Toliara

The bay that Toliara stands on was known to sailors long before the town existed. St Augustine's Bay, just south at the mouth of the Onilahy river, was a watering place for European ships crossing the Indian Ocean, and in 1645 an English association attempted a colony there that failed within a year, driven out by famine, disease and conflict with the Malagasy. Trade continued all the same: pirates and traders frequented the bay, and a trading post at Saint Augustin resupplied passing ships and dealt in slaves from 1686 to 1719.

The town itself grew late. French traders and a French resident first settled on the islet of Nosy Ve offshore, and in 1895 that community moved to Tuléar; it was under the French, after 1897, that the town grew into the regional capital, laid out on the broad grid of sandy streets it still has. Its former French name was Tuléar; the present Malagasy spelling was adopted in the 1970s. A harbour, a cathedral, schools and warehouses followed, and the town became the outlet for the sisal, cotton, rice and peanuts of the south-west.

The completion of the Route Nationale 7 tied Toliara to Antananarivo, nearly a thousand kilometres away, and made the city the end point of the long road south-west from the capital. The University of Toliara was founded in 1971, and it includes a fisheries and marine sciences institute. Since independence the city has grown quickly and unevenly, pressed by the recurring drought and famine of the far south, which pushes people into its outer districts.

Toliara is the meeting point of the Vezo, who live from the sea, and the Masikoro, who farm and herd inland. Vezo identity is defined by what people do rather than where they were born: to sail a pirogue, to read the reef and to fish is to be Vezo, and the sailing canoes drawn up on the sand around the bay are the emblem of the city. Ancestors are honoured in both communities, and the tombs of the south, decorated by the Mahafaly with aloalo, tall carved wooden posts, are renowned across the island.

Music belongs to the city as much as to the coast. Tsapiky, a fast, hard-driving guitar style created in the south-west in the 1970s out of South African pop and Malagasy tradition, is played through the night at celebrations and funerals, amplified and relentless, and festivals of it run for days in the city. Ancestral ceremonies remain part of religious life alongside Christianity.

Everyday manners are shaped by the heat and by the pousse-pousse economy: greetings first, bargaining without hurry, and life outdoors in the early morning and the evening. French is widely used in business, the Malagasy spoken here is a distinct southern dialect, and the city's university and marine research institute give it a student population from across the country.

About 170,000 people live in Toliara, the capital of the Atsimo-Andrefana region, and the population has grown quickly as drought and famine in the far south push families towards the city. Most live in low houses of wood, reed and cement in districts spreading inland from the centre, where services are thin and water supply intermittent.

The economy rests on fishing — from the reef, the bay and the deeper water, with much of the catch dried, salted or sent north — along with the port, trade in cattle and cotton from the interior, the university and hospital, and a tourist business based on the reef villages and the RN7 traffic. Sisal, salt pans and mineral prospecting employ others in the wider region.

Days run early and late around a long, hot middle: pirogues leave before dawn, the market is busiest in the morning, the streets empty into the shade after midday, and the seafront fills again at sunset. Power cuts, water shortages and poverty are constant, and the hunger of the far south, only a few hours away by road, is never distant from the city's concerns.

Toliara eats from the sea. Fish, octopus, squid, crab, lobster and sea urchins come in daily from the reef and are grilled over charcoal or cooked with tomato, ginger and coconut; dried and salted fish, laid out in the market, is the trade good that travels inland. Rice is less dominant here than in the highlands, and cassava, maize and sweet potato carry many meals, boiled, pounded or grilled.

Zebu is ceremonial food more than everyday food, eaten in quantity at funerals and celebrations, though grilled beef brochettes are sold on the street. Tamarind flavours drinks and sweets, baobab fruit is eaten in its short season, and mangoes, coconut and cassava cakes fill the stalls. The standard hotely plate is rice or cassava with a laoka of fish or beans and a spoonful of sakay, the chilli paste, alongside.

Drinks are cold beer, sweet coffee, coconut water sold from a handcart, ranovola — one of Madagascar's most common traditional drinks — and toaka gasy, the home-distilled rum of the countryside. The beach hotels at Ifaty and Anakao cook a French-influenced version of the same seafood, and wine from the highlands around Fianarantsoa reaches the better restaurants in the city.