GLOW Camp

Often times during two years of service Peace Corps Volunteers end up doing a project that steps outside of their normal day-to-day responsibilities at site. Over the years they’ve proven to be productive opportunities for volunteers to collaborate and break up the monotony of plodding along on primary projects while alone at site.  One of these Peace Corps project mainstays is a GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) camp.  Essentially the idea behind a GLOW camp is to equip young Malagasy women who show potential for leadership with the necessary skills to make healthy life choices as well as advance their personal, professional and academic goals. The premise is that in most developing countries gender roles are much more rigid, in some cases to the point of being institutionally oppressive. In most cases the deck is stacked in favor of the men.  I’ve mentioned previously when I talked about family and gender roles that as far as Madagascar is concerned, there are certainly countries that score worse on the equity barometer.  Madagascar currently has a number of women running for President (out of 33 candidates). However, Madagascar still has a ways to go and there’s no way, no  how that a country is going to climb its way out of poverty if it’s dragging the dead weight of a marginalized population.  So with that in mind a group of five volunteers, myself included, decided to organize a GLOW camp.

We had five towns represented: Miarinarivo, Ampefy, Sandrandahy, Kianjandrakefina and Arivonimamo.  Five towns for the five volunteers in the central highlands region who came to country together in the same training group. In theory we were each supposed to select four young women each, ages of 13-16, and one adult chaperone to attend the camp.  Per usual though, preparation for the camp and finding the participants didn’t quite go according to plan.  I would say Madagascar threw me a curve ball, but it’s more like I stepped up to bat and pitchers began materializing to all lug curve balls in my direction simultaneously. 

Emma and I worked together to prepare the grant, which went off without a hitch.  Then came my part in Arivonimamo.  It was imperative to catch the girls before the school year ended so early one morning, the first week of June, I loaded up on applications and flyers and strolled across the street to meet the Director of the public middle school.  My first impression was that he was thrilled by the idea and he quickly agreed to call a meeting of all the middle school girls in the specific age group.

‘Alright,’ I thought, ‘this should be pretty simple.’

I turned up two weeks later, and was ushered into a classroom full of roughly 20 girls by the Director.  Rather than follow me into the room the Director quickly pulled me outside so that we were standing in the doorway and dropped this bomb on me as if he were telling a joke:

‘So I forgot to tell the teachers about the meeting thing and we didn’t really get all the girls together.’

‘Oh…ok. So who are they?’ I cocked my chin towards the interior or the room, and squinted in at a room full of 13-16 year old girls.

‘I just talked to two science classes and asked if they wanted to spend time with the vazah.’ (foreigner)

Great.

Despite the inauspicious beginnings I forged ahead with my little spiel about what GLOW camp was and why these girls might consider enlisting.  Thanks in some part to the less than productive introduction by the Director, many of the questions centered not upon women’s empowerment but rather my marital status and whether I can teach English.  I did notice a few girls who were listening with rapt attention and made sure to reiterate the importance of the camp to them personally as I handed out application forms.

And then the girls went on vacation.  I needed four girls and every time I would pass by the middle school office I would get the same response.  Two applications had been turned in, nothing more.  ‘It looks like those two are going,’ I thought.   The problem was, with school not in session, many of the students in Arivonimamo return to their rural villages, often times miles away down terrible roads with spotty cell service.  After some time I was forced to concede that one of the girls had disappeared into the black hole of highlands countryside. That left only her friend Lanto as my sole student. 

With only one girl of four picked out I was in a bit of a bind.  So, as is often that case when I’m in a bit of a jam here in Madagascar, I went to my buddy Jean Claude.  Turns out his sister is 15 years old.  Pretty lucky, huh?  So I asked him, ‘do you think she’d be interested?’ He enthusiastically said yes so I pushed a little further, ‘do you think she could find a friend to come with?’  Yup.

Then, with three of the four girls picked.  Or at least one picked, and with Jean Claude on the case, I figured I would be able to spend the next three weeks finding the perfect candidate to be the final GLOW camp girl.  That’s when the biggest curve ball of them all clocked me upside the head.  I came down with pneumonia and a pleural effusion in my right lung.  That story is for a different time but the doctors said it was likely a microbe that got into my lung and one theory is that I got it when I had entered a tomb at a recent exhumation ceremony.  Regardless, it laid me up in the hospital for about nine days followed by a little over a week of extra recovery afterwards in the Peace Corps medical unit.  With my health finally somewhat intact I scrambled back to site on Saturday morning, with the GLOW camp scheduled to begin on Monday and still one girl short.  Chanthiah! I thought.  Of course, why didn’t I think of her before?  A student in my computer classes for over six months Chanthiah had proven to be one of the most dedicated young women I’d worked with in Madagascar. Only problem is that she’s nineteen.  A bit outside of our target market.  I decided that desperate time called for desperate measures so I made the call.  Chanthiah was onboard without a moment’s hesitation once I’d explained the concept to her. With our four girls assembled and an Arivonimamo chaperone in tow we hopped a taxi-brousse for Tana that Monday morning. 

