Two days into driving along Madagascars Route National 7, has been a fun and often tiring yet rewarding journey. It really doesn’t help that with 6 photographers on board we do like to stop to take photos. Our Madagascan guide has also got a camera now and he is learning and enjoying photography as well, so between us all a 4 hr drive could take 6 hours or longer! The roads have been ok, sealed, with occasional potholed sections.
On the first day we had numerous rice paddy stops, but for me the most interesting stop was at the aluminium recycling and smelting stop. Locals collect aluminium and smelt it down into things like pots and pans. I had also been set a daily photographic challenge to get 3 black and white photos. I am more than happy with the three I took here. I’ve added a rooster photo because some people like roosters…..
We ended up having lunch at 3pm due to how many times we stopped along the way. This morning though we went and visited a few craft markets around the town of Antsirabe. I’m not normally a fan of craft stops on tour, but some of these were really good. The first one was a workshop they crafted items from Zebu horn. The first stage of the process uses fire to release the bone from inside the horn. The bone is ground up for herbal medicine among other uses. Then the horn is turned into jewelry and spoons and other items. At times the big toe is used to hold the horn in place, but the artisan still had all 10 toes so he must be very good at his craft!
Another craft stop was at a place where they create little miniature things, like cars and bicycles, from recycling materials. The demonstration of making a bicycle wheel was quite interesting, using tin and wire and even rubber tubing. I was less interested in silk weaving! Then we hit the road again and a much shorter drive with less photographic stops to reach the town of Ambositra. Its quite cold here, something I was not expecting!
We’ve also heard many stories about Madagascan life, society and traditions while on the road. Madagascans are mostly protestant in religion but also have a lot of other practises, which includes having family tombs, parading the bones of the dead and also the idea that a deceased person is just seriously ill and they become an ancestors. We’ve also heard about the use of a witch doctor to set the date of a wedding and the need to also employ speech makers from a part of Madagascar to make the wedding official. Then there was the circumcision stories which I won’t share here, mostly because it makes me squeamish!
India I think uses matchmakers to map wedding dates too – I wonder if their divorce rates are lower than ours