Taxi rides in Tana

Another guest post from KP

Taxi rides in Tana are, more often than not, an adventure. Tana (the thankfully shortened moniker for Antananarivo – “The City of a Thousand”, Madagascar’s capital) is a hilly city. Think: San Francisco, without bay views (or earthquakes). After their conquest of the city in 1895, the French invested no small amount of money in the capital in their effort to turn it into a city akin to what one might find in southern France. I’m not sure that they were successful. Furthermore, I doubt that the cobblestone streets in the Old Town have been replaced since 1895, which contribute to the reckless abandon with which taxi drivers hasten to navigate their 1960 era Peugots (full of holes themselves) around the gaps of missing cobblestones and bumps of upended cobblestones. Descending from the Old Town, the streets become paved, enabling the taxis to augment their speed, but the passages remain narrow and curvy, causing passengers to reach for oh shit handles which don’t exist. As one enters the sprawling ‘suburbs’, the streets become roads more recognizable to those of us who grew up in places with well-run Departments of Transportation: lines separating the lanes, designated turn lanes, and roundabouts labeled with clear signs. Despite this sense of order, taxi drivers don’t feel obliged to remain in their lanes, crossing over into the oncoming traffic lane at will to pass slower vehicles (paying no heed to looming oncoming traffic).

In Fianar, my daily commute to work is a four minute walk. Commutes in Tana are a stark contrast, and when I visit Tana, my morning routine becomes a race against the clock when I suddenly remember at 7:00 that I need to allow at least 30 to 60 minutes for the commute to get to my first meeting. Traffic jams seem worse than those in the US, as catalytic converters and environmental air pollution laws are unknown in Madagascar; numerous vehicles spew trails of dark smoke.

Two weeks ago when I was in Tana, I had an especially fun taxi ride. I had an appointment downtown at 2:30, and as I was staying in the burbs with an expatriate friend, I left the house to walk up to the main road to catch a taxi around 1:30. It was Saturday, so I hoped there wouldn’t be too much traffic. I am at the point in Malagasy where I can hail a taxi and tell the driver where I need to go (and that’s about it). I don’t know what I said, but the taxi man thought that I spoke fluent Malagasy. He proceeded to converse with me throughout the ride. Every few minutes, I’d recognize a smidgen of what he was talking about, enough to throw in an appropriate word, and he kept on chatting. He wasn’t convinced of my lack of language skills, even when I would say things in French and explained that I really don’t speak Malagasy.

One feature of taxi rides in Tana is coasting. It’s an art form, really. As we pulled out, I felt like we were going a little too fast – till I realized it was because we were approaching a hill down which the driver intended to coast at top speed. We picked up enough momentum that we were able to pass another taxi as we barreled down the hill. One disconcerting feature of this taxi was that the driver had to wrench the steering wheel to the left immediately before shifting. We stopped at a gas station along the way, and he grabbed a 1 liter plastic water bottle out of the front seat, and filled it with gas. I assumed he would then fill up some other plastic container under the hood– proper gas tanks aren’t deemed a necessity for taxis around here – instead, he replaced the bottle full of fuel on a shelf under the glove compartment, carefully positioning it so it wouldn’t spill, and we drove the rest of the way with our extra gasoline inside the car.

I tend not to favor unsafe conditions which are out of my control, and more often than not taxi rides in Tana certainly fall into that category. For some reason, though, these taxi rides almost always put me in a pleasant mood. The unexpected moments bring a smile, and make up for the long commute.