Things I love about
Madagascar
1. Little kids piled on a pousse-pousse going home after school, especially when there are a bunch of cute little backpacks hanging off the back.
2. The fact that women breastfeed anywhere, openly, and nobody gives a shit,
because duh, when a baby is hungry, that’s what the mother’s breast is there
for. There are some anti-breastfeeding-in-public morons in the US who would do
well remember this.
3. The drive from Farafangana (my banking town) to Vangaindrano
(where I lived), with its stunning view of the Indian Ocean past the valleys.
5. When I did a lesson in a local English class asking kids
what their favorite foods were, 99% of them named a type of fruit—mangoes,
bananas, lychees, etc. What a far cry from the typical American kid’s response,
which more likely than not would be “McDonald’s”, “Doritos”, or something else
equally depressing. With the exception of the occasional small package of
cookies or crackers (a treat), most kids here simply do not eat processed food.
In fact, they eat exactly what the adults eat, which further emphasizes my inability
to ascribe to the American notion that kids need special (unhealthy) food
because they won’t eat adult food. I’ve never seen any kids here eating chicken
nuggets or mac and cheese, and what a welcome relief that is.
6. Riding my bike everywhere (especially to beautiful places like this beach), and feeling like a kid every time I do.
7. Opening my front door at night and seeing the Milky Way
above the trees, displayed like a bright banner in the night sky.
8. The fact that talented local artisans can pretty much custom-make you anything to order: jewelry, shoes, handbags, furniture, you name it.
9. When a stone-faced kid is staring at me, and just by saying hello to them in Malagasy, I can get them to erupt
into a toothy, joyous grin.
10. Little babies wearing tiny, adorable straw hats to protect them from the strong Madagascar sun. It kills me that I don't have a photo of this, because it's the cutest thing in the world, but I always felt too intrusive and rude to ask a stranger to take a picture of their baby.
11. The unspoiled, undeveloped beaches. In America, people look at a beach and wonder how many million-dollar condos they can build on it, but here, it is just part of nature.
12. Malagasy kids and their inventive play—you will never hear one of them say “I’m bored”. Kids make their own toys out of sticks, mud, sardine cans, old CD's... whatever they can find. My favorite is when some local kids made their own stilts and were walking around on them!
13. Here, people repair and reuse broken things—umbrellas, shoes, buckets, extension cords, even lighters. There
isn’t the same idea we have in America of “oh just buy a new one”, because most
people can’t afford to.
14. You see male friends holding hands and generally showing affection to one another. Of course, it's a bit different here because homosexuality is essentially an unknown (especially outside the cities), so they would never even
think that it meant anything other than “we’re friends", but I always like seeing it.
15. This is probably a legacy of the French colonial education system, but children learn how to write in cursive, and so as a result, everyone – even teenage boys—has really beautiful handwriting. I particularly love the writing on this sign outside my local carpentry shop.
15. This is probably a legacy of the French colonial education system, but children learn how to write in cursive, and so as a result, everyone – even teenage boys—has really beautiful handwriting. I particularly love the writing on this sign outside my local carpentry shop.
16. The way kids in my town greeted me every day like a local celebrity, with shouts of "Emilieeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!" I will forever miss riding my bike up the road to my house, and the throngs of kids who would run up to me shouting my name as I arrived. I also loved the fact that little kids who weren't yet speaking when I arrived learned to say my name as one of their first words. It was so flattering and heart-warming.
17. The strong culture of working together, through the formation of cooperatives or fikambananas. These exist for every kind of profession: seamstresses, farmers, epicerie owners, fishermen, fruit dryers, etc. They're a helpful support system, a mechanism for motivating others, and a way for people to secure credit and financing for their businesses.
18. The very un-American diet centered on whole, unprocessed foods like rice, vegetables, fruit, legumes, and locally-produced meat. People generally don't eat enough vegetables and protein, but still, the diet here is plant-based and low in processed food
and sugar, and therefore healthier than the Standard American Diet (SAD).
19. Little kids riding on the front of bikes. I know it’s not safe, but it’s just so darn cute!
20. The ability to buy ridiculous made-in-China things like Facebook and You Tube flip-flops.
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Things I don’t love
about Madagascar
1. That from a young age, most girls work so hard at housework, taking care of siblings,
cooking, and laundry, and aren't afforded the time to just be kids as much as boys are. And I hate that this often means that the boys are allowed to go to school, but the girls are forced to stay at home.
2. The culture of infidelity and having a sipa (girlfriend on the side). I know that infidelity exists in every culture, but it's particularly saddening to me how many Malagasy men think it's ok to cheat on their wives and father children with other women (or even school-age girls). This just compounds the problem of poverty, because it creates single mothers who can't support their children, girls who drop out of school because they get pregnant, and families that don't get financial or emotional support from the father because he's off with his girlfriend.
