Regarde, le Nouveau Noir

Yes, the title pertains to my tan. I apparently have such a tan that I am regarded as a new black person. Also I have a terrible sunglasses tan; I look like a raccoon. Its hideous. We have just come back from Faux Cap, a village in the southern Madagascar. I spent the week there in a village. Faux Cap is located in the Antandory region and the people in the region are called the Tandory. People in this region have the most difficult lives and are the poorest. The reason this is so is because of the arid climate. Nothing can grow here except some tubers and melons. There are frequent periods of drought and farmers are helpless to prevent the death of their crops. In these times, people survive on the fruits of cactus (an introduced species). Anyway, the SIT group and some Malagasy students were separated into 12 groups to live in 12 different villages in Faux Cap. I was placed with one other SIT student and a Malagasy student. There was a huge party for us on the beach at the end of the week and we danced in the blazing sun for about 8 hours (also we danced our way to the party, a distance of 2 miles)People got live chickens as gifts at the end of the stay. My family didn’t. Chickens are terrible though. Dirty and idiotic.

I am confounded by many things in this country.  The following may contain many politically incorrect statements but I feel it is important to express how I feel. Most of the confusion increased after the village stay. I stayed in a village with 27 people. The host father, has 4 fields of corn and melons and tubers. It is very surprising how anything can grow in such sandy soils. In addition of agriculture, the villagers also keeps livestock. Livestock are zebu (their version of cows), goats, sheep, chickens and turkeys. The livestock roam all over the space of the village and feces from the animals covers every inch of the ground. Why allow the animals to roam around like this? Perceptions on hygiene are incredibly different here.  The villagers have very strict cultural opinions about which direction the door of the house should face and have a number of other rules for people; why is it that a culture so concerned with keeping people disciplined has no intention of disciplining their animals? When people are eating, are doing tasks, a hoard of dirty chickens surrounds them and tries to eat the food. They don’t cook outdoors because they consider the outside dirty but they don’t make any moves to clear the animal feces in their yard. They cook in a tiny wooden shack over  with wood, the risk of a fire is incredibly high in there and it is so smoky in there that I could hardly keep my eyes open when I was in there. In addition, they stroll around barefooted in the dirty yard. One day as I was sitting under a tree (on a mat) writing in my field journal, a baby girl without underwear was playing in the sand, eating dried up goat pellets. Just so you know, kids are really bad here. Dirty, demanding and undisplined. My friend stuck her foot out of her tent and a baby started sucking on her toe.The other villagers sitting around us said absolutely nothing.  Why is it also that although they live 2 miles from the sea, the people don’t bathe : the reason- to conserve water. I can admit that 2 miles of walking in the blazing sun to clean just to get immediately dirty again seems futile but if the village itself was not dirty, this wouldn’t have to happen. Perhaps I have become too Westernized in my thinking but isn’t it basic human instinct to want to separate oneself from the filth of animals?  The only well in the entire area of Faux Cap is located next to the sea. This well is used by everyone in the area but because it is so close to the sea, the water is brackish. The villagers cannot use the water for the plants because of this. When there is a prolonged period of drought, the villagers let their crops and livestock to die out. There is no system anywhere to conserve rainwater when it does rain. And in these periods, people do nothing and eat the fruit of cactus.

Perhaps this is because people were visiting the village but during my stay there, women sat around day in and day out doing absolutely nothing. Men in the village grazed with the cattle and older boys would graze with goats. Children all go to school but they get to choose 4 hours out of the day for school. This is what our daily schedule was like: everyone would wake up at dawn (including me) and get ready for breakfast. Afterwards, the host father would walk us around the his fields and ask us to take pictures of him with his crop. If not, we would pose with shovels and take picture of ourselves pretending to do work. Meanwhile the women would harvest food for meals. Upon returning to the village, we would write in our journals while the entire village would sit around us and stare. We would practice our Malagasy with them which actually was a nice experience. It was just irritating when the women and children would ask us for gifts. The word cadeux was thrown at us daily. This happened even after we gave them gifts. Giving out gifts by the way was really like feeding a pack of wolves. All one had to do was hold out the gift and children and women alike would grab at it like a piece of meat. There were several women in the village who pointed to my body spray when I was spraying myself demanding “cadeux”. The nice thing was that they weren’t really offended with a straight up “ No.” They would just continue starting and smiling. My friend Laryssa (the other student I was with) and I were stared at constantly. We were like zoo animals. I went into the village thinking that the villagers would constantly be busy resting only in the hottest part of the day. I envisioned that people would be weaving mats as a pastime but instead all the women and children did day after day was sit around staring at us and picking lice out of each other’s hair.

