Leaving Madagascar & the sadder side of it
The guy who picked me up to take me to the airport was a lovely Malagasy man, very passionate about his country but very aware of its flaws as well. We had a really interesting chat about the state of the country, its past and its potential future (or lack of) and here are some ‘facts & figures’ that speak volume about how lucky we are to be born in a Western world when 98% of the local population are deprived of basic health care.
This conversation started because as I came out of the hotel a woman approached me wanting to sell me a table-cloth for 1 euro (she’s probably spent 30 hours on it). I said ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have a table to go with it but you can have 2 euros for nothing, I don’t need your table cloth, thanks anyway’. Well, no sooner had I given her the bank-notes (there are no coins in Madagascar) that my driver told me off gently saying ‘2 euros is TOO much, you’re raising expectations and now you’re going to have 20 kids running after the car while we’re stuck in traffic because they’ve all been watching you, even if you haven’t noticed them’... and sure enough they came. ‘me, me, me’... and then you feel SO bad. One little kid was real persistent though and followed us for ages and I told my driver ‘I am sorry but I have to give him something, it’s just too sad’. So he said ‘let me handle it then, I’ll give him the money, but you stay in the back and keep the windows locked and please don’t give him more 1 euro’. So I did. And I just thanked God I never had to beg so hard in my life to have anything to eat. It’s just so humiliating... though, hopefully, they don’t see it that way. But most people brush them off as if they were just annoying flies when they are people... maybe with not much dignity left, but they are people all the same and God finds them precious.
I took lots of notes as we spoke because I wanted to make sure I would remember it all as accurately as possible.
Probably one of the facts that upset me the most was to be told that only 2% of people can afford health care or dental care. This means that if you are bleeding to death and can drag yourself to a hospital, the first question they will ask before they even take a look is ‘how much can you afford ?’, if you can’t afford anything, will be asked to join the back of the queue and will be ‘seen in due course’, when they know full well that most people will die waiting.
Most women give birth at home as well and 4 in 1,000 will eventually die as friends and family cannot always help if there are complications.
Some organisations like Medecins Sans Frontieres do come over regularly to offer their skills but most volunteers only stay 3-4 weeks and then go back not to burn out because they are so overwhelmed by the need and if a ‘mobile clinic’ opens anywhere, there can be 50,000 people A DAY asking to be seen.
Even when boys are circumcised, it’s done with a sharp bamboo and no pain-killers or anything. So if the ‘doctor’ who does the procedure is experienced, it’s already quite painful but if he’s not it’s excruciating. No female circumcision.
95% of people on Nosy Be who are employed, have a job in the tourism industry. However, this still leaves 74% of people unemployed who get no dole money whatsoever. If you don’t work, you’ve had it basically.
Because of this dire situation it is quite common for parents to encourage their young daughters to have sex with ‘the white man’ (the ‘vaza’) in case a relationship develops. The ultimate goal for a black teenager is to be married off to a white man to have any hope of a future. As a result of these sexual relationships, 34% of girls aged 13+ are ‘single mothers’. They won’t use the pill because they don’t believe in medication. They only believe in plants and are told that if they drink a certain mixture of leaves, they won’t get pregnant. However, when they do get pregnant, most are not distraught as they secretly hope it will keep the white man coming back. However, as you can imagine, most guys do not have that kind of future in mind and the girls can never trace the fathers again, leaving generations of ‘cafe latte’ men (their description, not mine) with no father figure around.
I did mention that I’d seen some truly beautiful girls with some really ‘old, fat and bald’ men having dinner and he said ‘that’s normal, that’s the type they like best’... I said ‘why? Because if they are fat it means they have plenty of money to pig out on food and if they are old it means they will hopefully die soon with a big bank account?’, he laughed and said ‘yes, I think it’s a pretty accurate guess’. But it’s actually a huge ‘honour’ for the family if one of their girls marries a ‘vaza’, it’s their equivalent of ‘hitting the jackpot’.
If they get pregnant and are too young the girls are taught to drink a herbal tea that will make them abort a week later and then another tea to stop them haemorraging but it doesn’t always work.
