Zebu cart

It's sunrise in the Sambirano Valley and a small traffic jam emerges on the bridge crossing the river in Ambanja, caused not by motor cars but by slow-moving zebu carts on the narrow bridge. The passengers and drivers of these traditional ox-powered vehicles are mostly farmers on their way to the central marketplace to sell their crops.

Zebu carts, or charrettes à zebu as they are know, are common sights in and around Ambanja, the region, and across much of the country.

Dozens of workshops produce charrettes in Ambanja. One such workshop in the town centre is run by Mr Theodore, who with his team of six skilled carpenters builds and assembles around 50 charrettes per year, all manually crafted without the use of electrical power tools.

The design and model are always the same: A simple two-wheeler which easily attaches to one or more zebus.

A charrette takes about one week to build and costs 1,800,000 (USD 400).

These charrette remains as practical and relevant among farmers today as they have for some hundreds of years.

The countless farmers keeping the tradition deserve recognition for their collective effort in protecting the environment by reducing the number of petrol-powered cars on the roads.

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