Madagascar

Thanks for the updates guys. We shall see. I am on Ethiopian so sounds promising. Now to see if the domestic flights are going. Supposed to fly to Tulear the next day. I will give an update of my own in a day or 2 and let you all know what I experienced.

Avoid Tana city centre for the foreseeable future. Today and yesterday GenZ Protests ongoing. Supermarkets reopened. Curfew will stay in place for the time being. 8 pm to 4 am. That means all scheduled flights arriving during curfew hours are cancelled. Domestic and international. AF is flying now via Reunion and is arriving during day hours. Emirates today cancelled. Domestic flights are a mess. Down to luck right now. In several big towns Diego Tamatave Majunga TuléAR curfew also remains in place. Different timing though. They want the DJ to resign. He mostly will try to sit it out. He and his shadow man Rakatomanga are already loading assets onto planes. Just in case.

La Buse.

Nosy Be situation normal. ET arrivés normally.

I tried to communicate to a girl in a massage place with google translate in both French and Malagasy.

She didn't understand either one.

What other languages are spoken in Nosy Be / Diego?

You can still try the sign language. May be it will help.

[QUOTE=Tna01;3029635] I tried to communicate to a girl in a massage place with google translate in both French and Malagasy. She didn't understand either one. What other languages are spoken in Nosy Be / Diego? [/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Tna01;3029635]I tried to communicate to a girl in a massage place with google translate in both French and Malagasy.

She didn't understand either one.

What other languages are spoken in Nosy Be / Diego?[/QUOTE]Marsian? If the girl comes from La Brousse she has if at all 4 years of schooling. Not able to read or write properly in Malagasy let alone in french. Just say fair l amour. And type in the amount she gets for "massage". International language.

La Buse.

Sorry but there will be no arrival update from me. Whole trip derailed due to health issues. Maybe a couple weeks, maybe next year.

Fuck this is going to be expensive! OTOH hopefully all this shit will have calmed down by the time I give it another go.

Back to France now.

Spent 2 weeks in Nosy Be, then 4 days in Tana. The last days in Tana reminded me the COVID lockdown. Restaurants closed at 6 pm, then curfew at 7 pm, meaning you have to order your diner before 6 pm, and eat in your hotel room. You'd better have phone numbers to organize your company, or it will be a TV evening alone with your hand. All nightlife is closed.

As I stayed at the Pousse Pousse hotel, I used to order a chicken salad and fruits from Buffet du Jardin, packed to take away. Many restaurants closed, even for lunch. La petite Brasserie was open until 6 pm.

Diego was hot too, so you should avoid.

Only Nosy Be stayed 'normal', even the airport always opened, and flights still active (except for / from Tana after 5 pm).

Party every night at Ambatoloaka, Taxi Be and Afro Bar always packed with girls. I had the pleasure to meet Neddy, but didn't have time to drink a beer, due to my very busy planning with my kenyan GF and friends. My bad! Next time Neddy!

Conclusion: avoid Tana. Go straight to Nosy Be, and stay there.

French in Madagascar. News from 02/10/25 AT 8 PM🇲127468;.

Safety of people and property: Demonstrations are planned for tomorrow, Friday, 03/10/2025, in major provincial cities and the capital, where gathering points are planned on all roads leading from the outskirts to the city center. Traffic could be very difficult. Limit your movements and stay away from any gatherings. Keep useful numbers with you: police, gendarmerie, ambulance, fire department, consulate, etc.

Curfew:

O Antananarivo: 8 pm - 4 am.

O Antsirabe: 8 pm - 4 am.

O Diego: 10 pm - 4 am.

O Majunga: 10 pm - 4:30 am.

O Sambava: 9 pm - 4 am.

O Tamatave: 7 pm - 5 am.

O TuléAR: 10 pm - 4 am.

INTERNATIONAL transport:

AIR France: Flights postponed and modified as follows:

- Departure from Paris (CDG) on October 2nd and 3rd at 8:30 PM (EST: 7:30 PM) via reunion (RUN) and scheduled to land in Ivato (TNR) at 11:05 AM.