Thankfully, because the ‘white man’ is more educated on sex matters than the ‘black man’ and because the girls are only interested in sleeping with white men, the HIV virus hasn’t really spread as much as on the mainland. Only 1.5% of people are HIV, which is way below the 30-40% that occur in most East African countries.
Women can also be bought by black men by giving her family a zebu. My guide knew a guy who had 32 wives, one in each village, that he hardly saw, but they were happy with the zebu as it was much needed.
I asked whether young boys were also in demand (as they are in Asia, by homosexual men) and my driver said that only 4 in one million Malagasy would be homosexual. It’s totally taboo over there and the ones who are never ‘come out of the closet’ for fear of being reprimanded or shaming their family. Once people know about their sexual inclination they will be whistled at or made fun of, with people pointing the finger at them, etc. They are given a really hard time, so, to avoid all this, they may exchange emails and meet in secret and usually try to hook up with French men who come over to meet them so that they can indulge behind closed doors but they can never go public. He said that though there is no law that says you can’t have sex with a minor, the underwritten rule that it would be with girls only if so. If any man was found having sex with a young boy “the people would take the law in its hands and would probably kill him on the spot” such would be the outrage – and the government would turn a blind eye in agreement.
Amazingly, the government has never enforced any strict law to say that ‘sex with minors is unlawful’ here because they know full well that it’s yet another case of ‘force majeure’ where it’s a matter of life or death.
He told me that once he was taking a guest to his hotel and he happened to see an old man hold a very young girl’s hand and checking in with her. So he went to the manager of the hotel and said ‘if you give this bastard a room, I’ll report you to the police’ and the manager shrugged it off and said ‘go ahead... but we have authorisation from the girl’s parents that they are ok with this, so you don’t have a leg to stand on’. He added ‘and sure enough, in every hotel it says “sex with minor is not legal unless you have secured a written authorisation from her parents”. It’s really perverse. And to make matters worse, her parents happened to witness this scene and then came to my guide and said ‘who do you think you are to interfere? Don’t you want our daughter to have a chance at a better future ?’.
However, unlike in Gambia where I was offered sex on a plate on a regular basis, here men are a lot shyer about offering sexual favours because they don’t feel their French is good enough to chat up French women.
He explained that what is ruining his country the fastest is the population growth “A typical Malagasy couple will want to have 14 children, 7 girls and 7 boys. The idea being that the odds will then be in their favour. And sure enough, usually, out of 14, ONE will succeed and be able to provide for all the family”. And he added, if none of the 14 ever amount to much, well then there is hope that among the 14 x 14 children ONE will probably become ‘somebody’. Then the person who makes it (whether it’s the girl who married the vaza or the boy who set up a good business) will be expected to share his income with the whole family, from the great grand mother to the niece.
People who ‘make’ it abroad tend not to come back because it’s too overwhelming. However, out of loyalty and because it’s so in-bred, they will usually send most of their earnings back home. A GP in Madagascar may earn 180 euros in Tana but 3,200 euros in Paris. Needless to say, he’s not coming back ! However, “it’s the dream of every Malagasy person to be buried in the homeland.. so they do come back... eventually... but in a coffin”.
Air Madagascar is owned by the government and they want total control on the air space as of May to be able to increase air fares. They cancel the direct flights from Paris to Nosy Be with Corsairfly and the ones from Italy with Air Italia, forcing people to go via Tana and then taking an AM internal flight, to ‘back-track’ to Nosy Be. This is real inconvenient and adds £250-£350 to the cost of the trip and so most people stop coming to avoid the hassle and wait till the direct flights resume again. The local population is really angry about this because it totally cripples their income and there is no good reason for this kind of policy but the increase in the air fare goes towards stuffing the pocket of politicians a bit more.
He told me that if someone gets to the top of the scale, “within 4 months they can put enough money aside to assure a healthy lifestyle for ALL their descendants for 4 centuries”... well, considering how fast they breed, that’s a pretty staggering equation.
