My batch answer for everybody asking me what Madagascar is like.
One dreamy mosquito net haze (made hazier by my myopia) flutters between me and the rest of the world. And I love it. I feel like I have my own private room, even as the bunk above me creaks and shakes with mounts and dismounts.
People keep wanting me to describe my environs. I hate to give my opinion as if it’s anything definitive when I have only been here a few brief hours and my perspective is alien. There are people whose narratives on Madagascar are infinitely more important and valid than mine. But here goes. (No pictures; the internet here isn’t fast enough to upload them, I’m afraid.)
It’s past midnight and I’m officially on day 2 of the capital city, Anantanarivo. The whole place is a sensory barrage. I stepped out of the airplane to the subtly sweet smell of engine exhaust and a bright gibbous moon. From the luggage carousel onwards, we were welcomed by smiling, vested luggage porters. It quickly became evident that they were there for tips; I had to stealthily spot my luggage, sneak towards the carousel without looking at it, and grab it before anyone could help me. My teammate wasn’t so lucky; one porter who never even touched her luggage harangued her for her leftover euros, and when she didn’t give him enough, brought her luggage over to be checked by security. Then we had another heart-stopping moment when the porter holding our sign for the pickup vehicle we requested back in America did not seem to know about our pre-determined destination. With a pang, I wondered whether this stranger was our real driver after all. What if we were being taken somewhere else by someone else? What could we do? How would we find out? The story ends well. The guy with the sign handed us over to the guy with the van and who confirmed our destination.
Next battle: we arrived at the hostel past 1 AM; the night-shift worker placed us in a room with towering bunks, housing nine. I was on the third bunk-story. There was no secure place for luggage. Our compromise was to triage our valuables and sleep with them in the bunk with us. I didn’t even take off my shoes. My mosquito net reeked of feet. Actually, the whole room overall had a pedal aroma.
It turned out in the morning that we were placed in the men’s room. We were relocated to the women’s room the next day, and it only had the scent of the flowers blooming just outside the window. Do men just smell like feet? Another post-midnight lodger was added to the women’s room just now, a male, in the bunk above me; now the sour tang of wet shoes is back.
Our one taxi ride was a wild adventure. There aren’t really addresses in Anantanarivo. All navigation is done by landmarks and directions, but we didn’t know French or Malagasy, so we just said random key words and pointed and prayed that the driver knew what we meant. The taxi bumbled and rumbled over most of the cobbled streets, but when it was climbing up towards the high city (a higher-income, less residential area, where we were living), its engine started whining outrageously and our speed simmered to a stop. The driver was clearly flooring his gas. We squeaked along a few meters at a time while the car roared. The normal smoke-smell of the city intensified, and was tinged with the smell of burning plastic. One of my teammates started cheering on the car; then we all joined in, and so did the driver, for each excruciating second as the car climbed. When we made it to the summit, we all (including the driver) yelled and whooped. I guess there’s no language barrier to joy.
That night, our hostel hosted an urban funk concert. A lively group of European ex-pats and Malagasy friends came by to hang out, and we joined them (or they joined us). They all evidently knew each other, and it was dizzying how quickly the conversation bounced from English to French to Malagasy and back. We felt the sticky shame of American mono-lingualism. The only other mono-lingual people we’ve met here were Canadian and Australian. Yay for the remnants of English imperialism! Now we’re the least capable in other tongues.
Going just about anywhere in Tana, I am confronted with the reality of poverty. The cars here range from 30–15 years old, on average. The exhaust smell from the tarmac at the airport only intensifies in the city proper, and is mingled with other aromas: tobacco, cooking fires, welding, roasting meat, sweat, urine, and flowers. Stands of fried donuts and long sausage strands also boast portly flies. In between buildings are winding alleyways half a meter wide; sometimes in them I spot stairs, chairs, clotheslines, piles of rubble, and people. Beggars line the streets of the touristy high city. Their toddlers know how to say Madame and Monsieur; I saw kwashiorkor outside of a textbook for the first time. I feel intensely visible. Street vendors and passersby stare as I walk by. Out of habit, I keep my city-face on. “Non, merci.” No smiles. “Tsy misy. Avela.” Quick pace. One persistent sticker-seller followed my team for two blocks as my teammate smiled and refused. Two men with fistfuls of roses drifted towards us as if pulled by magnets. I shook my head no, hoping that this, too, was a universal signal.
The problem is, I understand that people do what their circumstances allow. There’s no shame in begging. The luggage porters, the aggressive salespeople, the invasion of space, all of it is to keep on living. What is my discomfort to their daily battle to put food on the table?
As we ate lunch, a woman was huddled in a blanket across the street, sheltering an infant between her knees. The whole time, she dozed there. A teammate couldn’t handle the fact that we were eating all the food we could want while she couldn’t afford a meal. She bought a meal for her at the supermarket. I reminded her at the cashier that such an effort would be futile. “That’s a nice thing to do for her, but this problem is endless.” The problem is systemic, and she is but a symptom. I had said similar things about the street vendors that she talked to. “If you buy something from one, the rest are going to hound you until you buy something else.” But I was sorely corrected by her response: “Sure, we can’t fix things for everyone, but if we can help one person once, don’t we save a life?”
I was ashamed of myself. I didn’t show it, but I realized I did not have a love for humanity the same way my teammate has. If I had been around during the Gospels, I might have so advised Jesus, “there are adulterers all over the place, and Samaria is totally a detour from where you’re headed. What if You did this whole John 4 thing more efficiently by calling a meeting in some central location for all adulterers in the Middle East and forgiving them all at once? Batch forgiveness.” Or, “Jesus, you may have saved this woman from being stoned today, but people are being stoned every day. Why didn’t you stop those stonings?” Or, “These guys who sawed through the ceiling totally cut off your speaking, which is way more important than this paralyzed guy. At least finish what you had to say, so that you don’t encourage further rude behavior like this.” Or, “Jesus, in a few months You’re going to die on behalf of all men. That’s the highest yield thing You could possibly do for us. Until then, why don’t You just take it easy? You’re already doing a lot. You don’t have to tire Yourself out by helping individuals if You’ve already helped the world.” I imagine His reply would be something like, “get behind Me, Satan!”
For all my high-minded efforts to make the world better, I think I missed the trees for the forest. It’s not like helping one person would cost me much. It’s not like doing so signs a contract for me to buy food for each of the thirty-or-so homeless people we say today. So why didn’t I want to do that? Or I had a thought, maybe giving begging children the bonbons they requested or giving homeless people things to eat would encourage them to keep begging rather than getting a profession. But does that mean I consider myself an authority to police or influence others’ behavior? That I alone hold the scales to should and should not? Have I fallen into the developed-country mindset of being somehow influential to this country just because I hail from privilege and wealth? Here I am, B.F. Skinner to the street-residents of Anantanarivo, you’re welcome. That logic assumes that people beg out of choice. I doubt that privileged assumption fiercely. Or I had the mindset, “I’m here to do some medical research that will benefit many more people. I’m giving back in a better way, so I don’t need to do it here.” But helping people systemically and helping people personally aren’t mutually exclusive. So why am I making it that way?
I don’t have an answer yet. Let’s keep talking and thinking.
