In transit, Tamatave to Tana
“Welcome to Tamatave. We are lost.”
Tovo’s voice conveyed a mix of pleasure at getting us to Tamatave an hour ahead of schedule, nonchalance at our predicament, and a touch of wonder at whatever of life’s quirks had caused us to be lost at all. Our vans were stopped across from a butcher shop on one of Tamatave’s side streets as our drivers tried to get their bearings.
It turned out we were only a few blocks from our hotel, on the edge of the city’s Arab quarter. The hotel’s name reflected this faraway influence, the Hotel Le Sinbad. The rooms weren’t fancy, with concrete walls and garish fluorescent lighting. But the beds were soft, and I think any tourist would be comfortable there.
The drive into Tamatave was not so luxurious. Things started out pleasantly, all of us piled into two Peace Corps vans, tracing the now-familiar roads near Mantasoa. Corey, Monica, and Ellen got John’s external speakers and started blasting the Backstreet Boys, singing along raucously. The eucalyptus groves and red earth of the high sierra turned to more lush pine forests as we descended; some of the vistas reminded me of the Alps.
We stopped for a restaurant lunch in a small town near Moramanga. After John, Adam, and I finished we talked to the lone white guy waiting among the bush taxis. He was British, visiting his brother who works with a mining company on the Île Sainte-Marie. It’s strange how foreigners, vazaha in Malagasy, now hold some of the same fascination for us, even though we’re vazaha ourselves.
The mountains gave way to hilly banana country. The view out the window was almost oppressively green. The road, though well-paved, snaked wildly, and we were all motion sick to some degree. We passed through villages built as corridors of houses along the road, where everyone seemed to be carrying hooked pole-knives for harvesting bananas. Both the landscape and people reminded me of what one might see in the Philippines or Malaysia, not Africa.
As we neared the city, however, I had visions of Florida. The country was now completely flat, fields marked with palm copses and a large factory on the horizon. Tamatave’s outlying sections too reminded me of some of the poorer sections of Orlando.
However, the city proper reminded me most of Cartagena, Colombia. Not desperately poor like Dosso, Niger, or Saint-Louis-du-Nord, Haiti, which are both of similar size. Just cobbled together without a plan, a city whose residents are just poor-off enough to have to set aside aesthetics to get through the day-to-day. The main streets are paved, the others left to themselves. Only the government buildings and foreign-owned businesses are well-maintained; the rest are cracking, but serviceable. There are few taxis, but many tricycle rickshaws, with the two-person passenger seat mounted above the rear wheels.
That first night was our first opportunity in a while to have vazaha cuisine, so we went to Gastro Pizza, a restaurant that our language teacher Modeste had recommended. We shared pizzas and got ice cream for dessert. From there most of the group went to relax at a bar near the hotel, while the rest of us went to sleep.
On Wednesday morning Tovo took us out for breakfast at a Malagasy restaurant. We ran into Danny, an RPCV from ’05 to ’07 who now lives in Tamatave. After his service ended he got involved with the fair-trade vanilla industry, and now works with a farmer’s co-op exporting vanilla to the US. He talked about cash crops’ potential to improve farmers’ lives, provided the money from sales flows properly and fairly. We asked him what he knew about our individual sites, and though he’d only been south once, he told me Manambaro has a lot of moringa.
YES! HAHAHA, YES! That’s what I’ve been waiting to hear! Moringa is a fantastic tree from India that has enormous potential for reversing malnutrition, or at least vitamin deficiencies, in Africa. The leaves and seed pods of the tree have huge amounts of Vitamin C, Vitamin A, iron, calcium, and protein. It prefers sandy soil, and grows well even in nutrient-depleted earth. It flourishes most during the rainy season, but if given enough water it will grow year-round. And the best part, in my opinion, is that the tree can be completely defoliated and the leaves will grow back in about two weeks. The leaves are a touch bitter, but not that different from spinach. Mix it with peanut butter, onions, and chopped chilis, and you got kopto, my favorite Nigerien dish.
