat served at Le Panda comes from his kills!

While it may not be the bar from “Cheers,” I think Le Panda would make for quite a setting for a television show. The regular crowd of vazahas, mostly French expats with a few Belgians and Swiss, is an eclectic bunch: everyone knows everyone and hangs out as old friends, regardless of age differences. The mid-twenty- and thirty-somethings are usually here working for NGOs, maybe spending a few years here. (Most people after meeting us here and chatting with us a bit are really surprised to learn that we’re only 20 years old!) There are a few much older people, in their 40s and 50s – one guy said he’s been living here for the past 30 years and now speaks fluent Malagasy!

Francesca and Romain ordered a bit of dinner at Le Panda…Romain had calamares au persil (squid in parsley sauce) and shared zebu carpaccio (the zebu equivalent of the raw meat dish usually made with beef). I marveled at Francesca’s bravery eating raw meat in a developing country, but she didn’t get sick at all! [in fact, knock on wood, we have yet to get sick from anything we’ve eaten here…keep your fingers crossed for us in these next three weeks!]

We then bar-hopped across the street to Chez Dom, which is described in the guidebooks as a “smoky backpacker café where lots of tour guides hang out.” Oh, silly guidebooks. They fail to capture any of the real essence of any of the places I’ve been here in Madagascar…

Chez Dom is very small, very smokey. There are a lot of Malagasy guides, who Adrien (Romain’s best friend since high school in France) says are the only Malagasy people he doesn’t like. They have a parasitic livelihood: leeching off of the vazahas, trying to get them to go on one of their overpriced tours, but at the same time disdainful of foreigners. [I got into an argument with one the other night: after trying to flirt with me for the longest time (asking me if I had a boyfriend, when I was getting married, etc.) he then said I was being “mean” to him when I made comparisons between here and the US; I defended myself, saying I was merely making comparative observations; he dismissed me magnanimously, saying he wouldn’t hold it against me, since I was “young” (being just 20 years old to his 26); I said I may be young, but I’ve traveled a lot in my life; he countered that he meets a lot of people from different countries, as a tour guide – ha! Gotcha! Meeting people from different countries is not the same as actually going there!] They’re all young men, trying to dress European with scarves and brand-name shirts, they’ll try to flirt with you, ask you for your number, put their number in your phone. They disgust me – they’re the epitome in slimy, trying to mix in with the vazaha crowd while simultaneously trying to leech off their money - but you can’t get rid of them, so you just have to put up with it and have a little fun with them sometimes (after all, they will sometimes buy you drinks) by giving made-up answers to the questions they ask you (I get a real kick out of this: sometimes I say I'm married, sometimes I say I have a fiancé...).

Chez Dom has both a good-size TV and an overhead projector, so during the World Cup games we spend weekends there, eating dinner (my favorite dish is their misao, Chinese noodles that I load up with lots of spicy pink chili sauce; the rest of the vazahas go crazy for Chez Dom’s American-style cheeseburger, made with zebu meat), drinking (THB and lots of rhum arrangé, the flavored rum poured from those mysterious jars with the floating fruit and vanilla beans - I'm quite a fan), and watching the game projected up on the wall.

So that first night of going out, after Le Panda and Chez Dom, we didn’t just stop there: as Chez Dom started clearing out, all the vazahas started piping up their votes on which discothèque they wanted to go to. Soafia Dance Club won out in the end over Le Moulin Rouge (yes, they have one of those here, too!), and so we piled into one vazaha’s truck an drove over.

Soafia was…well, hilarious. Francesca, Gaia, and I all got in for free, being girls. We walked down some stairs to a dark room with strobe lights flashing and twirling light effects. A mix of Malagasy pop, and US 80s music. People standing around in groups, some on the dance floor, some at the bar. If it weren’t for the fact that this was Madagascar, this would have been the lamest club ever.

But our group of vazahas took to the dance floor together as one. The Malagasy men would try to dance with us, but our fellow vazahas were always quick to rescue us before anything became awkward. If I felt a hand moving for my hip, I grabbed it and threw it aside without even looking to see who it was – we were having goofy dancing fun, and no one, Malagasy or vazaha, was going to ruin it for me!

