Blogs from Antananarivo, Madagascar, Africa - page 3

Well the dinner was great! Zebu steak for me (type of big horned cow with a big hump on its back) and a traditional Malagasy (Madagascan) dish for Dario, both delicious. Of course we tried a local beer, Ambree, very nice! Then we went to bed exhausted. Next morning we had brekky at 6.30am then grabbed our things and took a taxi to the taxi-brousse station (basically mini van which are public transport) to take one to Fianarantsoa, 10 hours south. We managed to just miss the morning one, we didn’t want to wait until 2pm for the next one so instead we got on one that was heading to Ambositra, 5 hours south. We had to wait in our seats (we had the best ones since we were one of the first people in the ... read more

Another late arrival sees us haggling yet again over a taxi fare, this time in French outside Antananarivo's Ivato airport. We settle on 30,000. Sound a little expensive? Fortunately we're dealing in Ariary and 10,000Ar is about NZ$7. At this time of night its a fair price to the central city. We're staying in the slightly seedy part of Haute-Ville and apart from a few girls of the night on the street its pretty quiet. Madagascar was a French colony and along with the language it has obviously retained various other aspects of French life. Old Renault taxis and baguettes are everywhere. We catch one (taxi that is) to the Rova, an old Royal palace on a hilltop overlooking the city. Unfortunately its closed for renovations but we get an informative guided tour of the local ... read more

Hello one and all! It's Lilly here writing from an internet cafe in Antananarivo with a funny keyboard that is making me type very slowly and so is costing me a fortune haha. we've had a pretty good time so far, arrived on friday night in the capital and we were met at the airport by 2 nice malagasy men in one of the most run down cars i've ever seen, it didn't have a dashboard or anything. Driven through the streets as everyone ca,e out to celebrate the eve of independence day and were dropped at a hotel for our first night. Woke up the next morning to catch a taxi-brousse, read minibus stuffed to overflowing with people, to Ampefy for a weekends holiday before starting our placement in Andasibe. was quite intimidating as touts ... read more

Rice paddies. Rickshaws. Names full to bursting with syllables. Old European guys with young local girls. More to the point, facial features. Even if archaeological evidence didn't provide a scientific confirmation, one would know that the roots of the Malagasy people lie far to the east, in what is now Indonesia and Malaysia. In other words, Madagascar was first settled by people from thousands of kilometres away rather than the somewhat closer inhabitants of mainland Africa. This is just one aspect of what makes it such an intriguing country - even now, the highlanders are an Asian culture speaking French in a geographically African location. I've had Madagascar on my mind for a while, but only in the last couple of years has it become an essential to-do if I ever travelled through Africa. Lemurs and ... read more

3 hours drive north of Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, is a small agricultural town named Anjozorobe. It is surrounded by green hills and enormous stretches of rice paddies. Local farmers are certainly liable to the slash and burn culture, which means there are few trees about, but the production of nutritious red rice still has high yields. People wear a huge array of hats. Some don more traditional straw trilbies and sun hats while others adorn a whole range of hats imported by foreign aid charities. American clothes dominate as a result of this. Traditional garb seems rather distant. While I was teaching, the main high school even held a beauty pageant, which although extremely popular, seemed to borrow its entire process from an outside world. Students dressed in tennis gear and brandishing a tennis racket to ... read more