I am not at all a picky eater but all we had at the village were rice and beans. It was gas central in me and Laryssa’s tent. Breakfast was just pulpy rice meal and lunch and dinner were rice and beans. Although I was fed, sometimes I was so hungry I felt like fainting. One time I almost threw up because I was so hungry. Although this sounds terrible, my friend and I would at points lock ourselves up in our tent eating cookies that we didn’t want to share with villagers. (the near throw up incident came after the cookies ran out, they were hard times). They had the best sweet potato though. Its not yellow and very sweet like American ones. They are just perfect. I didn’t get to bathe during village stay so I was the sweatiest, nastiest I have ever been all my life.  But I do think I smelled better than the village people. There was BO there that was too awful for words. 

We did manage to swim in the ocean. I was the best. I loved it. The beach was equivalent to paradise. For two days, we camped on the beach under the stars. The stars here are exquisite. We slept with our rainfly off under the stars. So amazing. Stars make for some exquisite toilet in the field experiences as well. We found some awesome shells and corals on the beach as well as some dead squid. Took some good pictures. Although women just float around topless here. Its  kinda crazy. Our host sisters took their tops off and asked us to take pictures of them. We pretended to.

But man I am in love with this place. The sky when the sun is setting is straight out of a painting in the most beautiful colors imaginable. my soul is at peace. I just love it.  Also my friend has fleas. And has third degree burns on his lips. He takes doxy.

New words I know in French

Fleas

Mud

Diarrhea

Constipated

Very reflective of my experience here. Though no diarrhea yet.

Would really like some sugar right now. No food here to satisfy sweet tooth, what is up with that. Ice cream is really expensive here. 3 dollars for an ice cream bar! What a rip off. Yes, I operate in Malagasy money (ariary)

Have a zillion things to say but will stop for now. Also, two weeks ago there was a cyclone. My flea friend’s roof blew away and my fence few down. My father fixed the fence during the storm. What a man. People really like Celine Dion, dominos and country music. They play dominos for hours and hours. Ha. On our 17 hour bus ride to Faux Cap (where the villages were), I swear we listened to 4 Celine Dion albums. The bus also broke down on the last leg of the trip so we waded through ponds of cow poop water and pushed the bus. Took us 4 hours to arrive in a destination 20 min drive. Yup

When I washed my clothes today after the village stay, 500tons of grim was washed off. Double that came off my body. Zebu poo burns through your shirts btw. Please do not question when you see odd green stains on some of my shirts upon my return.

It Rained alot that First Week

Hello every one ! Hope all is well.I write to you from the city of Fort Dauphin. I am using my host father’s computer to write this blog ( choosing to ignore my readings for Monday, c’est le weekend afterall). As I type this, I chuckle to myself because  I see pictures of Barack Obama flashing past in a slideshow app on this computer. They love him here, his face is everywhere.

 Last Thursday I took a 15 hour flight to South Africa  only to discover when I landed there that the delay caused by JFK closing down has caused me to miss my flight to Madagascar. Thankfully South African Airlines was nice enough to put all of the people in my travel group in a really nice hotel. Of course, as I was carrying a Burmese passport, I was required a visa to step outside the airport. I stayed in a transit hotel inside the airport and was separated from my travel group. All was well however because my hotel room was really nice- king sized bed and dual flush toilet. Not to mention a cool looking capsule –like glass shower next to my bed. ( please admire pictures below) As I lay in my bed I wondered about the next time I would experience running water and comforters. At 6:30am, I sat eating breakfast (paid for by the airline) in the lounge where I had sat 11 years ago, waiting to catch a plane back to Burma. Apologies for bringing up the hotel repeatedly, I had no idea it was possible for airlines to be so nice and give stranded people a place to stay for the night.

As anticipated it was raining when I got to Antananarivo or Tana. I was mentally unprepared for the shock of people speaking  French. It was was quite sudden too, the program assistant immediately spoke to us in French when we got there. Our academic director, Jim was also there to pick us up at the airport. He is actually the nicest man in the world. Jim Hansen is the name. Write it down to say hi if you ever meet him. I met the rest of the group later in the day. Our mode of transport was a bus referred to as the “Tata”. Yes. Our flight to Fort Dauphin was delayed so we got to see some of Tana. Strolling around Tana I was struck by how similar it was to Burma. Clothing lines hanging between buildings, open drains, wet and muggy weather, people staring , shabby bamboo fences…etc. These sights in the city of Tana was shocking for many people just because of how different it was from the United States.

