sometimes there are no words: a story from the beginning of the end.

Yesterday was one of the hardest days I've had in Madagascar. I got to witness the fascinatingly slow process of the Malagasy justice system at a village level.

On Saturday, after three days of waiting for paperwork to be completed at the Tribual Court in Diego, the Gendarme went to my village and arrested a 17-year old boy named Arnaud who had stolen many things from my house over six months ago. When I initially filed a report against him, I told the Gendarme that while I could not be sure he was the one who broke into my house in the middle of the night three weeks ago and stole my iPod next to my head, I thought the likelihood was high. On my word alone, they put him in handcuffs and hauled him off to a holding center, which is where I went yesterday morning.

After a couple of anxious hours of waiting, typewriters clacking away, I was informed that we would go to my village with Arnaud (in handcuffs) and three Gendarme to search his house and the house of his friend, where is where he says my iPod is.

The return trip to my village after so many weeks away was an emotional one for me. Memories of the last two years flooded my mind. What a bittersweet feeling to return to my village home under such unpleasant circumstances.

We proceeded to Arnaud's friend's house only to discover that his friend is out at sea fishing for the day and may not return to late afternoon or even the next day. After almost an hour of formalities and speeches by the village president and the Gendarme, and Arnaud swearing that his friend Vic is the one who stole the iPod, we were able to search the house.

The searching borders on comic. Digging through musty piles of clothes in cardboard boxes, rummaging through broken backpacks filled with miscellaneous papers and broken bits, opening up cupboards and baskets caked with dust, checking underneath moldy, flea-ridden mattress pads that look like they'd begun to grow into the wooden slats of the floor beneath them. We find nothing. It's hot, not a puff of air from the sea and well past lunchtime; the whole village is sitting in the shade, waiting for something to happen.

More speeches, which is the true Malagasy way. Nothing can be done in this country without this odd formality, in which you never actually look at the speaker. Everyone just sits around passively staring at the floor.

We eat rice in the late afternoon heat. Arnaud sits on the ground outside the shack, handcuffed, ostracized. Moments later, we hear a high-pitched mournful wailing sound, one that women here use at funerals. The sound is something of a cross between sobbing and warbling, and gives you chills immediately. Arnaud's mother approaches me, and half-prostrating before me, throwing her cotton head cloth repeatedly over her face, cries over and over again, begging my forgiveness. My stomach lurches and my heart breaks. I don't know what to say or do. Finally the Gendarme asks her to please wait outside.

Just then, word gets out that Arnaud's friend Vic has just returned from fishing. The Gendarme casually finish up their bowls of rice, enjoy a cold glass of Coke, and saunter over to Vic's boat. Laughing, they say, "Where's he going to run away to? He can't swim!" They escort him over and handcuff him to Arnaud and soon the next round of speeches and questioning begins.

Vic says he never stole my iPod, that he never went into my house that night. No surprise there.

Next we proceed to Arnaud's parent's house; more speeches, more searching, more groups of people standing around. The wailing mother continues to cry, and eventually asks to speak with me privately. She wants to know if she can pay me, if I am angry, if I think that Ambolobozokely is a bad place because of her son. I try in my best Malagasy to explain that she does not need to worry and that I love my village very much. Sometimes, there are no right words.

The search continues in the tumbledown shacks that people call home. The mattresses are disgusting, and I have to cover my face from the smell of mold and dust. Nothing here, nothing there. The Gendarme grow weary and start to question the two boys more aggressively. Soon, there will be nothing else to do but leave.

Astonishingly, we find three small items that had been stolen from my house from the first break-in last September: my alarm clock, a waterproof box and strangely... eye shadow. Why steal that?! And where were they found? Underneath the seat of an old, rusted car that's been left to decay for probably 15 years. Just the frame and a couple musty cushions remain.

By this point it's almost 5:30 and dusk is starting to settle over the village. I am emotionally exhausted and my brain feels like an empty pot. Too much language translation and cultural overload. I just want to go back to my shack and sleep forever.

