What’s your worst travel story? Long layover? Flat tire? Or the classic, a baby that won’t stop crying? I assure you none of these holds even a candle to what you will most likely experience on any given taxi-brousse ride. Taxi-Brousse rides are not for the faint of heart. They involve too many passengers in too small of cars. They involve reckless drivers on dilapidated roads. They involve enough sundry luggage tied to the roof, stuffed under seats, and placed in your lap to furnish a house and, most likely, populate a barn. The gas always goes in a 1.5L water bottle under the driver’s seat. The speedometer sometimes works. The car never leaves on time—”We leave at three. Be here at four,” was what one PCV was told with regard to her departure time.

In other words, taxi-brousse rides bring discomfort and danger to their apogee. A timetable? Forget it. A mechanical (and probably emotional) breakdown? Inevitable. Space to bend your legs? Not if those chickens on the car floor have anything to say about it. Leaving and arriving late and being cramped next to farm animals are simply par for the course. Nonetheless, every brousse ride comes with its own unique surprises, and the weirdness intrinsic to this strange mode of transport manifests itself in different ways. Some brousse rides approach being mildly enjoyable. Those are the ones where after driving one hundred kilometers and still hundreds more to go, you get out of the car, look at the roof and exclaim, “Is that a goat?” And it is! Others seem to suggest some otherworldly sadistic intervention. The following recount is of the latter.

This particular brousse ride began in the city of Antsohihy. Kaitlyn and I were returning from a weekend of “banking” there. Our towns are too small and too secluded to warrant having their own banks, so every month we take a car into Antsohihy in order to withdraw money and engage in debauchery of the lowest order, i.e. having a beer or two. To understand what we go through during these travels is to understand also the road system in Madagascar. One of the strange things about maps of Madagascar, aside from the fact that the country is a giant island, is the glaring lack of roads connecting the country. There are a few nicely paved roads going up and down the coasts and surrounding the capital city, Antananarivo, but that’s it. As for the road going to our sites, Befandriana-Nord and Mandritsara, the road is either dirt or mud depending on the weather. I live one hundred kilometers from Antsohihy (sixty-two miles), yet it takes us four to five hours to drive that. Kaitlyn, who lives another hundred K down the road from me has it even worse—it takes her eight to ten hours. So you can see right away that the scales are not in our favor when it comes making this brousse ride, especially considering that we were traveling in April, the heart of the rainy season here.

The first sign that we were in trouble was that our brousse left unusually late. Usually, if we are scheduled to leave at seven o’clock, we should have no problem arriving at seven, dropping off our stuff (this time I have a heavy propane tank for my gas stove), leaving, eating breakfast, discussing Philip Roth over coffee, and then coming back around nine to watch them load the car. On this particular occasion, however, we didn’t hit the road until ten o’clock. Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t be a problem, but here in Madagascar there are two problems with a late departure time. The first is that by noon the sun has reached its zenith and is wreaking havoc on anyone who dare venture outdoors. On a good road this is no problem. Flying down the highway at breakneck speeds of sixty kilometers per hour, hair flying back in the wind, watching the scenery while enjoying a nice car breeze is all fine and good in theory, but in practice, when your the turtle instead of the hare, you just get a nasty case of brousse arm (sunburn from having your arm pushed out the window), sweaty shorts, and maybe even fat foot (which ailment this writer is particularly prone to contracting. The second problem is that the market closes at five o’clock.

So at ten o’clock we made our way finally out of the city and towards the three check points that control incoming and outgoing traffic. Yes, there are, within the span of five miles, three checkpoints, two of which are staffed by military personnel carrying AK-47s, the third of which is staffed by police. In Madagascar there are gendarmes and police. No one, not even the natives, are really sure what the difference between the two is. I can say that the police wear blue berets and the gendarmes wear green berets—or are supposed to. Usually they look like they went to the goodwill and found some random assortment of clothes they thought looked militaristic, like huge-ass boots and out-of-date american forest camouflage. I tend to think of them in terms of, maybe, the national guard and the local police? Word is that the last president, Ravalomanana, attempted to disband the gendarmes only to be reprised by the French government. Passing through the checkpoints involves the checking of registration and, more often than not, an exchange of money. On the day of our trip, however, something went awry with either the former or the latter and while we made it past the police checkpoint, we were forced back into town by the gendarmes and had to switch cars. It’s so easy to write “switch cars,” but in reality switching cars takes a large expenditure of effort. Brousses travel with all but a small house on top of them, a house that is, granted, tied down with exceptional skill and attention, but that takes time to switch from one car to another. We make another pass at the checkpoint—no cigar. Now instead of returning to the brousse station, we just sit in the brousse. This sounds completely banal, but try to imagine the frustration of a.) sitting squished between people and luggage, your ass already numb, and you equipped with the knowledge that the ride hasn’t even begun, b.) that the sun is only getting higher and hotter and your clothes are getting uncomfortably damp, and c.) you have no idea why this godforsaken car isn’t leaving (nor does anyone else for that matter). Imagine your brain on loop (insert expletives where needed): WHAT ARE WE DOING?! WHY AREN’T WE MOVING WILL SOMEONE LET ME OUT OF THIS CAR WHY ARE WE JUST SITTING HERE WILL YOU SHUTUP BACK THERE THIS ISN’T FUNNY I NEED TO GO TO THE MARKET IT’S HOT. I’ll spare you the gory details. Suffice to say, we made it out of Antsohihy. But let me also point out that I’m only just getting started. There is so much more to this brousse ride. It makes me wince just to think about it. 