Malagasy Avocados: A California Girl’s Disappointment (6/27)

At Ranomafana as we began our trek, our guide pointed out some wild avocado trees to us. Now, I’m a true California girl, raised on guacamole. When my mother didn’t have anything to pack me for lunch she would put an avocado and a spoon in a bag and send me off to school. So - having spent the last five months in New Jersey, far from the Mexican food I love - when I realized there were avocados here in Madagascar, I got really excited. I was just short of scraping the squashed fallen wild avocados off the trail with my bare hands – that excited. When we got back from our trek, we gave our guide a ride back into town and he showed me where I could buy avocados in the market.

I picked up three at 200 Ariary a piece. They were rounder and smoother than what I was used to – not at all like the oval, bumpy-skinned fruit I was used to. Still, I had high hopes. When we went to the little hotely where we had lunch, I asked for a knife and a plate right away – I wanted my avocados now (and Malagasies are just chill like that: Gaia wanted a dish that the restaurant didn’t have, so she went across the street to a different hotely, ordered, spoke with the manager, waited, and came back to eat with us in our hotely with her entire meal brought over from the other place! No one seemed annoyed in the least!)

Anyways, back to the avocado story…

I eagerly cut the fruit, and split it into halves. The pit was huge, leaving very little edible flesh. I sliced off a piece with the knife and put it in my mouth. DISGUSTING! It tasted watery and flavorless – not at all like the rich, creamy avocados of California. Still, I was hungry and my meal still hadn’t arrived. I dug into the other one. Just as gross. Gaia said the Malagasies eat avocados as a dessert with sugar. I was skeptical, but I was willing to do anything to improve the horrible flavor, so I took some of the sugar that had come with Francesca’s coffee and sprinkled it on the pale green flesh. Still gross, if not worse than before.

Saddened, I took the third avocado home just so that I could take a picture of it for you, dear readers [see above]. This last avocado had the most flesh out of the three, but still, after just a few forced bites, I simply had to throw it out. I’ll wait another few weeks until I can have the real deal, the food of my birthplace.
Maybe I’ll even have my mom meet me at the airport with an avocado and a spoon.

Spelling Correction: "Vasa" is really "Vazaha"

I've been using the word "vasa" a lot - it's the Malagasy word for foreigner, and it's usually what little children and creepy men call out to us when we walk around town in Fianar. We foreigners use it to refer to ourselves, but somehow when it's being called out to you by people in the street, by children point and laughing at you and by men sexually harassing you, you really start to hate the word. It's not meant to be offensive, but somehow it becomes so, I guess because we're from a multicultural, multiethnic country where you can look like literally anybody from anywhere and still not have people point at you and say "FOREIGN!" Like, literally, "YOU DON'T BELONG HERE!" I don't understand why they laugh when they say this - what's so funny about the fact that I'm not Malagasy? There are plenty of other foreigners around town, so it's not like seeing one is such a rarity...I think it's just one of those things that I'll never completely understand, having been raised in a country founded by immigrants that celebrates diversity.

But back to the point of this post: I should have known better than to think that a word in Malagasy would be spelled exactly as it sounds! Turns out it's spelled vazaha, although it is pronounced "vah-ZAH" (with the emphasis on the second syllable, if you're speaking true Malagasy; usually I'm too lazy and just say "VAH-zah")

I realize that most of my readers don't care about this distinction, but I had to make it for the sake of authenticity.

To make this blog post more worth your time, here's a photo preview of my next blog post: it’s a gecko eating a banana at Ranomafana National Park, where I finally saw Madagascar’s most famous celebrities: LEMURS!!!

Spelling Correction: "Vasa" is really "Vazaha"

I've been using the word "vasa" a lot - it's the Malagasy word for foreigner, and it's usually what little children and creepy men call out to us when we walk around town in Fianar. We foreigners use it to refer to ourselves, but somehow when it's being called out to you by people in the street, by children point and laughing at you and by men sexually harassing you, you really start to hate the word. It's not meant to be offensive, but somehow it becomes so, I guess because we're from a multicultural, multiethnic country where you can look like literally anybody from anywhere and still not have people point at you and say "FOREIGN!" Like, literally, "YOU DON'T BELONG HERE!" I don't understand why they laugh when they say this - what's so funny about the fact that I'm not Malagasy? There are plenty of other foreigners around town, so it's not like seeing one is such a rarity...I think it's just one of those things that I'll never completely understand, having been raised in a country founded by immigrants that celebrates diversity.