We pack up the two handcuffed boys. They will go to the Gendarme holding center and after that, I do not know. They will not return to Ambolobozokely while I am there, which is only two weeks longer. I want to stay but some repairs are needed on my house before it's safe.

This is hard: I want to make everything better, to take away the shame that some might feel because of this event, to have closure and give thanks to those that have helped me over the last two years. I return to my village home today to begin the process of ending the sojourn. 

mora mora frustrations.

All of life in Madagascar can be summarized in two simple words: mora mora (slowly slowly). This covers everything from communication tactics to transportation issues, and even police work, which I have had the pleasure of experiencing first hand over the last couple weeks.

As most of you who follow my blog regularly know, my house was recently broken into in the middle of the night and my ipod was stolen as it lay beside me on my bed. After moving out of my village and waiting for a week for Peace Corps to organize themselves with a plan, today I was finally able to go to the Gendarme (armed police, who most of the time do absolutely nothing other than stand on the side of the road flagging down passing trucks and asking for money or something that they want from the driver, like fish, mangoes or whatever). I had this silly hope that I could simply swoop in, pick up the Gendarme and return to my village home.

When we arrived, we made all the formal, passive introductions and shuffled papers around the antiquated office for a bit of time. There is no electricity, no computers, no phones... just a couple of moldy rooms with large, open windows looking out onto mango trees and sugar cane. A couple women squatting in the shade. Chickens scratching in the dirt. In the background you could hear the click-clacking of a typewriter from the 1970's... the only piece of machinery in the entire building.

The Gendarme officer informed me that if I wanted them to actually go to my village and do something (ie go the guy's house that I believe did this), I would need to file a report, fix the old report I filled out before (requiring Malagasy language skills far exceeding my own), bring the paperwork to the Tribunal Court in Diego, wait three days, then they will go to my village with the proper paperwork and then, maybe then, something can be done. But only if this guy is still there by then (it's been nearly two weeks now since the incident).

Three hours later, typewriter still clacking away, the report was filed. The mora mora way of life continues.

what to expect.

Here is a list of some of the things you can expect out of me after my return from Madagascar.

I may prefer sitting on the floor to sitting in chairs, especially during meal times.

I may be unable to eat with a fork. Certain foods- actually, most- may require the use of a spoon.

I will take extremely long, hot showers, because indoor plumbing is the greatest invention in the universe.

I may stumble over seemingly easy English words or expressions, which might leave you feeling like you're playing a board game. For example: "What's it called... when you wanna sweep the floor... you need to use a... it's got a long handle..." A broom? Yes.

I may not be able to enter your house without taking my shoes off.

I will probably- with or without my knowledge- use Malagasy words as a regular part of my speech. It doesn't mean you're not mahay, it just means some Gasy words stick and have no good English translation.

I may want to dedicate long periods of the day to going on solitary walks or laying on the floor. Don't be alarmed- I don't have a social disorder- I just spent two years living alone in a shack and that's what I've been doing for most of it.

If I talk about being Gasy, or Gasy foods, I mean one s, not two.

Depending on when you see me, I may look like a homeless person. My clothes have been scrubbed by hand, beaten against rocks and dried in the sun for two years, and they're not in very good condition. If you would like to donate your old clothes to me, or buy me new ones, I promise I won't object.

I may use baffling acronyms such as PST, IST, MSC, COS, ET etc. This is a result of working for the US government.

I will have no idea what you're talking about if you bring up news, events, pop culture, TV shows, commercials or trends that occured after February 28, 2010. Please don't be alarmed. It's scary to me too.

I may walk very, very slowly.

I may be overwhelmed and/or frightened by large groups of white people.

I will probably irritate you by greeting you with a statement of the obvious. For example, it's early morning, you're making coffee in the kitchen. Instead of "Good morning!" I might say, "Making coffee?" Or perhaps you're washing dishes... "Washing dishes?" Reading the paper? Drinking tea? It's annoying. I apologize ahead of time.

