Visiting the baobabs in Antsiranana was an awesome experience. But witnessing the tourism industry in Madagascar also brought with it plenty of conflicting emotions.
*This site contains affiliate links, where I earn a small commission from purchases you make, at no cost to you.
The first time I set foot in Madagascar was when we docked in the port of Antsiranana, a remote city which was known as Diego Suarez until the mid-1970s. The heat was so intense that it left an oily slick on your skin within seconds; after a few minutes that oily slick was coated in a thin layer of dust from the street. It was so hot that even my memories of this place are tinged with a coppery red tone. After leaving the ship we followed a long narrow dirt track outside the port, where locals gathered to sell souvenirs and tours. A man with no legs sat in a wheelchair every time we arrived, banging a drum which made a wooden puppet hop from foot to wooden foot, a bucket in front of him to catch money from the passengers. Taxi drivers and tuk tuk drivers flocked around the freshly-arrived tourists, eager to get a gaggle loaded into their vehicles in return for a wad of notes.
Taxis in Madagascar are old cars in a rainbow of colours, with cracked windscreens glued together with lines of orange resin, and crispy seats, stuffing seeping out from each tear in the fabric. The tuk tuks are equally colourful, some hand-painted in their own designs. One driver arrived proudly every time we were in port in his tuk-tuk emblazoned with hand painted swastikas, grenades and rifles. I wondered whether he knew what the swastika actually symbolises.
After a couple of visits to Antsiranana we decided it was time to get further afield and see the real symbol of Madagascar: we wanted to see a baobab tree.
What is a baobab tree?
A baobab is a magical thing, pals. (No, really.)
Every single part of the baobab tree can be used for something; the fruit is one of the most nutrient-rich foods in the world, the trunks can store water (Malagasy people sometimes use them as actual water tanks), the bark can be turned into rope or material for clothes, and the leaves are edible too. Technically these alien-looking trees with their thick conical trunks and sprouts of branches jutting only from the top, are succulents- storing water in their trunks like a camel with its humps- which can survive the harshest of harsh heats. They can also live for several thousand years. Some Malagasy villages even believe that baobab trees house the spirits of their ancestors.
It’s no wonder the baobab is known as the Tree of Life.
Curiosity sparked? Read more about the baobabs on Atlas Obscura.
The taxi driver
Haggling a price with a taxi driver in 40ºc heat wasn’t an easy or enjoyable task, especially as the drivers tend to quote some crazy prices. As much as we wanted to see a baobab tree, €50 per person for a twenty minute journey seemed kind of insane. (Not just insane, but in actual fact we just plain couldn’t afford it.) We managed to haggle one driver down, and four of us jumped into his bright orange car which buzzed through Antsiranana and out onto the bumpy roads outside the city. A little furry cherub swung to and fro from the rear view mirror, and the driver sat in silence as he navigated his way over humps and bumps.
The ethics of going as a tourist to the poorest nation in Africa is something that I struggled with a lot whilst we were there. On the one hand, the majority of Malagasy people survive on next-to-nothing, so why shouldn’t they try and make as much money as possible from the shiploads of visitors who were deposited at the port every two weeks? I could understand why they presumed we would just be able to hand over all of our euros without thinking twice about it; we were travelling on a big shiny cruise ship after all, seemingly the definition of luxury. But on the other, aside from the fact that we did not physically have the money that some of the taxi drivers were asking for, €200 in total for a short car journey to some trees is nothing less than extortionate.
We tried to make conversation with the taxi driver, but he wasn’t having any of it, and didn’t even once crack a smile. He either thought we were obnoxious tourists who were therefore definitely not worth engaging with, or it’s just not his style to have a casual chat with his passengers.
Sugar and the children
After a while, the driver pulled in to a little lay-by overlooking some fields and an almost perfectly conical island in the distance. That was the Sugar Hill, a sacred place for the Malagasy people who live here. Very few people are allowed to set foot on the hill, which sits in the blue water like a green mound of sand which has just cascaded through an egg timer.
But I don’t think it was really the hill that the driver had brought us to see. There were two taxis already parked up in the lay-by, almost completely surrounded by a crowd of locals, mostly children and teenagers. The passengers of each car- one full of crew and one separate group full of passengers- were taking pictures of each other handing out sweets and wads of money to the crowd. The cruise ship company I work for is German, so just after New Year we had a surplus on board of small marzipan pigs (it’s a German thing), and so handfuls of these plastic wrap marzipan pigs heads were being placed into the children’s outstretched fingers. On the ground was a sprinkling of shimmering plastic wrappers, discarded in the dirt as the pigs were eaten.