As I said before, the road to Befandriana and Mandritsara is one of the worst in the country. Our region is infamously known within the Peace Corps as “the Black Hole” because of its inaccessibility. In fact, the former Peace Corps Volunteer at Kaitlyn’s site was flown monthly to and from Antsohihy—Kaitlyn is afforded no such luxury. The first section of road—from Antsohihy to Befandriana-Nord, my site—is especially dilapidated. Most of the road is dirt, which means that during the rainy season (December to April) most of the road is mud. Indeed, entire stretches of road become non-traversable. It goes without saying that any transport done to and from site during the rainy season will involve alighting from the brousse (to lighten the load) and walking multiple kilometers on foot. And while disembarking certainly helps, it certainly doesn’t guarantee that the car will get from A to B. No, getting to B often involves getting off the beaten path, to use an apt phrase, and driving round about mud ditches through fields or even, as we did one time, up a hill and through a small village. In the worst of cases, passengers actually switch cars en route. The mud here is deep, churned, ubiquitous and cruel. Cars are always getting stuck in the mud, the like of which make a hilarious spectacle (until, of course, you’re the one stuck). I’ve broken sandals in the mud here, lost entire limbs even—sojourner beware. 

During the brousse ride currently under discussion, our driver was making good time at first. He was ably and swiftly navigating through the treacherous trenches of mud, so ably that we were able to refrain from disembarking at most points. Then, a gamble. Our driver was attempting to power through a particularly deep ditch, when there was an ominous noise from below. We made it out of the ditch, but in the process we sacrificed what must have been an important component of the shifting mechanism because low and behold our car was stuck in second gear. This, of course, is bad and culminates in an attempt by our driver to remedy the problem. I should say that while most drivers display a blatant disregard for commonsensical road etiquette, they all appear to be accomplished mechanics. We pull over the car and our driver slips under the car to take a look. At this point it’s already past noon. The sun is high and the air is hot. Now that we’re the ones stuck, we’ve become the scenic fodder for other (few) passing cars. Our predicament is both humiliating and depressing. Not only are we being heckled, but I’ve got a full-on case of fat foot and sweaty thigh to boot. 

And voilà! We’re off again! And now, thanks to the driver’s flash drive, we’ve got music! One of the things you realize living in a developing country is how seemingly arbitrary technological diffusion is. Of course, there’s obviously some Adam-Smithian-invisible-hand market forces at work, but sometimes the juxtaposition, between, say, people complaining about having no food while talking on their cellphones, can be disorienting. Almost all brousse drivers use thumb drives or mini-SD cards to put music on the radio. Unfortunately for American passengers, up to date technology does not necessarily imply up to date music and depending on the driver you could get stuck listening to Celine Deon, a band called West Life, Enrique Iglesias, or just new-age crappy Malagasy music that makes your ears all but bleed. This time I’m just glad to be moving though.

But alas, our optimism was premature. Just a few K down the road our car broke down again. Our driver pulled over in a small village and began seriously overhauling the car. Knowing next to nothing about car engines, I will simply say that large bolts were taken out of the engine, something big was taken out and switched, and that the whole process took about two hours. To make the situation worse, this being the middle of the rainy season, sweltering heat has given way to pouring rain—add soggy clothes to my list of ailments. Mentally, our frustration has transformed into a mixture of jocularity and awe. Our dinner hopes thoroughly dashed, two previously discarded anxieties quickly become legitimate problems. First, the Peace Corps has strict rules about traveling at night, which means Kaitlyn, who lives another six hours down the road, probably won’t make it home tonight. Second, the road going to Kaitlyn’s site is cut perpendicularly at one point by a small river—Ankazambo. During the dry season Ankazambo is nothing more than a small stream, easily driven through by car or even bike. In the wet season though, Ankazambo, according to the locals, can grow considerably in size such that the road is impossible to traverse. And with this rain, things aren’t looking good.

