Madagascar Trail II (or, The Art of the Push Start)

Taxi-brousse travel is a team effort. It starts at the parcage- that mud-puddled, trash-strewn gathering of old vans and inebriated men- for empty cars only circle in Madagascar; a critical mass must be reached for departure. This means that whole days of your life can be lost in waiting, eating yogurts and staring forlornly at that piece of paper that guy swore four hours ago was a ticket; for this is the arena of liars and thieves, schemers and scammers, ruled by young men whose primary talent is the ability to simultaneously drink beer, smoke cigarettes, and chew qat; trust when I say that mixing uppers and downers is the least of their offenses.

Everyone- not just the highly conspicuous- is desperate to get out of there. Recruitment becomes a shameless and occasionally violent endeavor; new arrivals are besieged, tugged hither and thither, deceived on all sides, sweet-talked and cajoled, fights break out over their baggage. Once you have survived this gauntlet and put your money down on a brousse, you now have a vested interest in the battles that follow. You plead with your eyes, please pick my van, and are not rarely a selling point: look, you can sit by the foreigner, she speaks Malagasy.

Once critical mass has been reached (about double the number of persons logical in a time interminable), the driver, who has spent the past hours of assemblage indifferently drinking beer in the shade, is suddenly in a tremendous hurry. He repeatedly leans on the horn, yells at the teenagers still strapping an entire living room set to the roof, yells at his newest customers, do you think we have all day? We passengers, who have been helplessly trying to express that very fact for the past short eternity, can only grumble as we squeeze in like cattle for the kill. With another yell, a qat-chewing, cigarette-smoking, didn't-bother-to-put-down-the-beer crowd is gathered; all hands on deck, much unnecessary shouting and last-minute exchanging of bills, and it is at last time to roll out. You rejoice as you try not to look at those poor souls you are leaving behind like convicts in barbed wire. Then you remember that the journey has...just...begun...

When describing bush-taxi travel, one must be prepared to use the constant refrain: "And then I almost cried..." Thus necessarily arises amongst us victims of a cruel system, us captives of a dictatorial regime of the roads a common ethic of endurance, a spirit of survival that transcends the heat, the sweat, the long inexplicable delays, the cavernous car-eating potholes, the sheer disregard of personal identity.
Food is shared and babies are passed. We bond at the most trivial of opportunities (Yes, Barack Obama is president of the United States...No, surprisingly he is NOT Malagasy but...). We cling to each other for dear life as the driver plays a high-speed game of reverse frogger (avoid chickens, goats, small children, herds of cattle and oncoming traffic; extra points for chameleons). We look discreetly the other way as the key falls repeatedly out of the ignition, snigger at the the petty bribery of the national police (Oh no sir, it only LOOKS like humanity is busting out of the seams of this vehicle), and offer up a chorus of outraged disbelief when the car slows for yet another passenger: Where are you going to put this one? On the roof??

There are musical malfunctions, the deluges of sudden squalls, numerous traffic jams, a term which here refers not to the number of cars on the road but rather to the complex extrication strategy required to quit the vehicle (move that arm...whose leg is this?...hold the baby...wait, watch my toes!). Through it all we are pecked by chickens and peed on by goats, accordion blares at an ear-splitting volume. When it finally comes time to escape you can no longer claim among your abilities that to either hear or walk properly.
Your bag is tossed down, the driver gives a half-wave, a final half-hearted attempt at customer service, and roars off, leaving you to limp on counting the hours of your youth lost on the past two hundred miles...