10

Got back to Tana today from a week long village stay. Hmm how to explain ? I was put purposefully with a fam that tsy mahay frantsay (did not speak French). Roland had perceived my level of nerdiness with the Malagasy and thought I could benefit from some straight up immersion. well

 So on Friday morning I was brought home by my dad Faly (literally means ‘happy’) in a janky blue automobile owned by the school. On the way we passed a sleeping volcano, casual. My dad was missing his four front teeth and had an excellent crazyman smile. F – A –L –Y tattooed the knuckles of his right hand, ADIOS between his finger and thumb.  “tia miteny malagasy” “dei mafiniratra!”

We live in the fokotony (town) KABAHABA. Our house is a room in a two story brick ‘traditional’ style casa with a cluttered porch. Chickens all around. There are 2 beds. One is my bed and the other bed is for the rest of the fam. There was a mom a dad and three daughters age 8 – 12. There are two tables, a dresser and a radio and a window. Also a rice bag full of all their clothes.  My dad shows me his guitar, it is broken but he has fixed it with a fork and a leather strap. ‘mahay?’ I play redemption song for them and they think I am a genius. Yet to be discovered that my dad is actually boss at guitar even though he only plays hira vavaka (church hymns). my mom is beautious and holds her hair up with a red clip in the shape of a dollar sign. She is strong looking and has good eye wrinkles. ‘dei mafinaritra fa afaka miteny gasy satria tsy mahay frantsay isika’ à how great that you know Malagasy because we do not speak French!

….about that. This was me starting my third week of language learning……………………….. dei mafinaritra!

My mom’s brother lives in the room downstairs with his wife and two chidlers. Grandma and grandpa and random cousin live in the house right next door. Older sister sells petrol in the shack across from that. Cousins live around the corner. My mom’s tanindrazana (ancestral land) is here in kabahaba so her fam is literally everywhere. They are stuck deep in 5+ generations of mpamboly ovy . of mpiompy omby (potato farmers. cow raisers). This is what they do. They tell me several times. They say it with such swagger I feel like a loser trying to explain my parents’ desk jobs. ‘insurance?’ Faly asks me about my dads commute and I am at a loss to explain a 4-lane highway.

Oh forgot to mention THESE PPL ARE TINY. I am literally a gangly white giant amongst them. Also there are three kittens. I have never seen a kitten eat an ear of corn before last week. Or a bowl of rice. New things new things.

The girls come home from school and are literally silent to my attempts to make them talk to me. I am asking them stupid questions ‘Do you like food? Do you like school? Do you like pencil?’ They are staring at me in the face. I look up the word for ‘shy’ in the dictionary.

These are my days:

-we mitsangasangana (walk around). They take me on walks literally through fairy lands. I feel like we are tiny ants crawling through a crazy magical landscape. Sometimes my dad makes us stop and do photo shoots. Sometimes they play in the rice paddies but I cant go in because I might get a parasitic worm. Sometimes we mipetripetrika (sit around) and mijeryjery (look around). I am struggling with finding a word stronger than dei mafinaritra which they say for anything that is relatively nice at all, including eating a chicken neck for breakfast.

-I follow my mom to the fields and sometimes help if she lets me. She will not let me put the giant bag of soja on my head. She will let me mamboly ovy (plant potatoes). I have my hands in cow shit and pine needle fertilizer for much of the morning. Dei mafinaritra!

-people come up and watch me pull soja plants. They are confused. They are wondering what is the vazah doing here pulling up soja plants? They are wanting to know – ‘why is she here?’ ‘does she speak malagasy?’ they are especially wanting to know – ‘does she eat corn?’ ‘does she eat sweet potato?’ this question comes up without fail every time. ‘how much corn?’ eating corn is a hilarious joke in kabahaba, I think because everyone grows it, but no one grows it to sell it to anyone. They grill it and eat it for tsaki tsaki (snack). They cut the stalks with a machete and eat them while they mipetripetraka, while they are staring me in the face. It becomes my fallback for talking about how I like kabahaba: ‘mihinana katzaka betsaka (I eat a lot of corn).’ People literally think this is the most hilarious thing ever. I make friends.

- I juggle the baolina (soccer ball) with the ankizy (neighborhood chidlets). I play a lot with my 18 year old cousin who is crazy athletic. Sometimes she has to stop and breastfeed her 6 month old infant while I sit idly by and ponder the state of my unused ovaries.

-I try to ‘play’ with the kids in the neighborhood but this usually entails them staring at me, waiting for me to tell them what to do. I teach them hopscotch and how to say ‘wazzzapp??????!!’

-a lot of the time I sit around and observe people working. There is a lot more time here than I’ve ever experienced anywhere.

-sometimes I draw with my sisters. I learn the word for ‘to teach yourself’ mahay hoazy. Also an inexplicably hilarious word for the residents of kabahaba.

-I speak Malagasy ALL THE TIME. By the end I am a semi competent at making complex sentences and comprehending when old grandmas want to ask me if it hurt to get my nose pierced. Roland tells me im the most advanced they’ve had anyone at this stage. I literally read the dictionary for fun. Nerd win

-I walk the 7 mile round trip to the market/church. I am literally sore from this. Coincidentally, this is something my 8 year old sister does every single day. At church (Lutheran) we sit outside because we are tara­iki be (late)so there is no room inside. I sketch the mountain across from me and amass a crowd of literally 30 children. I feel awkward because they are paying attention to me instead of Jesus. I ask my mom ‘mety?’ ‘is this okay?’. She shrugs. Jesus can wait.

- we respectively eat 6 small mountains of rice for breakfast lunch and dinner. With the rice we eat  sometimes potatoes sometimes beans sometimes egg. Sometimes akoho (chicken). the whole chicken. They give the chicken head to the youngest. They encourage me to eat chunks of fat because this is the best part! You must eat it! I do not eat it. They are happy to eat it for me. They like the calories.

- I sit on the porch and mitendry gitara (play guitar). I write some songs but don’t think they will work anywhere besides this one guitar capoed with the fork the way it is. Faly tunes the strings on a whim to fit however he is feeling at the mo, whichever church hymn he is wanting to make us sing to. I ask him how long he has been playing and he flashes me his gum line - ’30 minutes!’

When it is time to leave my 8 year old sister suddenly and unexpectedly starts bawling her eyes out. This is really distressing for me because I was hoping to escape this veloma (goodbye) with dry eyeballs, but this was not in the cards. Ive never cared so much about a family I knew for less than a week. They tell me to come back, to bring my whole fianakaviana !! ..tempting.