Mayotte to Madagascar – 28 Oct 2010
We had to leave the Jardin Maoré at 7.45am even though our flight was after noon because they feared we’d get stuck in traffic in rush hour + they also had strikes in town, just as they did in France (for the same reasons).
It was another enjoyable drive all the way to the harbour and I had a very interesting chat with our driver who had lived on Mayotte for 10 years but was starting to think that it wasn’t as idyllic as he’d hoped. He still felt there was a great cultural shift between the local peope and the French ones and said he was fed up with the African mentality of wanting ‘everything for nothing’. He said the locals just want to be fully French to be able to cash in on benefits but have no interest in anything else. Corruption was still a great problem too. He said that Madagascar would have been his first choice for settling in as the landscapes are more spectacular, but it was too unstable politically. But he said it was hard to find hard-working local labour and a survey was undertaken recently that showed that you need 2.5 black people to do the same amount of work as 1 white person will do in the same circumstances, hence the bills at the hotel being so high as local people were paid the same salary as in France but 3 times more were needed.
He also mentioned that one of Madagascar’s growing problem was the Chinese barons. They don’t have enough food for everybody in China so they buy some land here to cultivate crops. They even bring 300+ of their people (so the locals don’t have a chance to earn wages from the land exploitation), they exploit it as much as they can and once nothing will grow on it anymore, they go back to China, leaving behind hectares of desolated land. And the Madagascar government didn’t seem to be willing to do much about it because, well, they get the money for the selling the land (back to corruption).
He also explained that today’s strikes in Mayotte were mainly from teachers though they are paid 4,000 euros for just working 18 hours a week. This inflated salary is to give French teachers an incentive to ‘move over to Mayotte’.
He also said that 40% are illegal immigrants. Each year they send 20,000 back to the other islands but the moment a child is born here, he will be instantly entitled to French citizenship and so they won’t be able to send the mother back. So: many pregnant women try to make it over on time for the birth to get dual nationality.
The ferry back was a 20min journey and then another 10min drive to the airport. Our flight to Nosy Be was on time but I didn’t dare go and see Pepette (my flurry friend from the May trip) because drivers kept claiming they needed a 4x4 to get there and wanted to charge me 5 times the recommended rate. I couldn’t even call the lodge to ask them to send me a taxi as there was no call box. Come to think of it, there are no coins in Mada anyway, only bank notes. So it was a long 3h30 wait with absolutely nothing to do.. No wi-fi there either. There is a cafe just across the airport but it doesn’t have a lot to offer.
We got to Tana at 7pm and it was another hour until we made it to the hotel (le Chalet des Roses). It was comfy and nice but the pizza place was at the back of the hotel and it looked a bit unsafe. However, we had no problem. We’d been travelling all day (one of these days that you have to ‘write off’ basically) and I couldn’t wait to get to sleep but it did feel rather hot in the room.
We had to leave the Jardin Maoré at 7.45am even though our flight was after noon because they feared we’d get stuck in traffic in rush hour + they also had strikes in town, just as they did in France (for the same reasons).
It was another enjoyable drive all the way to the harbour and I had a very interesting chat with our driver who had lived on Mayotte for 10 years but was starting to think that it wasn’t as idyllic as he’d hoped. He still felt there was a great cultural shift between the local peope and the French ones and said he was fed up with the African mentality of wanting ‘everything for nothing’. He said the locals just want to be fully French to be able to cash in on benefits but have no interest in anything else. Corruption was still a great problem too. He said that Madagascar would have been his first choice for settling in as the landscapes are more spectacular, but it was too unstable politically. But he said it was hard to find hard-working local labour and a survey was undertaken recently that showed that you need 2.5 black people to do the same amount of work as 1 white person will do in the same circumstances, hence the bills at the hotel being so high as local people were paid the same salary as in France but 3 times more were needed.
He also mentioned that one of Madagascar’s growing problem was the Chinese barons. They don’t have enough food for everybody in China so they buy some land here to cultivate crops. They even bring 300+ of their people (so the locals don’t have a chance to earn wages from the land exploitation), they exploit it as much as they can and once nothing will grow on it anymore, they go back to China, leaving behind hectares of desolated land. And the Madagascar government didn’t seem to be willing to do much about it because, well, they get the money for the selling the land (back to corruption).
He also explained that today’s strikes in Mayotte were mainly from teachers though they are paid 4,000 euros for just working 18 hours a week. This inflated salary is to give French teachers an incentive to ‘move over to Mayotte’.
He also said that 40% are illegal immigrants. Each year they send 20,000 back to the other islands but the moment a child is born here, he will be instantly entitled to French citizenship and so they won’t be able to send the mother back. So: many pregnant women try to make it over on time for the birth to get dual nationality.
The ferry back was a 20min journey and then another 10min drive to the airport. Our flight to Nosy Be was on time but I didn’t dare go and see Pepette (my flurry friend from the May trip) because drivers kept claiming they needed a 4x4 to get there and wanted to charge me 5 times the recommended rate. I couldn’t even call the lodge to ask them to send me a taxi as there was no call box. Come to think of it, there are no coins in Mada anyway, only bank notes. So it was a long 3h30 wait with absolutely nothing to do.. No wi-fi there either. There is a cafe just across the airport but it doesn’t have a lot to offer.
We got to Tana at 7pm and it was another hour until we made it to the hotel (le Chalet des Roses). It was comfy and nice but the pizza place was at the back of the hotel and it looked a bit unsafe. However, we had no problem. We’d been travelling all day (one of these days that you have to ‘write off’ basically) and I couldn’t wait to get to sleep but it did feel rather hot in the room.
posted by Sylvie at 9:43 PM
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