When in Madagascar, do as the Malagasy do

As I near the 7 month mark here at site, I’ve gotten to establish a fairly good daily routine, which has helped me to feel at home here. Because some of you have expressed interest in what daily life is like here, here’s a description of my day-to-day routine is.

First of all, when you live somewhere without very much electricity, life’s daily rhythm tends to revolve around the daylight. Right now it’s dark here by around 6:30PM, and people are in their homes for the night as this point, cooking dinner and spending time with family. Even though I have electricity (usually) at my house, I like to be home by 5pm, because otherwise the roads are very dark. By 8:30pm I’ve usually taken a bucket bath in my ladosy (outdoor shower hut), eaten dinner, and washed the dishes, and then I spend the next couple hours checking email on my laptop (I have a USB modem, but I pay by the megabyte so I have to use it sparingly), reading, writing, or watching a movie on my laptop. I’m usually tired and in bed by 10 or 10:30, which is obviously a huge change from my night owl ways back in the US!

In the mornings I wake up around 7, although my neighbors are usually up and making noise by 5 or 5:30 (when they start banging around I usually put in earplugs to prolong my sleeping time.) For breakfast I alternate making oatmeal (thanks to people’s generous care packages!) and coffee at home, or going to my local mofo (fried bread) stand and having mofo balls and coffee there, eating while standing up and chatting with my neighbors.  When I eat at home, I usually have a leisurely breakfast and read a few pages of The Economist, my subscription to which my mom has graciously been forwarding a few issues at a time. Then after breakfast I clean up and get dressed, slather on sunblock, and do some work at home on my computer, or bike to the COLDIS or TIAVO office. I try to work in the office of one of my two counterpart agencies every day, although at this point my work projects are still taking shape. For COLDIS, a collective that buys spices and exports them abroad, I am starting to work on a sustainability project (more on that in a separate blog post); for TIAVO, a microfinance organization, I am hoping to work with some of their clients to do business consulting and advising on credit usage.

One big facet of life here is the sieste, the 2+ hour break in the middle of the day when offices and schools are closed and no one works.  Part of the reason is the heat, but another reason is that students and workers go home to eat lunch. Things close up between 11:30 and 12, and most offices and banks reopen between 2 and 3. They close down again by 4:30 or 5, so as you can see, the workday is not like your typical American one. Usually I go into the market after the office closes at 11:30, in order to pick up food for that day’s lunch and dinner. Then I bike home to cook and fetch water, and then I usually do a bit of reading or studying before heading back to work, or working on a project at home.

On the weekends I am a bit more leisurely and tend to spend either Saturday or Sunday at home, cleaning my house, reading or watching movies, or hanging out with the local kids who drop by to draw pictures or goof around. I always spend one weekend morning entirely devoted to doing laundry, which takes about 2 hours, and I also like to go for a long bike ride every weekend to keep in biking shape. This weekend my plan is to ride to my friend’s site, Lopary, which is 21km north on a very hilly road. Because I’ve been traveling and not biking every day I am definitely out of shape right now, so 21km is going to be a “long” ride for me right now!

So that, in a nutshell, is what daily life is like here in my town. When my brother was just here visiting, with him slightly incredulous at how early I wanted to go to bed every night, I was reminded on just how different my routine is from how it was back home. It was a bit surprising to realize how much I have adjusted my lifestyle and internal clock to the rhythm of life here. But as they say, when in Rome—or in this case, when in Madagascar…