Back in Tana

And it is another world. I didn't realise it when I first came. In my mind, Tana was Madagascar, when all it shares with the country is its geography. First, people wear shoes. Then, they wear coats and pants. Third, they speak French and some even speak English. Fourth, many of them have finished school. Fifth, there aren't rubbish piles, ducks, chooks, pigs and sundries all around. Sixth, there are traffic jams, or if you want to see it differently: enough cars to have traffic jams. Seventh, the roads are often made of bitumen. Eighth, people aren't afraid to spend twice the national average daily earnings on a taxi ride, or an a drink in a bar.
I won't go on. I got here following the RN7, the primary tourist axis of the country. Even though I've seen interesting things, the last few days have been marked by a few conversations.

1) With volunteers for various associations. Over the last month and a half, I have developped a distrust of charities, forming the belief they do more harm than good. Volunteers always have heart warming stories doomed before they start. Two medical students worked in a hospital out bush; there a French doctor volunteered his time to lord over the villagers, operating way past his competence without any respect for protocols. A group of medical students from another university were building a school that a covent would administer later; I could see a few problems but nothing major until a few days later.

2) With high officials from the European Commission, and more importantly with a man who had been in Mada for five years equipped with a different perspective on development. His theory; just about every foreign aid project harms the country more than it helps it because it creates parallel institutions and weakens the existing ones, however poor and corrupt. From the others: the EC has too much money for Africa. So as not to reduce next year's budget, bureaucrats throw money at dubious local projects, furthering the harm on the country.

3) With a bourgeois Merina married to a Vazaha woman. Here was a man, a Malagasy, who crossed his legs with his shins parallel to each other, who wrote reports for worldwide organisations, who spoke with great logic, who answered my questions with precise and relevant information, and who produced official reports to further answer my inquiries.