East of Africa: An island divided

by Stephen Greenwood on

We’re at a small, roadside cafe – a room that consists of a few wooden planks slung together to form a humble dining area. Our server is a loud, jovial woman in her fifties and seems particularly excited to have a vazaa in her restaurant. She enthusiastically brings out six plates of over-saturated rice and sets them down on a cheap plastic tablecloth. I reach for the aluminum fork in front of me and hang it over the rice as I wait for the others to dig in.

Nobody moves. They’re all waiting for the side dishes of chicken, fish, and shredded pork to be brought – and not one person starts eating until every last plate has been set down. It seems particularly strange because the rice is presented almost as soon as we are seated, and the side plates arrive one by one over the course of fifteen minutes.

I guess I’ve lived for so long in a culture where everyone rushes to eat every meal, that it’s sort of refreshing to sit back and let the food get lukewarm for the sake of good manners.The wait creates long gaps of silence that amplify our language barrier, so we resort to watching a small television in the corner of the wooden room.

On almost every television that I’ve seen in the past few days there have been two faces juxtaposed with one another. The first is the face of a young man wearing a dark suit that seems to be a touch too large for his slender frame. The other appears to be an older, seasoned politician; smooth, polished, experienced.

I inquire about the two men, and receive an unexpected lesson in Malagasy civics.

Everyone jumps in, speaking with angst in short sentences about “the young boy” – the name given to Andry Rajoelina (rah-joh-ee-LEEN–ah), declaring that he’s too inexperienced to be running the country. A valid argument since, at 35 years old, he’s officially the youngest head of state in all of Africa.

Rajoelina was formerly the mayor of Antananarivo, and assumed the presidency after forcing out the elected president, Marc Ravalomanana (rah-vah-lo-mah-NAHN), in a coup.

Ravalomanana is the latter man on the screen. Elected in 2002 and then reelected in 2009, he fell under suspicion of corruption and using public money for personal uses. The outrageous spending included the purchase of a presidential jet billed at $60 million; a move that has ended up landing him a four year sentence in prison.

The popular story is that Ravalomanana came out of poverty by selling yogurt from the back of his bicycle, and eventually constructed the largest domestically owned business in Madagascar.

Rajoelina on the other hand, had a much different path to power. As the son of a colonel, Rajoelina dropped out of high school and worked as a DJ in and around Antananarivo. Eventually, he established his own radio station and married into significant wealth, which opened up the opportunity for him to run for office as mayor of the capital city.

Rajoelina had been serving as mayor for roughly a year when the government shut down his privately-owned TV station. An interview with previous head of state Didier Ratsiraka was set to air, and was cited by the government as “likely to disturb peace and security.” Rajoelina retaliated by organizing a series of protests in the capital. All in all, over 100 protestors died from military resistance, further outraging the citizens of Madagascar.

Before long, Rajoelina gained the support of the military, and was able to storm the presidential palace, installing himself as President and Monja Roindefo as Prime Minister.

There are murmurs around our lunch table that Rajoelina is just as corrupt as Ravalomanana. Some suggest that he’s orchestrating suspicious business transactions with his new power as President. They say that there’s never any real change; just one corrupt politician after another.

A depressing reality, since it’s the lives of the people like the kat-mis who are ultimately affected by the actions of the people in power. Money that could be used to facilitate development is being wasted on senseless, selfish expenditures. Do we see it in the West as well? Of course. But it’s a situation that’s all too familiar in post-colonial Africa. A condition that’s nearly unavoidable in an environment with weak infrastructure, strong military power and individuals possessed by greed.

To hear and see more about the unfolding of the coup, it’s worth watching this outstanding piece from Journeyman Pictures.

Read the previous articles in the East of Africa series here!

East of Africa: ToughStuff (w/ video)

by Stephen Greenwood on

The idea for ToughStuff came to Adriaan on a trip to his home in the Netherlands, between stints of working with charities and NGO’s in Africa for fifteen years.

He was in the garden, inspecting a cheap outdoor lamp that had solar panels built in to the top of the plastic. The light would automatically recharge a set of internal batteries during the day, and have enough power to stay illuminated throughout the night.

He thought, if the developed world could be using this technology to light our gardens, then why can’t this same equipment be used as a primary light source for the most needy people in the world?