We had planned three topics to tackle over three separate days. Health, professions, and higher education. The first day, the arrival day, would be relegated to introductions and getting settled so as not to overwhelm the girls, many of whom had never been to the capital before and had certainly never had the experience of a week-long sleep away camp.  Two of our delegations were trekking up from pretty far down South and they weren’t expected to be in town until close to dinner. Upon the arrival of our Kianjandrakefana and Sandrandahy groups we herded everyone into the dining hall/activity space for a round of introductions.  Drawing upon our collective camp knowledge we framed the introductions as such: your name, your grade in school, where you’re from and the aggravatingly vague yet ever popular, something unique about yourself.  Now this presented an unusual challenge for these young participants.  As products of an education system that treats independent, critical thinking as something to be avoided, and a culture that shuns individuality in favor of the collective, I observed looks of confusions and an uncomfortable shifting in the chairs of many of the girls.  Thus as we went around the room introductions went something like a game of telephone, where one girl would decide to say her favorite color as her unique fact, a trend which would continue down the line for ten girls until one intrepid soul ventured the number of siblings she had, which then became the theme of the moment. 

As I previously mentioned, this pattern of behavior stems from entrenched cultural norm that is hardwired into most Malagasy people.  The difficulty that the GLOW camp presented us, and in some senses it could be seen as a microcosm of Peace Corps in general, was to find a way to tease out the leadership abilities for these girls by drawing on an entirely foreign cultural framework.  In America, a culture predicated upon individualism, there are certain understood attitudes upon which one can draw when teaching leadership skills.  The right conditions can exist too in Madagascar, one just needs to know where to look and what to appeal to culturally.  So how do you teach a group of young Malagasy women, who struggled to put forward a unique fact about themselves, to be leaders and to take stake in their own future?  Bring in other Malagasy people.

The first day was the health day and we put heavy emphasis on reproductive and sexual health. We had two Malagasy organizations come in to lead the sessions.  The first, PSI which stands for Population Services International, sent ‘peer educators’ to come and speak to the girls about the importance of protection and all things you need to know about sex.  When I first greeted these ‘peer educators’ they struck me as aloof Tana hipsters, which are the bane of my existence, but that’s neither here nor there. Besides, I didn’t even have a chance to see their session since most of the days discussions would revolve around sex, Nick and I, the only two men in the vicinity decided it would be best to recuse ourselves from the proceedings and go take care of some camp logistics around Tana.  Nothing could guarantee that these 14 year old Malagasy girls would clam up and fail to ask important questions about sex like the presence of two 25 year old white guys.  So Nick and I took care of printing the completion certificates, which we realized we’d printed incorrectly once the girls pointed out the incorrect date (a win for the Y chromosome, huh).  We also took care of buying bananas and condoms for the condom demonstrate that was led that afternoon by our second Malagasy organization, MAHEFA.  Again, Nick and I didn’t have a chance to see the MAHEFA session but rumor has it that they knocked it out of the park, teaching the girls about nutrition, reproductive health and, thanks to Nick and my superior condom and banana buying prowess, how to properly put on a condom.     

Our second day of activities, the third day of our camp in Tana, was our big ‘professional aspirations’ day, which for fun and because we could, we held at the American Embassy.  Needless to say the girls were floored by the grandeur of this little slice of America which happens to be the nicest building in Madagascar, think of that what you will.  After a slightly confusing security check in which the security detail tried to acquire identity cards from a bunch of 15 year old girls who live in mud-brick houses in the rural countryside guess what guys, they don’t have them.  We won that stand off and were all ushered into a side room where we were greeted by a senior diplomatic elf with a handlebar mustache and a green blazer.  He gave a quick introduction before ceding the floor to the group of Malagasy women, half who worked at the Embassy and half from a professional women’s association that we had scheduled to join us.  I honestly could not have been happier with the way things went.  Each woman spoke for roughly twenty minutes explaining where they worked, what they did on a daily basis, and what it was that led them to their position.  Team Arivonimamo asked a few good questions too so I’m counting that as a win.