- Departure from TNR on October 3rd and 4th at 2:00 PM via RUN for CDG the following day at 3:35 AM.

Very unlikely this will end quickly. The DJ clearly stated that he will not vacate his seat.

Avoid ALL big towns. No nightlife to be had. Most businesses restaurants limited service or closed. The only places no affected to my knowledge are:

Nosy Be.

Isle St. Marie.

Fianarantsoa.

Antsirabe.

Ft. Dauphin.

Smaller towns.

But NOT Sava Sambava. People are fed up with government control of vanilla prices.

Advise to postpone your trips. If this continues longer. Places will run out of everything. Starting with fuel. Cash. Food. Even Nosy Be is already affected. No fresh produce coming in from the Haute plateau.

La Buse.

[QUOTE=Neddy69;3029906]French in Madagascar. News from 02/10/25 AT 8 PM🇲127468;.

Advise to postpone your trips. If this continues longer. Places will run out of everything. Starting with fuel. Cash. Food. Even Nosy Be is already affected. No fresh produce coming in from the Haute plateau.

La Buse.[/QUOTE]Thanks man, that is very helpful. Will just have to watch this over the next month and see what develops.

VL.

Well if ever there was a time to miss a trip due to illness, this is it.

Thanks to those of you on the ground for the information updates. Please keep doing so. Trying to find up to date info on Mada outside of Mada is almost impossible.

[QUOTE=SouthEaster;3030115]Thanks to those of you on the ground for the information updates. Please keep doing so. Trying to find up to date info on Mada outside of Mada is almost impossible.[/QUOTE]Plenty info can find on facebook or expat forums or talk with girls.

On facebook from any different city in mada and they tell you all news on particular city you are interested. Also hundreds of videos sharing how people protest and fight with police and so on! I hope this protest not last 2 or 3 month same as 2009. I start a bit worry as my flights already booked and payed for beginning of December with some domestic flights also for sambava and nosybe. Hope everything will sorts out!

[QUOTE=SouthEaster;3030115]Thanks to those of you on the ground for the information updates. Please keep doing so. Trying to find up to date info on Mada outside of Mada is almost impossible.[/QUOTE]Facebook. Midi Madagasikara. Orange Actu. Loads of up-to-date information. In french. Also French consulate.

La Buse.

I don't "talk" to girls there in any way nor do I normally go on FB so I usually just do google searches for news. Some in French (and mine is not great) and very few in English. I think December it should have calmed down that you will be fine. If this shit is still happening 2 months from now the place has bigger issues.

I read Economist article of the demonstrations. It is one week old so not latest information, but it has lot of info of Madagascar. It is long, so just skip if not interested.

To see why thousands have taken to the streets of Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, in recent days, look up from the demonstrations to the cable car that dangles above the city. The line, which was finished this year thanks to financing from France, is meant to ease congestion. But repeated power cuts mean it rarely works. As a result, the city resembles the world's worst ski resort.

Even when electricity is flowing, at the equivalent of one euro for a short ride the cable cars are about six times the cost of a bus ride and more than many Malagasy people spend on food in a day. "It has become an attraction, not a mode of transport," admits an official.

Several cable-car stations were set on fire during the largest protests the country has seen in more than 15 years. The demonstrators say they are fed up with persistent power cuts, water shortages and rampant corruption. They want Andry Rajoelina, the president, a pedlar of herbal cures for covid-19 and former dj, to resign. Mamy Ravatomanga, a businessman seen by protesters as the power behind the throne, is another target. So far, Mr Rajoelina has responded by sacking his entire cabinet, imposing a dawn-to-dusk curfew and having security forces crack down on crowds.

The protesters feel a kinship with other youthful activists. Some invoke anti-government movements in Kenya. Others wave the same pirate flag used recently in Indonesia and Nepal. Yet their frustrations stem from home-grown problems. Since 1960, when French rule ended, GDP per person has shrunk by almost a half, the largest fall of any nation without a civil war. The demonstrations are the work of Generation z, but their grievances have been decades in the making.

