The roads out west are terrible in Madagascar, and it’s hard to exaggerate just how badly ruined they look.
If they’re paved, they’re cratered with potholes, little sandy patches of broken pavement like rough scabs on skin. If they’re dirt, they look like dusty valleys and peaks with dips and grooves. And it goes on for hours.
Some days, the hours would stretch so long that my butt began to feel sore, and I had to rock from side to side just to keep it from aching. The problem is, while your neck is working hard to hold your lolling head upright as the car bounces along, you can’t do anything except look out the window. The car is swaying so violently you can’t read, nap or eat. You can only suffer through the ride and try to ignore the nausea in your chest.
Bad roads in Madagascar symbolized the country’s social and economic problems. Nothing improved because corrupt officials skimmed public funds, or bureaucrats mismanaged repairs, my driver said. As a result, people were discouraged from moving around to find better education, business and work opportunities. Good teachers didn’t want to travel long journeys to educate kids in remote areas, local farmers and fishermen had trouble transporting goods to bigger markets elsewhere, and villagers had less access to jobs in other places. The lack of good infrastructure kept people in poverty and hindered economic growth.
Bad roads are good… business?
Some people tried to earn at least something from the situation. On our drive down from the highlands, a lean, old man waited for us at a white bridge. My driver said the man had deliberately removed a few of the metal planks of the bridge, leaving gaps in the bridge and a few pieces just wide enough for one tire to tread on top, so that he could collect a fee as he made a show of waving his hands and guiding our car across the precarious platform. My driver suspected the old man had purposefully dismantled part of the bridge so he could operate an illegal toll booth business. “Because each time I come here, there is another piece missing,” my driver said and laughed.
Instead of going to school or playing together, pairs of little boys, anywhere from ages 5 to 8 years old, stood by the side of the roads and shoveled dirt under the scorching midday sun to fill up potholes and smooth over the surface of the road. They ran by our car with outstretched palms, begging for money. Other boys walked alongside herds of zebu, or a type of cow.
Panning for gold
Going by road, I witnessed a level of poverty I had never seen before, even though by then I had visited a number of other developing countries.
When we stopped by the side of a bridge, I was immediately swarmed by a gaggle of cute kids. They shouted French words for money, candy and bottles of water. “L’argent! Bonbon! Bouteille, bouteille!” Down below, their parents were doing the back-breaking, hard labor of panning for gold. A group of men pounded wooden poles into boulders to pulverize the rock, while the women swirled the grains of rock in muddy water to separate gold from pebbles. “Vaza! Vaza!” several women shouted up at me, the Malagasy word for foreigner. They might earn from $5-8 a day from selling flakes of gold.
Zebu stealers
During another drive, we passed by a line of middle-aged and old men trudging along in the hot sun. Not many people in the country have cars, my driver said, so the only options are to hitchhike from tourists, squeeze into a tiny van with 20 other people, or walk.
This group of villagers was looking for a stolen zebu, my driver explained. All the men in the village had to join the search, or else they’d be accused of being in on the theft, and had walk until either the zebu was found or the search party was called off, a journey on foot that could last at least three or four days straight. It could be a dangerous search, as thieves were often armed, but it was worth it. “Zebu are like treasure,” a sign of wealth, my driver said. A wealthy villager might have up to 2,000 zebu.
Zebu are valuable because of a tradition where betrothed men steal a cow to impress his fiancée of his physical strength and cunning. Villagers tolerated the practice as a sort of romantic prank. But in recent years, zebu stealing has become a dangerous business. Young men without hope of better jobs turn to theft, and lazy men are happy to pay for the service. Since it’s common for villagers to have several wives, they’d have to steal more than one. Maybe there’d be less crime if the roads were better, local economies grew, and there were better jobs, my driver concluded.
Sights and smells
We drove by countless numbers of little villages, ranging from thatched huts on dirt plots to lean-tos with corrugated metal roofs and two-story buildings with pink walls and green shutters. By the side of the road, women balanced baskets of sweet potatoes on their heads. Occasionally, a putrid stench of something being burned invaded the car.
But there were also moments of awe at the landscape, the striking crispness of the skies, the blue so clear, the blades of weeds so sharp it feels like you’ve just put on glasses with the correct prescription for your eyes. As we rolled up and down hills through the midlands, the clouds were in a layer way high up, like a veil.