3. Extrapolating from that, I hate the way that women are undervalued and told they can’t do things, can't succeed in school or business, have to stay home and be housewives, and are just generally subservient to men. Coming from a relatively progressive country like America, it was a huge shock to be thrown into a world of pre-women's movement gender relations, and it has definitely made me appreciate how women are treated in the US, even though it's still flawed.
4. The heartbreaking poverty— at this point, almost 90% of people here live under $2/day. So many people can’t afford school fees, can’t
afford good food, can't afford medicine, can't afford a decent house, and frequently can't even afford clothing. I often see people checking the fruit trees behind my house
to see if anything is edible, and you can tell it’s because they don’t have
anything else to eat. It makes me want to cry every time.
5. The overuse of tavy (slash and burn agriculture) and clearcutting to turn more and more swaths of forest into rice fields, and the generally short-sighted view of the
environment. (But by the same token, people are hungry, so can you blame them for wanting to grow food?)
6. The fact that many people think a bowl of just rice
constitutes a meal, and don't understand that in order for their children to grow up healthy, they also need protein, vegetables, fruit, and other food groups.
7. The constant shouts and taunts of vazaha ("white person/foreigner"). I hate it because I hate when anyone is objectified as nothing more than their skin tone, whether it's black, white, brown, yellow, purple, whatever. All it does is just emphasize our differences, when instead we should be focusing on how we're all pretty similar. I especially hate it when women point at me and say “look at the vazaha” to distract their crying baby, much as Americans
would point out a dog or a cat. I'm not a zoo animal, for pete's sake.
8. The disgusting trash that's absolutely everywhere, littering some of the most beautiful places in the world. There is a gorgeous, serene grove of trees right near my house, and what do people use it as? A trash dump and a toilet.
9. The atrocious roads and terrible infrastructure. Even most of the "paved" roads, like the main central artery of the RN7, are in terrible shape.
10. The disgusting smog of Tana, the capital. This is both because of the 1960s-era taxis (no catalytic converters) as well as simply the massive urban sprawl and unsustainable growth of the city which was resulted in way too many cars, trucks, and buses.
11. The rampant sex tourism. It makes my skin crawl whenever I stay in a hotel and see a white man being accompanied by a much-younger Malagasy girl. I also have a hard time with the cultural notion that if you’re a
Malagasy girl and marry a white guy—no matter how old and disgusting he is—you’re
getting ahead in life. My neighbor recently asked me to find her a white
man—and one for her 8-year-old granddaughter (later in life, I certainly hope.) There is a huge "sexpat" culture here of French men who move to Madagascar after retirement.
12. That people assume that if you’re white, you must be
French—and that children assume to ask you for money. Somehow they have all learned to say “Donne-moi de l’argent”, even though they often don't exactly know what it means. I mean really, has that ever actually worked for them? Does anyone actually say "oh sure, here's money!" And c'mon kids, if you’re going to demand money from
someone, at least use the polite ‘vous’ form and say “Donnez-moi de l’argent”.
13. The fact that it costs over $1,000 to fly to South Africa
roundtrip…. Which is almost the same as flying roundtrip to NYC, a mere 8,000 miles
further away.
14. The mistreatment of dogs/other animals, especially in the Sud Est where dogs are seen as the lowest life
form, and it's taboo to care for them or give them food. Yet dogs still exist, and are not only starved but are also kicked, beaten, and abused. One of my favorite things of traveling to India was seeing how even the stray dogs in Goa were fed and taken care of out of karmic responsibility.
15. The tradition of blasting music before, after, and during cultural events and parties, to the point where it's as loud as possible and talking to another person is both infuriating and pointless. WHAT? SORRY, CAN YOU REPEAT THAT? I CAN’T
HEAR YOU. I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE SAYING. NO, BLASTING THE MUSIC DOES
NOT MAKE IT ANY EASIER FOR ME TO UNDERSTAND MALAGASY.
16. In the Sud Est, there seems to be somewhat of a culture of dependency and an attitude of “give me things because you're a vazaha". A lot of
times people only saw me as a potential source of free stuff, just because I am a foreigner. When I moved out of Vangaindrano it was frustrating to see all the people come crawling out of the woodwork to demand stuff from my house, even if I had never even seen them or talked to them before.
17. The fact that it’s considered perfectly appropriate to try
and get a woman’s attention by hissing at her. It makes my skin crawl whenever
I hear it, and I refuse to respond to any guy that hisses at me.
18. Market day in my town, which results in an overabundance of chicken sellers that snarl up traffic (foot/bicycle/pousse-pousse) and causes a massive, infuriating bottleneck on the main road in the center of town.
19. When people fetch water at the pump and overfill their buckets up to the brim, and stand there and pour out some of the water before walking home. Or they waste the water otherwise because it ends up sloshing out as they walk home. Yet people always chide me
for not filling up my buckets "enough" when I fill them exactly to the line. My response? “I don’t like wet
feet.”
20. People who don’t look
when they cross the street, and just start blindly walking diagonally across the
road without a care or a thought for anything that might be behind them. I can’t
tell you how many times I’ve nearly collided with someone on my bike because of
this.
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