We followed up our professions day with a stop at the University of Antananarivo where are professor at the school of agronomy who has worked with me previously was nice enough to meet with us.  The heat was blistering and though the Malagasy girls seemed to be putting up with it fine I was melting so we moved into the shade and sat on the grass to learn about higher education.  The professor, Fanja, happens to be one of the most impressive people I have met here in Madagascar.  She currently holds a doctorate from Cornell in the States which she earned while studying on a Fulbright scholarship.  Despite her plethora of commitments she was somehow able to set aside half a day and gather a group of students to speak with us and give us a tour of the University.  That afternoon the girls visited an English teaching program and passed by a center dedicated to helping Malagasy people study abroad in America.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the afternoon’s activities.  The combination of scorching heat in the morning and infected liquid I still had sloshing around my lung (I’d only been out of the hospital about a week), made it so that I was too wiped out and needed to rest in the afternoon.

The final day of the camp was designed to reward the girls for attending the camp and working so hard all week.  Since many of them had never been to Tana and those that had likely didn’t get to explore the big city much we made the day into a field trip around the capital.  We passed through Analakely, the premier shopping hub in Tana, where the teenage girls treated us like their not-so-cool parents and told us to hang back, since presumably the presence white people make things more expensive.  The day also included one of the most touching moments that I’ve experienced thus far in Peace Corps.  Back in the epoch of kings here in Madagascar, Antananarivo was ruled from the Rova, a castle perched on the highest hill overlooking the city. Naturally we felt this would be a neat place to take the girls but as we approached the front gate we noticed the entrance fees.  500 Ar for Malagasy people and 10,000 Ar for vazah (foreigners).  We’d budgeted for the entrance fee of 500 Ar but the 10,000 Ar for the five of us volunteers was a bit of a slap in the face.  To give some perspective, 10,000 Ar is roughly $5.  We make $4 a day.  So while $5 may not seem like a lot imagine spending more than what you make in a day to get into a museum.  You might decide there’s a better way to spend your day.  So, we turned to the girls and explained that, the five of us volunteers are just going to wait outside and the rest of you can go tour the Rova with the chaperones, we’ll cover your entrance fees and be here when you get out. That plan didn’t stick.  The girls were absolutely resolute that they didn’t want to see the Rova if they were going to charge the volunteers such a high price.  We tried to haggle with the desk attendant; our chaperones even stepped in, but to no avail.  I am sympathetic to charging slightly higher prices for foreigners in a country as desperately poor as Madagascar.  The people here should be able to afford to visit their own attractions yet at the same time tourism needs to generate sufficient income to contribute to the nation’s development.  However, we’d just completed a diversity and prejudice session with the girls the night before so they were acutely sensitive to discrimination.  By this point in the week they understood that we were volunteers living here, working on a relatively meager salary and that 10,000 Ar was nothing to scoff at.  The girls were incensed by the price difference, some of them so upset that they were moved to tears and in a unified act of defiance decided to refuse to enter.  So, in a very moving gesture of solidarity the girls led us back to the tour bus and we left the Rova to head back to our training center.

We held our closing ceremony in the dining hall shortly after dinner that night.  As parting gifts we bought nice purses for the chaperones and English-Malagasy dictionaries for the girls, along with pictures from the camp and certificates of completion for all the participants.  The overhead lighting was dim and everyone sat on benches arranged like pews in the center of the dining hall.  Each girl was called one by one to the front of the room to receive their parting gifts and had their picture taken while the rest of the girls clapped enthusiastically.  The atmosphere in the room was buoyant and familial, in a way only really found in the moment of anticipation before the end of an intense bonding experience.  Following some parting words by the five of us Peace Corps Volunteers, one of the girls stood up and explained that she had been designated to speak on behalf of all of the camp participants and proceeded to offer a thoughtful kabary (speech), thanking us for the experience. 

As we closed in on 8pm we sent the girls up to their room on the third floor and settled in for the night in our second floor room. The five of us were comfortably piled onto our pushed-together beds and about halfway through the movie we were watching we started hearing a faint cry from outside.  At first we put it out of mind.  We were exhausted, beat, we’d successfully pulled off the camp and it was probably just the girls playing around on the stairwell like they had the nights before.  Then it came a second time.  This time louder. 

‘Actually, maybe that’s bad,’ Emma said as she glanced over at me, alarmed and already pushing herself up off the bed.

