andyinmadagascar: Tulear

I have been in Tulear (or out at sea) my whole time here so far. Tulear is in the southwest, the dry part of Madagascar. The warm days, cool nights, hot sun, relatively constant wind interspersed with the occasional flat calm, and the way the light falls on the land remind me of Western Australia. The ground color of Western Australia is rusty red, and in that it is very different -- a tan, sandy color being predominant here -- but the scrubby landscape and the weather seem similar. The vegetation is both places is sparse, and all dry adapted.

Western Australia and southern Madagascar (probably should include all of Madagascar) also differ greatly in the standard of living and the base infrastructure available. Tulear is unprepossessing in almost every way. It is dusty, dirty, and many of the buildings have a look of rubble about them. There are a few places that I suspect are fairly upscale -- or even kept up -- on the inside, but I have only been in one of them, and every building has a facade of chalky wear, and creeping network of missing bricks, crumbling ornaments, and slowly spreading cracks. All this is exacerbated because the streets are generally lined with shacks made of sticks and corrugated iron selling all manner of goods from biscuits and bottled water to cell phones and cell credit updates, to fruit, roast sweet potatoes, chunks of freshly butchered goat, and deep fried doughballs and coffee with sweetened condensed milk. It took me two weeks to notice that, at least in some places the endless wall of dukas (the Swahili word, I don't know the Malagasy term) is shallow and that there are walled gardens and low, seemingly kept up houses behind them.