The sad thing is that Madagascar could be a very rich country, with plenty of money for everybody “everything grows here, from spices, to sugar canes, to bananas, we used to be the biggest exporter in the whole of Africa. We also have mines of sapphires, emeralds, silver...” but the leaders are very choosy about who they will allow to settle in Madagascar because they worry they will deplete the country of its wealth (incl. its wildlife). They even imposed a 65 euro fee for a Visa last year to stuff their pocket some more but they had to scrap it under public pressure as no one was coming anymore and people were starving (Tanzania only charges £36 as comparison).
The downside of the Malagasy people is that, if anything, they are too nice “we are so laid back, we’ve never been to war or attacked any other country, we just want a simple life, 3 bowls of rice a day to keep hunger at bay, basic health care and just get by... we don’t have high expectations’ and leaders know that and abuse it by keeping them trapped in poverty by keeping all the profits to themselves.
My driver was so interesting and so passionate about his people that it was a joy talking to him: “I keep telling them to stop having so many children. I’ve got two, I’ve given them good education, they’re doing very well as a result, and it’s a much safer bet !” but he found it was so hard to achieve any kind of ‘mentality shift’. He added that “admittedly, some people are lazy and don’t really want to work hard, they think it’s easier having children who’ll work hard for them... and I used to criticise the laziness of the African people all the time, until I spent one day in a field when it was 45C in the shade and then I realised that I felt so sleepy that my body couldn’t function properly either, so I have a bit more sympathy for some, but not for all’.
I suggested he runs for President ! He said ‘Actually, I don’t want to because I value my integrity too much and I know I’d lose it too if I made it any higher because they ALL do... eventually. They usually start off with a real desire to help the people but end up forgetting their goal so fast, it’s scary”.
He said that from 1975 onwards, it took just one president to ruin the whole country – who then he just went off to Paris to avoid living with the consequences.
In fact the only people who make it to the top in Madagascar all come from the same tribe. The ones who ‘made it’ and escaped poverty chose to invest in their community through setting a fund to educate the children, so that ‘all the kids from the village could have a future’ and ‘it works, they all make it’.
As a French person, I had to ask about colonism and how he felt about our invading his country a few decades ago (1890). Actually, the British had won Madagascar originally (1885) but had to give it up to the French. He said that actually the Malagasy people were much better off under French ruling, “education was free for all, they brought over their text-books, their savoir-faire, built infrastructure, etc, and when they left, in 1960, it all stopped”. There are almost no school books written in the Malagasy language... and besides, who is interested in Malagasy anyway? French or English is what is needed to be able to expand’. When it became independent, the first President made people pay for their education and as a consequence of this policy 58% of people are now illiterate.
Interestingly, Mayotte (a small French island West of Madagascar) has got the very same debate going on at the moment, with a few people fighting for independence but the vast majority voting against it because, having seen how fast Madagascar went downhill after we handed the keys back to the people, they actually feel much safer getting grants from France to fund various schemes.
Who can blame them?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Useful local contacts:
Evasions Sans Frontieres,
will charge £240 for a “car + driver” for a week.
Esf.nosybe@moov.mg for Nosy Be in particular
http://www.kikoohotel.com/
Tel. 00 261 32 04 185 83
Email: acceuil@kikoootel.com
For excursions near Diego Suarez, to go and see the Red Tsingy, Amber Mountain, the 3 bays, etc.
http://www.mada-evasion.com/boutique/liste_rayons.cfm
(in French & Italian only though) for excursions all over the country.
For excursions near Tana, found great literature and ideas for ‘day trip’ advertised in the Tana Plaza hall:
SICEH Voyages, 36 Ave de l’Independance.
Tel. 22 603 70 / 22 288 91.
Fax. 22 201 08
Email: contact@siceh-voyages.com
The Tana Plaza is based at 02 Avenue de l’Independance.
Tel. 22 218 65 / fax 22 642 19
Email: contact@siceh-hotels.com
Website: http://www.siceh.com/
Guides have French as their 2nd official language and some speak fluent English.
Best time to go:
May was beautifully green with all the paddy fields. Lemurs are mating.
Sept-Oct is when you can go whale watching off Ile Ste Marie (N. East Coast). There will be plenty of flowers.
