The long road back to Tana

As I carried my bags across the sand to the car, I took one last look at the bright stars above the rustling palm trees. We were doing the return drive in a single day and needed to leave well before sunrise. As we drove in the darkness, I glimpsed the silhouettes of baobabs and the occasional small fire in homes as people began their day. Given the darkness, I was surprised to see people already walking along the side of the road.

Sunrise, and the smoke of an early fire

Our return drive was much of the same scenery, and with nothing else to do I tried capturing some of our fellow commuters.

Roadside stand for breakfast

a young zebu herder

Is it still called carpooling if the vehicle looks like a golf cart?

People washing their laundry in the riverbed

How the locals get between towns: taxi brousse

Drying her laundry and crops

Traffic jam, Madagascar style

For some people, they keep their savings in zebu rather than banks

family tombs

We even saw a few covered wagons, reminding me of the pioneers and the Oregon Trail

We only saw rickshaws in a few of the villages, carrying people or cargo

In the areas with road damage, we repeatedly saw groups of children pretending to repair the road as cars approached and begging for money as compensation for their “work.” I didn’t blame them for trying, but what surprised me was how consistently this played out over such long distances that there’s no way the kids could have been in contact.

The roads were damaged in a recent cyclone; you can see why we had to slow down even on the straight parts

On my previous trip to Madagascar we’d seen some pretty nasty accidents, made even worse by the isolation lack of medical response. I was glad we hadn’t seen anything this trip, but shortly after commenting on that to the driver we passed a nasty accident involving one of those packed taxi brouses. I couldn’t bear to look closely, but the driver thought it could have resulted in a fatality. My prayers for road safety increased the closer we got to Tana. The narrow roads had been mostly empty all day, but in the afternoon commute it turned into a crowded and high-speed race as private cars, semis, and taxi brouses raced each other and attempted to pass zebu-pulled carts on winding roads. After a few close calls I couldn’t look ahead any longer, and prayed while looking anywhere but forward.

I was more than grateful when we safely arrived at our office, and celebrated my return to the hotel with some sauna time to stretch and a delicious dinner in the hotel’s restaurant.