Wednesday, September 20, 2006

A Celestial Shift

Something strange happened this weekend. I started waking up a half an hour later. Or, rather, the world around me started getting up a half an hour earlier.

I can’t explain how it happened. Maryanne and I have this habit of going for a walk in the mornings, a nice little circuit that takes us on scenic overview of the city. We meet on the street at 6 am, watch the sunrise as we pass along the mountain road, then return to town at about 6:45, just as things are getting going and in plenty of time for us to shower and get to work. We have been doing this for months now. As winter waned we watched the sun ascend the mountain tops just slightly earlier each day, but something very strange happened between Friday morning and Monday morning. Friday all was as normal – we met students on their way to school and noted how the town was just beginning to stretch as we passed by. But by Monday, the rest of town had beaten us to the punch – and not by just a little either.

I didn’t notice the full effect until Tuesday because Monday was socked in with heavy clouds and fog. But on Tuesday morning when I emerged on the street at 6 o’clock, the streets were already packed with people going up and down the hill, children on their way to school and taxis and motorcycles threatening to run them all down. As I began walking I found I was dodging in and out of crowds of school children and out of the path of city buses. And the sun was so bright (it had already crested the hill before I even stepped out of the door) I regretting not wearing my sunglasses. Yet the time on my watch was the same as the last week, and the BBC wholeheartedly concurred with it. It was as if the Malagasy had decided that over the weekend daylight savings time, Malagasy style, had come into effect, and all times were now shifted half an hour earlier.

Something else happened too: summer arrived. Just last week we were still wearing turtlenecks and heavy sweaters and complaining about the incessant cold wind. On Sunday night I threw off my long-clung-to covers in exasperation and by Monday I was sleeping with the window open. The fog and clouds on Monday were almost steamy rather than clammy and on Tuesday I wore a halter top when walking outside.

So spring lasted a weekend, and now we’re fully into summer here. And I have started my walks at 5:30 am – I’m sure by next week, or at the very latest, October, it will be 5 am, or else risk getting mowed down by taxis and buses and herds of children on their way to who-knows-where, since school doesn’t start until 7:30.

 

 

 

Monday, September 11, 2006

My life is a broken-broken-broken record

This last week I traveled to the east coast of Madagascar and back – so in the space of a week, I traveled on 4 long-distance public transport busses, took numerous city taxis and “pousse-pousses” (the rickshaws ubiquitous in costal towns in Madagascar), ate in too many restaurants to count, and patronized many businesses. And in almost every case, I had the following conversation.

 

Malagasy man [after negotiating taxi fare/business service/taking food order]:        Wow, you’re really good at speaking Malagasy.

Me:       Thank you.

M.m.:    No, I mean it, you’re really good.

Me:       Really?

M.m.:    Have you been here a long time?

Me:       Yeah, a while.

M.m.:    Because you speak Malagasy really good.

Me:       Is that so?

M.m.:    Did you study it here? Or over there?

Me:       Here. Nobody teaches Malagasy over there.

M.m.:    So, you’ve been here a while?

Me:       Yeah, 3 and a half years.

M.m.:    Do you like it here?

Me:       I think if I didn’t like it here I’d have left by now. [But don’t think you’re not tempting me to leave now]

M.m.     Are you married?

Me:       No.

M.m.:    Do you have kids?

Me:       No.

M.m.:    Do you have a fiancé?

Me:       No.

M.m.:    Do you have a boyfriend?

Me:       No.

M.m.:    How long have you been here?

Me:       Three and a half years.

M.m.:    And you don’t have a boyfriend? How do you DO it?

 

There’ve been a few rare variations on the theme. This is my favorite:

 

M.m.:    Are you married? Do you have kids?

Me:       No

M.m.:    Aren’t you a little LATE?

Me:       No.

M.m.     No, you’re late. How old are you? How to you plan to ever have kids.

Me:       Well, I’m not planning on giving birth 14 times like the Malagasy do.

 

Then variation #2:

 

M.m.     Are you married?

Me:       No.

M.m.:    Do you have kids?

Me:       No.

M.m.:    Do you have a fiancé over there?

Me:       Mmmm….

M.m.:    Do you have a Malagasy boyfriend?

Me:       No.

M.m.:    How long have you been here?

Me:       Three and a half years.

M.m.:    And you don’t have a boyfriend? How do you DO it?

 

As you notice, hinting that I might have a fiancé after all doesn’t really do anything to change the final pattern of the conversation.

 

Also note, these guys are not necessarily hinting that they’d like to be my Malagasy husband/father of my children/fiancé/boyfriend. Mostly they just can’t seem to understand how somebody could possibly live alone long enough to have learned an adequate amount of language…or maybe learn a language without having a “private tutor.” So this conversation, depending on how much energy I have at any given time, usually winds up leading to a long health education session about protecting yourself HIV/AIDS and other not-so-desirable illnesses. Because while most of these guys weren’t so delusional to think that I might just be looking for them to take home with me, I guarantee not a one would have said “no” had I offered the opportunity. Nor would they have given up their other wives/girlfriends to come and live with me alone. I know, I found some really scary statistics during a research stop on this trip…and I don’t care to have those statistics confirmed in practice.