16 - 18 NOVEMBER 2011
MADAGASCAR – Country number 24 – MADAGASCAR
ANTANANARIVO or
“TANA”
An easy afternoon flight, with Air Madagascar (who were 50%
cheaper than Kenya Airways) with dinner and wine to arrive at Antananarivo’s
airport to find no hassles getting a visa on entry here. I collect my pack and
exit arrivals to find my name on a piece of paper for my booked taxi into town.
I’m staying at the Sakamanga which seems to be a very groovy organisation with
hotel, excellent restaurant, great take away shop and even a souvenir store. My
room is lovely (I am paying in Euro here!) but when I check in and ask if I can
walk around I’m advised that its dangerous to walk around at night here. So I
try their take away a few doors up for a beer and of course my pathetic french
gets me a beer served in a wine glass when I’d wanted the small bottle!! The ol’
ver vs bute conundrum! lol
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| I love these taxis |
I have booked my dates giving me two days before the tour
and two days after the tour to check out Antananarivo so next morning I’m keen
to look around the city, founded in the
17th century and with a population of over a million! I tackle the Zoma (city
market) first, once the largest market of the world so they say and finding the
street where most locals breakfast I try one little hole in the wall and order
a Portuguese omelette; so oily, so cheesy and so delicious, it’s a pity they
don’t make tea so well, but I’m happy anyway. Tana is another city built on a
huge hill so I take one of the very groovy taxis – they are little Citroens with
sun roofs, all the way uphill to a rocky ridge at 1,431m where the palace and the nearby Museum are.
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| Fighting chameleons |
The
Rova (Queen’s Palace) has been closed after a fire a few years back but walking
around the back to check the views from here, I find local kids catching
chameleons from the trees using long poles, then lay the poles together on the
ground and watch the chameleons fight! Perhaps chameleons are solitary folk?
lol The Musee Andafiavaratra is crowded with school kids but its nice to see
their excitement over the exhibits, which are an odd, dusty and varied
collection from the Merina monarchs.
I spend the rest of the morning walking
downhill taking any roads towards the centre of town and am so enamoured of the
views, the atmosphere and general ambience of Tana that I cannot walk 20 yards
without getting my camera out to take another photo. Strolling past churches I
find one built in 1874 commemorating where a queen threw christians off the
cliff to their death, in 1849! There are tidy flower beds in yards and streets,
cute taxis motoring up impossibly narrow, curving streets and wonderful vistas
on a lovely sunny day. It is so laid back, fashionably French and another world
away from the Africa I left in Nairobi yesterday. From the posters around town
I gather that sex tourism is an ongoing problem here on Madagascar. Tourists
coming from Europe looking to be accompanied by very young local girls YUCK!
I contact Marie Paul, a local WAGGGS rep, who then contacts the
former Federation President, Marthe to telephone me and I arrange to visit this
afternoon. Here the Federation has three Girl Guide Associations – catholic,
protestant and non-denominational. Easily finding the GG headquarters in the
same street as where I am staying their upstairs offices are staffed by Guides who
receive office training. I meet finally Marthe after our numerous emails, and
her daughters, we chat to try and find some dates that suit us – she is heading
up country the days I have returned from the tour –so we arrange to meet for lunch
the next day. They give me a Federation badge and a lovely handbag made of
local materials leaving me feeling so inadequate having given small tokens in
return.
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| The martyrs were thrown from here!! |
More wandering about this lovely town, taking in old
colonial architecture , checking out the shops with loads of very nice kitsch,
all suited to the very modern frenchie on holiday! Taste testing a couple of tea
rooms and of course making sure I take the downhill roads is a very successful
tactic. Now I can make sense of the city map and orient myself enough to work
out where the markets are, what stairs lead where and where else I want to see.
On my return from the Gap tour Sakamanga only have a more expensive room, so I head
over to the Chalet de Roses where the GAP tour begins tomorrow – it’s not
nearly as lovely as the Sakamanga however it does have a room for my return
dates so I can relax knowing I won’t have to look around for another place at
the end of the tour. AND it’s near a convenient set of stairs that head
straight down into town and the market so that is a big plus. 