But back to the point of this post: I should have known better than to think that a word in Malagasy would be spelled exactly as it sounds! Turns out it's spelled "vazaha," although it is pronounced "vah-ZAH" (with the emphasis on the second syllable, if you're speaking true Malagasy; usually I'm too lazy and just say "VAH-zah")

I realize that most of my readers don't care about this distinction, but I had to make it for the sake of authenticity.

To make this blog post more worth your time, here's a photo preview of my next blog post: a gecko eating a banana at Ranomafana National Park, where I finally saw Madagascar's most famous celebrities: LEMURS!!!

Independence Day, Malagasy Style: Celebrating 50 Years (6/25-6)

This year Madagascar celebrated 50 years of independence from French colonial rule – no small milestone. With this in mind, across the country, Malagasies partied accordingly. From an American perspective, coming from a country that’s already celebrated its bicentennial, it was really interesting to watch as well, and to compare the differences between le 26 juin and the 4th of July.
For one thing, the celebration began not on the 26th, but the day before. Most people had the day off from work, and many people took this as an opportunity to get completely wasted by midday. There was a carnival of sorts in the middle Fianar, with a little Ferris wheel and games like shoot-the-bottle and bingo. Children sometimes set off firecrackers, just as the French do for Bastille Day, keeping me on edge all day (have I mentioned that I HATE firecrackers?!).
Saturday the 26th I woke up late (tired from our return trip home from Ambohimahamasina the day before), and when I stumbled down to the kitchen I found that Ambinina had stopped by to visit and was chatting with Francesca. The three of us continued to drink tea and talk about cultural differences, world politics, and religion – what a way to start a day!
Sometime later our landlady, Madame Lulle (sp?) stopped by with “a favor” to ask. She wanted to invite us to have Independence Day lunch at her house as her guests. “Favor”? Hardly! Our pleasure!
I thought it rude to go over to their house without bringing something, so I grabbed the pineapple I had bought the day before and brought it along when we went over at around 12:30. Mme. Lulle led us to her living room, which took me by surprise: she had a large leather couch and huge wooden cabinet unit in the corner, filled with dishes and glass objects. I was impressed: despite the exterior of the house, it seemed like by Malagasy standards Mme. Lulle was quite well-off. She unlocked one of the cabinets to get out a pitcher and plates, and served us orange juice and cookies.
She was the utmost in welcoming, but seemed sad. She explained that her two sons were away, one studying in Tana, the other in Switzerland. “Je suis seule,” (“I am alone”) she said. En plus, she had always wanted daughters, so she was very happy to have us over. We talked a bit about what we were doing for Ny Tanintsika, what we were studying in the US, etc.
Soon (but not before I had eaten many, many cookies!) it was time to sit down to lunch. There were about ten of us total, if I remember correctly. One of the guests was the patissier and saucier from Tsara Guest House, a well-known restaurant in town; I’m pretty sure he brought some of the food, and it was indeed delicious.
Mme. Lulle explained that the meal was typically Malagasy. We started with some salad dishes: a lettuce salad, a dish of potatoes and green beans in some sort of creamy sauce, surrounded by grated carrots, garnished with tomatoes. And of course, bread! More orange juice, along with pineapple juice, Coca-cola, Bonbon Anglais (literally, “English Candy,” found only in Madagascar; actually a disgusting soda that most describe as tasting like Red Bull; I thought it smelled like cotton candy, not in a good way), and the strongest rum I have ever encountered. It burned my nostrils just sitting across from me at the table! But the Tsara Guest house patissier downed glass after glass throughout the meal! He takes his liquor like a Princetonian!
Next came the main course. I had warned them that I was a vegetarian, so a special dish of potatoes in a delicious orange sauce with onions had been prepared for me. Then, of course, there was rice a-plenty: two huge serving dishes full! Impossible to finish. Then, the main attraction: the turkey! The turkey from our yard, the one that’s been waking me up every morning! I may be vegetarian, but I’ll admit, I was glad to see him go. Francesca said he was delicious. He was cut into large pieces and served along with huge pieces of pork; I couldn’t tell which was which. Definitely not kosher!
One of the guests at the meal was a computer science student who lived in our little walled area. He’s seen us teaching English classes in the little room attached to our house, which is what prompted the most hilariously awkward comment from him (he speaks some English): “I’ve noticed you have a very beautiful laptop, I’d like to touch it sometime.” Priceless!
We were so stuffed by the end of the meal, we could hardly move. We thanked Mme. Lulle profusely and returned to our house to digest.
~
Later, unfortunately, we had to go out to the bank; Gaia had called us to ask if we wanted to go to Ranomafana National Park with her tomorrow, and we needed money for the trip. We knew we didn’t want to be out in the streets that day because of all the drunkenness, but we had to make the quick trip.
It was a weird feeling: we were stared at even more than usual. The men hissed at us, called out to us. One punched Francesca in the arm in passing. Every child we passed laughed and pointed at us and yelled “Vasa! Vasa!” Why all the laughing? What’s so funny? Do you not think I know that I’m a foreigner?
It was very disconcerting. I realize that this was the day they were celebrating their independence from the vasas, from the French, but still – WE weren’t French! Strange to see how old animosity dies hard when it comes to national independence. I wonder if Americans were rude to Englishmen visiting the US 50 years after the Revolutionary War.
~
That night there were fireworks. Francesca went over to the office to use the internet, but came back because she said the night guard at the office was completely trashed – he could barely speak and walked into a wall three times! Later, he disappeared – no one was there to guard the office!
Francesca and I cracked open a THB over dinner, safe at home – no need to go out. Let the Malagasies have their fun, we’ll stay here safe and wait for our own Independence Day!

