I have a certain talent for making my life more complicated. Somehow, on every trip, for every dollar and hour I save, I can almost guarantee I’ll lose it in a feat of gross negligence. I get lost, show up late, or like today, can’t fill out simple paperwork.

But I’m here. I arrived in Antananarivo an hour late and made the ever-patient girlfriend (she’s waited a year already, not that she hasn’t been busy) wait another hour while I stood in line for an entry visa, then went back to fill out a declaration form, then had to follow a guard through a gaggle of touts and passengers with better sense of how things work here so I could get the visa I thought was obtained at the end of that line I’d just been standing in. Turns out I needed a stamp first, or something. I’m still not sure. You’d think I’d have the hang of this entry-requirements tango by now.

But as I said, I eventually made it through. My first impressions of Tana are a bit clowded by 20-plus hours of travel through four countries (China, Thailand, Reunion, Madagascar), and I’m lousy at taking everything in on the first day. Some things stick out though. Poverty is rampant. Shanty towns dot the city, intermixed with French colonial architecture. The finance ministry looks a bit like a run-down Chinese apartment building, with peeling paint outside and crumbling brick steps. I suppose this is what a real developing country looks like.

This morning, sitting on the plane, I saw the bluest sky I’ve ever laid eyes on. The clouds broke over the Indian Ocean at sunrise, and the pale dawn reached up toward indigo overhead. I forgot what a blue sky is supposed to look like, even in Dalian.

I keep saying things in Chinese, which does me no good here. French is the business language, but most everyone sticks with Malagasy. I don’t speak either. I’m told the local language is easy, so we’ll see how much I pick up in two months.

This is a bit disjointed. I’m still travel weary and my head is in the wrong time zone. More to come though, and photos, too.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 11:43 pm and is filed under roadside blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.