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Malagasy Solutions to Malagasy Problems

As you might have guessed from the title, I’m in Madagascar. Internet bandwidth is lacking, and I’ve still got lots of South African photos to sort through, but, skipping out of chronological order, here’s a bit of text.

In Madagascar all prices and policies are negotiable. Pay attention and you may notice a guide buying tickets for only half the people in his group (pocketing the difference), or a ticket agent attempting to charge you half-price for children’s admission when it’s free.

Not just policies but policing is negotiable. In fact, in the two Malagasy stories to follow, the police are the problem. But first, by way of prelude, a South African story.

A campfire tale. Modern day, somewhere in southern Africa. A mental hospital was closing down, and sixty patients had to be transferred to another institution in another town, some hours away. These patients were considered low flight risk, or maybe there was no budget for anything better, so they were simply bundled onto a chartered bus, unsupervised except for the driver.

As might be expected, the bus driver stopped en route to have some drinks. Returning, belatedly, to his bus, he found it empty. Not wanting to be held responsible for the disappearance of his sixty passengers, he found an ingenious solution. He drove to the nearest public bus station, and offered a free ride to the town that was his destination. Shortly his bus was full, and he drove all sixty new passengers to the asylum. “But I’m not crazy!” they cried as they were dragged through the gates. That’s what they all say…

The first malagasy story concerns the tuk-tuks, three-wheeled motorcycle taxis with a bench seat in the back. It’s illegal to have passengers in the front seat. So whenever the tuk-tuks approach a police checkpoint, the tuk-tuk stops, the front-seat passenger squeezes into the back, and the tuk-tuk proceeeds a few yards past the checkpoint before stopping again to let the front-seat passenger resume his place.

Tuk-tuks are ideal for short trips, but for rides longer than a few minutes you’ll get a better deal in a collectif, a shared taxi-van.

The apex of automotive luxury is a private van, owned or chartered by a tour company. These make tempting targets for venal police, who routinely stop them at checkpoints and ask the driver for a bribe. Solution: charter van drivers don’t carry cash, and don’t get paid until the trip is over. Therefore, no cash is available for the police.