Week 1

After a wonderful couple of days in Johannesburg with Xoli on the way through, I arrived in the Madagascar sunshine last Monday (my birthday!), and was welcomed with huge smiles by Haro and his friends. They took me straight to my apartment, which is large, comfortable, and right at the top of the tallest hill in Antananarivo (Tana), in front of the Queen’s Palace. It has amazing views over the city and I get a brilliant sunset every day.

View from my apartment

I spent that first afternoon driving around town with the two young women I will be working with a lot.  They are both local Malagasies – one is the head of the NGO (Nyaina) and the other an economics Masters student who is acting as my interpreter (Dina). We had a great chat about the state of things in the country, and ended up on a balcony café eating French pastries as the sun set behind the Queen’s palace. This is a fascinating place – it looks like a cross between Europe and Africa – very European style buildings, but the chaos of the developing world with people and cars everywhere. And the fairly regular chicken and cow as well. Peaceful chaos.  Lots and lots of poverty, but also great energy and humour. The day ended with dinner at Haro's house, meeting his lovely wife Julie.

Flower market

The next morning I had a meeting with Haro and his team to sort out the agenda of Madame Katerina (that’s me). I then spent the afternoon walking through the slum areas on the canal to get an idea of how some people are living here, and the impact that the rains have since everything gets flooded as the canals/drains are blocked with rubbish. (The city was originally built on the hillsides at the order of the Queen, but as the population increased with rural immigration, the city has sprawled into the lowlands.) Interestingly, as tragic as the poverty is, I found myself also noticing the amazing spirit and energy, and people’s industriousness as they set up stalls and “manufacturing” shops based on the rubbish that they salvage.

Then as a contrast, off to the foreign Jumbo supermarket, where I had a heart attack at the prices – US$11 for a box of Special K! – and was embarrassed to buy anything much in the company of my entourage (the two women mentioned above and our “bodyguard” Dani – not needed generally as it is very safe, but he came with us for the canal walk just in case) who earn about $150 / month. The only soldiers I have seen all week were two outside the supermarket, with machine guns – this supermarket was attacked during the riots last year.

Dina, Ny Aina & Dani

It's fantastic watching Haro take on making change in his country - he is absolutely determined to address the injustice, the corruption and the mismanagement, and build a real movement for a different Madagascar.  He has an equally passionate and committed team around him, who have been incredibly welcoming to me.

Tuesday and Wednesday I spent listening one by one to the “testimonies” of what has happened to Haro’s individual team members in their lives that has made them feel a need to stand up and fight to save their country from corruption and mismanagement. Some examples: One guy successfully sat the prestigious public service exam, and when he turned up for work on his first day found that some wealthy person had paid to have their name applied to his file, and had taken his place. Another spoke of having to pretend he was an orphan so that he could be looked after and educated. And lots of other stories of missing out on education, family breakdown due to poverty, and struggling to survive. It was pretty emotional for some of them, and full on for Haro as he listened to and then translated their stories (from Malagasy to French to English).

It was also clear that many of their issues have come about because of the volatility and uncertainty created by a transition from French colonial rule to Malagasy rule, and then from a communist regime to a capitalist regime (with a huge dose of corruption thrown in for good measure). There’s also a strong division between the elites, the middle class and the poor people, which seems almost impossible to permeate, due to the systemic favouritism and corruption – not exactly surprising, but horrifying to my egalitarian Australian soul.

At lunch on the second day, a group of trade union leaders arrived back from a meeting with the Ministry of Transport, jubilant that they had got a commitment to have 500 people’s pensions honoured – they have been trying since the national railway was privatised and they were all sacked in mid-2003!

That night Haro and Julie threw a dinner party for some of their close friends – great fun – a lot of the conversation was in French but they really tried hard to speak in English for me. Best line of the night: “In Madagascar, even the corruption is dysfunctional.”  Haro’s friends are great, and hugely supportive of his plan to run for Mayor, including providing financial and network support. I thought I might lose some weight here, but the French influence is alive and well (bread, cheese, pastries etc) and the food at the dinner party was amazing (massive prawns, quail, crème brulee), so possibly not…

On Friday I gave Haro’s team “feedback” – my observations on the themes and values that came out through their testimonies, and how they can be leveraged and expanded on for the development of their political party / support movement / campaign. We also talked about agency, and explored what stops Malagasies from acting, and what would help empower people. The discussion was incredibly insightful, and threw out some key points that will need to be addressed as the project moves forward.

I also ran a session on using the power of narrative to engage people and build the movement. (I emailed my Harvard professor Marshall Ganz afterwards to tell him that they loved his work!) There is no doubt that the Malagasies have plenty of “stories of self” that they can use to mobilise people for a new government and a new system. (I discovered the next morning there was one slight misunderstanding – I told them that my Harvard professor used the narrative work with Barack Obama and mobilization of his supporters – somehow they heard that it was ME working with Barack Obama…)

We finished with a vision session where they worked in two teams to describe the perfect Antananarivo in 10 years time – Tana 2020. It was fantastic watching people get so passionate talking about the kind of place that they would really like to live in – I got a bit emotional at one point! It was also humbling how many of their ideas were things that I take completely for granted in Australia – eg sealed and lit roads, enough food for three meals a day, restrictions on smoking and alcohol, old people’s homes, a decent public transport system, etc etc).

Yesterday we met with more people from the Telma (telecoms company) trade union, who are fighting a battle over the large scale downsizing that has happened since privatisation, which has been conducted in an illegal, corrupt and bullying way. More testimonies, more anger, more passion that will be directed at making change.

I am now supposed to be spending the day finishing an assignment for my new Masters (in International and Community Development) – the subject is Participatory Approaches to Development, which I have been absolutely living for the past week.

I have also discovered BBC World on the TV, so am hearing about the mess of the Australian election as I type. It’s the only English channel (of 80+ channels) – my conclusion? – time that I brushed up on my French… alors au revoir pour l'instant!