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.
No comments:
Post a Comment