If you have good bread, olives, wine, cheese and/or apples, you may serve them to me. You do not need to ask if I want them, but you certainly may. The answer will be yes.

I will not want to eat white rice.

I may not have a good answer if you ask, "How was Madagascar?" How would you respond to, "How were the last two years of your life?"

breakdown of a break in.

11:48PM: Wake up to an odd sound in my house; think it's just the cat. Look at my ipod to check the time. Fall back asleep.

12:40AM: Startled awake by another sound... think it's just the deluge of rain outside. Reach for my ipod to check the time again, but it's gone. Search everywhere. Shake out sheets, pillows, check under the mattress. Repeat this process a dozen times. Did my cat eat my ipod? Did I? Where the hell did it go?

12:52AM: Hear a clunk. Quickly turn on my head lamp and hear someone run out around my house. Heart pounding, frozen in bed. Cannot make myself check outside.

3:00AM: Fall back asleep. Nightmare about break-in.

6:15AM: Wake up. Window is open, lock has been fiddled with, bare footprints under the window in the mud. My ipod is gone. Someone reached under my mosquito net in the night and took the ipod that was next to my sleeping head.

7:05AM: Call Peace Corps. I don't feel safe to stay in my village, and Peace Corps supports this fully. Village president and small group of people gather around to discuss. Begin packing my bags.

11:30AM: Bike out of my village. Will return with Peace Corps van to collect the rest of my belongings later.

Everything right now is uncertain as far as what I will do from here. I had five weeks left to go in my village, but now I'm not sure if I'll be returning for any amount of time. There are still so many goodbyes to be had, things left up in the air, people that I want to thank who have helped me so much over the last two years.

I think I made the right decision in leaving because I didn't feel safe. But with such an abrupt ending, I long for some sort of closure. More updates in the weeks to come.

my fat ass (part 3)

(For those of you who missed it, click here for "my fat ass part one"; here for "my fat ass part two".)

Over the last few months, I’ve lost some weight. Not a lot of weight, maybe ten pounds or so, but enough that people in my village have begun to take notice. Well, they notice everything anyway, especially my not-so-fat-anymore ass. They’re worried.

To most Americans, losing weight is seen as good thing, which is understandable in a culture where the skinny are coveted and the chunky are seen as lesser beings. What’s fascinating is actually how hard it can be to have a healthy weight in America. We are inundated day in and day out with absurd food choices, oversized portions, easy lifestyles (admit it, not many of us are out there slaving away in the fields) and very little time in our hectic lives for moving our bodies.

We all know it’s become a problem: an epidemic of obesity. More than 30% of Americans are now obese and 50% are overweight. Childhood obesity and diabetes rates are at an all-time high.

Life is just not the same in Madagascar. People here work very, very hard their entire lives, with often little more to go on than a measly bowl of rice and nothing else until they catch or gather it. Children here have some of the highest stunted growth rates of any developing nation. Think your six-pack abs are hot in America? Well, they’re a dime a dozen in Madagascar.

So it should come as no surprise that having some heft to you is seen as a good thing here. The bigger you are, the wealthier you must be; the bigger your booty, the more you must be sitting around raking in the cash. The biggest people I’ve seen in Madagascar are the ones with likely the most desirable job: taxi-brousse drivers. These guys sit on their butts all day driving around, collecting money and eating roadside foods. Think long-haul truck drivers, beer bellies and all.

In any case, I wouldn’t have considered myself in the brousse driver category, but I definitely put on some pounds my first year in Madagascar. I was used to living a very active and healthy lifestyle in the U.S. and suddenly, there was all that sitting around wondering what to do in my village, coupled with the heat-induced laziness… and all those endless bowls of white rice… and deep-fried bananas… and deep-fried cassava… and deep-fried bread… and deep-fried dough… and deep-fried fish… well, it all started to add up. To my fat ass.

And boy was my village happy! Everyone was always talking about my weight amongst themselves, because there’s no shame in it here. While I silently suffered every comment, they rejoiced in my ever-growing ass.

