Arriving in Madagascar

MON - On my arrival at the tiny, hot, Antananarivo airport, after a three hour delay in Mauritius, I’m met by two sign-holding ADRA workers. Both are Malagasy. The nervous-looking man, Warren, interprets for the cheerful, smiling woman.

'Do you want to exchange any currency?'

The guidebook has said I might as well change money in the airport as anywhere else, so they take me upstairs towards the bank, leaving my suitcase(!) with an ADRA driver. However, it becomes clear that the woman is about to leave on a trip, and they think it would be a good idea for them to change (!) the US $100 cash I reckon would be enough for a week in a very poor country.

Obviously, I have no idea of the exchange rate between dollars and Malagasy ariary, so I’ve got a decision to make. Do I trust them, or do I go to the bank which I can see at the end of the corridor? As with handing over my suitcase, I reckon I’ve put myself into the hands of this charity anyway, so I might as well go further and trust them money-wise as well. She gets out her calculator, does the conversion, asks if I agree with the terrifyingly high number on the screen (I do, helplessly), and gives me hundreds of thousands of ariary notes.

Oh good.

Travelling There
I have travelled to Madagascar on Air Mauritius, which initially sounded dodgy to me, but after looking it up online and noting my 12-hour Heathrow-Mauritius route would be on one of their brand-new Airbuses, I realised it could be pretty good. So it proves. The food is very similar to Indian food, although some of the British people on board found the chicken curry and rice a bit too spicy.

The main assessment of any airline is, of course, the in-flight entertainment system, particularly their film selection. It is the first time I’ve been on a plane where you can stop-start-and-search-the films you’re watching, so the long night passed agreeably. There is a wide selection of films: current ‘blockbusters’, classics (including Bollywood and French –reflecting the primary Mauritian cultural influences), and kids’. I watch The Illusionist (fairly good, Edward Norton), Woody Allen’s Scoop (poor, Scarlett Johannsson), Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (to redeem the great man), and Hero (beautiful, Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi), without the sound and with subtitles, as I fall asleep on two seats in the very back row.

The Drive into Tana
I begin filming outside the airport, as soon as we’ve said goodbye to the woman who has taken all my US dollars, and get little clips of my first impressions of Madagascar. The road into the capital is decent tarmac, and initially I am fooled by the big adverts and some ostentatious office blocks into thinking that Antananarivo (or ‘Tana’), at least, is fairly prosperous.

But quickly, and then increasingly, there are glimpses of the poverty at play in the capital. Many people are barefoot as they walk along the long road, getting out of the way if we beep. We have to pull out around ox-drawn carts. People sit by the side of the road, attempting to sell pitifully-unappealing-looking trinkets and food. There have been heavy rains during this rainy season, and young men are fishing with a stick and line in fields and rice paddies which have turned into lakes.

But there isn’t rain during our drive, and indeed the bigger impression on me is a more African stereotype of red dust. People are hanging out at shack-like shops, laughing, joking, or staring blankly into space, on the side of the road as we get into the city. Some more substantive shops are painted as Coca-Cola billboards.

Malagasys look like a cross between black

African and Indian sub-continental peoples, although apparently there is Indonesian mixed in as well.

There’s a real mixture of clothing on view – the occasional suit, smart trousers, shirts and ties, but mostly battered skirts, shorts and T-shirts. Faded fake football shirts and basketball tops often make an appearance.

The ADRA man Warren answers all my questions, but is a little stilted. He’s the first in Madagascar to have an exchange with me that is repeated several times during my trip:

‘Is this your first time to visit Africa?’

‘Well, no, I’ve been to Morocco. About two years ago.’

‘Oh, Morocco isn’t really Africa.’

I can see why people say that, but one thing is clear. Morocco is much further along the developmental stage in being a tourist destination, as Madagascar aspires to be, but the urban poverty I saw in Marrakech is the same as in ‘Tana.’ People at the bottom of the pile dress in a similar way, build shacks in a similar way, and attempt to improve their lot in a similar way, no matter where they are in the developing world.