Madagas-scare

We have just returned to “civilization” after a rather harrowing trip to Madagascar. Political unrest has plagued the capital city of Antananarivo for the last 2 months, and on the day we flew there, it escalated quite a bit. The military had declared that the presiding president and his opponent, the mayor of Antananarivo, had 72 hours to meet to resolve who would lead the country as their conflict was paralyzing business, commerce and daily life. Depending heavily on tourism for income, the country and its impoverished people were desperate. Indeed, we were just about the only tourists in we saw in the capital and later in the country. On the day we arrived the US Department of State had also issued a travel warning for the country, recommending that all US citizens and non-essential Embassy personnel and family members immediately leave the country. Perfect.

We had originally planned to fly out of the capital to the western coast of the country to see the famous baobab trees and relax on the beach, but our in-country flights had been cancelled (because there were no tourists to fill the seats) so we were stuck in the capital. The hotel we had booked, La Varangue, which was neat and full of character, was located just a few blocks from the center of the action, compounding our anxiety about being in Antananarivo. We could literally hear the protests just down the street. Our flights out of the country were scheduled 5 days later, so the thought of spending 4 nights in the city filled us with dread.

With no internet access, spotty phone connections, no ability to safely walk around outside the hotel on our own, and our own country urging us to leave, we were all the more anxious to get out. The closing of the airport was our biggest worry. Luckily our travel insurance company had a reservations team who could work on changing our outbound flight for us even while we were without internet. After two days, they arranged for our departure one day early. 

So, at the suggestion of our hotel’s owner, we hired a driver and car to take us out of the city to a national park (that was quite beautiful, and we could actually enjoy once our earlier flight was secured). Our driver Davy was a reassuring presence as he explained how the unrest was primarily happening in the city and not out in the country, so we would be much safer there…Oh, and Malagasy and French are really the only languages spoken in Madagascar. So while he could relate some of what was going on and enlighten us about how the people really lived and were being hurt by the current politics, the language barrier made our trip even more stressful and hard. So we spent 2 nights out in the country seeing a jungle-like landscape with lush foliage and cute lemurs. Thank goodness for the lemurs!

We drove straight to the airport on the day of our rescheduled flight with fingers crossed that it would be open and the flight would go. Needless to say, the relief we felt upon finally boarding the flight back to Jo’burg was immense. If we had known all that was unfolding in Madagascar as we were heading there, we would have skipped the country. But we went and in the end learned quite a lot about our personal capacities for stress, what severe poverty looks like amidst great natural beauty, and just how “bad” bad can be.