The five of us quickly rushed into the hallway where I found two of my Arivonimamo girls, one cradling the other, on the stairwell.  They were surrounded by a few of the other girls and one of the chaperones who looked up at me with a mixed look of concern and panic.  One of my four girls, Sandatra, was collapsed in a heap on the floor, cradled by Iana.  With sweat on her brow and her eyes rolled back in her head she was alternating between a piercing wail and a possessed, hyperventilated breathing.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked Iana as I placed my hand on Sandatra’s head to check for a fever.

‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ she explained breathlessly. ‘She just started screaming and crying.  I think her heart is on the wrong side.’

‘Wait, WHAT?!’

‘You know how it’s here on us,’ Iana pointed to her heart, ‘well I’ve heard it’s here on her,’ she moved her hand a few inches across her chest.

So naturally I was in a panic.  One of the chaperones suddenly appeared with a glass of water and handed it to me.  We splashed some on her face and Iana tried mightily to force her to drink some but Sandatra continued to thrash and wail, which by now I was convinced meant her heart was exploding.  Her body felt feverish and one of the girls from Ampefy suggested we strip off her sweater to try to cool her down.  One of the chaperones then proposed that we take her outside so I threw her arm around my shoulder and carried her down the two flights of stairs and we slowly shuffled into the yard. 

Immediately, once Iana the chaperone and I sat her down on the concrete ledge outside Sandatra’s breathing begin to slow and she collapsed, exhausted, against my side as I tried to hold her up.

‘Eric,’ whispered Emma and Nick from the doorway, ‘Eric, come in here.  You have to come in, she just wants your attention.’

‘I can’t, I think she’s really sick,’ I said  

‘Eric, seriously, come inside.’

I propped Sandatra up, leaned her over onto Iana, and slipped back into the building.  Turns out, Emma explained to me, that this girl just wanted attention. My attention to be specific.  Or at least that is what the other chaperones and some of the girls were saying.  Now in Sandatra’s defense, at least two of the other girls were also having these episodic attacks and hyperventilating as well up in their room.  Some of the adults pulled us aside to explain that most of these girls hadn’t had experiences as intense or similar in any way to what they’d just been through at our camp and the idea that it was coming to an end was too much for some of them to bear.  I have Iana to thank for nearly giving me a heart attack but it turns out the ‘Sandatra’s heart is on the wrong side’ thing wasn’t true.  She was just heartbroken about leaving.  The chaperones weren’t impressed though.  She did it by your room so that she’d get your attention, they assured me.

Needless to say, the events of that final night threw me into a bit of a funk.  I was overwhelmed and unnerved by the whole thing to be honest.  The GLOW camp turned out to be an amazing success yet, despite leading a Girls Leading Our World camp, it turns out I don’t know much about teenage girls.        

Until next time,

Veloma

Famadihana, again

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about Famadihana, the Malagasy tradition of exhumation, but it will likely be the last because, well, tis the season but once a year.  The season usually coincides with the winter months here in Madagascar, roughly July until late October or early November.  Outside of this relatively temperate bracket the weather can become wretchedly hot and rainy.  Not ideal conditions to be pulling mummified bodies from their tombs and exposing them to the elements.  Because Malagasy people are particularly hospitable I was invited to a slew of Famadihanas last year only a few short months after arriving at site.  It was an eye-opening experience but unfortunately I was about as green as they come at that point and my Malagasy was nowhere near good enough to feel like anything more than an audience member in some bizarre cultural theatre.

This time around I can talk.  Over a year and a half into my service here I’ve gotten a pretty good handle on the language, enough so that I can wedge myself into a social event and hold my own as a part of it.  In fact, during this round of Famadihanas I had the chance to tag along and work at one with a buddy of mine, Ras, who is a mpampandihy here in Arivonimamo, which translates to ‘someone who makes people dance,’ or, I suppose, a DJ.

Ras had been hired to work two different Famadihanas, over a 4 day period from August 11^th until the 14^th.  I was invited to work them with him and his partner Zo but had to miss the first day of festivities because I was once again with my good friend from out East, James and his partner in crime, Tahiry.  The two of them had been planning to visit some of Tahiry’s family in the capital so figuring they’d already have  to come pretty far West I made a plea for them to keep on the same trajectory for another hour and come spend some time in Arivonimamo.  They agreed and Monday, August 12^th James, Tahiry and I set out towards the town of Fonenana to catch the second day of celebrations and give James his first glimpse of this uniquely Malagasy custom.