As our taxi slowed to a halt, a group of children separated from the group and came to circle around us as we got out. Immediately a sea of hands went up, beckoning to their mouths or stomachs that they were hungry, they needed food. Or down to their bare feet- “Lady, I need shoes!” Older women and teenage boys had picked up chameleons from the roadside on sticks, and were holding them out like an egg and spoon race, offering photos of them for money. A man held a lemur tied on a rope, who stared searchingly down my camera lens as I gazed in awe at the little creature.
Every time we docked in Antsiranana, a fresh batch of photos would pop up on somebody’s Facebook account, taken in the exact same lay-by overlooking the sacred hill. Arms around the local children, or candid shots of the (mostly) European crew members handing out money and sweets. Likes and loves would rack up in their tens and hundreds beneath the photos, a little tally chart of appreciation from the Facebook friends and amazement at such generosity. The children were beaming, the white European visitors were beaming; everyone was happy all around.
And yet. I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable about it. It felt like this pitstop to see the children was as much a part of the tourist experience in Antsiranana as visiting the baobabs or buying a straw lemur as a souvenir. (As a disclaimer, pals, I always handed over some money if I took a photo, but just throwing out cash and food as if I was the saviour of the universe was where I had to draw the line.)
It is very clear that the people here lived on next to nothing, and handing out sweets and money was well-intentioned; but were these exchanges actually beneficial to the Malagasy people, beneath the surface? How much good was actually being done in the long run? Or maybe there’s no harm done, because it’s better to be kind when you can instead of not at all.
Answers on a postcard, pals, because I still have no idea.
To the baobabs
Before long, the driver decided it was time to leave. As we clambered in, another taxi arrived behind us, and the locals gravitated towards the newly arrived vehicle. I heard a child cry ‘lady! I need shoes!’ as I wound down the window for some fresh air. We headed onwards across some flat muddy fields with cows tramping across them in the hot sun. The car rattled and hummed along, and then climbed back up a hillside past more cows on a beach, finally pulling up on a road lined with trees and trestle tables.
The tables were laden down with souvenirs, and a collection of tourists were already browsing. White tablecloths hand-embroidered with tiny people and flowers and cows, tables full of vanilla pods and vanilla oil, metal bracelets with baobab trees carved into them by hand, and one table filled with gemstones. Rose quartz, citrine, amethyst, carnelian. A little boy sat underneath in the shade, watching everyone and waving shyly while he scratched patterns in the dust. We bought some things from the tables and wandered along a grassy pathway to an open area where more tables were set up and children were playing.
The baobabs near Antsiranana are still babies, but that doesn’t mean I’m not glad that we managed to see them. The trees poked their tendril-like branches above the surrounding greenery like strange snails’ antennae probing into the hot air. On the open grassy space children ran around, laughing and attempting to catch chameleons.
Conscious that the taxi driver wanted to leave, it wasn’t long before we headed back to the little car on the road, ready to drive back to the city.
So. Tourism in Madagascar. Good or bad?
First, a word on the baobabs. If you arrive in Antsiranana expecting to see a picture-perfect baobab-lined road, you might be sorely disappointed. (That particular road in Madagascar is known as the Alley of the Baobabs, and it’s located hundreds of miles away so you’ve no hope of getting there from Antsiranana port.) For me, actually seeing the baobabs turned out to be a tiny tiny factor in this day- both literally and figuratively. I
more vividly remember driving through the countryside in the sweltering heat, cows lazily wandering through muddy fields on either side of the car, children thrusting chameleons and lemurs towards us as they pointed at their stomachs and feet, and the battle inside my brain of what was the right thing to do.
The baobabs are just a tiny glimmer on the top.
Being a tourist often leads me to ask myself some very confusing questions. Tourism is, at its core, a good thing. To meet people who live differently to you, to experience a different way of life and realise that there’s more to the world than your little tiny bubble, is important. And I do believe that if the right foundations were laid, and the right infrastructure built, tourism could have the power to be hugely beneficial to Madagascar. (Look at somewhere like Costa Rica, which saw a huge influx of wealth after it steered away from deforestation and towards eco-tourism.)
Madagascar is a country with an incredible level of natural resources, beauty and culture, but which suffers from corruption and a severe lack of infrastructure. We managed to find ways to support locals and local companies while we were there- read about our trip to Nosy Tanikely with Mada Nosy Be Tourism (who we loved). But I really hope that over time more is done to help develop the tourism industry here. In a way that is beneficial to communities as a whole.
Like what you see? Want to read more? Sign up here.