After breakfast we met with Aaron and Bobbette, two current PCVs from the area, and they showed us around some of the Tamatave relief agencies they’d worked with. We stopped at the government-run CDIV clinic, which is a key facility in diagnosing patients at risk for AIDS. The doctor wasn’t there, so we moved on to a factory on the other side of town.
The American Catholic relief organization Saint Gabriel has set up a large compound where they are training Malagasy workers in water sanitation. Part of the compound is the SaniTec porcelain factory, which produces high-quality, low-cost latrine seats. I was skeptical of this idea at first, until I found out that SaniTec installs entire latrines for Malagasy families. And that business model is pretty smart: if SaniTec/Saint Gabriel can elevate latrines with a porcelain seat to a status symbol, then using said latrines will also be an act of status. The free market should affect positive behavior change by connecting it with a physical commodity.
In the afternoon Bobbette took us to her favorite ice cream shop. The flavors were worlds better than the ice cream we’d had the night before, made with on-island coffee- and vanilla beans. It was absolutely sublime, probably the best non-Parisian ice cream I’ve ever had.
Thursday morning we departed Tamatave for Foulpointe, Bobbette’s site. It has some fame as a resort town, because unlike much of Madagascar’s coastline, Foulpointe boasts an offshore reef that acts as a barrier against waves and sharks. On the way we stopped at a CSB clinic for more instruction on how to weigh babies and give vaccinations.
And then there was the beach. As beaches go, it wasn’t that impressive, way too crowded for my liking. But the fact that we lodged in bungalows within site of the Indian Ocean had a luxury all its own. For the rest of the afternoon we splashed in the warm pond-like water and soaked up the sun. It was incredibly relaxing to have just a few hours to ourselves after the stress of traveling.
At five we rendezvoused in Foulpointe town with a team from Population Services International (PSI), a relief group that monitors nutrition, sanitation, maternal health, and AIDS. They erected a seven-by-ten foot screen, speakers, a generator, and a projector. This setup was the PSI Cinémobile, a relatively pioneering method of educating large groups of people.
As far as we knew, the PSI workers had made no announcement they were coming to Foulpointe. As soon as the speakers were working, they began blasting dance music to attract a crowd. We Trainees stood to the side and danced, because there was nothing else to do but watch. When enough people had gathered, PSI began playing Malagasy music videos on the screen. After a few of those, it seemed like the whole town was present, and PSI did a brief announcement in Malagasy, something to do with condoms. Bobbette and Aaron introduced themselves in Malagasy and did a condom demonstration with a banana. A few more music videos with famous Malagasy singers endorsing condoms, then the main event started.
The video opened with the protagonist, whom I’ll call Red Sweatshirt Guy, cheating on his fiancee with another girl. I think he was using condoms with this girl, but not with his fiancee, which enabled him to cover his deception. But that girl was sleeping with another guy! And Red Sweatshirt Guy almost got into a fight with that guy! And someone wasn’t using a condom! And... I lost track of what was going on very quickly.
And on the plus side, the crowd watched with rapt attention for the entire film. And one thing I did understand about the story was how the filmmakers approached infidelity; they didn’t portray cheaters as immoral, just too dumb for their own good whether they were using condoms or not.
During the day Aaron had talked to his Rasta friend, whom everyone called Rasta, to organize dinner on the beach. After the presentation, we went back to the beach by the hotel to Rasta’s restaurant. The restaurant consisted of a long low-slung table and stools, and a sign proclaiming the space Chez Lala Rasta. Rasta and a couple other guys brought out rice, pickled carrots, and fresh-caught grilled prawns. The prawns were succulent and tender, hands down the best seafood dish I have ever eaten.
This morning I took a dip in the Indian Ocean under a blazing golden sunrise. I was the only one in the water.
So Tech Trip turned out to be filled with sun, fantastic food, and inspiring new ideas. It was great to get a sense of what approaches the relief organizations are taking towards Madagascar’s problems. They have some revolutionary ideas, and it’s nice to know we’re not alone in this fight.