The first day of any Famadihana consists mostly of preparations, the erecting of the tents, slaughtering of pigs, the arrival of the guests and what not.  By the time the darkness is setting on the first night much of the groundwork has been laid and people are ready to party.  By the time James, Tahiry and I arrived on the second day most of the people had been dancing and drinking non-stop throughout the night.  That, or they had managed to eke out a few hours of shut eye crammed onto straw filled mattresses or grass mats in dark corners of the mud house that served as the backstop of the Famadihana yard party.  Ras ushered us past bleary eyed merry-makers and crops of children clustered throughout the yard and up a rickety wooden staircase to a small balcony that housed the speakers through which he was running his mpampandihy operation. 

From up on high we could see Famadihana proceedings straddling the national road on one end, where people were congregating to get a look at the two vazah (foreigners) who had just arrived, and the red-earth house we were standing in.  Down in the yard there were the two dining areas off to the right, built from large branches or planks of wood stuck into the ground and encircled by colorful plastic sheeting. Inside people were being brought heaping portions of ‘vary be menaka’ which literally means, ‘rice with a lot of oil.’  What it is, is a Malagasy specialty, especially in the highlands, served at most noteworthy cultural events.  Because of that you might think it would be a big elaborate dish.  Unfortunately it is exactly what it translates to.  Guests are given a generous portion of rice while family members work the crowd with buckets and ladles, distributing chunks of pig fat soaked in oil.  The taste isn’t all that bad, but trust me, too much of vary be menaka will wreak havoc on a vazah digestive track.  Outside of the food tents there was an open space in the yard with ‘hira gasy’ musicians (traditional Malagasy music), arranged in a semicircle in the wings and people congregated in the center, dancing to the alternating currents of Ras’s music and hira gasy.

Once we’d gotten the lay of the land, Ras and Zo decided to lead James and I back down to the yard, to the outskirts of the party near the little tables stocked with booze.  ‘Up here,’ Ras suggested as he climbed into the back of an un-yoked Zebu cart that was pitched forward in a resting position. We clambered into the back of the slanting cart that was close enough to the beer stand that we could reach down and grab ourselves a round.  Ras, Zo and Tahiry, along with a few other Malagasy men that had gathered cracked the caps off the beers with the teeth and handed them around to us.  Now that we were settled we got to talking about the Famadihana a bit.  Knowing it was James’s first time around everyone wanted to pitch in their thoughts on what Famadihana means to Madagascar and Malagasy people.

‘There are a couple of important reasons for Famadihana that you’re going to want to remember,’ Ras began. 

James and I have both spent plenty of time hearing and reading about Famadihana and I’d been to my fair share so I was interested to hear his take.

‘First, you’re paying homage to those who have come before you, paying respect to the ancestors, or the ‘razana,’ he said.  So far that was something I knew, it was pretty much what I expected him to say. 

‘Second, it brings all of your family together, which is a lot of people in your average Malagasy family.  It’s a kind of reunion where you can catch up with those you haven’t seen in ages and celebrate the love of your family.’  That was also something that sounded in line with what I’d learned but it struck me as a little sentimental coming from him.

‘And third,’ he explained, with a coy smile spreading across his face as if he’d saved the best for last. ‘Thirdly, it’s a way for you to remember who exactly is in your family so you don’t accidentally date your sister.’

I can’t say the guy doesn’t have a sense of humor.  Like I’ve said before Malagasy families are enormous so maybe he has a point.

After James and I danced in the yard for some time to the hira gasy, intoning over and over again the repetitive yet somehow hypnotic melody, we were called out into the road for a photo shoot.  James and I had both brought our cameras along for the event, and since cameras don’t come around often for most Malagasy communities, and vazah come even less frequently, the entire community decided that it was imperative we take advantage of the situation.  For about 45 minutes James and I were shuffled around between different configurations of friends and family while Ras and Zo used our cameras to snap photos.  We staged dancing photos, were handed babies, and were the center-pieces in umpteen family portraits until it became time to make the journey to the tomb. 

At this point we were beginning to burn out of being the focal point and quite literally beginning to burn from the hours spent dancing in the sun.  As is quite usual here, the moment fatigue starts to set in is quite often the moment I’m thrust into the spot-light.  Right before the parade to the tombs began I was handed a t-shirt to put on.  It was the same one being worn by many of the family members who had organized the Famadihana.  It claimed that I was a descendent of a pair of brothers whom we were on our way to exhume, and I considered it quite an honor to have been included with the family.  I was given the t-shirt discretely by one of the family members and once the others saw it on me it set off a ripple of excitement through the ranks of the family.  I could tell from some of the furtive glances cast my way by some of the young drunk guys that one of their comrades had worked himself into a self-righteous drunken pout because a vazah was wearing one of the family shirts so I insulated myself with the majority of the family who had given it to me and were coaching me along.  I vowed to keep a low profile and a wary eye on some of the drunk guys. 