Next day I move hotels but on
arrival at Chalet, I’m told that my roommate is still asleep so I leave my pack
and walk to another side of town to find the Muse de l’art et de l’archeologie closed
(is it ever open?), more shops to check out after the tour and find my way down
to Lac Anosy – the heart of Tana. So called because it is heart shaped it looks
very green but there are loads of folk strolling around making for a lovely
atmosphere! Try finding the flower market to no avail so I take a taxi back to
the Chalet where my roommate is now out and they are rearranging the room into
a twin. I quickly change for lunch and meet with Marthe at Sakamanga from where
we walk to a local restaurant for lunch where we are also joined by Patricia
and Nene, two young leaders and Marthe’s daughter. The restaurant is on the
swcond floor, set up in a former home and there is a young man playing a piano
during the time we are here, making for a lovely atmosphere. I ask lots of questions about Madagascar’s
current state of affairs – I learn that Guiding is very concerned about the problem
with street children and young girls being lured by sex tourists, the economy
is going nowhere and even though there is a new prime minister to appease
foreign aid donators, the same old faces are making up government numbers and
no one expects much to change in the near future. They are very, very poor here
and there are certainly no fat malagasy here.
After lunch I locate the Alliance
on Independence Ave to book a ticket for tonight’s ‘spectacular’ and head back
to Chalet to check out the room and supplied toiletries that had no labels. I ask at reception to identify shampoo,
conditioner and moisturiser, then shower, change, do a little hand washing and soon
enough my tour roommate, Anna arrives. We introduce ourselves but Anna is a
little taken aback that I have used her toiletries and have the window wise
open drying clothes. OOPS this could be a bad start so closing the windows, I
assure her that I had asked reception about the bottles and on the upside she
is pleased (or relieved) that the double bed had been transformed into twin
beds. Thankfully its time to attend the tour meeting, where the lovely
Fanomezana H. Rajaonarisoa, just call me Fano, introduces himself, the
‘rebadged’ G Tours (something about Gap Clothing and brand names), a few ground
rules via a printed sheet (he must have guided some real nincompoops in the
past judging by some of the advice he’s giving) and some last minute changes to
the itinerary. There are nine of us present now and another six are currently
stranded at Johannesburg airport but hope to join us in time before we depart
tomorrow morning. There are Jill and Brian from Melbourne, Lynda from Edmonton,
Helen from Vancouver, Jon from Denmark, Anna from Israel, Sigrid from Austria. Clare
from UK.
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| Can you see the heart shaped lake? |
Arrangements are made to meet for dinner tonight but I have to give my
apologies as I have booked the show tonight but promise to join them afterwards
at the Chalet’s restaurant. Heading back into town for the Cirque Spectacle at
Institut Francais which is a bit of a hoot – a live show with 2 performers
doing magical things with ropes to wow the small children and amuse the rest of
us. Afterwards I head back to meet the group who have finished their meal and
making plans to return to the hotel to go to bed! It’s only 8.30pm so I head
out again – yes my tour leader advises me against walking on my own but it is
so early – so I dine out on a fab meal at Sakamanga then find the groovy Tana
Arts Café for some good mohitos and meet the owner of the nearby Palms Hotel.
He calls himself an indian, not malagasy and I find the distinction very
interesting, as he is 2nd generation born on Madagascar. He is buying the delicious mohitos and not allowing
me to return the shout so soon the fun must end because starting the tour with
a hangover could be a bad omen.
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| Cute taxis |
Bad enough that it has not been a very
promising start to my group experience, I shouldn’t be late back to my roommate
because she has the only key and will have to get up if I am back too late.
Time to buckle down and get with
the program methinks so getting another groovy little taxi, I make it back to
find Anna still up and about. We chat a bit and quickly learn we have a few
opposing views on her country’s political issues so I shut up and try to end it
well. In the morning the rest of the group have arrived and after quick hellos
I head out again to the market for another yum Portuguese omelette leaving the
rest of the group eating in house. The only drawback here at Chalet De Roses is
the constant barrage of souvenir sellers with raggedy, begging children
constantly camped out front. Over at Sakamanga there are a couple of
stallholders across the road who call out each time you pass. Here, even if you
are seated inside they are always motioning at you from outside. And the bamboo
instrument that is played at you whenever you walk past – I wonder who would
ever want to buy such a thing?(two weeks later on my return to Tana, I spot
three tourists with this thing poking out of their bags – obviously its charm
is just lost on me!) Heading back to the hotel we all board a comfy bus to
begin our G tour of Madagascar together.
FACT: Madagascar is a unique experiment of alternative
evolution that lasted undisturbed for some 60 million years and interrupted as
late as some 2000 years ago by humans oddly arriving from Southeast Asia at
first and only later appended by another wave coming from the African continent.
Madagascar was separated from the rest of the world well before the emergence
of mammals and so it was originally populated solely by reptiles allowing some
of them, especially the chameleons and geckos to develop to a big variety and
the few random mammal species that have been cast away from African continent
differentiated into many species exploiting all unoccupied niches -
particularly the endemic lemurs which are the only Madagascar primates.
FACT 2: Here as a white person, I am known by slang as a "vazaha"
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