Written upon arrival in Madagascar:
When last I wrote, I spoke of the stars of the southern hemisphere, sitting with insomnia in Greenfield the night before I left.
As I write, I am watching my first sunrise over Madagascar dissipate the velvety strips of fog over the rolling hills. The golden light is bouncing back pink and purple over the low clouds, and already an impromptu (but evidently regular) chorus of animal noises has crescendoed to provide an ample soundtrack. Of the instruments, I can recognize only the rooster, the crickets and some songbirds. The rest are completely foreign.
Back to the stars. Last night, I lay on the roof of my hotel to make good on my grandfather’s permission to formulate my own constellations at will. The sky was pitch black and the Milky Way cut a brilliant divide directly overhead. I have never seen stars like this before. Venus and Mars shone brightly. Orion was there, upside down, but there were more individual stars and potential constellations than I have ever witnessed in my life. Cliché, yes, but the shooting stars were frequent and sigh invoking.
And of course, this being Madagascar and thus in compliance with all of my other experiences thus far along my journey, my expectations—even for the night sky—were shattered in the best way possible. There were not just the stars, the planets and an enormous illuminated crescent moon, but to the south and stretching up the west was a dry lightning storm, just periphery enough to not block my view of the milky way—again like nothing I have ever experienced in my life. Huge clouds filled and contained the light in an incessant strobe-light effect. There was no thunder. It was so beautiful I wanted to cry.
So here I sit, morning in Madagascar, on that same roof now. I am safely with my group in a hotel estate on the outskirts of a village on the far outskirts of Antananarivo (Tana), the capital city. Due to political and social unrest in Tana, the schedule of our program remains up in the air; we will remain out here for our orientation and as long as need be until we have determined the safe and proper course of action for our program.
Getting here, however, was a series of stories ridiculous in and of themselves that make this morning all the more sweet.
It took five takeoffs to for me to get here: one from Milwaukee, one Atlanta, one Washington, one Paris, one Marseille before touching down in Tana. There are two groups through SIT in Madagascar this semester, one focusing on ecology and conservation, the other (mine) on culture and society. There are sixteen in each group, each with a 13:3 girl to guy ratio. Each group had one person go early to Madagascar, so there were 28 of us from all over the country that met up at Washington Dulles to embark together.
Some of you in country may have received a frantic text message (“um al gore is on my plane”) from me in the moments before my plane took off from Dulles on its way to Paris. Indeed, it was true: Al Gore was in first class on my plane, security clientele and all. The responses to my text were hilarious and emboldening. Some favorites included “Well that’s an inconvenient truth”, “He’s contributing to global warming” and “Give him a hug for me”, but overwhelmingly the theme seemed to be a call to action: “I expect a story out of this”, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” “make something happen” and, Gracie’s piece de la resistance of “Go talk to him to tell him how smart our generation is and he’ll be like, oo that girl’s great.”
Generally, I knew I had to be bold and make something happen. After all, I was en route to Madagascar (one of the earth’s last ecological Disneylands) and sharing a leg of that route with Al Gore, a Nobel laureate in environment-loving, was bound to be a good omen.
I happened to sit next to a girl named Rita on the plane (good sign #1) who, as conversation would prove, happened to be from Madison (good sign #2). She is funny, sarcastic and game for anything (good sign #3), willing to humor me in my endeavors. We made fast friends with each other and shortly thereafter a stewardess on the plane who confirmed that yes, our suspicions were right (Al Gore was on the plane) and no, it was out of the question to go up and visit him. But, upon another pass-through and when asked if it would make a difference that we were 28 students en route to Madagascar to love and save the environment, she perked up and ran to confer with the first-class stewardess, coming back and excitedly instructing us to write a note explaining ourselves and our purpose which she would deliver to Mr. Gore.
Whaaaat, we thought—we get to write a note to Al Gore! Rita and I, as others slept, scribbled three drafts of a note that basically proceeded with: an apology for interrupting his flight, an explanation of who we are and what we’re doing, a complement to him for his work on behalf of the environment, and a humble request to come and say hey if he had an opportunity. This culminated with the fact that Rita (of course) is an artist and drew a chameleon not unlike those we will see here at the bottom of the page next to our names and the underwrite of “the SIT Madagascar group”.
