Traffic report

Thursday, February 09, 2017
Ambositra, Madagascar
During those few days I was moving uncomfortably around central Madagascar, there were so many photo opportunities that I just couldn't take advantage of:
A woman gets on the taxi-brousse with a four-year-old and a chicken.  Initially the chicken is squawky (I can definitely sympathize) but the boy snuggles beside his mother and drapes his little wrist affectionately over the neck of the chicken in her lap, and the bird calms down.
When at rest, herd-boys all over the world strike a confident pose, with their stick or switch on their shoulder.
This country definitely has the world's highest percentage of gap-toothed and snaggle-toothed people.
Two men are chatting beside the road.  They've been through a lot but they're still strong.  Both barefoot, one with a stick, wearing a medley of well-worn garments, hats that look just right.  They are clearly enjoying the conversation.
I went to Fianarantsoa in order to take the spectacularly slow and primitive train down to the coast.  It's the only train in the country that is still running, and is said to make the Burmese and Ethiopian trains seem like the luxurious Blue Train.  Most people suffer this train trip in order to get to the coast, but I was going to do it for the pure experience of rock-bottom train travel, and then come right back.  I asked people in Tana, and they said the train was running every Tuesday and returning every Friday.  Then I asked in Ambositra, and they said it went down every Tuesday, and came back up every Friday.  When I arrived in Fianarantsoa, they said the train would be going down the next day, and coming back on Friday.  So I went to the train station to make a reservation, and they said the train had not been running for two weeks and they didn't know when it would be running again.  The locomotive was en panne.
From 7:24 to 7:30 am in the main street of Ambositra (pronounced "ambooshtr") while hundreds of kids are heading for school in their uniforms, the following vehicles passed by: 13 motorbikes, 18 cars and trucks, 7 bicycles, and 31 pousse-pousses.
The pousse-pousses in Ambositra are all powered by men on foot. In India in 1974 they were in general use and were called rickshaws, although many of them were cycle-powered. In Lahore in 2001, many were motorized while the rest were cycle-powered. In this century the only place I have seen people on foot dragging a rickshaw is downtown Toronto, where they are a novelty conveyance for tourists and a source of summer income for university students. The Canadian can earn more in an hour than the Ambositran earns in a month. Most of the Ambositran operators wear sandals or flip-flops, but more than a few are barefoot. A typical ride costs 2000 ariary or USD 0.65 to go a kilometre or so; shorter distances cost less. Initially I was puzzled why Ambositra, apparently the most prosperous of the three towns I have visited outside Antananarivo, had the most pousse-pousses. Then I realized that I was only thinking of the supply side. On the demand side, Ambositra probably has more people willing to pay money in order not to walk.
I was told in Antananarivo that a typical wage for a semi-skilled worker in regular employment is 40 euros/month (a euro currently being only very slightly more valuable than a US dollar), and that a manual labourer in piecework could earn a euro or two per day, maximum three, whenever fortunate enough to find work.  This sounds low, but it turns out to be a generous assessment.  Outside the capital, one would receive less.
Another common conveyance for goods in this region is a low flat cart without sides, like the ones they used to use to trundle baggage at railway stations, powered here mainly by gravity. These were in heavy use descending one of the hills at the edge of town. They were also seen carrying lumber or construction materials down the highway far from any town. And these trolleys were also being pushed back up the highway, empty or loaded. There are other countries with a similar topography and economy (Lesotho, Ethiopia) but I have never seen this elsewhere.
This is the first country I have visited where the principal beast of burden is man. Only rarely do you see a bullock cart, and I haven't yet seen a single donkey.
I've just put captions on the photos below, taken in Fianarantsoa and Ambositra, and it occurs to me that one might assume that I was wandering through the dodgier parts of these towns.  No:  these are the principal commercial streets of these towns, which are among the most developed towns in Madagascar.  Outside of Tana, I didn't see anything resembling a modern shop in the country.  I have visited more than thirty African nations, most of them over thirty years ago, and none of them are like this.
(More photos below)

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2025-02-17

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