[Rain Man]

We had breakfast at the hotel, mixing it up with French perverts and also the only American we would see until our last day. I kid you not, it was a professor doing lemur research. Nice guy, so we chatted over breakfast.

On the plane trip to Antananarivo, we got documents explaining that sex tourism was being cracked down on in Madagascar. Apparently, the country is a destination for French men in terms of both prostitution and child prostitution, and sure enough, we saw a fair number of middle-aged French men traveling alone or with Malagasy women.

Apparently, the practice has been aided by old Malagasy customs that promote prostitution. In traditional culture, a Malagasy girl is considered "marriage-eligible" as soon as she hits puberty, and one of two things happened: either she got married, or she could set up her own household and "entertain suitors". A suitor was required to give the father of the girl two zebu (cattle, more or less) in order to "court" the girl. Well, some savvy fathers figured out pretty quick that they could have the girl set up a household and then bring "suitors" to her at two zebu per "date". When the French arrived, they could pretty easily afford two zebu (or cash equivalent) and voila! they got to boink a 13 year-old legally. Apparently, the government decided that that wasn't a good thing, so they were cracking down on it, though we still saw our share of French men with attractive young Malagasy women.

By the way, Malagasy people are a genetic mix of black African, middle eastern, and Indonesian races, so you'd see some who looked like Zulus and stuff (very African skin and features), others who looked Indonesian, and then everything in between.

Here's our street in the daytime.