On the face of it, there are simple economic explanations for why Madagascar is so poor. The vast majority of workers are subsistence farmers. Their productivity and incomes are "trending down", notes the World Bank, partly because of deteriorating soil conditions brought on by drought and deforestation. While the population has grown from 5 m to 32 m since 1960, forest coverage has fallen from 33 m hectares to 6 m, according to a diplomat.

To visit a village in Madagascar can involve not only a journey of several miles from a main road but also, seemingly, in time. Ox-carts trundle past, occasionally overtaking girls carrying pails of water. A straw poll by your correspondent suggests many Malagasy have not heard of Mr Rajoelina or Donald Trump. It would take more than 70 years at recent growth rates for Madagascan living standards to catch up with those of Rwanda and Uganda, which are in the bottom half of African countries by GDP per person.

Basic infrastructure is calamitous. There are perhaps half as many paved roads as there were in 1960. On a recent journey around the north of the country two dry riverbeds had to be driven across because bridges were out of action. It costs more to take goods from Antananarivo to Tamatave, a port 200 km away, than it does to then ship the produce to France.

Worsening rural poverty and fast population growth have caused a surge of migration to cities, especially the capital. That has added to pressure on ageing power and water systems as well as on housing. On the outskirts of Antananarivo ad hoc developers are building amphibious slums on top of paddy fields.

Many of Madagascar's difficulties stem from the disastrous socialist experiments under Didier Ratsiraka, president from 1975 to 1993 (and again from 1997 to 2002), whom the cia thought wanted to turn the island into North Korea. "But the problem goes beyond economics," says an economist in Antananarivo.

Madagascar, argues Denis Alexandre Lahiniriko of the University of Antananarivo, has failed to do two big things. The first is to foster a common identity among its roughly 20 ethnic groups, which can be crudely divided between those of south-east Asian origin in the interior and coastal peoples with mainland African roots. The second is to build a state that benefits ordinary people, not just a narrow elite. One civil servant says that corruption is so routine that she regularly has to decline envelopes of cash from businessmen from China or other African countries. A politician says that his family would disown him if he did not steer patronage their way.

"We are a mafia state," adds Ketakandriana Rafitoson, an anti-graft campaigner. One consequence of Madagascar's renowned natural splendour is that there is no end to the things that can be trafficked through deals between corrupt locals and foreign buyers. The goods that have reportedly been part of criminal enterprises include gold, lychees, vanilla, rosewood, tortoises and the island's endemic lemurs. In 2023 a British court found Mr Rajoelina's former chief of staff guilty of soliciting bribes from a gem-mining firm. "It is a treasure island plundered by pirates," says a locally based analyst.

Maybe death isn't darkness.

Given the poverty, some visitors wonder why Malagasy have put up with their lot for so long. One reason is surely the repression that can be meted out to those who upset the powerful. But another theory is that some Malagasy care more about the afterlife than life on earth. In the south it is common for people to spend more on their tombs than their houses and to kill herds of zebu (cattle) upon death. "The attitude is that you can be poor until you are dead," says a journalist from the region. In the central highlands the practice of famadihana ("turning of the bones" where corpses are exhumed from tombs in costly ceremonies to appease the family's ancestors, is another example of how rituals related to death can eat into household budgets.

Yet such practices may be more of an effect of poverty than a cause. The protests that threaten to topple the government are a reminder that Malagasy are willing to take to the streets. In 2009 demonstrations against the elected president, Marc Ravalomanana, led indirectly to a military coup that ultimately brought Mr Rajoelina to power for the first of three terms in office.

Is Mr Rajoelina heading for a similar fate? At the time of writing there were reports of some soldiers joining the protests. Much depends on whether the army's leaders side with the street or the president. Like his beloved cable cars, the president's reign appears to be hanging by a thread.