This article appeared in the May issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.Most towns and cities in Madagascar have contained an outbreak of plague that began in the country last August, but about 3,000 people who live in a garbage dump on the outskirts of the country's capital, Antananarivo, are still in close proximity to the disease. The inhabitants of "Ralalitra" (the "City of Flies") spend their days scavenging amid debris, rats, and dead bodies. SAMVA, the private company the government contracts to run the facility, denies the squatter settlements' existence and has threatened photographers and journalists who try to document life there.
Advertisement