A sincere and succinct letter, complete with kind words and original artwork and signed with our names, was hand delivered to an intrigued Al Gore by an excited stewardess.
Two hours later, in black jeans and a black tee-shirt not unlike the outfit worn by John Travolta in Grease, Mr. Gore came back to say hello. He was led straight to Rita and myself to shake our hands, waving to the rest of the group. Startled people around us began to take pictures. We talked for a minute about what we were doing and he was happy to hear about it, wishing us luck before heading back up from whence he came.
It was ridiculous, especially because we hadn’t told the rest of the group we invited Al Gore to come back and say hello on their behalf, so they were pretty caught off-guard and utterly confused as to why he walked up to Rita and me without hesitation. So yes, the first very ridiculous moment.
But not the last. We landed at Charles de Gaulle in Paris at 6-something in the morning for what we thought would be a 6-ish hour layover. I had resigned myself that nothing exciting would come at this point of the trip, because let’s face it: Paris is a hike from the airport and with international flights one can never be too sure. I would not see Paris except in name.
With the help of an extra four hours provided by our flight being delayed from 1pm to 5:20pm and the daring drive of friends Sarah and Marit, we knew we could make a dash for it. Marit is a fellow Columbian (also a fellow Urban Studies major) whose good friend Miriam is studying in Paris. At 6am we procured a euro coin which provided us 45 seconds worth of instructions on how to find Miriam via the Metro. These instructions ended with exiting the station, walking three blocks and looking for a red door. A long shot, yes, but we were willing.
At this moment, let me say: Merci bien, le peuple français, pour tous tes grèves! The French habitually love to strike, and when that strike happens to be a rail strike and happens to fall while we have exactly 7 hours (and I only 25 euro) to do Paris, that translates to free rail into Paris proper and subsequent free Metro rides throughout. Obviously, someone was looking out for us and found us very funny.
The entire (free) ride there we were in awe that we were actually going to Paris. As we exited the Metro station and saw the glorious edifices and window boxes that ooze ‘o la la’, we were in shock that we were actually in Paris. When we walked three blocks and found four red doors, we thought it hilarious that we were in Paris. And sort of lost.
With a posse of two behind me, I walked into a hotel and convinced the concierge to let us use his phone to find our friend. Two minutes later, Miriam emerged from the first of the red doors and led us up to her adorable efficiency on the fifth floor in an equally adorable banlieu de Paris.
Not to waste a moment, we collected ourselves and descended onto the streets of Paris for what would prove to be a “Greatest Hits” tour of the city. Each of us had been there before, so we had no hesitation setting a course for the nearest boulangerie en route to the Centre Pompidou. I am convinced that the best food on earth is a French baguette with gruyere and jambon, real beautifully cured ham. I could eat that forever, so I ate two demi- baguettes over those six hours. That, and a pain au chocolat, a fantastic latte in a petit café on one of the side streets, a croissant, a crèpe….. basically our tour was punctuated with French food and cliché Parisian sites. We justified this by bringing up the piles of rice we could expect in Tana.
BEFORE NOON that day (bearing in mind at 6am we were still at the airport), we managed to see: Miriam’s neighborhood, the Centre Pompidou, Hôtel DeVille, Notre Dame, Pont Neuf, the Louvre, the jardin de Tulieres, the Place de la Concorde, the Musée d’Orsay, also waving hello to the Tour d’Eiffel, the Champs-Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe. This is with the time to eat the aforementioned delicacies included.
Ahhh Paris, je t’aime! The spirit was willing but the body was weak, having gone over twenty-five hours without sleeping, but it was worth it completely to see the city in a new light and begin to understand both the grand sites and the more accessible, more human petit rues filled with people and smells and brightly colored cloth. I love Paris, and for a minute Marit and I looked at each other and both thought, “do we have to leave?” After all, we hadn’t planned on coming so each thing we saw and ate was like a treat, a bonus, a gift undeserved. It was lovely.
