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 Antananarivo
No description of Madagascar could be conveyed without using the word "unique." The island--the world's fourth-largest, excluding Australia--has been likened to an ark afloat in the Indian Ocean and a treasure chest of precious metals and gemstones. An early French explorer described Madagascar as a private sanctuary where nature "could work on different models from any she has used elsewhere."
Nature was kind with its creations, including in Madagascar's mix no large carnivores or poisonous snakes. Nothing on the island, with the exception of crocodiles and malarial mosquitoes, threatens humans, while medicinal plants used in cancer-curing drugs offer tremendous promise. Extinct species provide interesting study as well. There are fossilized dinosaur bones that litter some parts of the island and eggs of the bear-sized "elephant bird," extinct since the late 1700s. The environment and geology in Madagascar are as varied as the wildlife. The island features caves that can swallow Carlsbad, unusual rock formations that recall "Indiana Jones" and canyoned rivers dotted with waterfalls. Depending on your sense of adventure, you can hike mornings in a rain forest and camp overnight in a desert reminiscent of the U.S. Southwest. Underground riches include gold and other precious metals as well as fields of sapphires, emeralds and semi-precious stones. Madagascar's original settlers are thought to have come from Indonesia or Malaysia only about 2,000 years ago, stopping in India, Arabia and the African coast before reaching the island. Their culture today shows influences from all the lands they touched, as well as those of European traders who used Madagascar for water and food replenishment while en route to the East. The people of the former Malagasy Republic, who are still referred to as "Malagasy," all speak a common language. Yet they consider themselves to be 18 tribes, differentiated by dress, hairstyle and practices, including distinctive "fadys," or taboos, that they take very seriously. Their religions are predominantly Christian and Islam, but with unusual twists such as ancestor worship and, to us, strange burial rites. A friendly people, the Malagasy often invite mission employees to their homes and to weddings, burials and other ceremonies. The people are also superb craftsmen, using Madagascar's natural resources to create beautiful furniture, jewelry, art objects, cloth and embroidery. By the 1860s, Madagascar had evolved from a land of several independent kingdoms to one unified kingdom, with embassies in Washington, D.C., London and Paris. It also welcomed U.S. commercial officers, who were stationed in Malagasy ports. Among them was Victor Stanwood, who was reportedly murdered by French rivals and is commemorated on a memorial plaque in the State Department lobby. France took over the island in 1896. Although it turned Madagascar into a jewel of its empire, France's occupation did not come without cost, including an unsuccessful Malagasy rebellion in 1947 that left between 80,000 and 100,000 dead. The Malagasy finally regained independence in 1960, but today insist on the distinction of having been conquered and occupied, not colonized, by the French. Madagascar's current president, Didier Ratsiraka, took control during a 1972 coup. His socialist regime had a disastrous impact on the country's economy, infrastructure and society. Roads, hotels, government buildings, hospitals, prisons, electricity and telephone services deteriorated. Decades of progress in education, health and social services were wiped out, and Madagascar devolved into one of the world's 20 poorest countries. Life expectancy in Madagascar remains low, and infant mortality and birth rate are high. The island's per capita income is just $250 a year, with 70 percent of the population earning well below even that paltry sum. Ousted by largely peaceful protests in 1990, President Ratsiraka regained power in 1997 elections as a "born-again" democrat and capitalist after the interim government proved incapable of moving the country ahead. Keeping the new democracy stable and helping the Malagasy regain economic ground are the overriding objectives of the four U.S. government agencies in Madagascar: State, the U.S. Information Service, the Peace Corps and the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID's concentration on improving family health is enhanced by Peace Corps health workers and the embassy self-help program. USAID's efforts to encourage private sector reform are supported by USIS experts. USIS' emphasis on strengthening the media and judicial reform are underlined in embassy speeches and interviews. The embassy focus on improving human rights finds support from the other agencies. Helping to save what's left of Madagascar's world-famous environment is another major mission goal, with most of the funding provided by USAID. An estimated 80 percent of the island's original forest already has been destroyed. Absent outside intervention, experts estimate that the remaining 20 percent--habitat for many of the island's unique creatures and plants--will disappear within the next 25 to 50 years. Madagascar has established several parks and preserves, but these too are under pressure from animal, timber and orchid smugglers. USAID programs train park