Antsirabe, Madagascar
August 17, 2015
Early start for our Malagasy adventure. Breakfast was ordered at reception from a French menu for a Petit de Jeurner – eggs, bread rolls, small tubs of yogurt etc. Joy had fun translating the French, so that we knew what we were ordering. We ate at small tables at one end of the compact lobby. After breakfast we met our guide Lala for a briefing. We were surprised to find that he had recently been to Melbourne in company of a young Malagasy boy who needed some specialised surgery. The contrast between conditions in Australia and those here is stark.
As we boarded the bus, we were pressed by ladies in the street outside our hotel selling intricately embroidered tapestries depicting Malagasy village scenes. We headed south to Antsirabe. Small paddy fields are the major unit of agriculture but most are dry at this time of year – being used to grow vegetables (mainly peas) or wheat or rough grazing for Zebu. Not far out of town we stopped by the side of the road to look across a valley of rice terraces being ploughed by oxen and two-storey mud-brick farm houses. From a distance these houses look almost Western standard but on closer inspection, the construction was very simple and there was no glass in the windows.
We were soon met by a group of shy and fascinated children from the settlement, probably of late primary to early secondary age. We asked our guide why they were not at school and he described the concept of ‘mora-mora’ which means ‘slowly, slowly’ or ‘take it easy’. Sort of equivalent to ‘no worries, she’ll be right mate’.
We stopped at Ambatolampy to visit a backyard aluminium saucepan production centre, where scrap engine casings are melted down by the kids after smashing them into pieces. Moulds are made in ash for pouring in the hot metal. The workers use their bare feet to tamp down the ash. Still in bare feet they pour in the molten metal and remove the new pot and lid. The air is filled with ash particles and goodness knows what contaminants. The workers were skilled and cheerful. The aluminium wares from this village are sold all over the island and are even exported to Reunion, particularly the large cooking pots with lids.
After our ‘factory’ visit, we went for lunch at a village home set up for passing tourists. It reminded us of a similar experience in far west China. Pasta-vegetable mix, chicken pieces and pineapple fritters. Ambatolampy seemed to us to be a frontier town with its dusty streets, open-fronted stalls selling all sorts of produce, included fly-covered cuts of meat and with chickens, pigs and mangy dogs roaming everywhere. This is not the lush, green-forested, country-side we were expecting.
After lunch we had a guided tour through the paddy fields and back-blocks of the village, discussing the crops along the way. Some industries we noted were water cress production, small coffee plantations, soap manufacture from tomato, Buddleia ash, Aloe and animal fat. The poverty in the streets was rather confronting as we made our way through a market of clothing, food stalls and bric-a-brac to a Boules Playing Field and back onto the bus.
Accommodation in Antsirabe was in a Western-style multi-story Hotel with a large entrance lobby and dining room. Certainly more up-market than our Tana stay. The evening meal (fish for Joy, steak for Austin) was superb.
