The Pousse-Pousse Incident

Wednesday, February 18 2004 @ 09:47 pm EST

I had just survived the four hour, 170km trip from Tana to Antsirabe - my first by taxi-brousse. Upon arrival, I was swamped by locals trying to sell me food, watches, TV antennae, spark plugs, and a host of other useful-looking devices. It took the driver quite a while to get my backpack out of the tangle of the roof baggage, and during this time I chose a pousse-pousse guy to take me downtown. A pousse-pousse is essentially a very colourful rickshaw and I had about a half-dozen to choose from. They all looked about the same to me, so I chose the guy who asked me first. This was a mistake.

[10 Oct 2003]
The way the pousse-pousse racket in Antsirabe works is kind of interesting. The majority of these guys don't own their own pousse-pousse - they rent them for about MGF10,000 per day [about CAN$2.25]. The locals pay between MGF1,000 and MGF1,500 for a ride within Antsirabe, so each driver has to make about eight or nine trips a day just to break even. As you can imagine, the competition is fierce. Because I'm a foreigner, I expected to pay about MFG3,000-4,000 to get from the northern taxi-brousse stop to the downtown area. So I hopped on the pousse-pousse, backpack between my legs, and we left the rabble behind us.

As I quickly discovered, my driver didn't speak French very well. I asked several times how much it was going to cost, but didn't understand his replies. I didn't clarify this before I got into the pousse-pousse, even though I knew better. I guess it was the crush of people I was trying to escape at the taxi-brousse stop that made me anxious to get out of there because I don't like being surrounded like that. As we made slow progress towards the downtown, the driver and I exchanged what I assume were pleasantries and I had a chance to look around the town a bit.

Along the way, a guy in a navy-stripped shirt and an old, beaten fisherman's hat rode up next to us and introduced himself as José. His French was better than the driver's, so I chatted with him a bit. He was trying to sell me on a three-day pirogue [dugout canoe] trip down the Tsiribihina River. He passed me a blue binder filled with photos, maps, and brochures of the area. As I browsed these, he told me that he already had two Frenchmen lined up for the trip, leaving on Saturday. The trip sounded interesting, so I arranged to have him meet me that evening with the two Frenchmen to have a chat.

As we arrived at the courtyard of the hotel, just off the main street, the driver asked me if I wanted to do a tour of the town after settling in. I told him I wasn't interested. He insisted that I take his tour. I told him I wanted to pay now. After we went through this routine several times, he just turned around and left. An odd way to do business, I thought. I went into the hotel only to find out they didn't have any rooms - they were in the midst of renovations. I threw on my backpack, prepared to walk around town looking for a room.

As I got a little ways down the street, the pousse-pousse driver came up behind me. He was pissed off.

'Were you just going to walk away without paying?', he demanded in broken French.

'I tried to pay, but you wouldn't accept it.', I insisted. 'How much and I'll pay now.'

'Get in and we'll do a tour.'

'No, I just want to pay.'

'You can pay after the tour.'

At this point, I started to get a little annoyed. 'I don't want to take your tour! I want to pay!' I handed him some bills. 'Here's 3,000.' In Malagasy Francs, I only had one 10,000 bill and about 4,500 in other bills and change.

The driver started to raise his voice and switched to Malagasy, which of course I didn't understand. I took it to mean 'Not enough.'

I gave him the rest of the 4,500, turned around, and started walking.

He ran out in from of me with his pousse-pousse to block me, screaming something in Malagasy, which I still didn't understand because I hadn't learned the language in the past 26 seconds. Soon, other pousse-pousse drivers and people on the street came over to see what the commotion was all about. While I explained to the driver that I didn't have any more Malagasy Francs, and that he'd have to settle for that, even more people showed up to watch the exchange. I started to feel a little uncomfortable with the situation, even though I was on the main street, because this was turning into a mob. I gave the driver a US $1 bill and walked away again [I figured my health was worth at least that]. He followed me a short way protesting some more, but when he realized that what he'd gotten from me was pretty good and that I wasn't going to stop again, he left me alone and the spectators dispersed.

With that behind me, I still needed to find a hotel. José showed up beside me on his bike again and suggested a place around the corner. I walked into the place, a little off the main street, and it reminded me of a tavern you might see in one of Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns. I asked to see the room and was shown downstairs to a dank, damp room with an unappealing mattress for a bed. It was even worse than the roach place I stayed at the first night in Tana. Even the low, low price couldn't tempt me to stay there so I left to find something better.

I looked at the map of the town and decided to check out a hotel near the southern taxi-brousse station called Hotel Manoro because I figured I would be leaving from that area. After a little hike through the busy streets, I made it to the hotel, looked at the room, and checked in. I took a second-floor room which was fairly clean and had a reasonable bed, though I used my sleeping bag instead of the linen which was provided, and a shower with warm water. The room looked out over the taxi-brousse station, so it was going to be a little noisy, but I had my trusty earplugs so it wouldn't be a problem.

After settling in, I went downstairs for a bite to eat. Part of the restaurant doubled as the reception area and lounge, with a small TV in the corner. I skeptically ordered a pizza and sat at my table looking at my Lonely Planet to get an idea of where to head next and looking at the Tsiribihina River route. The 'pizza' was not very good - I don't know what kind of cheese it was exactly, and probably don't want to know - but I was very hungry, so I wolfed it down, followed by rum-saturated bananes flambé for dessert.

José, the pirogue guy, showed up just as I was finishing my dinner - sans Frenchmen. He explained that they wanted to delay until Sunday and that we would meet tomorrow. We discussed the trip in a bit more detail - what was provided, what kind of food we'd have, and so on - and arranged to meet back at my hotel the next day.

The owner of the hotel and his family sat at the long table across from me for dinner. After everyone was done, they settled in to watch a bit of TV. I stayed to see what Malagasy TV is like. We ended up watching a movie about a shark-research facility called Deep Blue Sea which was dubbed into French. The matron of the family and I exchanged an eye-rolling look as the kids screamed in horror at one of the main characters being munched by a shark. In some of the commercials, Bollywood-esque singing and dancing in Malagasy made it very difficult to discern exactly what was for sale. This alone made them more entertaining than the movie.

As I went up to my room after the movie, I realized that due to the surreal TV experience I had completely forgotten about the pousse-pousse incident earlier in the day. I reflected on my mistakes and chalked it up to experience. Dropping in my earplugs, I drifted off to a peaceful sleep.

I never considered taking a pousse-pousse again.

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