Oct – Nov Baby lemurs are born in Oct and will be on their mother’s back. +1H of daylight in Nov (it gets dark at 17H40 all other months – too early !). Early Nov is also the best time to see the elusive fossa when he doesn’t mind coming out by daylight to impress the females (the ‘fossa’ is very strange big cat that has some dog-like features and is totally endemic to Madagascar). Check it out !
The rainy season lasts from late November to late March.
MISC:
It rains more often on the East coast. You will only see the indri-indri lemur there though, in one small park (and nowhere else). They are totally white lemurs and can also look quite cute.
I also wanted to see the one that ‘dances’ but these ones are very difficult to see as they only ‘dance’ at 6am to celebrate daylight, then they go into the forest.
To go to Berenty Reserve (where they have ring-tailed lemurs that are quite tame) would mean an extra 3 full days on rough roads and 2 nights in a ‘bivouac’ or in a tent with a portable WC. I wasn’t sure I’d be that brave myself...
The biggest chameleon can be found in the South too, 40 cms long and some of the oldest baobabs too (3,000 – 5,000 years old).
Once you have passed security at Tana airport, you will not be able to change your Aviary notes nor even spend them on anything (all duty-free is euro or dollars only !). I had to ask a lady from security if she could go to the exchange desk on the other side and change my notes for me – which she did. No UK banks will touch Aviarys so it’s ‘dead’ money if you can’t change it – though they do have a ‘charity’ box for disavantaged children (as they always do in airports around the world).
In case of emergency:
Assistance Plus is excellent, even if you have only just called to join them after an emergency has arisen. I met a guy at the airport who contracted a serious infection in his leg after some bacteria got in his skin (through a small, insignicant cut !) and he was getting no joy with the insurance from Nouvelles Frontieres (they hardly picked up the phone) but he joined this local one after the incident happened and within 24H they flew him over to St Denis on Reunion to be hospitalised for a week.
----------------------------------------------------------------
I came back to a grim Paris at 11.45pm and was lucky that I had been allowed to fly back at all as, unknown to me, the air traffic controllers were on strike at Orly (over retirement age being extended by 2 years) and as it was already +1H in my head, I would not have been too thrilled being delayed much longer (in fact, most planed were “at least 4 hours late” I was told). Thank you Lord !
The guy who picked me up to take me to the airport was a lovely Malagasy man, very passionate about his country but very aware of its flaws as well. We had a really interesting chat about the state of the country, its past and its potential future (or lack of) and here are some ‘facts & figures’ that speak volume about how lucky we are to be born in a Western world when 98% of the local population are deprived of basic health care.
This conversation started because as I came out of the hotel a woman approached me wanting to sell me a table-cloth for 1 euro (she’s probably spent 30 hours on it). I said ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have a table to go with it but you can have 2 euros for nothing, I don’t need your table cloth, thanks anyway’. Well, no sooner had I given her the bank-notes (there are no coins in Madagascar) that my driver told me off gently saying ‘2 euros is TOO much, you’re raising expectations and now you’re going to have 20 kids running after the car while we’re stuck in traffic because they’ve all been watching you, even if you haven’t noticed them’... and sure enough they came. ‘me, me, me’... and then you feel SO bad. One little kid was real persistent though and followed us for ages and I told my driver ‘I am sorry but I have to give him something, it’s just too sad’. So he said ‘let me handle it then, I’ll give him the money, but you stay in the back and keep the windows locked and please don’t give him more 1 euro’. So I did. And I just thanked God I never had to beg so hard in my life to have anything to eat. It’s just so humiliating... though, hopefully, they don’t see it that way. But most people brush them off as if they were just annoying flies when they are people... maybe with not much dignity left, but they are people all the same and God finds them precious.
I took lots of notes as we spoke because I wanted to make sure I would remember it all as accurately as possible.
Probably one of the facts that upset me the most was to be told that only 2% of people can afford health care or dental care. This means that if you are bleeding to death and can drag yourself to a hospital, the first question they will ask before they even take a look is ‘how much can you afford ?’, if you can’t afford anything, will be asked to join the back of the queue and will be ‘seen in due course’, when they know full well that most people will die waiting.
Most women give birth at home as well and 4 in 1,000 will eventually die as friends and family cannot always help if there are complications.
