Don't take a taxi-be on a holiday!

(FYI- if you pronounce taxi-be correctly, it will rhyme with holiday!)

The taxi-be is the cheapest form of public transportation in Tana and also the most popular. It's also the way we get around town (other than walking!) at the moment. The taxi-be are large vans with small seats like a schoolbus down either side of the van. The people squeeze two to a seat and add another seat in the middle when it gets really full (which is most of the time!). In a luxurious taxi-be, this extra seat will be a seat that folds out from the permanent seat, but most of the time, it is just a board that is balanced between the two seats, across the aisle. Most of the taxi-be have doors that open in the back so that you can scramble inside at the brief bus stops along the route. At busy times of the day, climbing aboard is an artform consisting of flying elbows and knees. Being missionary vazaha, we have not yet mastered this art form nor are we sure we really should. For our large American build, the taxi-be are a bit uncomfortable but for the small-framed Malagasy, they are quite nice. Somehow they sit five across with no problems, but we cannot squeeze our long legs into the seats without some aches and pains. I wonder what the Malagasy really think about us hanging out into the aisle, but they are definitely too kind to say anything. They just squeeze in next to us or jump over our legs.

Yesterday was a public holiday celebrating Mary's ascension into heaven (yes, it's Catholic in origin, and no, we didn't celebrate nor do we or many of the Malagasy understand the purpose of such a holiday). Most of the businesses were still open so we took the taxi-be to a craft market. Unfortunately, when we tried to return home in the late afternoon, all of the taxi-be were full. Not having mastered that wonderful art form I mentioned previously, we waited patiently. Soon many of the taxi-be were not even stopping to pick up more passengers. The crowd of people needing a ride began to grow. So we decided to walk to the next stop. At the next stop, we found the same story. So we kept walking...and walking. In just over two hours, we arrived at the commune (or town) that neighbors ours. There, we were finally able to get a taxi-be for the last leg of the journey. We had heard rumors of this happening but to actually experience it was something else. I guess we will be more grateful for our seats, scrunched though they may be, on the next taxi-be.