---
description: 'Ambalavato is a neighbourhood created for Ny Rabe; the city around it is the real Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar, with real places such as Mahamasina and Anosy.'
question: true
order: 30
title: 'Is Ambalavato, where the Rabe family lives, a real neighbourhood?'
canonical: 'https://markleex.com/@nyrabe/questions/is-ambalavato-real'
markleex:
  entity: '@nyrabe'
  url: 'https://markleex.com/@nyrabe'
  version: 1
  published: '2026-10-10T06:43:25+00:00'
  updated: '2026-10-10T06:43:25+00:00'
  trail:
    -
      label: 'Questions about Ny Rabe'
      url: 'https://markleex.com/@nyrabe/questions'
  lang: en
  content_license: 'All rights reserved'
---

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](https://nyrabe.com/ny-rabe-mianakavy-eny-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?](https://markleex.com/@nyrabe/places)