Madagascar 4a - My First Taxi Brousse

My First Taxi Brousse

Taxi-brousse just means bush taxi. It is public transportation to remote areas and can be anything from a tiny 4x4 to a massive coach albiet one that is about 30 years old and is jacked up and made into a 4x4. My first one was somewhere in between with a capacity of about 30 people though there really is no maximum capacity for a Taxi Brousse. I don't have any good photos of a taxi brousse yet but I'll make a point to take some.

We had made the decision to abort the pirogue-de-mer and return to Morombe. My crew helped me secure a place on the next taxi-brousse which departs Morombe at 1:30am and arrives in Ifaty at about 1:30pm. On the grounds that my pirogue "taxi" had not actually successfully gotten me to my destination but, in 8 days of travel only about 1/2 way there I insisted they pay for it but accepted that they pay 1/2. Also, I refused to pay for a hotel for the night since, how hard can it be to stay up until 1:30am anyway.

I'm taking this bit directly from my travel notes it was 2 1/2 weeks ago on Sunday night/Monday morning of 29 Sept.

10:30pm Sunday night - Not wanting to shell out the AR 15,000 on a bungalow (£5) I decided to stay up. But since I had read all my books and wanted to save my ipod batteries for the actual taxi brousse I was sitting around the crabe hotel dining area alone in the dark I grew bored and tired. Robert had suggested that if I wanted I could use the sail to relax on so I layed out on the "grace de dieu" sail which was covering my stuff. At 10:30 Robert and a girl come back to the dining area and also not wanting to shell out on a room took the sail back from me and made a little bed on the cement floor. I couldn't believe it! I had nowhere to go and 3 hours to wait. For all I know Robert and his girl were naked and fucking in the sail of a sea pirogue not 10 ft from me. Luckily either he didn't do anything or they were unbelievably queit but he did make some rude gestures and use some phrases that he had tought me the night before which I hadn't fully understood but I knew were rude.

This is not exactly how I envisioned the "pirogue de mer adventure" ending when I signed up 20 days earlier.

Anyway, I set my alarm for 1:00 because now I really did not want to miss this taxi-brousse. As I'm heading out to the road to check out the situation (all was dark) I encounter a guy engaging me in conversation - at 1:00 am on a Monday morning. I mistakenly assume he is from the taxi-brousse come to help me out or make sure I was up or whatever. No. He was just another pirogue captain staying at the hotel - pissed- trying to solicit my business as he was taking his pirogue south towards Ifaty the next day if I was interested. Fuck that! I've had enough piroguing thanks anyway buddy and I'm definitely not waiting until tomorrow when I've got a taxi-brousse coming to pick me up in a few minutes.

Well since they should be there any minute I figure I want to be waiting for them so I bring my stuff down to the road. It is really really dark. There are maybe three lights on in the whole city.

I'm waiting, I'm waiting. Every now and then a drunk person on their way back from a night out stumbles by but I'm not sure if they see me because it's so dark. 1:30 comes and goes. 1:45. 2:00. 2:15. At this point I'm very terrified that I've missed it. But I can hear a big engine from across town. That must be the taxi brousse right? I can see tail lights. Is that it? I've got to find out. I pick up all my stuff. Hey if the Paris Metro was no big deal then Morombe in the middle of the night shouldn't be a problem.

As I get closer, I can see a guy standing on a raised platform loading stuff onto the roof. This is definitely it. Sweet. I'm going to make it. Robert can do whatever he wants to that girl now. I'm getting on the taxi-brousse. I'm approaching and am maybe 20m away when I hear the gears engage and it starts to pull away accelerating around the corner. I break into as fast a run as I can with a massive backpack on and a smaller one in one hand and a back of misc stuff in the other hand. I'm not going fast enough. I start yelling in frecnch "Attender moi!" "Taxi-Brousse!" "Attend!" But he didn't attend.

So now I'm really paranoid now. Scared even. Here I wait for nearly an hour for the taxi brousse to pick me up as agreed- or at least I thought we had agreed, the self-doubt is seriously creeping in now as to whether or not I understood the arrangement correctly and just as I'm about to catch it, 45 mins after the agreed upon time it drives away and doesn't even stop when I yell after it. GREAT! Another day in Morombe. Morombe, where the beach has more shit on it than grains of sand.

So as I pick up the pace I ask someone who happened to be awake "C'est le taxi-brousse?" just in case I was mistaken and that wasn't even it. He answered yes and helps me chase it down. As we round the corner however I can see that it's not going to be quite as hard to chase down as I thought as it is now stopped and is in front of the main depot. The same depot where I had bought my ticket earlier in the afternoon and is loading up more stuff up onto the roof and thre are only about 10 people on board.

Whew! I did make it after all. And there aren't very many people on board. I thought these things were supposed to be crowded. Maybe I will be lucky. About an hour later after 9 or 10 stops later I have a very uncomfortable and moaning about it chicken under my seat and a drunk guy's feet in my lap. Only 14 more hours to go until Ifaty.