We were told very little about our plans for our first week. For some reason most of us heard that we were going to staying at the premier hotel in Fort Dauphin for three days. Our flight to Fort Dauphin was one of the scariest plane rides I have ever experience. It was the first time that I feared for my life. We flew through lightening and rain (which was not the scary part), it was the landing. That was terrifying. From the copious amount of movies I have watched involving plane crashes, I had learned that the landing was the most dangerous part of flying. We were informed that we were going to land but there was not a light in sight and the plane tilted from side to side as it rapidly approached the airstrip. It was certainly terrifying.

For the first three days in Fort Dauphin, we lived in a village called Manatatanely(sp?)in an old boarding house without running water and electricity. We were not informed about our whereabouts and the rest of the plans for orientation. I have learned to accept that here. Time does not move here in a linear fashion, it is circular- there is no set time for things to start and the schedule is very flexible. The worst part of the stay at the boarding house was the outhouse. It was basically a hut over a deep cesspit and the floorboards were unstable. The fear of falling in was a constant as we used in the hole. In those three days, we learned some Malagasy and spoke mostly in French. We still had no idea what our families were like and what we were going to do in the next week of orientation. It also rained constantly during those days. Our planned excursion to a classified forest was cancelled due to slippery slopes and leeches (a real concern for me; greater even than the fear of falling off a slippery slope). There were also many many mosquitoes there. Many of us were eaten alive. Our legs looked terrible. We learned how to count, dance and respect Malagasy customs. We were nervous because we were told we were going to dance with our families. On our last day there we were given a sheet of paper with the names of our families and their job positions. We are perused that sheet as if it was going to reveal some information about our families if we stared hard enough. The food there was delicious. The fruits were incredibly fresh and delicious. For breakfast we ate fresh baguettes with jam and sweet butter. Other meals were usually composed of rice, veggies and some type of meat. We also had citronella tea and burned rice tea. Burned rice tea is brewed with burned rice that has stuck to the bottom of the pot after cooking rice. It sounds strange but it is good, with a nice smokey flavor.

During our stay there, we went to visit a fruit farm. It was an incredibly beautiful day and the landscape was breath taking. I couldn’t help but exclaim over the beauty of it. Everything was lush and green and the mountains in the distance were absolutely beautiful. The man who owned the fruit farm spoke in rapid French but the best part was just getting to look at his land and sample the,produce- we sampled fresh starfruit, mangoes, macadameia nuts and pamella, We also got a chance to go to the market and buy produce to practice our Malagasy. We got to haggle with shopkeepers who laughed at us attempting to speak in Malagasy. Also we weren’t give very good deals because we were foreign.  Our lunch at the restaurant near the market was excellent. We sat on a veranda with a terrific view of the mountain and had the most declicious shrimp and beef kebabs. The veggies here are really good as well and they are served soaked in vinegar. There is this green sauce that is also served with the food here and it is just mashed up little green chili peppers. It is too spicy for most people but I love it.

The night we got to meet the family was the most unnerving thing I have experience in a long time. We sat in a restaurant waiting for the families to arrive and when they did, they identified each of us from the pictures we had sent them. My first meeting with my family was very awkward- we sat in silence eating most of the time and I starred at the Malagasy dancers performing for us. I danced with my sisters and sang in  Malagasy for them. I also managed to pull out some African dance moves. I think many people were impressed.

My family actually is wonderful. The father speaks very food English so all is not lost on me trying to communicate in French. The location of my school however cannot possibly be better. It is on a hill right next to the Libanona beach. We get the most amazing sea breeze in the classroom and have been going to the beach  everyday since we arrived. I wish I had an underwater camera because there is an abundance of marine life in the shallows near the beach. The water is fantastic! The waves are really rough here so it is easily to get pulled under . The weather has been absolutely beautiful. I am significantly tan now but had a shoulder sun burn for a few days. ( the malaria meds I’m on makes me sensitive to the sun) Sun burns are rather painful. Also I think my English is falling apart. Pardon. Internet too scarce here to spell check.

Anyway, veloma! Au Revoir! Or good bye! Until next time!