After few years of research and development, ToughStuff International was born.

Okay, pause for a brief disclaimer: I need to say that I wouldn’t usually devote an entire article to write up a commercial enterprise. But I wholeheartedly believe in ToughStuff’s approach. It’s one of the few things I’ve seen that has the potential to change the face of the developing world in multiple ways…

The truck we’re in is full to the brim; six grown men and a load of lamps, panels, batteries and merchandising material. I’m with a team of salesmen that ToughStuff has assembled to begin promoting the products on foot from Antananarivo to Toliara in Southern Madagascar.

Through broken French and English, I find out that sales team has come from all walks of life; a couple of university students, a brewery advertising manager, an auto mechanic…they are excited to be working for the company, and excited to get out of the city for a few days.

We makes stops in small villages, where green hills and blue sky meet streaks of bright red dirt. The sales team enthusiastically shows off the lamps and panels to owners of small roadside shops. In every location, a crowd immediately forms around the salesmen.

People are instantly intrigued by the futuristic looking products; they’ve seen solar power on the roofs of big buildings, but are amazed to have it in their hands, at a price ($20) that’s still considered an investment, but within reach.

The shop owners write their names and phone numbers down in dusty booklets. Some of the more wealthy business owners discuss the potential of buying large sets of lamps and renting them to individual consumers. I suddenly see the brilliance of ToughStuff’s business model, in that there are theoretically 1.4 billion customers worldwide that desperately need this product; not something that many startups can claim.

A hundred miles outside of the capital, we stop to check in with a few customers that received prototype units. The first house we visit is a two level brick, mud, and thatch structure that belongs to a farmer and carpenter named Regice. Outside the house, six or seven children are playing with a metal hoop that they push along with a stick. The goal appears to be to get the hoop to roll by using the stick to nudge it along, tapping the left and right edges to keep it upright.

Regice makes horse-drawn carts for a living, and tells us that each cart takes him about one month to build. Prior to using the ToughStuff lamp, he used kerosene lamps at home and in his shed, which would cost about 20 cents a day to refill. He’s extremely happy about using the LED lamp, because it’s free to use and so easy to operate that his kids charge the lamp for him. He now buys food and invests in his carpentry business with the money that would have been spent on kerosene.

He shows us that he keeps the solar panel mounted on the roof, with the small cord dangling on to the balcony to charge the lamp during the day. The sales team brings out an adapter that’s just been released which utilizes the solar panel to charge a range of mobile phones. Regice immediately agrees to buy one, so that he doesn’t have to walk to town and pay to charge his phone.

Regice is more fortunate than most of the neighboring villagers. He’s able to purchase things like the lamp and cell phone connector because he operates a stable business. But for most, $20 per lamp and panel is still a major stretch – something that Adriaan hopes to whittle down as ToughStuff takes off.

We continue our Southbound journey and the sun begins to set over large, monolithic rock formations to the West. I think about the enthusiasm that I witnessed over the course of the day; the villagers we spoke to have so little, but yet were so excited at the chance to have a reliable, clean, and renewable source of light.

Find out more about ToughStuff on their website – http://toughstuffonline.org

East of Africa: City of the Thousand

by Stephen Greenwood on

In Antananarivo, the French colonial influence is everywhere: spired churches sit atop the city’s prominent hills. Pretty jacaranda trees line Lake Anosy, which wraps around a war memorial statue in the center of the water.

A large defunct train station sits negelected at the end of a wide boulevard. The sign below the grand clock spells the city’s old French name: “Tananarive”. Horse-drawn carriages and 1960’s Renault and Citroën taxis jam the stone-covered roads, with crackling radios blaring out a french news broadcast.

In this sense, Antananarivo feels like a fractured, soiled apparition of Paris.

But unlike most of the capital cities in Southern Africa, Tana was already a major city before colonization. Around 1625, King Andrianjaka conquered the twelve sacred hills of the city and established it as the capital. He named the city Antananarivo, “City of the Thousand”, because of the thousand guards that were kept to watch over the new establishment.

After the French captured the city in 1895, they remodeled many parts of it to host the growing population and improve transportation for trade and manufacturing. The population of Tana expanded from 100,000 to 175,000 by 1950, which has since exploded to a staggering 1.4 million people after independence in 1960.

