Rough Travels

Written on 16 January 2010

I had my first you-chose-to-come-back-to-this-you-idiot moment the other day. I had been waiting for it – wondering when it would happen and what it would be that would trigger memories of all the things that had caused me frustration with Madagascar and with Peace Corps before.

It finally happened during my trip back to site after finishing my portion of the training in Mantasoa. Things started off well. I got a ride in a Peace Corps car early in the morning from Tana to Moramanga. Then my taxi-brousse from Moramanga to Tamatave filled up relatively quickly and we were able to leave way earlier than I had expected. I think I only had to wait for about an hour. Even the brousse ride started off well. We hardly had to stop at all and were making great time. I was actually counting myself pretty lucky, especially since when I left Moramanga, Chris’s car was still waiting for 18 people and it was looking like he’d be waiting around in Moramanga for a good part of the day.

Then the trouble started. I knew something was amiss when I started seeing endless lines of camions along the side of the road and I started to worry about what had caused all the truck drivers to call it quits so early in the day. Then we got to the first traffic jam and I discovered the reason. Land slides. Parts of RN2 were completely covered in mountains of mud. I can only assume that this was a result of the cyclone that had apparently caused torrential downpours on the east coast for days on end. I must say, as an environment volunteer, it’s pretty frustrating getting held up by something like land slides and knowing that if the people would listen to all the various environment workers running around Madagascar and stop burning/chopping down the forest problems like this would be a lot less likely to occur.

The first couple weren’t so bad. The people in the surrounding villages had managed to get them cleared and cars were making it through. Traffic was just backed up because only one side of the road was cleared. But as we continued the traffic jams got worse and worse. The lines of traffic were so long that the drivers were just turning off their cars and sitting and waiting for hours on end. I felt really bad for the men who were clearing the road. Every time we got to another land slide it looked like every male in the village had showed up with their shovels and antsy be (the Malagasy version of the machete) and were working like mad to shovel the mud off the road and push the cars through one by one. The damage was incredible. Rivers and ponds had swelled well beyond their banks; houses were flooded and barely standing; trees had fallen everywhere; the mounds of mud at times reached heights that were well above the heights of the taxi-brousses. Despite all the surrounding damage, the people seemed most concerned about getting the road cleared, which I appreciated but it made me wonder why no one seemed to be concerned about the pitiful state of some of the flooded houses.

Every land slide we came to took longer and longer to get through. The driver kept stopping the car and we would sit for so long that I kept thinking we were giving up for the night and that we would just sleep in the brousse and try again in the morning. I was wrong each time. After sitting for a couple of hours the cars would all suddenly turn back on, everyone would wake up in excitement that we were going to move again and we would advance for about a dozen or so meters. Naturally, my phone died in the middle of this trip so while everyone else was calling family and friends to check in I just sat huddled in my seat thinking of the people I would have been able to call to pass the time and trying to fight off the onset of claustrophobia (thankfully I had my iPod fully charged – I think that was the only thing keeping me sane). My phone dying presented another problem as well. Apparently our Safety and Security Officer had been trying to get in touch with me to warn me about the road being cut and find out if I was ok. Of course, there was absolutely no way for him to get in touch with me and the next morning I received all of the missed calls and text messages from him and other friends trying to find out if I was still alive. At one point we saw a couple bulldozers come through (that’s right I said bulldozers, in Madagascar). At that point I assume the road was cleared but it still took another 4½ hours to make it to Tamatave because everything was so backed up. I am now able to fully appreciate just how many cars use RN2 every day. It was pretty shocking to see such long lines of traffic in a country where you can usually travel from one place to another and only see a handful of other cars.

All in all, the trip from Moramanga to Tamatave – a trip that normally takes around 4 or 5 hours – took us over 16 hours, 12 of which were spent trying to get the 30k strip of land slides. That was probably the worst taxi brousse ride I have ever experienced in Madagascar. But when I came back to Madagascar I knew something like this was bound to happen and I’m feeling pretty good now that I’ve survived my first incredibly frustrating event. I’ll feel even better if I ever make it back to site. Today is Saturday and I left Tana early Wednesday morning. I’m supposed to get back today but I don’t want to jinx it since I was supposed to make it back yesterday but the taxi brousse to my site never showed up. This trip has been plagued numerous problems aside from land slides. Peace Corps is going to have a hard time getting me to come back to Tana again during the rainy season, which is going to be a problem for them since there are several things scheduled in the next few months that they need volunteers for. At this point, I think I’ll only agree to make the trip again if they send a helicopter to pick me up and take me back home.