James and I floated along the edges of the march up to the tomb and slowly made our way towards the front of the cavalcade so that we could get some pictures of the flag bearer who was leading the procession.  At the head of the march, followed by a herd of hira gasy musicians and throngs of Famadihana goers, there is always one Malagasy man with the Malagasy flag strung up on a thin bamboo stalk and he leads the group of family and friends on the march to the tomb.  Upon seeing me taking pictures in my newly acquired Malagasy shirt, one of the family members had the idea to pass the flag off to me.  I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to lead a Famadihana but I was also wary of upsetting any cultural norms which might cross the delicate line I was already toeing with one of the hammered cousins.  In the end I decided to take hold of the flag and led the Famadihana across the grassy plain towards the tombs for about 15 yards until I was able to pass the flag back to its rightful owner.

Once we arrived at the outcropping of tombs the throngs of people gathered in a circle around the short, squat, cube shaped tombs, on top of which stood all the important male figures of the community.  A number of speeches were made in succession, extolling the virtues of Famadihana and joyousness of the occasion.  All the while, groups of young men removed large slabs of stone from the tomb’s entrances, sliding them off to one side to reveal a musty, cavernous darkness below. 

James and I had positioned ourselves near the entrance to one of the tombs with the hope of catching a glimpse inside.  A group of young men had already descended into one of the tombs and was emerging with the first ‘faty’ or dead body.  One of the older men from across the entrance noticed our fascination and asked emphatically, ‘would you like to go inside?’ 

We were dumb-founded; I was under the impression that it wasn’t proper practice to let just anyone tour the inside of a tomb, a most sacred places in a culture that holds its ancestors in the highest regard.  Still, I looked at James, who gave me a look of, ‘well if you’re game, then I am,’ and we both quickly agreed.  He pulled the two of us around to the front entrance and showed us down a small set of stone steps that led down into the tomb.

Inside the ceiling was just tall enough for James and I to stand up, having ducked through the small stone doorway to enter in.  The chamber had a dank, musty smell and the air felt warm with the faint, stale humidity of air that had ventilated through and around death for years.  We stood in the center of the cavity which was ringed by three levels of carved stone shelving on each wall and on the far side across from the doorway.  Our new friend explained that the most recent bodies are put into the tombs on the lower shelves and the ‘faty’ slowly graduate upwards the longer they’ve been in the tomb.  Having seen the tomb James and I quickly excused ourselves, not wanting to overstay our welcome, and rejoined the crowd of Malagasy people dancing with already extracted bodies. 

As things began to wind down, James came over to me and said that he and Tahiry would have to take off so that they could make it back to the capital before dark.  At that point I was worn out and happy for an excuse to take off.  Not to mention that the young drunk guy who had previously been giving me the evil eye had seemed to have settled himself and I wanted to take off before my luck changed.  The matriarch of the family also appeared to be looking for an excuse to take a little break and walked Zo, Ras, Tahiry, James and myself back to the main road so we could pack up our DJ equipment and send our two friends to Tana. 

I said goodbye to James and Tahiry and parked myself on the opposite side of the road with Ras, Zo and all of our equipment to wait for a taxi brousse (the local bus transport) to take us back towards Arivonimamo.  All of the sudden I hear a chorus of voices shouting from behind the main house, on the pathway that led from the tomb.  A hoard of men and women, all wearing my same Malagasy shirt that says we’re all from the same family come storming out from behind the house and at the center of the throng I saw a young woman balling her eyes out, held up by another young woman and a young man.  On the edges of the fray there were two young guys, veins bulging from their necks in anger and eyes the same blood-shot, cloudy hue that happens only when someone’s far gone on ‘taoka’ or Malagasy moonshine.  The whole family was screaming and failing their arms while some of the women cried hysterically and young drunk men circled the yard provoking each other. 

I quickly pulled a sweatshirt I had brought over the top of my family t-shirt at which point one of the older Malagasy men saw me and tried to explain the situation to me.  Unfortunately he was as lost in the haze of moonshine as the young men and couldn’t exactly piece together what he was trying to explain away.  He gripped my hand tightly and with eyes bulging from his head implored me to understand how sad it made him to see what was happening to the family.  How much it hurt his heart to see these young men acting this way. I assured him that I understood and he stumbled back in to mediate the dispute/provoke the young men.  I wanted to fade as much into the shadows as possible so I asked Ras to figure out what was going on. ‘Apparently that girl’s husband said a swear word which upset her and then her brother got upset with the husband,’ Ras explained.

