The Country Everyone Knows But Nobody Visits 🇲🇬

Harry’s first day in Madagascar, walking Antananarivo with no guide, no Malagasy and no French — deliberately, on the argument that he’d rather have unmediated encounters and miss some sights.

Two things run through it. The first is the history that explains why an African country is full of people who look East Asian: the first settlers came from what is now Indonesia, Africans followed, and the French came last. The second is poverty at a level he says is worse than anywhere else he has filmed recently, in a country with extraordinary natural wealth — 75% of the population on a dollar or two a day.

He ends on the line he keeps returning to across the bundle: 99% of people everywhere are good, most of the people watching are too frightened to go and find out, and he is going to keep living as though it’s true.

Key moments

• [00:00] Tana — city of a thousand soldiers, 1.5 million people, and over 75% of the country below the poverty line.
• [00:33] The national stadium, built by China, which he says FIFA doesn’t recognise because it isn’t safe.
• [01:04] Warned within minutes to watch his camera because of men with knives.
• [01:35] His answer: he has been told that in every city he’s been to, London and Paris included.
• [02:12] No shared language — his French is bad, there’s no English, so he tries to learn Malagasy on the street.
• [03:51] French colonial architecture, and a street performer nobody is paying.
• [04:57] The Church of the Immaculate Conception at the top of the hill.
• [05:33] His method, stated: no guide, no plan, just walk down into the city.
• [06:04] The history — first settlers from Borneo, then Africans, then the French in the scramble for Africa, hated for how they treated people.
• [06:38] Independence in 1960, very fast, and corruption since: one of the most unequal countries in the world, with enormous natural resources.
• [07:10] Koba, the peanut cake, around 10,000. He rates it eight out of ten.
• [08:20] The practical problem: no French, no Malagasy, so the day runs on Google Translate and pointing.
• [08:50] His read on the city — beautiful in the light, with a darker side he hasn’t got to.
• [09:24] Why he isn’t hiring a guide: he’d rather have authentic interactions and miss a few places.
• [09:55] Fried banana, 500.
• [10:00] Begging on a scale he hasn’t met in any other developing country.
• [10:31] A child who wants food rather than money. A meal costs 600.
• [12:04] Men who tell him, through a translator, that life is very hard, there’s no work, and they’re hungry.
• [12:43] He gives a little, and a crowd forms instantly. He has to leave.
• [15:57] Street manicures and pedicures, with fifty people waiting.
• [16:27] 80% of Madagascar’s animals are endemic — lemurs, geckos.
• [16:58] The main market, which surprises him: clean, calm, a new road, better kept than African markets he’s filmed.
• [18:35] Why the city fills up — people arrive from every tribe expecting opportunity, and some get stuck with no family and no community.
• [19:08] Deeper in, the market becomes what he came for.
• [19:45] Phones: Nokia bricks, Huawei, Oppo, no iPhones.
• [20:26] Public urinals inside the market, male and female, which he notes is rare.
• [21:00] Coffee, 500, and he rates it.
• [22:31] A shoe seller’s daily earnings, given as around 50,000, though the figure gets confused in translation.
• [23:36] A Madagascar shirt: 40,000 for the bad quality, 150,000 for the good.
• [24:53] He pays about $20 for the good one.
• [25:23] And says why he didn’t push the price: she’d told him life is difficult, he used to bargain hard, and he’s realised he doesn’t need to.
• [25:53] Shared taxis across the city for a few pence.
• [26:27] On crime: opportunistic and poverty-driven, not headline crime or extremism. He notes viewers keep predicting trouble that doesn’t arrive.
• [28:08] Fake Essentials, 55,000, and 5,000 more for the bag.
• [29:48] The thesis: 99% of people everywhere are good, and most people watching are too frightened to find out.
• [30:57] The paintings, at $74, which he calls a tourist price and then says art doesn’t really have one.
• [30:57] An African country where many people look Asian, which he says he has seen nowhere else.
• [31:30] His comparison: this feels a level below the other developing countries he has filmed, Papua New Guinea included, and the contrast with the island’s resources is what makes it sad.
• [32:07] Twelve hours of work for $2, for three quarters of the people around him.
• [32:49] French cuisine, because of the colonisers — boeuf bourguignon — and zebu, the local beef.
• [34:01] Walking home at night on 4% battery past a group of young men, narrating his own nerves.
• [34:37] He gets back on 2%, and reports that Tana at night was fine.

Extracted pages

• Place: Antananarivo
• Country: Madagascar
• Tips: Judge a place for yourself, Carry a foreign eSIM, Don’t grind a price down to nothing