Zebu cart

It's early morning hours and the drivers of the ox-powered carts would have started in the dark. Just by sunrise at the crossing of the Sambirano bridge, there is rush hour and even a small traffic jam caused by carts slowly rolling across the narrow bridge on their way to the central marketplace to deliver their fresh seasonal crops from the countryside.

Zebu carts are common sights in and around Ambanja, the region, and across much of the big island of Madagascar.

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

The design and model are always the same: A simple two-wheeler which easily attaches to one or more zebus. A cart takes about one week to make and costs 1,800,000 (USD 400).

The carts, or charettes as they are known, remain as practical and relevant as they were hundreds of years ago in providing indispensable transport to farmers in distributing their seasonal harvests to marketplaces without wasting money on petrol.

The innumerable farmers maintaining the tradition of these vehicles deserve a collective environmental lifestyle award for their achievement of keeping their carbon footprints close to zero.

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