Wait? That’s it?  This woman was wailing as if she’d just lost her first born child and the half the men at the Famadihana were strutting around like they might slit each other’s throat.  ‘Yea, that’s it, I guess,’ Ras said and shook his head.

The fight began to cross the street and the pack of angry men swung in front of me and veered off to the right.  For a moment I thought it had calmed down and then out of nowhere one young guy bolted across the street and head-butted another so hard that it knocked him off his feet and sent him sailing into a ditch 5 yards to my right. 

At this point I didn’t care to fade into the shadows anymore and just wanted to get back to Arivonimamo so Ras, Zo and I flagged the next brousse we could find, quickly threw our gear on top and hitched a ride back home.

On the way back the three of us re-hashed the situation.  Zo and Ras were both having a pretty good laugh at how out  of control all the drunkards had gotten but both of them were a little unsettled by how dark things had turned.  Of Ras’s three reasons for Famadihana, I could see he was definitely right about how important Famadihanas are for honoring the ancestors.  It also made sense that it would probably keep you from dating your sister. At least helps you remember who exactly makes up that gigantic Malagasy family of yours.  As for strengthening the love within a family?  I wasn’t entirely convinced.  Or maybe the take home message is that taoka gasy is a fierce drug not to be trifled with.  Either way, been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

Until next time,

Veloma.   

Family

I was living in Milan, Italy at the time, second semester of my Junior year of college and my family had just come to visit.  We took a day trip up to the Lake Como area, a short jaunt North of Milan, and as we strolled along cobbled streets that traversed the hills surrounding the lake I got to thinking how bizarre life was at that moment.  I was living in a beautiful apartment, provided by my abroad program, in downtown Milan a few block from the famed La Scalla opera house. It must have been incredibly expensive.  Reflecting upon my circumstances a bit I started musing aloud, ‘isn’t it odd that I may be living in the most expensive apartment that I’ll ever live in and I’m probably the poorest I’ll ever be?’

To which my brother replied, ‘No man…. I could see you being poorer.’

Turns out he was right.

So here I am, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Madagascar.  It certainly wasn’t the promise of reaping great financial reward that drew me.  I’ve had to justify my life here over and over to perplexed Malagasy friends who grapple with the reality of a young American man leaving the land of promise and opportunity, forsaking family and friends, to come and subsist in Madagascar on the necessarily meager Peace Corps stipend ($4 per day).  I tell them that what I forgo in wealth, I make up for ten-fold in experience.  It could be that individuality and independence are hallmarks of American culture and create a certain restlessness in people, a proclivity to, or a need to strike out on one’s own and find life through experience.  But what gets left behind? 

I spoke with a friend the other day who, after hearing that I taught about business here said that Madagascar needs more technicians from countries that have ‘lasa lafitra’ or essentially, ‘gone far.’  Ok, fair enough I told him.  The phrasing of having ‘gone far’ implied for me some beginning point, which supposedly Madagascar is closer to, and conjured up the image of a linear progression, some road that the US is conceivably much further along.  I explained to him that if it’s the case that the US has ‘lasa lafitra’ then what I want to find out by living here is what we in America may have lost along the way.  To come here and live life as a Peace Corps Volunteer I’ve had to temporarily sacrifice family and my relationships at home, which turns out to be the great irony of my life here.  The most significant thing that I’ve left behind in order to learn what may have been lost on the road to prosperity ends up being dearest to the heart of Malagasy culture: family.          

Malagasy families are undeniably large.  If I were to quote an average number of children in a Malagasy family I would just be guessing, but judging by the number of little rascals I have running around my block, I would guess five or six to be a fair estimate.  It’s quite the jigsaw to try to puzzle all these little buggers to their respective ‘ray-aman-dreny’ or ‘parents,’ but I’ve gotten a pretty good handle on it over the past year.  It’s true that many of the demographic trends playing out all over the world are also creeping into Malagasy culture, so the average number of children in a single family is decreasing, but from what I can tell it’s still stubbornly high.  I asked a child earlier today how many brothers and sisters he had? ‘umm..betsaka,’ was all he said after a moment’s hesitation, deep in thought. ‘Lots.’  I also had an enlightening conversation about the number of children running around town with an older woman I often talk to when we pass on the road. 