After hours of watching the driver struggle in the dirt mud and making multiple snack runs to the local fruit/cracker vendor, we finally appear to be back in the green. Once on the road again, everything is imbued with a new sense of urgency. The driver knows he is late and drives extra dangerously—I support this. The other passengers are tense because they know Ankazambo is coming up—and of course that they won’t get to the market tonight. By the time we get to Ankazambo (both the name of the river and the village through which it runs) it’s 4:30 PM, which is to say that what should have been a four hour trip has taken us around eight. The river Ankazambo is located just beyond a sharp left turn. Once you make the turn, the road leading down to the river is constructed, and I use this word loosely, of mud of the highest and murkiest order. Thus, this small section of road is particularly precarious during the wet season, and warrants careful attention by either the driver or the “mpanera.” (All brousses are staffed by both a driver and an mpanera. The mpanera is sort of a helper who collects money, inspects road conditions, and carefully organizes luggage. You might ask, “Why is an mpanera necessary?” Well, the mpanera is necessary because even though every brousse ride begins with a car stuffed to the brim, drivers are obliged to pick up hitchhikers on the side of the road in order to make an extra buck. This is especially annoying under the following conditions. If the brousse ride is a long one, more road means more pick ups, and more pick ups means lots of starts and stops to load and unload the luggage. This can seriously upset the “rhythm” or “ambience” of a brousse ride, not to mention the hypothetical timetable. Also, if the driver is particularly “greedy” (their word, not mine) he will pick up people even if it means extreme discomfort for passengers already in the car. It’s telling that the way to get a driver to stop the car if, say, you need to take a leak, is to yell out “OLON-BELONA TSY AKOHO,” which means “People are not chickens.” Apparently, sometimes drivers forget this.) 

So we park the car just before the turn and our driver gets out to take a look at the road and the river. Thinking he’ll be but a moment, Kaitlyn and I start discussing dinner again, which looking back, most likely did nothing but push our luck. The driver appears to be taking his sweet time. We also yell out the window and buy some avocados from a fruit vendor who happens to be located just outside our window. (Buying food on the road is actually one of the highlights of brousse rides. Often little towns will develop a small micro-economy around brousse traffic. Brousses always stop briefly in certain towns for snacks. Rather than have passengers disembark, food vendors stampede the windows of the brousses selling various sundry snacks ranging from chicken, fish, grilled banana, fried banana, banana rice bread, raw bananas, cassava, and of course seasonal treats like lychee and giant squirming insects on a string (grasshoppers just went out of season).) Figuring how to eat avocados sans cutlery serves to temper and distract us from our impatience with the driver. Once the avocados have been consumed, however, our anxiety with all facets of the situation quickly come back into focus. What should have taken the driver five minutes has taken him no less than an hour and lambs that we are we’ve simply sat in the car eating avocados while the rest of the passengers make self-deprecating jokes about our situation. It’s five thirty now. This is no longer even remotely funny. Where is that driver anyway? Are we going to make it across Ankazambo or not? What exactly are we going to do for dinner? It’s worth noting that we’re not the only one asking these questions, but no one does anything about it. People in the back of the parked car are obviously just as restless and anxious as we are, yet they leave it to the “vazaha” (the foreigners) to initiate an investigation. Doors are opened, crammed legs and fat feet return once more to solid land. We march over to the bend in the road where the driver is standing and take a look at Ankazambo. Ankazambo, usually no more than a small stream, a creek even, has been transformed into a raging whitecap infested, full-blown roaring river. Even as we stare at the raging river that the driver is considering attempting to ford, an enormous, ominous tree floats down the river in front of us. Immediately, despite the driver’s admonitions that “it might go down,” the two of us know that there is no way we are making it to the opposite bank. 

Now we face a new dilemma. It’s quarter to six and night is quickly approaching. Since we’re only six kilometers past my town, Befandriana, we decide to try and convince the driver to drive us back. Claiming that we are now trapped in by flooded roads (it’s unclear how he knows this), the driver quickly shoots down Plan A—looks like we’re walking. Walking six kilometers sounds pretty easy, until we remember that I have a large and cumbersome propane tank on top of the car that I need to get back to my house. Reluctantly, the driver climbs on top of the van and unties my propane tank along with our additional luggage. I grab one side; Kaitlyn grabs the other and thus begins our long walk home through the Malagasy countryside.

