Taxi Broussing

Believe it or not, the entire transportation system for the 20 million people living on this island consists of six paved roads and perhaps a thousand elderly Mazda and Toyota passenger vans. Given these conditions, there is no earthly way transportation can be a pleasant experience. These vans called “brousses” by the locals tear about Madagascar chock-a-block with cargo and people. Best evidence is that these cars were sold at a discount to taxi companies and imported from Europe when they became obsolete. Once in Madagascar they are stripped down and refurbished to accommodate the maximum number of legal midgets physically possible. There is no safety equipment to speak of. The vans are more or less metal cubes with engines and big gas tanks. Plastic containers on the roof can also be filled with gasoline to ensure that all passengers can enjoy an exciting fiery death should the driver misjudge the wrong corner.
Overstuffing a brousse is technically illegal in Madagascar and police check-points outside the major cities are there to ensure passenger’s safety and security. However, a few thousand ariary can make any potential traffic citations disappear so capacity rules are no longer heeded. Some brousses come equipped with mini-video screens so passengers can view some horrendous and often shockingly explicit music videos while they are being carted around like packed sardines. Heavy sub-woofers also come standard on every brousse, when turned up to full volume, the advancing sound serves to clear docile Malagasy villagers off the road as the brousse approaches.
To top it all of, many brousses are customized. Rather than install decent interior upholstery, seat belts, or repair the inevitably broken side mirrors, taxi vans spend their money buying custom car horns, glue-on imitation chrome side ventilators, flashy stickers of all kinds. I always know the brousse that operates out of Ranomafana because it has two massive Hannah Montana decals in the rear windows. Other vans opt for a more religious tone, sporting a crucified Christ, Madonna with infant Christ, or bible verses written out in cursive glitter type. By in large, however, most cosmetic additions attempt to intimidate or flaut the car’s illustrious but also fictitious racing prowess. Pink and orange flames cover the running board and meaningless logos such as “MAZDA SPEED RACING” are plastered on their dented bodies and broken windscreens. Who these stickers are meant to appeal to is up for debate.
Worst then puttering about this island in one of these tin cages of death is trying to get one of them to leave at the Taxi Gare. Always located in the most unbecoming sections of town, come within 400 meters of any Taxi Gare and you will immediately be set-upon by 10 or more persistent hagglers. These people make a career out of forcing innocent and unsuspecting travelers into their particular vans. They usually open by asking, in French, where I am going. When I ignore them they just start guessing. “Your going to Tulear? This car is going there right now! [lie] its already almost full! [lie]” I am not going to Tulear, as I continue to spurn their advances, more hagglers are attracted to the approaching white person heavy laden with bags. Soon everyone is screaming various destinations and pushing each other out of the way to get a better angle on me. The hagglers begin accusing each other of being drunk. Fights break out as I look on apathetically. One or two of the men will start grabbing at my bags pulling me one way or another. This is not ok. I yell at them in Malagasy though their garbled French bickering. On more than one occasion I was certain I was going to be shoved into a moving van professional-kidnapping style. The event ends anticlimactically when I fight my way into a particular taxi company office to buy a legitimate ticket.
Hapless white people are not the only targets of harassment. I once witnessed an elderly woman holding hands with a young girl enter the Gare. The pair was swarmed with 6 or 7 seven full grown men trying to herd them into their particular van. When the woman resisted, two men seized the screaming child and began to pry her away from her guardian. After a few seconds of valiant struggle the old woman lost her grip on the girl, tripped on a paving stone and fell hard onto the cement with a cry. The basket of personal effects she had been balancing on her head scattered across the lot. Collecting her things the woman ran off in tears after the girl, I never saw her again and a little bit of my faith in humanity died that day.
Having beaten off the unkempt, unfriendly, and unrelenting hagglers, the search for a van begins. Not so easy when everyone you speak with is lying to you and trying to scam you. Not only is every price quote you receive heavily inflated, but every departure time is completely misleading. Every bus is leaving “right now” or “in 5 minutes” or “as soon as you pay.” Once you have handed over your money, everyone, thankfully, losses interest in you and you are liable to wait as many as four hours for your car to leave. Unfortunately there is perhaps no worse place to be sitting for hours than a Malagasy Taxi Gare. Generally, these places are little more than a glorified parking lot encircled by tiny cement huts that serve as offices. While you bake on black tarmac under the tropical sun, you are constantly subjected to the most diverse assortment of Malagasy riffraff begging for money or selling rancid food and new shiny plastic garbage from China. I bring a book and try to hide, usually not very successfully, in the back of a car.
The only plus about the transportation terror that I have just described is that you are always thrilled to reach your destination and you always tell the best stories. On a brousse from Manakara, the entire bank of windows on the right side of the car fell off as we were doing 75 kph and shattered all over the highway, puncturing a tire. There are no restrictions on carry-on luggage. Mattresses, entire motorcycles, geese, goats, and even illegally poached herons are all kosher; the only universal no-no is dogs. I counted 30 people (myself included) in a van designed for 12, but refitted for 15. I have watched on in shock as 20 bags of cement were pulled out of the nooks and crannies of an already packed bus. We ran over a turkey. I have shared my personal space with drunk old men, vomiting teenagers, jolly nuns, xenophobic toddlers, and terrorized chickens to name a few. Thankfully when the rents come we are renting a private van.