‘So what do you think of Malagasy families?’ she asked.

‘They’re great. You guys sure have a lot of children,’ I proposed in order to see what she had to say about family size.

‘We sure do, that’s what Malagasy  people do.’

‘Doesn’t that get expensive, feeding everyone and sending them to school?’ I thought myself pretty clever, hoping I could slowly implant the notion in her that there was some economic link between poverty and inordinately large family sizes.

‘Yea, that’s why we’re so poor,’ she exclaimed matter-of-factly.

‘Oh.’  

So it’s true that people are aware that a large amount of kids running around can exacerbate economic hardship.  Yet kids in Madagascar don’t just eat up a family’s resources, they’re often an integral part of keeping the house running.  As soon as they’re physically old enough to handle it kids often help the mother take care of the house hold chores.  The young guys, not quite as much, but it’s incredibly common to see young girls responsible for taking care of a baby sibling or called by an overworked mother to tackle any number of chores.  Every day I see little girls, scarcely twelve years old, parading up and down the streets with a little baby swaddled in a blanket and cradled on her back.

Malagasy people also marry considerably younger than Americans.  This isn’t an official number but I’ve been told by friends that 17-20 is a pretty average marital age for Malagasy girls, whereas men wait slightly longer, maybe 22-24.  As I edge towards 25 you can imagine how obsessed my adoptive families here have become with finding me a wife. 

Once they are married gender roles are fairly prescribed, though things have begun to shift in recent years with the exposure to Western norms of gender equality.  Traditionally men go out and find money, however that might be, and the women stay home to take care of the house and tend to the family.  Farm work seems to be something that both genders share in equally which plays a substantial role in the life of most families in this predominantly agrarian society.  I’ve been told that in recent years it isn’t unheard of for women to be the ones who work and for a man to play the stay-at-home dad.  Yet it’s not quite common, and gender still plays a significant role in family dynamics.  One particularly interesting aspect that stood out to me is that though the husband often brings home the money, it is quickly relinquished to the wife, who then manages the family finances.  I was told a couple of times that this is very much a distinctive characteristic of the Malagasy family dynamic.

Something else that differentiates the practices of an average Malagasy family from those that have become commonplace in American society is the approach to old age.  Nothing will appall a Malagasy person more than hearing that in many cases, people in America are carted off to a nursing home, as opposed to moving back in with a son or daughter’s family, once they’ve grown older and lost the ability to take care of themselves.  I asked a friend the other day if grandparents often lived with their kids and got a very definite,

‘No, not usually. They often live on their own.’

‘Really?’ I asked.

‘Well yea, until they’re older and can’t take care of themselves. Then of course they do.  Where else would they live?’       

It’s been awkward before when I’ve watched a mixture of shock and befuddlement wash over the face of a Malagasy friend as another friend tries to explain what he’d heard we do to our elders in America.  For most Malagasy people the practice of spending your final years in a nursing home is ignominious, and sending your loved ones there sins against the backbone of Malagasy society, the family.     

I want to leave off with a short section of an email I sent to my parents nearly a year ago, three or so months after getting to Arivonimamo.  My dad recently thought to send it back to me after finding out I was planning to write about family:

“I have a story I’ve been meaning to tell you guys.  So I had just gotten back from the In-Service Training and was walking around Arivonimamo visiting some of the artisans and delivering some money from scarves I had sold, when one of the ladies invited me into her house.   Malagasy people are incredibly hospitable so I get ‘mandrosoa’ all the time, which basically means, ‘come on in.’  So I was delivering this lady her money and caught her just as she was slaughtering a chicken for lunch.  I sat with her for a while and watched her cook and clean the chicken.  We chatted some more while she spun some silk thread and then when the food was ready they invited me to eat with them.  She told me during lunch that her son is studying in Indonesia right now and he’ll be home in just under two years, which is crazy because he has a remarkably similar time frame to me.  Anyways, I think all the talk about her son and my situation and living abroad, and the fact that I was living a sort of analogous life to her son, got her thinking about how this must be for you guys.  So she asked me if I missed you guys.  I told her I did but that I was lucky because there were so many people like her to take me in and make me feel at home.  At that point I turned back towards her and noticed that she was teary- eyed and had been crying a bit.  The whole situation just really struck me because no matter how independent and individual I feel here, and no matter how strange my situation seems, there’s something so common about it too, or at least it speaks to how transcendent of culture the emotional ups and downs are for both me and the people I left in the States.”- August 2012

Who knows, maybe we’re not so different after all.

Until next time,

Veloma