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AUTHOR’S JOURNEYS
Isolated from the African
continent for millions of
years, Madagascar is a
world of its own: an island
where nature invented its
own laws and time seems
to move to a different
rhythm. Travelling through it
means entering a laboratory
of life, but also a land of
silences and contrasts.
Among baobabs, lemurs
and villages of red clay, the
traveller discovers a country
as fragile as it is fascinating.
Seen from the air, Madagascar appears as a
vast green and ochre stain floating on the In-
dian Ocean. It resembles no other place. Unlike
other tropical islands, one does not come here
to rest: one comes to understand difference. The fourth
largest island on the planet split from the ancient continent
of Gondwana more than eighty million years ago, when
humans did not yet exist. That geological isolation created
an unrepeatable ecosystem: more than eighty per cent of
its species cannot be found anywhere else on the planet.
Madagascar is, in a way, a continent within an island. Its
humid forests, its savannahs, its mountains and its man-
groves are like fragments of different worlds brought toge-
ther by chance. Each region has its own climate, its own li-
ght and even its own language, its own rhythm of life and a
different way of looking at the sky. In a single day of travel,
one can move from the coolness of mist to the stifling heat
of the coast, from bright green to red dust. That diversity is
its strength and its fragility, its perfect balance between the
wild and the human.
Antananarivo, the city that breathes on
the hills
The capital, Antananarivo, is a charming chaos. It stret-
ches over twelve hills and is made of slopes, tin roofs
and red-brick houses that seem to hold one another up.
The markets boil with voices, fruit, fabrics and smells.
Taxis wheeze their way up impossible streets and the
stairways seem endless. From above, the city looks like
a mosaic of smoke, life and colour.
At dusk, children play football between puddles, women
return with rice on their shoulders and the air fills with gol-
den dust that softens the edges of the day. People stop
to chat, to smile, to share. Chaotic and human, “Tana”, as
its inhabitants call it, is the beating heart of Madagascar:
a place where poverty does not erase dignity or hope.
Among the palaces, churches and remnants of colonial
architecture, one senses the blending that defines the
country: African, Austronesian and Arab roots living toge-
ther in a single gesture. Madagascar is, from the begin-
ning, a mixture that cannot be explained, only felt.Red
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