We took a taxi from a friends house up a windy cobblestone hill in Antananarivo to the taxi-bruisse station. It was a battered Renault, thirty years old and as the driver pulled away from the house he shut off the engine and coasted silently down the hill swerving by children by inches and trying to eek as much as possible from the momentum. When we got to the gas station he took a two liter soda bottle from between his feet; which served as a gas tank filled it with diesel and we took off again coasting through crowded markets and cobbled traffic circles.
The ride fro, Tana to Berivotra is 12 hours crammed in a minivan with 18 other people, luggage and assorted oddities piled on the roof making it twice as tall; a giant top heavy turtle of a thing. As we rolled through one tiny town at three in the morning the silent streets were lined with dozens of stands selling hotsauce in different shades, all eerily illuminated by tiny tin oil lamps, some proprietors sleeping beside them, some looking at us expectantly.
It’s strange to show up in the town you are going to be living in at five in the morning as the sun is about to rise. We dragged luggage and donation goods through the sandy road back to the camp and slept for a few hours before the sun drove us out of the tents. Berivotra is close to a genuine wasteland. A sea of deforested grassland stretching in every direction and baking in the sun. The people of the village live mostly in tiny grass houses scattered along the road for a few miles. The taxi-bruisses rush by between Tana and Mahajunga: the biggest road in the country is barely two lanes and has a sort of road warrior feel to it; sharp black pavement winding away into the distance. A couple of weeks ago a truck lost it’s brakes and plunged off a steep embankment where it exploded, it was of course filled with lighters of something. The driver lived by throwing himself from the cab and so,e of the village children occupied themselves for a few days pawing through the smoldering wreckage.
The internet is exceeding slow and difficult to deal with here unfortunately, I’m posting a few weeks behind… Everyone go and eat an ice cream cone right now for me. Is it too much to ask? I think not!
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