18 May – Let’s all go to the Moo…vies

Solofo

Managed to have a fun and interesting day today….and finally really hit the wall.  No regrets about not being able to make Andringitra. Wouldn’t have traded today for it.

Slept mercifully late and had a big breakfast about 9.  I thought I was being conservative, but the croissant I ordered came out the size of a loaf of bread, the pressed OJ was in giant glass, and the omelet must have been made with three eggs instead of the usual two.  And it came with bread.  Fortunately, Solofo came out as the food was coming, so I was able to share some of this bounty.

Dunno how the sun got so high so fast, but it was already too overhead for good pics when I left the hotel.  Still, we headed out to walk down an old street still filled with old houses with tile roofs and old style balconies.  Some of the houses looked like they came out of the French countryside, but there were some distinct touches, like the balcony with the zebu head silhouettes carved into it.  They’re great constructions.

The street was filled with people because Wednesdays are both market days and zebu sale days,  Not everyone is here to shop or sell; it’s almost a weekly festival, and there was a definite energy going.  We walked through town, heading to the zebu market.  At one storefront, there were women weaving raw silk into shawls, and I thought a lot of their work was quite good.  They are a women’s group co-op, and they raise their own silkworms, harvest the silk, spin it and weave it.  I picked up a scarf for my mother there.  Unless memory fails, the scarves are about 1/3 the price here that they are in Tana, and many of them looked far more elegant. 

At another storefront, I heard some loud music and saw a hawker pulling people in off the street.  I went over to see what was up and discovered a “movie theater.”  The impresario was yelling something, and his assistant was pulling people in from the sidewalk, mostly villagers who’d just come to town to be here during market day.  I could easily imagine early American cinema being like this.  The “theater” had a billboard out front listing the next four movies and their starting times (which were something like 2, 4, and 6 o’clock).  I poked my head in to see the setup and found a TV with a DVD player on a stand in the front of a large rectangular room with people sitting on rough benches that stretched across the room.  It was barely a 26-inch screen, but the surround system was enormous….loudspeakers, I think.  It all looked so familiar, like a different cultural expression of the same setup we have when we go to the movies with stadium seating and surround sound.  I can happily report, too, that after all the years of Chinese pirating American movies, I’ve now found a place where Chinese movies are pirated.  I guess what goes around, comes around.  I did see The Karate Kid on the bill for later, though.

We carried on out of town to a huge complex on the top of a hill just out of town, the Zebu market.  These occur on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and people bring their Zebus from all over southern Madagascar to trade here. The area was full of large cattle trucks (we’d seen many on the road coming in) and herders moving their zebu around.

Despite the gigantic size and the constant shouting, movement and dust, the sale both seems and is pretty organized.  You just take your zebus into the huge pen on the hill and keep yours separate from those of the other sellers around you.  There must have been 50-75 of these little mini-groups in the enclosure.  While you stand there and hold your stock together, buyers wander around looking to see what they’re interested in, and you see people cutting head out of their groups and then reassembling them, people swapping cash (and there are people to give change running around), and people doing paperwork so they can prove that the zebus aren’t stolen.  Depending on the buyer and the purpose of buying the zebu, the big trucks at the bottom of the hill are for transporting the livestock.  It all makes a lot of sense.

I had a couple of nice conversations there, too.  One friendly old guy told me all about the financial side of things—how much a typical zebu might cost, how much transportation would run, how much you’d have to bribe the cops who stop traffic every 30 miles.  All this adds to the cost of zebu here in Madagascar.  Then as we were heading back across town, we ran into the night guardian from the hotel.  I jokingly asked if he’d bought a zebu, and he told me that he had 40 head on the way up from Tulear.  And he gave me all those details, too….the three herders, how he handled their food, what animals he had and what his expectations for them were.  Last thing in the world I expected from a night watchman.

The sun was getting high now, but we decided to go through the market on the way back to the hotel anyway.  It was just packed with every item imaginable and many unimaginable.  On the former side, there was a huge variety of food, clothing and home items.  Everything about the day reminded me working in Mali, and this market really felt that way, except for the presence of mobile phones and chargers.  The unimaginable category included several things, but dried grasshoppers (Oxahaca notwithstanding) gets the award.  This time.

Market Food

I had a Coke when we got back to the hotel, and we decided to revisit the market around 3:30 for more photo opportunities.  I headed back to my room, stretched out on the bed, and woke up three hours later at 4.  Wow…..do I feel rested now!  I think I’ve finally made the time and activity transition.  In fact, I’m feeling quite fit and ready to go.

We walked back through town after I finally got up, but the market was definitely breaking up and there was less activity.  Stopped by to see what was on at the movies (another kung-fu movie), shot a few photos, and went the other big hotel in town for a bite to eat since I hadn’t had lunch.  I had a vegetable soup that they actually made in the kitchen while we were sitting out on the covered veranda.  And I ordered some frites, too, which they cut and fried.  It was slow, but it’s still a little surprising that making everything fresh here is more efficient than popping open cans. 

We headed on back to the hotel with the people departing the market trying to squeeze into taxi-brousse vehicles.  Those who lived closer were walking.  And on three occasions, I had people either run head on into me or grab my arm to say something.  Acting on a suspicion, I asked Solofo if there were any bars in the area, and we were sure enough in the middle of a group.  I just can’t imagine being staggering drunk and having to walk several miles to get home.  What a rough way to move into a hangover.

And that was the end of my catch-up day.  It was great to take a down day.  In fact, one of the points of renting a car is to avoid the tedious public transportation and take advantage of the time saved.  I tend to run myself into the ground in the saved time, but it was a good move to just sleep this one away….and finally get my photos off my camera.