Some organisations like Medecins Sans Frontieres do come over regularly to offer their skills but most volunteers only stay 3-4 weeks and then go back not to burn out because they are so overwhelmed by the need and if a ‘mobile clinic’ opens anywhere, there can be 50,000 people A DAY asking to be seen.
Even when boys are circumcised, it’s done with a sharp bamboo and no pain-killers or anything. So if the ‘doctor’ who does the procedure is experienced, it’s already quite painful but if he’s not it’s excruciating. No female circumcision.
95% of people on Nosy Be who are employed, have a job in the tourism industry. However, this still leaves 74% of people unemployed who get no dole money whatsoever. If you don’t work, you’ve had it basically.
Because of this dire situation it is quite common for parents to encourage their young daughters to have sex with ‘the white man’ (the ‘vaza’) in case a relationship develops. The ultimate goal for a black teenager is to be married off to a white man to have any hope of a future. As a result of these sexual relationships, 34% of girls aged 13+ are ‘single mothers’. They won’t use the pill because they don’t believe in medication. They only believe in plants and are told that if they drink a certain mixture of leaves, they won’t get pregnant. However, when they do get pregnant, most are not distraught as they secretly hope it will keep the white man coming back. However, as you can imagine, most guys do not have that kind of future in mind and the girls can never trace the fathers again, leaving generations of ‘cafe latte’ men (their description, not mine) with no father figure around.
I did mention that I’d seen some truly beautiful girls with some really ‘old, fat and bald’ men having dinner and he said ‘that’s normal, that’s the type they like best’... I said ‘why? Because if they are fat it means they have plenty of money to pig out on food and if they are old it means they will hopefully die soon with a big bank account?’, he laughed and said ‘yes, I think it’s a pretty accurate guess’. But it’s actually a huge ‘honour’ for the family if one of their girls marries a ‘vaza’, it’s their equivalent of ‘hitting the jackpot’.
If they get pregnant and are too young the girls are taught to drink a herbal tea that will make them abort a week later and then another tea to stop them haemorraging but it doesn’t always work.
Thankfully, because the ‘white man’ is more educated on sex matters than the ‘black man’ and because the girls are only interested in sleeping with white men, the HIV virus hasn’t really spread as much as on the mainland. Only 1.5% of people are HIV, which is way below the 30-40% that occur in most East African countries.
Women can also be bought by black men by giving her family a zebu. My guide knew a guy who had 32 wives, one in each village, that he hardly saw, but they were happy with the zebu as it was much needed.
I asked whether young boys were also in demand (as they are in Asia, by homosexual men) and my driver said that only 4 in one million Malagasy would be homosexual. It’s totally taboo over there and the ones who are never ‘come out of the closet’ for fear of being reprimanded or shaming their family. Once people know about their sexual inclination they will be whistled at or made fun of, with people pointing the finger at them, etc. They are given a really hard time, so, to avoid all this, they may exchange emails and meet in secret and usually try to hook up with French men who come over to meet them so that they can indulge behind closed doors but they can never go public. He said that though there is no law that says you can’t have sex with a minor, the underwritten rule that it would be with girls only if so. If any man was found having sex with a young boy “the people would take the law in its hands and would probably kill him on the spot” such would be the outrage – and the government would turn a blind eye in agreement.
Amazingly, the government has never enforced any strict law to say that ‘sex with minors is unlawful’ here because they know full well that it’s yet another case of ‘force majeure’ where it’s a matter of life or death.
He told me that once he was taking a guest to his hotel and he happened to see an old man hold a very young girl’s hand and checking in with her. So he went to the manager of the hotel and said ‘if you give this bastard a room, I’ll report you to the police’ and the manager shrugged it off and said ‘go ahead... but we have authorisation from the girl’s parents that they are ok with this, so you don’t have a leg to stand on’. He added ‘and sure enough, in every hotel it says “sex with minor is not legal unless you have secured a written authorisation from her parents”. It’s really perverse. And to make matters worse, her parents happened to witness this scene and then came to my guide and said ‘who do you think you are to interfere? Don’t you want our daughter to have a chance at a better future ?’.
However, unlike in Gambia where I was offered sex on a plate on a regular basis, here men are a lot shyer about offering sexual favours because they don’t feel their French is good enough to chat up French women.
