Of course, most people in central and southern Madagascar were not on the move or hawking their wares along RN7. It’s just that many of those who were traveling were squeezed onto its narrow ribbon. Outside the towns, I saw only a few east–west roads leading off RN7 with a tarmac surface, and who knows how far the tarmac went? Poor infrastructure—primarily the roads, but also lack of electricity supply in rural areas—is the major barrier to economic development. In the rainy season (January through March), landslides block the road, and sections wash away or develop huge potholes. In places, work crews were building ditches and culverts to divert the water, but many stretches had not been repaired. Our driver engaged low gear and zigzagged, expertly avoiding the largest holes. It was uncomfortable enough in a high-riding vehicle; it must feel much worse in a bus or taxi-brousse. Every government since independence has promised to fix the roads and extend the network, but, faced with poverty, hunger, and pressing social problems, the promises are soon forgotten. “You can’t eat roads,” remarked our driver drily.
The bridges, mostly one-lane, are in serious need of maintenance. That’s except for one newish structure crossing a river north of Fianarantsoa. The old bridge, one UNICEF colleague explained, did not fall into the river through lack of repair; in 2002, during the six-month presidential standoff, forces loyal to Ratsiraka seized the government buildings in Fianarantsoa and blew up the bridge to stop troops from Tana from reaching the city. After the conflict ended, a new bridge was built with French aid. Communities up and down RN7 were left wondering whether the easiest way to get their bridges repaired was to blow them up and wait for donors to build new ones.
South of Fianarantsoa, RN7 turns southwest, dipping down out of the highlands to the treeless savannah grasslands. This is Madagascar’s high plains country, where herders drive their zebu and sleep out under the stars. The grasslands stretch for almost two-thirds of the length of the country, west of the highlands, and have a dry season of seven to eight months. If it wasn’t for the distinctive red-and-white kilometer posts and the absence of pickup trucks, it could have been Montana or Wyoming, the long grass blowing in the wind, the mountain ranges on the horizon. The grasslands gradually give way to a desert landscape of canyons, steep cliffs, and buttes dotted with scrubby trees and cactus; in the late afternoon, with the sun casting long shadows off the striking rock formations, we could have been in Arizona or New Mexico. We stopped for the second night in Ranohiro, gateway to the huge L’Isalo national park. Chez Alice, with its cactus fence and corral boasting Malagasy rodeo (presumably bareback zebu riding), was full, so we found a hotel in the town center, eating dinner alongside long tables of European tourists on their “Madagascar Adventure” tour. We were on the road again at 6:00 the next morning, as the sun rose over the bluffs and canyons, bathing them in the warm morning light.
Desert Treasures
The wealth in this beautiful but desolate landscape is not in them thar hills, but in the ground. And it’s not gold, but sapphires. Gemstones were first discovered in the forests of northern Madagascar in the early 1990s, drawing migrants to seek their fortunes. In the south, prospectors were collecting garnets to sell to foreign dealers; in 1998, a batch mined near Ilakaka, a wide place in the road along RN7, turned out to be pink sapphires. The discovery transformed Ilakaka from a few ramshackle huts into a boom town. The field, which stretches southwest across the desert from Ilakaka, is reportedly the largest deposit in the world, yielding high-priced deep blue sapphires along with pinks, yellows, and rubies. Other mining towns sprouted up along RN7. Their streets are lined with ramshackle stores selling provisions and tools, and rough, single-story shacks where miners rent small rooms at high prices. These are wild towns, with high rates of crime and prostitution, where the lucky miner who has just sold his sapphires blows it all on sugarcane moonshine and the slots at Les Jokers Hotel and Karaoke Bar.
With such riches to be uncovered, no machinery is used; miners use pickaxes and shovels to break the rocky ground and dig shafts, using buckets to haul the earth to the surface. It’s dirty, dangerous work; in the rainy season, shaft walls can collapse, trapping the miners underground. Most mines are individual or family operations. A few commercial mines, with optimistic names such as African Bank, Swiss Bank, and World Bank, are financed by investors who hire day laborers. The landscape is pockmarked with mine workings, but the deposits closest to RN7 and the towns have been exhausted, and miners must walk miles into the desert to work their claims.3
The real wealth is controlled by foreign traders—mostly from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Thailand—who buy the rough sapphires and sell them on Asian markets. The names on the gem stores—Fayez, Najeem, Iqbal, Farook—tell the story. The government, with support from donors, is training Malagasy miners and small traders in gemology and stonecutting and trying to collect export taxes. Regulating the industry and stamping out corruption is challenging. Rough sapphires are routinely smuggled out of the country, with a wink and a $100 bill slipped into the passport at customs.
The final sixty miles to Toliara are desolate, and the people poor. In contrast to the rough but functional two-story brick trano gasy houses of the highlands, the homes are single-room wood-and-mud huts with roofs of thatched reeds or palm leaves and a dirt floor, surrounded by fences of branches and cactus. Average rainfall in this region is just twelve to fourteen inches a year; the population depends primarily on zebu herding, raising meagre crops of maize, sorghum, and sweet potato in the sandy soil and along river banks.
Finally, we glimpsed the sea and the table mountain (a modest version of Cape Town’s landmark) that marked the final descent to Toliara. We crossed the low sandy hills into the city and reached the chamber of commerce in time for midmorning coffee. Just in time—my first presentation was scheduled for right after the break.
The “Champaign Country”
In June 1630, ships of the East India Company anchored in St. Augustine’s Bay at the mouth of the Onilahy River, about twenty miles south of present-day Toliara, to take on provisions before sailing up the Mozambique Channel. It was, by the standards of southern Madagascar, a cool winter, allowing the merchant Richard Boothby to feel comfortable in his suit of English cloth. During the three-month stay, not a single crew member died and there were few cases of sickness. “The country about the bay,” wrote Boothby, “is pleasant to view, replenished with brave woods, rocky hills of white marble, and low fertile grounds.” Crew members told him that away from the coast the land “abounds with mines of gold and silver and other minerals” and “a large plain, or champaign country, of meadow or pasture land as big as all of England,” with ample fish and game. “It is very probable,” Boothby wrote, “by the quantity of brown fat oxen, cows, sheep and goats brought down and sold unto us by the natives, that the country is very fertile.”
Boothby was intoxicated by what he saw and heard, as was his colleague, the surgeon Walter Hammond, who later published a pamphlet, Madagascar, the Richest and Most Fruitfull Island in the World. You must wonder if they were intoxicated by something else when they recorded their impressions. Compared with the east coast of Madagascar, with its tropical rainforest and lush vegetation, the land beyond St. Augustine’s Bay is among the most barren and infertile in the island.
Such enthusiastic accounts fell on eager ears in London, where city merchants, supported by King Charles I, were ready to invest in expeditions they hoped would make them wealthy. The East India Company was already engaged in a trading war with the Dutch and Portuguese in the Spice Islands and other parts of the Indian Ocean but had failed to establish settlements and forts. In 1635, a rival company, the Courteen’s Association, was granted a royal charter to trade in the East. Boothby and Hammond encouraged Courteen’s to sponsor a colony in Madagascar. Several attempts failed because of lack of funds and opposition from the East India Company, but eventually in August 1644 three ships with 140 men, women, and children, under the command of John Smart, set sail. They arrived