rangers and other workers, involve nearby residents in park planning and try to ensure that these residents receive benefits from any park income to compensate for income lost due to environmental protection measures. USAID and the embassy can also take credit for helping save the Masaola Peninsula, one of the world's largest remaining tracts of tropical forest, where researchers regularly report finding new species of plants and animals. Although USAID and other foreign organizations had spent several years mapping, planning and training workers to establish the area as a park, reliable reports indicated that timber rights were likely to be signed over to an Asian company. The embassy and USAID convinced the government to do otherwise, and Masaola was officially established as a park last year. Given the lack of infrastructure, life for mission employees in "Tana," as the locals call the capital of Antananarivo, has not always been easy. Within the past two years under President Ratsiraka's new economic policies, however, things have gotten considerably better. American-style supermarkets and local markets offer an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables, some of them (that word again) unique to the island. Roads in town, as well as some of the national highways, are being paved and the buildings are being spruced up. Electricity outages are rare, cable channels such as CNN and TNT are available, and the phone system, including Internet and cellular connections, works well. More and more hotels and restaurants are opening up throughout the country. The American School, with grades one through 10, has an excellent reputation. Classes are small enough for teachers to provide individual attention, and students do well when they go on to other institutions. Two of the school's students, Ross Wilson and Ben Saxton, won this year's "Kidvid" contest in State's worldwide competition for a film on life in Tana. Admittedly, cultural life, aside from some fine Malagasy musicians, leaves something to be desired. But most people consider the tradeoff--a naturalist's paradise with a perfect climate that invites hiking, biking, camping or scuba diving--to be fair. The more sedentary among us prefer watching the annual whale migration, just lazing on a white sand beach or browsing at Tana's many markets in search of that perfect antique, fossil or gemstone. Howard Perlow is the former chargé d'affaires in Antananarivo and is currently the deputy chief of mission in Asmara. Nyoka White, his wife, is a retired USIA officer.
USIS Antananarivo By Paul Saxton The USIS public diplomacy strategy aims to develop a foundation of trust and mutual understanding between Madagascar and the United States. Although there is a public diplomacy aspect to virtually everything the U.S. government does in Madagascar, most public affairs efforts are concentrated in three areas: building democratic institutions and promoting respect for human rights, economic reform and growth that leads to increased prosperity and trade with the United States and greater Malagasy awareness of the value of protecting their unique biodiversity.
USIS employs a wide mix of approaches and products to accomplish these program goals, including visits by short-term American experts, selected teleconferencing using worldnet facilities and a recently inaugurated, extensively documented and well-maintained Internet web site. The office's efforts are backstopped by a large information resource center, operated by three trained reference librarians, that offers 5,000 program- At the heart of the USIS program is the largest self- supporting English teaching program in Africa, with close to 1,000 students drawn from the government, banking, media and business sectors. USIS' approach is to teach English and good governance to judges and parliamentarians, English and economic reform to bankers and businessmen, and English and journalistic techniques to the media. Funding restraints have kept USIS' exchange programs relatively modest. It supports a U.S. Fulbright lecturer, various U.S. and Malagasy Full bright students, upwards of 10 international visitor grants and various mid-level grantees under the Hubert H. Humphrey academic exchange program. Although Madagascar is relatively isolated from the United States and private resources are scarce, USIS offers counseling services for a surprisingly large number of Malagasy students interested in pursuing self-funded higher education in the United States. USIS also has begun work with a newly founded alumni association that potentially groups together all Malagasy who have studied and worked in the United States, both privately and as part of U.S. government programs. The office aims to use this organization as a further conduit for U.S. ideas and expertise. USIS coordinates mission contact with the media and coverage of U.S. visitors and programs, and takes the lead role in a continuing dialogue with the media--an essential molder of public opinion. The author is the former public affairs officer in Antananarivo. |
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hat makes this Texas-sized island of 13 million
people so unique? For starters, the land. Some 75 percent of Madagascar's identified living species are endemic only to the island--among them eagles, lemurs, orchids, ferns, tortoises and chameleons.
