Zebu cart

It's sunrise in Sambirano. A small traffic jam has evolved at the bridge crossing in Ambanja, not by cars, but by zebu carts slowly crossing the narrow bridge. The owners and passengers of these ox-powered vehicles, mostly farmers, would have started travelling in darkness to reach the central marketplace to sell or distribute their crops by the early morning hours.

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 in Ambanja produce charrettes. 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).

The humble charrette remains as practical and relevant today as hundreds of years ago among farmers transporting their seasonal crops to marketplaces.

The countless farmers who maintain the tradition all deserve an environmental award for their collective behaviour reducing the number of cars on the roads.

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