He explained that what is ruining his country the fastest is the population growth “A typical Malagasy couple will want to have 14 children, 7 girls and 7 boys. The idea being that the odds will then be in their favour. And sure enough, usually, out of 14, ONE will succeed and be able to provide for all the family”. And he added, if none of the 14 ever amount to much, well then there is hope that among the 14 x 14 children ONE will probably become ‘somebody’. Then the person who makes it (whether it’s the girl who married the vaza or the boy who set up a good business) will be expected to share his income with the whole family, from the great grand mother to the niece.
People who ‘make’ it abroad tend not to come back because it’s too overwhelming. However, out of loyalty and because it’s so in-bred, they will usually send most of their earnings back home. A GP in Madagascar may earn 180 euros in Tana but 3,200 euros in Paris. Needless to say, he’s not coming back ! However, “it’s the dream of every Malagasy person to be buried in the homeland.. so they do come back... eventually... but in a coffin”.
Air Madagascar is owned by the government and they want total control on the air space as of May to be able to increase air fares. They cancel the direct flights from Paris to Nosy Be with Corsairfly and the ones from Italy with Air Italia, forcing people to go via Tana and then taking an AM internal flight, to ‘back-track’ to Nosy Be. This is real inconvenient and adds £250-£350 to the cost of the trip and so most people stop coming to avoid the hassle and wait till the direct flights resume again. The local population is really angry about this because it totally cripples their income and there is no good reason for this kind of policy but the increase in the air fare goes towards stuffing the pocket of politicians a bit more.
He told me that if someone gets to the top of the scale, “within 4 months they can put enough money aside to assure a healthy lifestyle for ALL their descendants for 4 centuries”... well, considering how fast they breed, that’s a pretty staggering equation.
The sad thing is that Madagascar could be a very rich country, with plenty of money for everybody “everything grows here, from spices, to sugar canes, to bananas, we used to be the biggest exporter in the whole of Africa. We also have mines of sapphires, emeralds, silver...” but the leaders are very choosy about who they will allow to settle in Madagascar because they worry they will deplete the country of its wealth (incl. its wildlife). They even imposed a 65 euro fee for a Visa last year to stuff their pocket some more but they had to scrap it under public pressure as no one was coming anymore and people were starving (Tanzania only charges £36 as comparison).
The downside of the Malagasy people is that, if anything, they are too nice “we are so laid back, we’ve never been to war or attacked any other country, we just want a simple life, 3 bowls of rice a day to keep hunger at bay, basic health care and just get by... we don’t have high expectations’ and leaders know that and abuse it by keeping them trapped in poverty by keeping all the profits to themselves.
My driver was so interesting and so passionate about his people that it was a joy talking to him: “I keep telling them to stop having so many children. I’ve got two, I’ve given them good education, they’re doing very well as a result, and it’s a much safer bet !” but he found it was so hard to achieve any kind of ‘mentality shift’. He added that “admittedly, some people are lazy and don’t really want to work hard, they think it’s easier having children who’ll work hard for them... and I used to criticise the laziness of the African people all the time, until I spent one day in a field when it was 45C in the shade and then I realised that I felt so sleepy that my body couldn’t function properly either, so I have a bit more sympathy for some, but not for all’.
I suggested he runs for President ! He said ‘Actually, I don’t want to because I value my integrity too much and I know I’d lose it too if I made it any higher because they ALL do... eventually. They usually start off with a real desire to help the people but end up forgetting their goal so fast, it’s scary”.
He said that from 1975 onwards, it took just one president to ruin the whole country – who then he just went off to Paris to avoid living with the consequences.
In fact the only people who make it to the top in Madagascar all come from the same tribe. The ones who ‘made it’ and escaped poverty chose to invest in their community through setting a fund to educate the children, so that ‘all the kids from the village could have a future’ and ‘it works, they all make it’.