Ambohimahamasina, Part 2 ADDENDUM: The Beer of Madagascar - le THB!

That night at Romain and Gaia's we also tried an iconic Malagasy beverage: THB (“Three Horses Beer”). I believe it is actually owned by the Coca-Cola Company, which is why the name is in English, but it’s produced and only found here in Madagascar. You see advertisements for it everywhere! I don’t actually like beer at all, but I was willing to give it a try. I was surprised by how light it was – it didn’t have a major, heavy, beer-y flavor to it. I’ve had it several times since when out with friends in Fianar (although my mother is probably cringing as she reads this!); the bottles are big, and are best shared with one or two other people – I highly recommend it while watching a World Cup soccer match!

Variation on a theme of “Patates malgaches”

The other day Charles the office guard (who, by the way, is now guarding during the day; he and the other guard switch off every week who guards at night and who guards during the day) said he had some “patates malgaches” for us to buy, since we had liked the first ones he brought us so much (see earlier post about “patates malgaches” and manioc). We bought a bag of them from him, uncooked. While the first ones we tried had been purple on the outside (although Charles called them “les rouges”, whitish on the inside, these were “les jaunes,” pale brown on the outside, yellow on the inside.
Hungry, we went back to our house and immediately cooked them for lunch. Or rather, I washed them in chlorine, then cooked them for lunch. Sure enough, they tasted just like “les rouges” – that is to say, delicious.
Francesca has been frying regular potatoes lately, which we bought last week, in addition to plantains, so when she went to do it again the other night, I proposed we try to fry the sweet “patates malgaches” in the hopes of achieving something like a sweet potato fry. Never having fried anything in my life (no pot of boiling oil has ever been seen in the Shaw-Champion home in my twenty years of life!), I left this to Francesca. She peeled and sliced them (uncooked) with some difficulty – they seem harder and tougher than regular potatoes, very fibrous at the ends. But they fry up just fine – yum!