The surge in growth, an unstable government, and a struggling niche economy has left many on the streets.There’s undoubtedly a strange beauty and exoticism possessed by the city, but also an almost equally dark and heavy atmosphere in the streets.

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Mothers with small babies wrapped on their backs come and walk alongside me for several street blocks, holding out their hands and saying in a hushed, raspy voice: “le medecin pour le bebe, s’il vous plait”. Their requests need no translation, but I’m rarely able to justify the act of handing out money on the streets in a foreign country.

Local people refer to the beggars as the “quatre-mis” or “kat-mis” for short. In post-revolutionary France, society was broken into three estates, with the poorest being in the third estate. The Malagasy slang term evolved out of the connotation that the beggars were below even the poorest of the third class. The forgotten ones. Useless to society. The lowest of the low.

I finally find that the only way to halt their pursuit is by stopping, and looking at them eye to eye, and regretfully shaking my head. It’s easy to keep walking and pretend to ignore the quatre-mis, and just as easy for them to keep following and keep begging. In that sudden moment of acknowledgement, there’s suddenly nothing left to say – nowhere left to go. We are two antithetical souls staring at one another on a busy sidewalk.

The mother turns around and walks away. I stand in the same spot, waching as the baby on her back bobs up and down with every step. The lump in my throat lodges a little deeper.

I decide to walk up a network of small streets to see the Rova – the Queen’s palace. A young man who claims to be a college student approaches me and says that he’ll show me the way, which I know will end with me handing over a couple thousand ariary (a few dollars) for his guidance. He’s pretty knowledgeable, and I have no problem with paying in exchange for historical information, so I walk with him through the neighborhood.

He tells me about the fire in the Rova, the mixed up political situation, and the riots that took place this past February. When I press him about his studies, he admits that he’s not yet a student but is saving up, and giving impromptu tours to help fund his dreams.

On the way back to the hotel, I deliberately take as many side streets and small alleyways as possible. I pass a group of boys playing on a half broken fooseball table, and practice a few more words of French.

Ahead, a busy Sunday market is closing for the day, and vendors package up scores of textiles, shoes, and cheap Chinese electronics. A large taxi-brousse fills its rows with as many people as possible, for the last ride of the day.

Eventually, I find my way back to familiar streets just in time for another Tana sunset, and take a moment to look out over the twelve sacred hills now painted in an orange glow. It may have started as the city of the thousand, but it’s now the city of a million; with requisite scars to bear from such growth.

East of Africa: Arrival

by Stephen Greenwood on

Adriaan and I are barreling down a small cobblestone street in a dusty 4×4. Several people narrowly miss the car’s bull bars as they dash across the road, yet hardly flinch when we brush past them. I look out into the mass of people; skin tones are a mix of brown and black. Moderately well dressed people walk next to beggars with torn shirts.

The market we’re passing feels as crowded and energetic as those that I left behind in Hong Kong 48 hours ago, except there are far fewer neon lights and far more visible indications of poverty.

I hang my arm out of the window; the air is noticeably chilly and thin. I mention this to Adriaan and he explains that Antananarivo sits at roughly 4,200 ft above sea level in Madagascar’s central highlands – not quite the hot, dry, barren desert I had somehow pictured.Adriaan is the co-founder of an enterprise called ToughStuff, a company that manufactures solar panels & LED lamps for people in developing nations. He speaks with an air of sincerity and conviction about the company, and tells me that he’s spent over 15 years working in Africa with various organizations, but this is by far the most exciting project he’s seen.

The excitement is infectious, and I realize that I have an interesting twelve days ahead of me as I document and gather promotional material for their launch.

He justifies why Madagascar is an appropriate location to begin ToughStuff’s rollout: it’s the fifteenth poorest country in the world, two thirds of the population live below the international poverty line, and some areas of the 226,597 sq mile island are so remote that they won’t be linked to the electricity grid until 2040 or 2050. I try to take all of this in as we approach the center of Antananarivo.

We pull into view of the tallest hill in the city, where the Queen’s Palace is perched high above the congested streets. Its inescapable presence on the hill feels like a permanent reminder to the masses of their lowly place in the world. The unattainable.

