What It's Like: To Find the number for a Restaurant

From Jack:

What It's Like: To Find the number for a Restaurant in Antananarivo

The restaurants in Antananarivo have been excellent thus far.  I have only been to a few: Le Grand Orient, La Plantation, and Le Carnivore--but my darling wife has been to a good smattering of them for lunch during the day.  While the languid speed of service often leaves ample room for improvement (think Paris speed but without the snooty waiters), the food itself has impressed me (as well as the low prices)!

Finding information for a restaurant in Antananarivo, Madagascar, however, is a  much more difficult affair for those of us accustomed to gentlemenly ease of YELP, SeamLess, OpenTable, GrubHub on the world wide interwebs--namely because it turns out that the world wide interweb is not as worldly or wide (or webby) as one assumes living in the cushy, connected northwestern hemisphere.   For those of us with parents of a certain age, these elderly founders of our nation would no doubt feel at ease in the very papered and Yellow-Pagey 3rd world.  I mean, who among us hasn't embarked on a road trip somewhere and had a parent inquire as to whether or not we had a map packed away.

A MAP! A map you say!

 How cute.

How...dare I say it...retro--I can almost picture an old folded map ironically jutting out from the glove compartment of one of my hipster relative's car as he blasts the latest indie violin-polka album whilst sporting suspenders, a straw beret and impossibly tight acid washed jean capris...ahem...but I digress..

Instead here in Tana, one needs to find a free promotional tourism booklet that comes out periodically here in Tana.  At the back of which one will find an (incomplete) listing of restaurants here in town with their phone numbers.  Of course as you can see from my annotation, the numbers aren't always correct.

You might also note that there aren't any addresses for the restaurants below.  Try typing the name of most restaurants below in google maps and you won't get much a result for most of them.  For a few of them you will get a few questionableTripAdvisor reviews with outdated or outright fictitious restaurant information.  This largely stems from the fact that the majority of streets in Madagascar don't have names and they certainly don't have street signs (although this is slowly changing).  

So one is relegated to using Oregon-Trailish directions when describing the location of a restaurant:  "So you go past the American School until you get to Devil's Triangle, then you go straight past two sets of rice paddies and turn left just after the Lutheran Church--you won't think it's a street but don't worry people in the market will get out of your vehicle's way" (this is a near verbatim excerpt of directions I have commonly received). 

Luckily google maps has a mapmaker function where you can edit their map and even add restaurants and stores.  Some of the good ones have already been added: brunch n bio is on there already (albeit in the wrong location) to name one. 

In some future posts we will posts our own MELP (mada + yelp...get it) reviews of the local fare to include snapshots of the menu since you can't find those online either.  By the way, le grand orient below does takeout (for our readers in the US this is a big deal)!

I Want You To Know--A Poem On the Passing of Madiba

(from Jack)
I just started Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom last week and wish I had not let it languish on my kindle bookshelf for the past year.  I am about a quarter of the way through it and the news of Mandela's death hit me hard.

As I thought about the life of Mandela and what I wanted to say about him--I started to write and the poem below is that product.

I Want You To Know--A Poem On the Passing of Madiba

I want you to know sweet daughters

That a man lived, loved, sacrificed and forgave for his people.

I want you to know these words

Ndiwelimilambo enamagama

Let these foreign syllables roll in your mouth like marbles

Know that this saying was embodied by a man:

I have crossed famous rivers.

I want you to know that the world you see was not always this way

Just when our country had defeated the evils of the Nazi Germany

Another hateful plague descended that we did not stop

From the streets of Johannesburg to the rolling countryside of the Transkei

African, Coloured, Indians and white were set apart

—separated

Men, women, and babies

graded and annotated like animals on

pieces of paper according to the shade of their skin.

No my sweet daughters,

This did not happen 150 years ago

but 60 years ago. 

I want you to know that this evil was defeated

Not by armies, guns or atomic bombs—

But by bludgeoned bloody sacrifice

By generations

                                    of gut-wrenching perseverance

And finally dealt its death blow by a forgiveness so

deep                                                                              and                                                                                                   wide

that it baptized an entire nation.

My sweet daughters,

I want you to know the story a man called

Madiba (his clan name),

and Tatomkhulu (grandfather),

Rolihlahla (the troublemaker),

(Nelson was just an English name his teacher gave him because she couldn’t pronounce his African one)

who walked this earth for 95 years.