The Kids! : Malagasy Children

Malagasy children are adorable. There is no denying it. They’re everywhere and they just are.
~
In Tana (the capitol) there were a lot of children begging, and heartbreaking as it might be, you had to say no – you don’t want to teach children to expect handouts from every foreign-looking person they see.
Here in Fianar, things are better. The children either go to Malagasy schools where they learn some French, or French schools (taught entirely in that language). The French school kids wear little blue smocks over their clothes, and you see them coming home from school in the afternoons for lunch (remember: 2-hour lunch breaks for all!). Some are fascinated by our appearances (not only are we non-Malagasy, but we are also taller than the average man here!); some like to show off their knowledge of English by saying “Hello!” with a big grin.
~
Two children, cousins, live next door to us and are always playing in our yard. Antonio is eleven, very tall and skinny, and speaks good French. He told me he studies everything in school: French, English, German, science, technology, math. He likes it all. I asked him to teach me some Malagasy, pointing at things around the yard: “leaf,” “rock,” “flower,” “dog.” Every word had so many syllables! The only one I retained was something like “AH-la”: spider.
Enola is eight and adorable, with short black curls; she sets out her dolls and bears in the yard and “cooks” food for them and her scruffy little white dog, Pitou. She loves hiding calling my name and waiting for me to look around the yard for her.
A few days into our friendship with the kids, things got a little out of hand. Antonio and Enola and friends decided it was great fun to bang incessantly on the door of our house and yell until we came to see who it was, then run away. And repeat. And when we caught on and started ignoring them, undeterred, they climbed through the bushes in front of our kitchen window and starting making faces at us thee. Francesca had to go out and yell at them twice, threatening to tell their mother. Things got a lot quieter after that! Shy and ashamed, it took a few days of our friendly hellos to get them to smile again.
~
But on the whole, the children here are very well behaved. I’m especially impressed with Charles (one of the office guards) and his wife’s four daughters [see picture]. The day I brought Charles’ wife my laundry, they were all there, taking care of each other as their mother did laundry and cleaned the office (using a bristly brush that she puts her foot on top of to scrub the floors in a sort of dance!). The baby (8 months old) was splashing water in a plastic tub and laughing. Nearby the oldest (probably around age twelve) was helping the second youngest (age four?) comb and braid her hair; the second oldest (age eight?) was busy on her own hair. I said “Bonjour” and they smiled shyly. I came back later with my camera to take pictures of my laundry hanging from the office’s second floor, and asked their mother if it was alright to take a few pictures of the girls. The second oldest was bold, smiling wide, and moving the shy second-youngest to pose as she sucked on her fingers warily. But when I showed them the first few pictures I had taken, something about seeing their own faces on the little screen broke the ice. Smiles all around! The oldest held the baby and all of them smiled. The second-oldest grabbed her jump-rope and started skipping, everyone started laughing. “Sautez, sautez, tout le monde saute!” (“Jump, jump, everybody jump!”) I said as I jumped too, which produced this shot [see above, click to enlarge], my favorite of the day. Their mother came downstairs to the yard, and I was able to take a family picture of mother and daughters; I promised to send them copies when I got back to the US.
~
I did, however, see something the other day that made me really sad. As we shopped in the market, I saw a little boy, probably around eight or nine, hand some money to a vendor in exchange for two cigarettes. Cigarette consumption by minors in Africa is not a total shocker to me – last summer in France I read an article in Time magazine about how the next big market for tobacco is Africa, where cigarettes are taken out of the package and sold individually. This means that buyers don’t get a chance to read the warning label on the package – that is, if they could read in the first place. Granted, this child could have been buying for a parent, but the just the fact that he could buy, as easily as a piece of candy, something so dangerous (not to mention wasteful – such a terrible way to spend money, especially if you’re already one of the poorest of the poor) was harrowing. As is the fact that Big Tobacco is aware of this growing market (growing literally – as birthrates are high in developing countries) and plans to profit off of lack of education in these countries – well, that’s downright disgusting.
~
But what’s impressed me the most about the children here in Madagascar is how little they need to be happy. No fancy toys, no GameBoy or PlayStation or Nintendo, none of the latest Barbie and Bratz dolls, no computers or cell phones. All they need is a doll or stuffed animal, a few tiny plates and spoons, or a soccer ball, and each other to keep themselves entertained for hours. It’s childhood from a simpler time. Granted, they won’t have the same amazing educational resources that American and European children have; many won’t ever leave the town they were born in, most won’t get to reach their full potential. But for now, they remind me of the value of the simple things: that we don’t always need technology, that sometimes ignorance is bliss, that a few well-loved toys, a friend or sibling and our families really can be enough.

