The signs in French seem to indicate two separate counters: one for Malagasy nationals and the second for others but they are both unstaffed. Instead a surly, aggressive moustachioed official shrieks across the space and, in response, a young woman carrying some sort of notebook, runs to one of the counters. By this time, however, we have followed other travellers arriving at Ivato International Airport, apparently in the know, by walking past these counters and joining a queue to purchase our visas.
Confusion reigns. I have no idea whether we have broken the rules because travellers behind us are being processed by the young immigration officer. To my left I can see two lines of people making their way towards the baggage carousels: those that seem to be locals and another set of people that have been processed by the young woman. To my right there is another queue of people that seem to be presenting themselves to another set of officials behind a counter labelled ‘police’. I suggest to Steve that this is where we should go but he is concerned that we should have joined the line on the left. Nevertheless, armed with our visas we join a crowd in front of us and to our right. ‘Stephen John’, confirms the round faced policeman to my husband, and ‘Louise Rosemary’ he says to me, and hands back our passports. I think we are in the country.
Following a hardwired travelling practice, we return our passports to their dedicated storage places in our backpacks but before we have had a chance to close the zips and replace the backpacks on our shoulders we are surrounded by three porters all agitating to retrieve our luggage from the carousel a few steps away.
Two of them carry the luggage a few metres to the customs section; a third keeps close, seemingly in the hope that he can still get a piece of the action. But they are all irritated when we do not pay them for their services. Unfortunately, we have had no chance to get any local currency and our Euros are in too large a denomination.
Waved through customs by an official clearly uninterested in the contents of our bags, we make our way into a cacophonous confusion of people. The scene is discombobulating with Asian and Indian faces placing us in South East Asia rather than Africa. Some are calling to arriving family or friends, others are holding signs for travellers that they have been contracted to pick up. To our right I briefly notice a lady holding a Spice Roads sign and then a little further on a man tells us that he is giving us a lift into Antananarivo – otherwise known as Tana, the capital city of Madagascar. Neither of these things gel with our understanding of arrangements for the cycling trip that we are here for, and Steve’s preoccupation is in finding somewhere to get some local money. So, we ignore the Spice Roads lady thinking that she must be waiting for somebody else, and dismiss the offer of a lift as a ruse. Once we have sorted our cash supply we find our way to a taxi, negotiate our fare and make our way to our accommodation in Tana.
The road is dusty and heavily pot holed. Lining each side, flimsy timber structures provide a bare minimum of shelter for simple counters on which are crammed a plethora of cheap, gaudy products, a few vegetables, animal carcasses, and precious little piles of charcoal. Long discarded plastic bags and a scruffy array of other rubbish add to the general grubbiness. The scene is teeming with pedestrians, cyclists, motor bike riders and car drivers that weave between each other in relative harmony, the faces readily revealing the country’s mix of Indo/Malay, African and Arabic history.
With one day in Tana we decide to visit the capital city’s famous old royal palace. Located high above the city, we travel to the site in a taxi. An ancient Citroën, perhaps a very early version of the Dianne, is our vehicle. The passenger seats are tattered, and the interior lining has long gone as has any suspension. So we each clutch the seats in front of us as the miniature vehicle noisily clunks its way up the hilly streets towards the palace. Within minutes of setting off, the driver pulls into a petrol station. Using the 5000 Ariary (about AUS $2.50) deposit that we paid him, he purchases just enough petrol to complete the trip. The palace ruins give witness to the time when Madagascar was ruled by kings and queens who tested the innocence of people accused of a crime by feeding them poison. According to our guide (who told us that each of the many guides that work at the site do so half a day a month), if they survived they were innocent. Christians were not treated with as much generosity. One of the queens, an animist that disapproved of them, had them thrown off a nearby cliff.
The next taxi that takes us back to our hotel is also one of the tiny pale yellow Citroens that make up the city’s taxi fleet. Its in much better condition than the previous one. It is lined and the seats are covered with a rug. And, although the car is roll-started without a key, it runs reasonably smoothly. However, before we can take off the driver begs us a few minutes to replace a flat tyre, and along the way also stops to pick up the fuel necessary to complete the trip.
But as we discover over the next couple of weeks, the taxi drivers are relatively well off. Ahead of five other African countries, Madagascar is the sixth poorest country in the world. Just over seventy per cent of Malagasy people live in poverty, and more than fifty per cent live in extreme poverty, a fact that is impossible to ignore in the streets of Tana.
Madagascar’s population is dominated by young people. Little kids dressed in rags play in the dirt and detritus that surround shabby little timber and corrugated iron houses and shops; young men and women mingle, lean and lounge. Some boys no older than nine or ten are perhaps luckier because they have work. They transport huge loads of charcoal, metal, timber or rice by pushing or pulling the long arms of medieval looking wooden carts that sit on tiny rubber wheels. Skinny, bare chested and typically barefooted, the immense struggle is writ large on their young faces, which stream with sweat.
Meandering Thoughts 