Of those years, eighteen he endured breaking limestone

rocks on Robben Island

his eyes burned out

hollowed by the sun’s fired reflection.

It is not enough, though, to simply observe and remember

That he spent twenty-seven long years imprisoned.

My sweet daughters, we must count the years together out LOUD

For I want you to feel the weight of those decades on your tongues:

One year

Two years

Three years

Four years

Five years

Six years

Seven years

Eight Years

Nine Years

Ten Years

Eleven Years

Twelve years

Thirteen years

Fourteen years

Fifteen years

Sixteen years

Seventeen years

Eighteen years

Nineteen years

Twenty years

Twenty one years

Twenty two years

Twenty three years

Twenty four years

Twenty five years

Twenty six years

Twenty

Seven

Years.

As those years wore on him like so many boulders

As the goliath death beckoned and demanded him

Madiba struck back and answered with the call of his proud father

Andizi, ndisaquala: I will not come, I am still girding for battle.

I want you to know,

That this man walked out of that prison

And left his hatred with his chains

I want you to know sweet girls

That the grace of love is more powerful than hate

But far more costly

And I want you to know

the most incredible thing:

Madiba’s long walk to freedom

was not just for those shackled but also for the oppressor.

His sacrifice liberated a nation

I want you to know this:

Forgiveness trumps evil and trounces hatred

In the end it was forgiveness that tore down apartheid

and built up a nation.

Finally my dear sweet Macee and Betty

I want you to know that on the 5^th of December 2013

A mountain of a man’s battle ended

And Madiba lay down his weapons

and crossed one last famous river.

What it's like to drive in Comoros: A Matador, A Bull, or the Cape

From Jack:

Comoros: A land of near misses

    I  traveled recently to Comoros--specifically Grand Comores (there are actually 3 islands that make up the state of Comoros: Grand Comores, Anjouan and Moheli--many Comorans claim Mayotte as part of the nation but currently it is an overseas department of France)--for work.

A billboard proclaims/admonishes along the coastline of Moroni:

"Mayotte is part of Comoros and always will be"

 I spent a week in its capital city Moroni, only venturing to the northern side of the island once.  Most of the week I had a driver (in Comoros and Madagascar, your rental car comes with a driver whether you desire one or not) but on a few days I had the opportunity to drive myself.  There's a plethora of things that one can write about the island and people of Comoros but for today I will discuss what it's like to drive in Comoros.  

Comoros is a country of near misses—if you are driving that is. 

You know how sometimes you can be driving somewhere in the US and you suddenly arrive at your destination with no recollection of how you got there?

This probably never happens to Comorans and certainly not to Americans driving there.

One cannot blithely drive down the roads in Comoros—zoned out and soaking in the lush green scenery (and the scenery is breath-taking--think north-side Kauai jungle).  By and large, the concept of a two-lane road is one that is foreign to Comoros. Sidewalks fall into that same category.  There are no shoulders, or drainage ditches in Comoros (with the exception of a FEW well-heeled neighborhoods perched in the high part of the city).

Driving anywhere in town is less an exercise in driving than in automotive hop-scotch—a constant series of dodges, accelerations, decelerations, stops, feints, and sphincter-puckering squeezes.   Your brain must be constantly calculating mental trigonomery to determine whether your vehicle or the one approaching will first reach the section of road only passable by one car at a time.  Another variable in this are the ubiquitous pedestrians (most Comorans don't own a vehicle) that are traveling down the same roads.   Finally add in the myriad potholes (some sections of road are less roads than long stretches of loosely connected potholes and craters) and heavy rainshowers and you have mathmatical calculations that exceed far beyond that of this English major.  All that said, the Comoran drivers that would zip past my slowly lumbering Toyota Prado were smoking butts and chatting distractedly as they nimbly navigated their vehicles centimers past mine with nary a furrowed brow.

As I parked the Prado in the hotel parking lot after my first jauunt, I thought of the person who would make the perfect driver in Comoros--the skilled, thrill-seeking matador.

For one must bravely face each oncoming car while calculating the exact time to pull back one's cape (i.e. veer to your right).  But I would venture that, drive long enough in Comoros, and sometimes you are instead the bull.  Matador, bull or cape--it is a decision you must make  hundreds of times during every two mile drive in Comoros.