The Zebu Market

I’m a bit ridiculous.

Once I heard about this zebu market in Amabalavao, and the fact that it’s sometimes the largest in the country, I decided that I needed to mess with Omega, my drive. I did this by constantly telling him that I was fully planning on buying a zebu in the market and that we would have to strap it to the top of the 4x4 to transport back to Tana. I reassured him that it would be a small zebu. And if you’re wondering about the ethics of strapping a live zebu to the top of a car, we drove behind a taxi-brousse that Friday with three live goats tied down on the back end of the roof. Such a sight doesn’t phase me anymore. It was pretty normal to see.

Despite messing with Omega, I fully intended to go to the zebu market. But I didn’t want to be an uneducated buffoon. I wanted to be well-informed as I perused the merchandise. So early in my vacation, I started inquiring about the pricing of zebu. Now you should know that I have a lot of useless information stored in my brain. One of those useless things is now a very comprehensive understanding of how to determine the price of a zebu based on its age, size, gender, and health. I would occasionally ask my guides, “How much would you sell that zebu for?” Pointing to a zebu. He’d give me the price and I’d follow up with, “Why?” He would give me the reasoning, and my economist brain stored the data for subconscious data analysis later.

As I discovered, a zebu ranges from 500k-2m ariary, between $120-$470. Only the biggest zebus, I mean them monster boys, fetch that incredible 2m price tag, and he better be male and in good health.

As I said before, I’m ridiculous.

I was joking with my Malagasy friends that I had a plan to completely collapse the southern Madagascar economy. “How are you gonna do that Nate?”

Well there were two plans. The first was that I was going to go around the zebu market and ask the price of zebu. Regardless of what they told me, I’d shake my head and say, “Nah man, too high. That guy over there is selling his for 200k less than that.” I would proceed to do this with as many people as I can, spreading rumors about prices and causing mass skepticism that the price of zebu was universally dropping. The crazy things about economics and the price system of our economy is that this plan is theoretically possible. If everyone suddenly believes things are worth less, then they’re actually worth less because price and value are determined by an equilibrium between the buy and seller. If all the buyers and sellers are skeptical about the price of their product, it is theoretically possible that there can be a massive price drop because the equilibrium has shifted due to misinformation.

The second plan was to give random prices. “How much for that? 500k? Absolutely not, I’m not paying you anything less than 700k.” Malagasy are suspicious people. Doing this over and over would cause mass confusion about the price of zebu. No one would know what the actual price or value of their herds would be, and the mass hysteria would cause people to hold on to their zebu until the market stabilizes; thereby, halting the zebu trade for at least a week.

Obviously, none of this would work. But it’s what I do in my free time.

In did actually go to the zebu market which was significantly less interesting than I thought it would be. I should be honest that I didn’t really know what to expect. I thought it would be kind of like an American auction where people are selling zebu and debating prices. But I forgot that I was in Madagascar. Instead, it was a bunch of Malagasy men standing around with their zebu doing nothing. In fact, I think I asked more about the price of zebu than the rest of the market did collectively. Like all things in Madagascar, nothing happens. People stand there for about an eternity, and then after several hours, someone finally decides to break the ice.

I arrived and walked around. I had a lot of eyes following me as I took pictures and tried to ask about prices. I didn’t really understand the prices because they were giving them in francs and in Malagasy, and francs are stupid/don’t exist and I can’t count pass 9,999 in Malagasy. I was approached by a band of children who proceeded to harass me for an hour. Once they discovered that I spoke Malagasy, I was bombarded by questions. One little girl asked, “Do you have any candies?” Nope. “Hmm, bottles?” Nope. “Hmm, pens?” Sorry little girl.

They didn’t leave me alone, and this process of asking questions continued without end. They asked where my car was, and I didn’t tell them, knowing that if they followed me to my car, they would try to take things from the back seat. By the grace of God, a van filled with a bunch of white people showed up, and the kids swarmed the van to ask them for candies, bottles, and pens. I took the opportunity to escape and find Omega and the car.

Afterwards, we headed to Fianarantsoa, which I dislike even more than the capital. I’m not sure how, but Fianarantsoa manages to be equally unappealing as Tana with less people. When I asked Jean Be what there is to do there, he said, “Leave.”

He was right. After lunch, I walked around for 30-40min and managed to find that the only thing to do was to leave. I rested that afternoon and took a good night’s sleep because Omega and I had a 12hr drive back to Tana the next morning.

And that concludes my long vacation to Tsaranoro in April. Now I must confess, I’m writing this on a plane, I’m somewhere over Togo I think. Depending on when I post this, I will still be gone. That is, as of April 28th, I left Madagascar to spend a month on the main continent and won’t return to Madagascar until May 27th. What this means for you is that you will hear about my adventures on the main continent sometime in June when I’m back to the Red Island.

In the meantime, however, please continue to pray for me as I pray for you each morning.

May God be praised.