The country is beautiful. If you like nature, it's definitely worth visiting. There are species here that don't exist anywhere else in the world and there are gorgeous empty beaches. However, we are living in the capital city, Antananarivo. It's basically a dirty, polluted, third world city, nowhere near the ocean.
The positive: we live in a big house, my daughter can run around practically everywhere in our residence and I don't need to worry, the French primary school is good, there are large grocery stores, personnel is cheap (we have a cook, nanny and chauffeur), expat weekly playgroups abound and life is easy (oh, and the pay is good
).
The negative: you can't really walk anywhere because there are few sidewalks and the fumes from the cars are really bad, the drive to school is 45 minutes (but the nanny and chauffeur usually take DD), and there are no public playgrounds to speak of so you always end up at someone's house rather than say, a park.
I miss being able to walk around and use public transport the most but I try to focus on the positive. We're in Mada for 4-5 years, max. It would be nice to meet more anglophone mamas, especially moms that are more granola. Most of expats here are French and the moms are pretty mainstream.