In an unrelated aside I would again like to take the opportunity to harangue Madagascar’s Postal (dis)Service for their extemporary failure to perform above a third-grade aptitude.
A few months ago, my dearest Aunt Mary carefully filled a padded manila envelope with food, letters, and lots of love. Having read my past blogs featuring unforgiving tirades against the post, she bravely decided to take the risk and entrust the package to these purveyors of incompetence and my some miracle it only took a matter of weeks for them to get it though customs where Peace Corps, like a white knight in shining armor rescued it from the dungeons of the Postal depot in Tana. However, it was only after I had triumphantly returned with my prize did I realize that my celebration was premature. While lingering in the dark purgatory of the customs office, a rat had chewed though the envelope and violated its contents. The double-packaged dehydrated milk had been breeched but not seriously plundered. However, the homemade cherry-smoked chicken jerky was opened and entire precious strips were completely absent. I was irate. My mail has about as much chance of reaching me as a mentally challenged tuna fish has in a shark tank. This is the second package to be assaulted in such a manner, both tragedies befalling Alphenaar packages. Maybe just send e-mails and think non-hungry thoughts?

Antananarivo (Tana)

I really don’t like Tana. Allow me to enumerate a few of my gripes with this city. First and foremost, Tana has perhaps the worst city planning I have ever had the privilege to witness in all my travels. The roads into the city disappear into a morass of crammed dirty backstreets. There are no highways in Tana, but enough traffic to make ten kilometer journey downtown a two hour project. The only mass transit is provided by antiquated Mercedes busses called ‘Taxi-be’ that charge 15 cents for the pleasure of being crammed into a child-sized seat next to an overweight Malagasy person as the engine chugs and sputters in gridlock traffic while you breath in enough exhaust fumes to induce a significant headache. Security is a big problem in Tana. Entire sections of town are no-fly zones for volunteers. Purses are slashed. Pockets picked. One volunteer a few years ago had his face beat in with a brick on his way back from a bar and had to be med-evaced for facial reconstructive surgery. Tana is also the city where the divide between rich and poor is most pronounced. Some residents live in shacks built in the swampy recesses of the rice paddies while the educated elite cruise through the garbage strewn streets in their European imports. Homes and businesses are secluded behind high walls decorated liberally with barbed wire. Rent-a-cop companies make a killing standing outside mansions housing the foreign and the wealthy. It is not for me to pass judgment on people for wanting to protect themselves and their possessions. It just makes for bad aesthetics.
Unfortunately this is the only city in Madagascar that you can’t avoid. As Madagascar’s capital, the terminus of four paved highways, and the home to the island’s only international airport, everything in Madagascar filters through this lackluster hub. Accordingly, finishing my wonderful vacation in Morandava found me staying at Peace Corps transit house in the wealthy suburb of Ivandy on the north side of Tana. The date was November 17, a normally inconspicuous date on the calendar but this year it happened to coincide with a controversial constitutional referendum being put to vote by the Malagasy government. As I was busy uploading my vacation photos onto Facebook, a group of ranking military officers decided to use the referendum as a pretext to over throw the current regime. From their base near the airport the officers announced to the world that a supreme military council was now in control of Madagascar, telling one French television station that the airport and presidential palace would be stormed the following morning preventing anyone from leaving the island and effectively paralyzing the current administration.
These men, however, failed to properly ensure the support of the rest of the island’s military apparatus and within 24 hours it became clear that the only thing the “Supreme Military Council” controlled was the building in which they sat and a pile of burning tires on the road out to the airport. Peace Corps and the Embassy, however, were not amused. A warden’s message was issued. Peace Corps extended a no-travel order to the entire country and I, as well as seven other unlucky volunteers, was more or less restricted to a one block radius containing one affordable restaurant and a gas station for a week. Even though the faux coup d’etat was quickly put down, my plans to go back home came to naught and a trip downtown was hastily called off when an improvised explosive device was detonated in a popular plaza.
As the walls of transit house closed in around me and the other volunteers, the embassy staff living in the area rescued us from excruciating boredom by inviting us to social events. Feeling a little awkward in a faded t-shirt and dirty sneakers we sipped expensive alcohols and got a little glimpse of the Foreign Service life. I became friends with one officer in particular, Jane and her nephew Aaron who had just arrived in Madagascar for a six month vacation. Jane invited myself and a slew of other volunteers to share Thanksgiving with their family and we feasted together on traditional American fare. For most of us it was a challenge to stop from eating the marvelous food even when our stomachs were well past capacity.
With the situation in the capital under control and our travel restrictions lifted, Jane’s nephew and I escaped on a weekend vacation to the sleepy costal town of Mahanoro for a real Peace Corps Thanksgiving. The volunteer living in Mahanoro had purchased herself a live turkey, which she had affectionately named Marvin, and had been stuffing it full of beans for the proceeding week. Mahanoro quickly gained the distinction of my new favorite coastal town. Quiet, friendly, unassuming, and with some 80 kilometers of sandy beach for running, the town would have been frequented by me on the weekends if it wasn’t some 800 kilometers from Ranomafana. Turkey-day-prep started early in the morning and after cooking furiously we managed to have a meal large enough to feed the 20 or so gathered holiday makers just before sunset. After ingesting Marvin, we hit the beach for beers and campfire under a spectacular canopy of stars, playing with the phosphorescent plankton glowing like glitter in the surf. I tried not to think about going back to Tana the next morning.