Tired from our walking adventure, we slept most of the train ride back to the airport. When we woke up it was as if it didn’t happen. But I took pictures, so I know it did. Also, I retained a pain au chocolat, so I tasted that it did.
Air Madagascar is certainly not United Airlines. There weren’t any screens with movies or fun maps to follow of our location over continents, much less famous political celebrities. But the crew was enthusiastic and I was dog tired, so I didn’t much care. A quick stop in Marseille to pick up more passengers and we were off over Africa, which in the middle of the night really was the dark continent.
Fast forward to later. The sun rises and the Indian Ocean is blue and then… the Malagasy coast. Beautiful. Soon this gives way to the fabric of the Malagasy land; deep velvety hills with rippling shadows, coarse wooly forests, patchwork quilts of rice paddies in various stage of ripeness. We descended the plane and the warm air smelt like flowers and like…freshness. It’s hard to describe the scent of fresh, but that’s what Madagascar smells like. Warm freshness.
We went through the modest airport with ease and good humor and were greeted by Roland, the program director. We collected our bags and threw them on top of a van, or taxi-brousse, which we boarded en route to our hotel. The drive went around the periphery of Tana, where the breeze flew in the open windows with sounds of people’s voices, laughter, music, chickens... it was amazing. The colors are so vibrant here, and driving along you see so many people along the streets, buying sausages and baguettes and old bicycle pats. People often called up to us in the car. I had a discussion in French with a young boy about his t-shirt through the window.
I felt like the drive could last forever and I would be content. At the same time I wanted to run out of the vehicle and interrogate most people about their daily life. What do you do? Why are you buying those used pipes? Is that palm oil in those bottles? Just as this was getting out of hand, the bustling streets gave way to a rolling landscape and we pulled into the hotel.
The hotel is a itty palace of sorts. Not really, but to lie horizontally, even on hard beds, is delightful. The people who work here are kind and friendly, and as we are the only tenants, they prepare meals family-style for us. Interesting foods, sometimes, but nevertheless it’s been fun to sit at a long table and get to know the other fifteen students on the program. As to the surroundings, the hotel itself is beautiful, surrounded by hills and paddies but nestled in its own garden, with mango, papaya and pomegranate trees. A dog recently gave birth to puppies who romp about and there are two huge tortoises who live in the garden. When I asked a man what their names were he laughed at me and told me that tortoises don’t have names. I disagreed, secretly naming them Pierre and Maria.
We have been in orientation since arriving. A dance/folk opera troupe came and performed for us at our compound. It sounds cliché to say it again, but it was magical. They sang from the top of their lungs and danced and changed costumes. I loved it; I felt really emotional listening and watching them.
Our conversations as a group have been interesting, half in French and half in English to start out. We have had many discussions about the developing situation in Tana, which at the moment is unstable but a fascinating experiment in a fledgling democracy with a populist bent. The progression of the program at this point is very much up in the air, though it’s hard at a hotel as isolated as this to be able to comprehend that events a mere thirty kilometers away are changing the course of our next three months. The frustrating paradox is that without having seen Tana, it’s hard to grasp the root arguments of the unrest; because of the unrest, it’s unsure that we’ll get to see Tana and contextualize it for ourselves.
Other than that, I’ve been going on many walks with some of my new friends around the area to little villages and through some fields. We’ve begun to learn Malagasy and do most of our academic speaking in French; my French comprehension has improved dramatically and I’ve gotten over the hurdle of fear when it comes to initiating a conversation or question in French. I find the familiarity that comes with having read and written a lot in my French classes has given me an added edge in conversational fluency.
The other students are a very interesting, incredibly kind and varied bunch. I’m enjoying getting to know them all, through conversation, cards, and shared experiences. For instance, I found myself reaching out and hugging the two nearest me last night during the lightning storm, catching Mike and Abby slightly off guard, but they understood the emotion that drove me to do so. Soon many more of us joined into a long chain group hug as we stood on the roof (it’s flat) and watched the show. Nicola told us the Greek myth about the Milky Way and we decided that, for all intensive purposes, Zeus wasn’t a bad explanation for the Greeks to have decided upon for the type of storm we saw.
I can't wait for the real adventure to begin!