Normally walking through the Malagasy countryside is reinvigorating. When you live alone and talk English at unmotivated, undisciplined, and uncouth students teach English for a living, sometimes things can get a little suffocating. Spending time in the countryside—looking at the landscapes (we live in the rocky mountains), watching the rice farmers plant, and breathing in the fresh country air—can bring everything back into perspective. This time, however, almost immediately as we begin awkwardly trudging down the road I notice that the country air doesn’t smell so fresh. In fact, it smells rancid. I look to Ankazambo, and wonder aloud inquisitively to Kaitlyn:

—Do you smell that? Is that Ankazambo stirring up some fetid debris? Or is that just us after a day of brousse riding?

—Smell what?

—How can you not smell that disgusting odor? It’s everywhere.

We put down the propane tank for a second and do some scrupulous smelling. All the usual suspects—armpits, hands, breath—prove to be innocent. Suddenly I smell my backpack straps and low and behold there is the source—my bag, and now my shoulders, are soaked in shrimp juice. Apparently, in addition to the warehouse of shit on top of that brousse, there was also a big crate of leaking shrimp juice right on top my bag. (I pause to note that this particular instance marks only the first in a series of putrid predicaments involving leaky shrimp, brousses, and backpacks.) I would carry the bag lower, such that it wasn’t in the proximity of my nose, except that I have to carry this goddamned propane tank in order to make a dinner I can’t cook because the market is already closed. So now, we’re walking with fat feet, cramped legs, sweaty backs, tired arms—all in a malodorous miasma of dead, rotting shrimp. The whole day and situation are so absurd that immediately we buckle over in laughter and have to put the propane tank down. Oh what a day!

Except the joke is still on us at this point. In our desperate desire to get home as soon as possible, we neglected to include in our cost analysis one crucial factor—it’s dusk. In the developed world we take night light somewhat for granted. Whether it’s streetlights or headlights, there is always some form of public light rendering even the darkest of nights passable. Here in Madagascar though, especially during the rainy season when the sky is interminably blanketed in a Matrix-like bank of gray clouds, night comes swiftly and darkly. So our good-natured-roll-with-the-punches laughing session was quickly injected with an element of urgency when we noticed that the sun was receding and the moon wasn’t showing her face. Night, I think, will always carry with it an element of fear. Most of us rely on sight so much to make sense of the world that when our pupils dilate to their limits and darkness still pervades we can’t help but fear. This is especially so in a relatively unknown area inhabited by strangers. More so when your status as “rich vazaha” is betrayed by your skin color. And even more so when those strangers are all sinewy, muscular, uneducated men who carry enormous knives (practically axes) with them wherever they go. During the day here, almost everyone greets each other. The effect is that you feel welcome and comfortable almost immediately. At night, however, this is not the case. Greetings are met with cold stares; axes reflect in the moonlight. The effect is the opposite. After getting some inhospitable looks and meeting some too-curious gazes, we begin to double-time it home. The propane tank grows ever heavier as our arms begin finally to succumb to fatigue. Part of the road is flooded, just as the driver anticipated, and we have to ford the equivalent of a medium-sized river, water up to our knees, all while holding on to the propane tank and keeping a wary eye on the axe-bearers. Once across, we manage to ditch our new friends with some fabricated shuffling and bungling. Now its just us, the trees, the darkness, and the five kilometers in front of us. 

After some time, we manage to flag down a motorcyclist heading back into town from Ankazambo. We ask him if he would please dispatch one of the little taxis to come and get us. He agrees; we continue walking, really, plodding at this point, until, after what seems like a very long time, we spot a van heading our way. It’s not the taxi we asked for but they work for the brousse company. Regardless, we really have no choice at this point but to get in. To put it simply, we are very happy once inside the car and immediately relieved to be going back—

—Oh we’re not going back yet? We have to go and get more people stuck at Ankazambo? We have to…retrace our steps? Huh.

We head back to Ankazambo, past the hatchet-men, past the flooded river, and all the way to where we started and park the car. In a sense we end the day where we began it, waiting for a brousse to be packed and loaded with passengers. All the while we sat there in the car, my shrimp-diseased bag in my lap, just looking out the window reflecting on the day’s events, yearning to be home where we could take cold bucket showers, curl up on my nice, hard wooden bed, and open up a room-temperature bottle of filtered and chlorinated water. Looking around the car I wonder if we’re all in the same boat here, so to speak. As if to confirm my thoughts a fight breaks out between two teenaged boys in front of the car in the headlights—apparently everyone is frustrated with the situation. Their fighting begins to escalate and the driver decides to flash the headlights at them, thinking this will prevent them from fighting. It doesn’t, and with a smack one of them is thrown to the ground. More stuff is loaded into the car. More people squish in—a baby. A baby, so oblivious to the chaos going on around it. A baby, spectator to grown humans battling it out with fortune, the elements, and each other. A baby, which upon seeing white people in the car, immediately begins to cry—and won’t stop.