The commune of Analalava was once a modest-sized community located on Madagascar's northwestern coast. The rural hillside gives way to sweeping sandy beach coastlines and estuaries, while metal and wood shanties dot the verdant landscape, connected by a spiderweb network of packed dirt roads. However Analalava has become a ghost town in recent months, ever since the coup de tat of General Edmond Rasoul.
These shanties now stand empty and abandoned, some having been damaged by strong winds and heavy rain from the monsoon season others demolished during fighting that looks to have taken place recently here. The glitter of brass ammunition shells can sometimes be seen amidst the grass and dirt, along with tire marks from trucks and tread patterns from tanks.
In every direction away from the coast, Analalava gives way to a dense and thick tropical jungle filled with the shrieking sounds of wildlife and what some authors might have called the heart of darkness. A half mile south of the commune the land rises up into gradually sloping hills, leading to an inlet that divides Analalava from the southern regions of Madagascar. There, in the high mountains just barely visible through the fog and rain, is the airport where the original Bravo team had made their attempted landing. Now, only the haunted memories of what may have been their last stand remains here.
This village was the landing site for Team Bravo-2 that landed in Madagascar to reinforce the original Team Bravo and coordinate with the Madagascar Liberation Front to help fight for Madagascar's freedom. Today, Analalava is still an unpopulated ruin. Locals have left the city as it stood during the Madagascar Liberation War and have resettled a new commune of Analalava further up the country's west coast.
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