Broken bridges

Sometimes you find yourself having days in Peace Corps where things feel just too easy, and then along comes something to remind you that you're living in a developing country with poor infrastructure. My latest example: two weekends ago I was in Manakara visiting some other volunteers before spending time working in my counterpart agency's office there. Two of my Manakara-dwelling fellow PCVs had just moved into an amazing new house that stands in stark contrast to most Peace Corps Madagascar houses: running water, a real kitchen, a giant living/dining area, 3 big bedrooms, plus a bathroom with a bathtub and hot water heater. I had a lovely, relaxing weekend and was generally just enjoying having some western-style amenities. It was one of those times where I almost forgot that I was serving as a Peace Corps volunteer. On Monday morning I worked in the COLDIS office, which is located across the Canal des Pangalanes in an area called Manakara Be, then biked back across the bridge to meet my friends for lunch. However, when I tried to return at 2:00, I found that I couldn't. The main road leading to the bridge was crowded with motorcycles, pedestrians, trucks, and pousse-pousses (rickshaws). I was frustrated and confused by all the congestion, and fought my way through the crowd with some aggressive biking. But finally I figured out why there was so much going on: the bridge had collapsed, and half of it was lying in the river.

Oh.

I have always hated this bridge for its poor design and annoying "bike lane" that is too narrow and full of broken pilings that are guaranteed to pop your tires. In fact, I was cursing it just as I was riding over it on my way to lunch. But never did I expect it to actually break! A large truck carrying salt was apparently the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, and my boss told me that although no humans were hurt, 3 cows died as the bridge went crashing into the river. I feel incredibly fortunate that neither myself nor any other volunteers were crossing the bridge when it broke. Had I gone to lunch just an hour later, who knows what might have happened.

This section of the bridge is not supposed to be here.

Unfortunately, because this is a developing country, no one is holding their breath waiting for a replacement bridge to be built-- it will without a doubt take months, if not year. But Manakara Be is a vital part of town: not only is the COLDIS office and warehouse located there, but so are 2 of the city's 3 banks, plus the post office and the offices of the chef de region and many municipal ministries. (Plus, the town's beautiful beach is located in Manakara Be... let's not forget that.) And so in the meantime, people have found ways to get around the lack of a bridge. Many people take the somewhat risky path climbing up the broken section of the bridge and walking over by foot. And the lakana (canoe) operators who live by the canal have started doing brisk business ferrying people, bicycles, and goods across the canal, for 200 Ariary a ride. (Imagine owning an epicerie in Manakara Be and having to transport all your goods via canoe after buying them in town.) In fact, as an economic development volunteer, it's been quite intriguing to see all the little businesses that are cropping up in response to the crash. There is one guy who just started a service watching people's bikes for 200 Ariary, so they can bike to the bridge and then leave their bikes when they cross over.

View from a canoe.

It remains to be seen how the bridge collapse will affect COLDIS's business operations, but it's unfortunate because there really isn't any other bridge crossing that would allow them to transport goods by truck. And although they just sent several trucks worth of cloves to Rotterdam (via container ship at the port in Tamatave), there are still several tons remaining in the warehouse. And pretty soon it will be the clove harvest and clove buying season, when this season's crop will start coming in.

People say that Peace Corps service is about adapting to new and different obstacles, and this is definitely one of them. I probably would not be dealing with this type of infrastructure challenge if I were working in America, so this is certainly another way that my business experience is being tested and expanded.

An isle of joy

(Lyric from “Manhattan” by Ella Fitzgerald, where she sings “we’ll turn Manhattan into an isle of joy.” If any song whisks me away to New York, it’s this one.)

Homesickness hits me in strange and unexpected ways. This afternoon I was standing on my front steps sorting rice in my sahafa, listening to music, and suddenly I found myself with tears in my eyes, drops falling into the grains of rice as I bent my head to hide my sadness from the neighbors. It was because of the song that had just come on: Ella Fitzgerald’s “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You”. Sentimental I did get, because ever since I fell for Ella’s voice as a teenager, I’ve always associated her songs with New York—even before I had the great fortune to live there—and so the music instantly swirled up a cloud of memories in my head. It was a pastiche of classic New York-iana: cocktails at Café Carlyle and the Oak Room; movies at the Paris Theatre; a crosstown walk through Central Park; a screechy subway ride over the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset; a moment of calm amidst the midtown crush in the reading room at the New York Public Library. I stepped back inside my house, closed the door, and allowed myself a few private minutes to shed tears over the city that I once called home.

I’ve only experienced a handful of bouts of truly impactful homesickness, because in general, I am happy and content with the choice I’ve made to live in Madagascar for 2 years. But each time I’ve found myself felled by homesickness, it’s been over New York-- not Vermont, the place where I grew up, and would be more considered my “home”. But New York is the city where I truly felt like I grew into myself, and made the most progress towards being the person I want to be. If anything has been made clear in my 6 months in Madagascar, it’s just how much I love the city, and how much of an indelible mark it has left on me.

I’m in a somewhat different position of the majority of other volunteers in that, as a friend put it, I “had a life” before joining the Peace Corps. (And oh, what a life it was.) So the difference between me and other volunteers is that coming here meant making a swift and decisive identity change. I’m no longer a city gal walking to the office every morning and switching into high heels from an under-desk collection, getting morning coffee at Balthazar, ordering groceries from FreshDirect from my iPhone and having them delivered to my door, going out for burgers and bloody Marys at Minetta Tavern, and then sweating it all off at Equinox and Physique 57. Certainly my time in the Peace Corps has reinforced for me just how privileged my existence was. Of course, this is an existence that I worked very hard to achieve, but here, hard work has been redefined. And of course, before coming here I certainly knew how things would be different, but there are times when I feel such a painful burst of love and longing for the city, and I wonder how I am ever going to make it until 2014. (And I was not helping matters last month by rewatching my old high school favorite show Felicity—all the scenes set in Dean & Deluca made me really crave a good latte!) I know that the city will be there waiting for me when I return, and with good fortune I’ll get into Columbia Business School and will be able to move back in fall of 2014. But that doesn’t stop me missing it now, especially since August has turned into September, and I reminisce on the ephemeral beauty of New York in autumn, air as crisp as its namesake apple, yet buzzing with life and promise as the city revs itself up again after the end of the lazy summer.

If you’ve ever been a New Yorker, you know the one constant that applies nearly all over the world: as soon as you say “I live(d) in New York”, people instantly classify you as a certain type of citified, cultured, probably-over-caffeinated urbanfolk. Being able to say that you’ve lived in New York is a unique type of social currency, but it’s one that doesn’t really have reach where I’m currently living. When people ask where I lived in America, and I give them my answer, there usually isn’t much spark of recognition. However, I am fortunate to have a Malagasy friend in my town who not only lived in Paris, but also in New York (talk about an extraordinary life). I recently ran into him after we both returned to Vangaindrano after traveling for many weeks. After talking about being in the capital of Madagascar, Antananarivo, we both agreed that we much preferred the beautiful landscape of the Sud Est to the dirty, smoggy city of Tana. And I said to him, “you know what? We both lived in the greatest city in the world. How could any other city compare?”