As a French person, I had to ask about colonism and how he felt about our invading his country a few decades ago (1890). Actually, the British had won Madagascar originally (1885) but had to give it up to the French. He said that actually the Malagasy people were much better off under French ruling, “education was free for all, they brought over their text-books, their savoir-faire, built infrastructure, etc, and when they left, in 1960, it all stopped”. There are almost no school books written in the Malagasy language... and besides, who is interested in Malagasy anyway? French or English is what is needed to be able to expand’. When it became independent, the first President made people pay for their education and as a consequence of this policy 58% of people are now illiterate.
Interestingly, Mayotte (a small French island West of Madagascar) has got the very same debate going on at the moment, with a few people fighting for independence but the vast majority voting against it because, having seen how fast Madagascar went downhill after we handed the keys back to the people, they actually feel much safer getting grants from France to fund various schemes.
Who can blame them?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Useful local contacts:
Evasions Sans Frontieres,
will charge £240 for a “car + driver” for a week.
Esf.nosybe@moov.mg for Nosy Be in particular
http://www.kikoohotel.com/
Tel. 00 261 32 04 185 83
Email: acceuil@kikoootel.com
For excursions near Diego Suarez, to go and see the Red Tsingy, Amber Mountain, the 3 bays, etc.
http://www.mada-evasion.com/boutique/liste_rayons.cfm
(in French & Italian only though) for excursions all over the country.
For excursions near Tana, found great literature and ideas for ‘day trip’ advertised in the Tana Plaza hall:
SICEH Voyages, 36 Ave de l’Independance.
Tel. 22 603 70 / 22 288 91.
Fax. 22 201 08
Email: contact@siceh-voyages.com
The Tana Plaza is based at 02 Avenue de l’Independance.
Tel. 22 218 65 / fax 22 642 19
Email: contact@siceh-hotels.com
Website: http://www.siceh.com/
Guides have French as their 2nd official language and some speak fluent English.
Best time to go:
May was beautifully green with all the paddy fields. Lemurs are mating.
Sept-Oct is when you can go whale watching off Ile Ste Marie (N. East Coast). There will be plenty of flowers.
Oct – Nov Baby lemurs are born in Oct and will be on their mother’s back. +1H of daylight in Nov (it gets dark at 17H40 all other months – too early !). Early Nov is also the best time to see the elusive fossa when he doesn’t mind coming out by daylight to impress the females (the ‘fossa’ is very strange big cat that has some dog-like features and is totally endemic to Madagascar). Check it out !
The rainy season lasts from late November to late March.
MISC:
It rains more often on the East coast. You will only see the indri-indri lemur there though, in one small park (and nowhere else). They are totally white lemurs and can also look quite cute.
I also wanted to see the one that ‘dances’ but these ones are very difficult to see as they only ‘dance’ at 6am to celebrate daylight, then they go into the forest.
To go to Berenty Reserve (where they have ring-tailed lemurs that are quite tame) would mean an extra 3 full days on rough roads and 2 nights in a ‘bivouac’ or in a tent with a portable WC. I wasn’t sure I’d be that brave myself...
The biggest chameleon can be found in the South too, 40 cms long and some of the oldest baobabs too (3,000 – 5,000 years old).
Once you have passed security at Tana airport, you will not be able to change your Aviary notes nor even spend them on anything (all duty-free is euro or dollars only !). I had to ask a lady from security if she could go to the exchange desk on the other side and change my notes for me – which she did. No UK banks will touch Aviarys so it’s ‘dead’ money if you can’t change it – though they do have a ‘charity’ box for disavantaged children (as they always do in airports around the world).
In case of emergency:
Assistance Plus is excellent, even if you have only just called to join them after an emergency has arisen. I met a guy at the airport who contracted a serious infection in his leg after some bacteria got in his skin (through a small, insignicant cut !) and he was getting no joy with the insurance from Nouvelles Frontieres (they hardly picked up the phone) but he joined this local one after the incident happened and within 24H they flew him over to St Denis on Reunion to be hospitalised for a week.
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I came back to a grim Paris at 11.45pm and was lucky that I had been allowed to fly back at all as, unknown to me, the air traffic controllers were on strike at Orly (over retirement age being extended by 2 years) and as it was already +1H in my head, I would not have been too thrilled being delayed much longer (in fact, most planed were “at least 4 hours late” I was told). Thank you Lord !
posted by Sylvie at 10:08 PM
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