Dune by Frank Herbert is one of my favourite novels of all time. It’s not just that it’s good sci-fi, but more that its messages about power, water and humankind are powerful and transcendent, and feel more accurate as the years pass. I thought of Dune often on my trip to Madagascar. The children in this particular quarter of Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, had descended in a group around a young woman with an empty bottle of Eau Vive mineral water. She told them she had no cash but handed over the bottle. I watched as this group of children probably aged around 6-11, argued over the empty bottle. I’ve travelled enough around countries that lack food and water security to know that water is life on so many levels, and that the commodification of it is a thriving industry in Africa- Shoprite and Jumbo Score here have aisles of bottled water. Yet everywhere you go in Antananarivo, you see water. From the luminous green canals flowing with waste- both human and otherwise-, to the rice paddies that line the roads around the city. It is a fascinating place where so much of the architecture is French, but now more regularly interspersed with more modern Chinese-built buildings. It feels olde world in some parts, with a colonial edge, and this unshakeable feeling that somehow still the old powers cling in the shadows, making decisions and influencing power. It’s important I think, to juxtapose this with my home city of