Ironically enough, the palace was almost completely destroyed by a fire in 1995. Work has since been done in an effort to reconstruct the building, but today it’s still mostly a hollow stone shell. A grand work in progress; an appropriate symbol for a country undergoing so much political turmoil in recent years.

Beneath the palace, large letters hang onto the hillside in a strange attempt to mimic the famous Hollywood sign. A-N-T-A-N-A-N-A-R-I-V-O. An-tana-na-rivo. It’s an intimidating word if you don’t break it down. Adriaan tells me that most of the locals refer to it simply as “Tana”, but warns me that I’ll encounter plenty of trouble pronouncing other town names and people’s last names.

We exit the car on a main street in the hills of the city. My ears are filled with a buzz of strange language and commotion. Vendors anxious to sell me things call out a word I haven’t heard before. “Vazaa! Vazaa!” they call out.

Adriaan tells me that it will be my new name for the next two weeks; foreigner. After getting my attention, they begin speaking quickly in French – which immediately tests the boundaries of the 8am French courses I took in college.

I stumble through a few botched sentences, and they transition into broken English. We end up meeting somewhere in the middle, as my brain begins to recall the daunting conjugations, precious masculine and feminine assignments, and proper syntax.

It becomes clear that it’s possible to get by with English in Tana, but it certainly helps to know a bit of French if you’re going out on your own.

We make it to a hotel near the center of town called the Radama, named after the first King of Madagascar. It’s a clean, quiet place with a surprisingly reliable wireless internet connection and a hospitable staff.

The room I’m given has a balcony, and I spend a few moments staring out over the city as the sun begins its descent for the evening. It’s a beautiful scene, and I soak it up; anxious to scrub off the last traces of Hong Kong smog to make space for the red dirt of Madagascar.

Follow the East of Africa series, all throughout this month – here. If you missed the introduction to this series, check it out here.

Madagascar: East of Africa

by Stephen Greenwood on

I have this habit of never preparing adequately for trips. The tickets get booked, the bags get packed at the last moment, and I suddenly find myself about to touch down in a foreign place.

When I found out I was going to Madagascar for work, I did some brief Wikipedia and Wikitravel skimming: fourth largest island in the world…lots of plants and animals…used to be a French colony…etc…etc…but I really had no idea what to expect.

I hadn’t seen the famous animated movie, my French was mediocre at best, and I knew very little about the history of the country.A year prior I spent five months in Tanzania and one month going overland from Mombasa to Cape Town, and figured it couldn’t be that different…right? The shortest distance between the shore of Madagascar and Eastern Coast of Africa is just 250 miles. As far as I was concerned, it was practically still East Africa.

The plane touched down, and I stepped onto the tarmac. It wasn’t long before I realized that I was wrong, again. Madagascar was not East Africa. It was East of Africa.

In the first few days on the island, a lot of things surprised me. I hadn’t realized that the population was so racially diverse and had assumed that the majority of people would be African because of proximity. But the land was first colonized by Austronesian people, (think Borneo, Malaysia, Indonesia) which has allowed Madagascar to develop an intriguing blend of language, skin tones, culture, and practices.

Another surprise was the apparent lack of tourists in the country’s capital, Antananarivo. The political unrest at the beginning of this year has put a big damper on the tourism industry; which survives because of Madagascar’s ecological attractions, animal life, and large national parks. And while a safari is a good reason to make the voyage out to Madagascar – it’s certainly not the only thing that the country has to offer.

I quickly came to appreciate the hospitality and sincerity of Malagasy people, the simplicity of the local food, the remarkably beautiful landscape, and the shreds of French charm scattered from the colonial period. On the contrary, I struggled to comprehend the strong presence of beggars in Antananarivo, the intricacies of the political disarray, and the reported corruption in business in the country.

Of course, there are things that Madagascar has in common with the African nations 250 miles to the West, but it’s clearly a place that has had a unique development, and will have a distinctive future.

For the rest of this month on Gadling, I’ll be sharing my observations from Madagascar through writing, photos, audio clips, and video. From the capital of Antananarivo to the southern coastal town of Toliara and back, I’ll be bringing you stories from the road, the beaten path, and everywhere in between. Tonga soa… welcome to Madagascar.

Starting this week, Gadling will be bringing you stories, photos, audio and video from the fourth largest island in the world: Madagascar. Check out all the posts in this series by following along here.