Manakara is a drowsy postcolonial town on the south-eastern coast of Madagascar, sleeping a ruinous sleep after once having been an important port and trading centre since it had been connected to the central highland city of Fianarantsoa by railway tracks in 1936. Nowadays Manakara is suffering from Toamasina (Tamatave) being the major port on […]
Schlagwort: Architektur
Ambohimanga
Around Tana and especially in the north of the Malagasy capital, there are several sacred hills tracing back to King Andrianjaka in the 17th century. He declared twelve hills as sacred for historical and political reasons. Nearly 200 years later, his successor Andrianampoinimerina did the same – but with different hills. So nowadays, there are […]
My heart is in the highland
The central highlands are Madagascar’s backbone, stretching along the eastern part of the island from the Massif du Tsaratanana – south of Ambilobe – all the way down south to the Andringitra Massif west of Manakara. In the southeast it is linked to the Massiv d´Antaivondro, a mountain range almost reaching Taolagnaro (Fort Dauphin) at […]
Antananarivo – Tana par plaisir
Antananarivo, Madagascar´s capital with two to three million citizens who just call it Tana, has been marked as the world´s third most polluted city just behind leading Baku/Azerbaijan and Dhaka/Bangladesh in a Forbes-ranking in 2008. But there must have been some improvements ever since then. When it comes to air pollution I´ve seen worse in […]
Libreville – No way out
When you get off the plane as a northern or middle European in Libreville, it is like walking against a wall. It is the extreme humidity that hits you like a weight packed upon your chest. At least I felt so when we arrived at Libreville at half past seven in the evening, after a […]
Lalibela – Jerusalem in Africa – Jerusalem in Afrika
It was the village of Roha on an altitude of 2.630 m in the remote Lasta highland at the foot of 4.190 m high Mount Abune Yosef, that king Lalibela had chosen after a change of power at the end of the Aksumite rule to have his nowadays world famous rock-hewn churches being built. The […]
Aksum
Aksum is located at 2.130 m above sea level in the far north of Ethiopia near the border to Eritrea, and it is the oldest continuously inhabited place south of the Sahara Desert with today around 60.000 inhabitants. That the town has been the capital of the empire of Queen Sheba as early as 1.000 […]
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