Ambalavato is a working-class neighbourhood created for Ny Rabe. The city around it is real: the Rabe family lives in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, as it is today. Fara's grocery is in Mahamasina, a real part of the city, and some stories take the family to real places such as Anosy.
Ambalavato gathers what people in Antananarivo live every day, the power cuts, the traffic jams, the taxi-be, the market, without being any one particular street, so that every reader in the city can recognise their own neighbourhood in it.
The places of the series are described on Where does Ny Rabe take place?