More Malagasy Cuisine: “Patates malgaches” et manioc

We’ve been teaching after-hours English lessons to Charles, one of the office guards, and his wife every night when we stop by to use the internet after dinner. To thank us, the couple has taken it upon themselves to resolve the mystery of the unidentifiable root vegetables I’ve been seeing at the market. On Sunday Charles showed up on our doorstep with a steaming plate of what looked like long whole purple yams. He called them “patates malgaches.” Francesca immediately got very excited; she recognized them as what she grew up with in Haiti, calling them “Haitian yams.” Sure enough, despite their color they tasted like the sweet brown-skinned yellowy-orange yams – the candied ones of American Thanksgiving with marshmellow topping – that I knew.
Yesterday (Monday) around lunchtime Charles was back again, this time with a bowl of long, pale, stringy-looking starchy vegetables, which he called “manioc” [see picture, double-click on enlarge]. I was familiar with the name, and we gratefully accepted his offering. Manioc proved to be rather bland, but piping hot they were satisfying and filling. Last night while on the phone with Robin he pointed out that I had already tried manioc – it’s what Cubans call “yuca,” and we had had it in March at “Cuba” restaurant in New York City. Then, it had been fried in oil and flavored with garlic, so I hadn’t recognized it here in Madagascar! Upon further research, it seems that certain crops are quite popular across the globe in tropical and/or island nations, with manioc/yuca being a prime example!

June 4th: First taste of Malagasy Cuisine!

Friday, June 4th we woke up for our first morning in Fianarantsoa. Our arrival was perfectly timed so that we could attend the entire Ny Tanintsika (the organization that the Scottish charity Feedback Madagascar set up on the ground in Madagascar; pronounced “Nee Tee-nahn-tseek”) team meeting, which included everyone from the office, plus the field agents. It was a large group, perhaps 30ish people, so we couldn’t all fit in the office. Instead, the meeting was held in a classroom at a nearby convent.
The meeting was almost entirely conducted in Malagasy, so even though Sam (our boss, who is British and fluent in Malagasy) translated a bit, we were still pretty lost. But what I can tell you about quite distinctly is the food!
At around 10am we had a break for tea, coffee, and snacks, which the nuns had prepared for us. The tea was lemony, and if you were pouring from the bottom you might end up with little green pieces of herb. Everyone was adding sugar cubes to theirs, but I found it just fine without the added sweetener. For snacks there were what looked like samosas (those savory triangular pastries of Indian cuisine; Indian empanadas, if you will) which had meat them, scallion pancakes (often found in Chinese cuisine; fried crispy and delicious!), and – get this – noodle sandwiches! That’s right: a piece of French baguette sliced lengthwise and filled with Asian-looking noodles! Talk about carbo-loading! Since there were also a few little pieces of fresh lettuce in the noodle sandwich, I abstained; I’m still not eating fresh produce unless it’s a peel-able fruit that comes from a tree. But the scallion pancakes were wonderful! You’ll often see them being sold on the side of the road, along with other fried items, or a plate of noodles; there were even some being sold behind the taxi-brousse kiosk in Tana. Of course, we were warned against buying non-packaged items from street vendors, so I was glad to get the chance to sample some local flavor, trusting that, perhaps by some diving power, the nuns’ food wouldn’t make me sick!
Around noon we breaked again for lunch. The nuns had laid out quite a spread! At each of the four or so tables there was a large pot of rice, a dish of cooked carrots and peas garnished with hardboiled eggs, a basket of bananas and tangerines (mandarines, which are delicious and in season and sold on every street corner and doorstep here) and a salad of some sort (looked like grated carrots and cabbage?). At each place setting there was a whole fish – head (with eyes!), tail, scales, and everything in between – as it was Friday. I served myself some rice and was passed a large bowl of water with greens (herbs?) in it; this was to add flavor to the rice, and it was really good! I also helped myself to the peas and carrots dish, and half a hardboiled egg (still proceeding carefully when it comes to food, especially since I had discovered that, should the need arise, the convent only had squat toilets). Content with my grain, cooked veggies, and protein source, I proceeded to enjoy myself…
Until suddenly, mid-bite, I felt a sickening crunch. I grimaced. Sam laughed.
“Oh, that’s something you have to remember when you buy rice from the market here. There might be gravel in it.”
We also got the chance to try a classic Malagasy beverage called ranon'ampango. Wikipedia describes it as a drink “made by adding water to the toasted rice left sticking to the interior of its cooking pot, and…served at every meal as a sanitary and tasty alternative to water.” It can vary in strength and intensity depending on how burnt the rice got in the pot; sometimes it is light-colored and opaque, while other times it is almost black. While we anticipated something interesting, it tastes exactly how you would expect it to taste – kind of like dirty, rice-y water. Yuck. At least we can say we tried it!