the burden of choice.

Many years ago I read an interesting book with an even more interesting title, called “The Burden of Choice,” by R. Stephen Warner. Essentially, the book suggests that Americans are in many ways hindered by the amount of choices we have, from the big, life-changing decisions to the small options that inundate us daily. Over the last few months, I have given much thought to the “burden of choice” we face in America and as such, how little of it exists in Madagascar. Of course, I cannot generalize an entire country, but the contrasts between the two worlds are astounding.

For example: do we really need to choose between 30 brands of toothpaste and 50 kinds of shampoo at the grocery store? As Americans, how do we decide where to live, when we have all the means necessary to travel far and wide across the country, or in any other country around the world? We are told from infancy we can be anything we want to be; which career path to choose, with a seemingly endless array of livelihood opportunities at our fingertips? Where to go for vacation? Which school to go to and what area of study? What loaf of bread should we buy? What television show should we watch, on which television and in which room? When to have kids, and how many, if at all? Which drive-through to go to? Which bagel, from the 15 to choose from, the 20 cream cheese options, and anyway, from which bagel shop? How to choose a spouse, when we can meet a million people on the internet alone? Would you like fries with that? Window or aisle seat? Paper or plastic? Pick-up or delivery? The choices are infinite and so pervasive that we hardly even realize how burdensome they’ve become.

What would life be life with fewer decisions to make? In some ways, I’ve come to find out since moving to Madagascar. For certain, life is a whole lot simpler here. And I keep wondering, is this why Malagasy people seem so much happier than Americans? The jury is still out for me; I offer the following observations for your consideration.

The impetus for some of my thinking started after a conversation with my father on the phone during my first month or so in Ambolobozokely. At the time, I was deeply concerned about what work I could do in my village (and to a large extent, still am, but more on that another day). There is no clear job description for me here; I am meant to assess my community’s needs and work to improve people’s livelihoods, while taking into consideration many of the dire environmental issues facing Madagascar. There is no Malagasy organization or person I work for, or with, and nothing specifically I am supposed to do from day to day. I was telling my dad how distraught I felt at the time about this and he suggested I try to find a side job to keep myself busy in the meantime. I laughed! As if there were a lot to choose from! Here are the career prospects available in my village, with job descriptions:

Fisherperson: Go out fishing everyday; repair nets as needed; put the fish you and your family don’t eat on a truck that goes to the city fish market daily.

Mother: Care for children, wash your family’s clothes (scrub by hand), clean the house; polish the floors; gather, kill, prepare and cook all food; clean pots and pans (more scrubbing); carry water from the well to your kitchen hut on your head; weave baskets when you’re not doing everything else.

Then there’s a smattering of shopkeepers, who buy wares from time to time in the city; a couple of hotely-owners, whose daily duties include killing and cooking food; a few carpenters, a couple teachers.

So, that’s about all you would find in the Help Wanted section of the newspaper here, if there was one, that is. Since I am not interested in being a Malagasy mom (not yet, anyway), I do go out fishing quite a bit, which I thoroughly enjoy. The work can be quite hard on the hands and back, especially when the seas are bad, but I’ve always been happiest when I’m out on the water. When the fishing season is poor here on this side of the island, many fisherfolk head over to the west coast where the waters are calmer and the fishing better. Unfortunately, this leaves many women to fend for themselves and to care for their families; as such, prostitution is rampant in the nearby port city of Diego. So, not a lot of career options, as you can see. (However, I don’t want to create the impression that there are not “normal” jobs in Madagascar; I have met many Malagasy people working for NGO’s, law firms, development agencies, etc. Obviously work varies from city to village level.)

In any case, maybe you think the job market in Ambolobozokely sounds depressing, but here’s the clincher: everyone here seems as happy as can be, save for the inevitable money concerns. No one is going to career counselors or meeting with therapists to discuss what to do with their lives. They’re just living them, peacefully. Yes, many are dreadfully uneducated and painfully unaware of the issues facing the world outside of their little village, but I offer this up solely for conjecture: Are we Americans better off because we are brought up believing we can be doctors, astronauts or even president if we just try hard enough? Are we happier spending our lives chasing down that ever-elusive perfect job? What if we were just content to go out fishing everyday, eat what we catch, and sell the rest?

But wouldn’t it be boring to do the same thing everyday? Then again, I wonder if boredom is actually wrought from having too many choices. Kids here never seem bored at all, even though they have not a single toy to their names, so to speak. They play in the dirt, with sticks, with leftover bits of whatever is around (aka trash), and keep themselves occupied all day long between playing games outside and doing housework and chores. At first I found this sad. But then I started to ask myself, why? Kids here never, ever whine or complain about having nothing to do, the way many American children do. When you have so little, it’s easy to be overjoyed just to have a crayon and a piece of paper. Maybe it’s all the choices we give our kids these days that leads to so much discontentment and entitlement.

I don’t know. But here’s more on living with less.

When I stroll down the one road in my village, I have two choices if I want to buy something, and those places are small, seaside shacks, as I’ve already alluded to many times throughout my blog. It doesn’t really matter which place I go to anyway, because they both sell the same things on their three or four shelves: two types of pasta, cans of tomato paste, one brand of toothpaste, several types of cookies, one brand of condensed milk, one type of bread, one brand of beer… and in bulk: salt, flour, sugar, rice, soap, cooking oil (bring your own bottle and fill up as much as you need). That’s about it. There are other small items, but you get the gist.

Do I miss spending an hour wandering up and down the grocery store aisles, often feeling bewildered and overwhelmed by which cereal or yogurt to buy? Do I yearn for the long checkout lines filled with impatient shoppers and crying children, taking a number just to buy some cheese, scanning my groceries on a machine that talks to me, wandering up and down the glowing fluorescent lanes just to find that one last item on my shopping list? No, not really. Sure, I would love more diverse food options, but I don’t miss the over-excessiveness of the American grocery store.

Anyway, if I’m not in the mood for cooking, I can always stop by one of the two hotelys (Malagasy-style restaurants; read: hut with a table and benches) in my village. They pretty much serve the same delicious things day in and day out, depending on what the shopkeepers have killed and/or what’s available: chicken in an oil-based tomato sauce, fish (smoked or ground up with onions and tomatoes), beef with cabbage or papaya, shrimp in coconut-based sauce, or boiled, fresh crab… and ALWAYS served with rice. (As a side note, Malagasy people eat more rice per capita than any other people in the world. Rice is what they eat as their main dish; the rest of the food is eaten in smaller portions, as a side dish.)

Sometimes when I’m cooking at home, or just wishing I didn’t have to cook, I wistfully think back to the culinary choices I had in America. Anything I wanted to buy at the store, from practically any corner of the earth, was readily available to me. Breakfast might be Mexican chilequiles, lunch could be Indian dahl and naan, a dinner of spinach tortellini, with a glass of Australian wine or Belgian beer. (I salivated just writing that sentence.) So many food choices! That, for sure, is something I miss. Or is it? Read my recent blog, “food,” in which I talk about how much I enjoy eating locally.

So, since everyone here is eating more or less the same things, doing more or less the same work, living in more or less the same type of house, does that relieve some of the pressures that we as Americans feel constantly in our lives; the insidious one-upmanship and keeping-up-with-the-Joneses?

I find myself asking: Is life less burdensome in Madagascar because there isn’t a wide-array of choices inundating people on a daily basis? Are the Malagasy people happier in general because they live "simpler" lives? Or are we the fortunate ones in America because we have the world at our fingertips? What do you think? I’d love to hear your comments.