Except now those days are over. I stopped eating fried foods (no easy task in a place where there is often literally no other food option available), exercise daily (the heat is my friend!) and feel almost like my normal self (and weight) with the exception of a daily dose of sorely missed fresh vegetables and salad. Plus, I think I’ve just plain gotten used to being hungry. All the time.

This has got my villagers very worried indeed. It’s the high season in Ambolobozokely: winds are calm and the seas are fruitful. Everyone’s eating their fish fill and raking in the Ariary with every kilo of fish sold. I ate at my girlfriend Sophia’s house last week; she couldn’t even zip up the skirt that six months ago was too big for her. She laughed merrily about her gut spilling out of her shirt, while I took note of my negative thoughts about it.

Suffice to say, every time I walk past a group of women these days, I hear them quietly whisper under their breaths, “Mahia eeee!” (Skinny!) They usually say it when I’m far enough away that they think I can’t hear them. Sometimes they cluck their tongues, as if I’m been struck with some terrible disease. Some have a more direct approach, like the local shopkeeper (an exceptionally large woman): she just asked, “What is wrong with you?”

Some conjecture I must be sick (I did lose some weight when I had Dysentery) while others exclaim “Ngoma!” (Missing someone!) Many of them insist I don’t eat enough rice while neighbors have started bringing over food, such as coconut-stewed bananas or crab sauce. I just keep pointing out that my big ol’ booty is right there behind me just as it always has been. They laugh.

Recently a friend came to my village that I hadn’t seen for a long time. The first thing she said when she saw me was “Mahia eeeee!” When I told her I wasn’t skinny, just enjoying getting exercise, she had an interesting reply. She told me that she knew it was a compliment for white people to be told their skinny, but she couldn’t understand why. I shrugged. Some things are better lost in translation.

What a funny world we live in. Americans are trying desperately to get skinny (and failing at that) while the rest of the developing world struggles for just a tiny piece of the pie.

two errands.

This morning, I had two errands to run in my banking town of Diego. Such small errands that, if I lived in the United States, would not even require me to leave my home, or if so, would be rather painless: pick up a package at the post office (these are usually delivered right to your door in the U.S!), and buy a plane ticket (normally this can be done on-line).

I set out as early as possible to do these two simple errands since the heat and humidity these days steadily climbs and becomes unbearable by 10 o'clock in the morning. Unfortunately the post office and Air Madagascar don't open until 8:30.

First stop, the post office. But please, don't picture a post office. Picture in your mind instead, a dilapidated, abandoned building, complete with broken glass doors, crumbling concrete steps, empty office stalls filled with broken machinery, computer monitors from the early age of computers so covered in dust they look like an artifacts, stacks of phone directories from the 1980's, busted brooms and all manner of boxes, piles of yellowed paper and trash blown into corners. This is where I go to retrieve my packages... where one solitary man sits behind a wooden desk day after day, writing up dozens of package slips by hand in leather-bound books that look straight out of the19th century. Each slip must, of course, be stamped with several official stamps in order for every transaction to be complete.

But I digress. Already pouring with sweat in the stuffy building, I hurriedly give the man my package slip, wondering why it costs an astonishing 10,000 Ariary less than usual. He looks at me sheepishly as he turns the corner to retrieve the package; I sense something is wrong. Normally he will pull out an ancient set of keys that opens a dusty storage room; this time he simply picks up what I think is a large envelope on his desk. As he comes around the corner I see that what looks to be an envelope was once a good-sized cardboard box, now squished (perhaps under the wheels of a truck?) and bundled together with twine. One corner is open, and the whole box is soggy and smelling of decay. This is the package I've been waiting two months for.

I can't help but instantly show my frustration, by swearing (in English) under my breath. He starts rattling off some story about a problem with the truck, and rain, and bad roads, and in response, trying not to be overly confrontational, I don't look him in the eye. I understand most of what he says; his Malagasy is a dialect with which I'm not too familiar. He suggests if I would rather come back in the afternoon, I can file a formal complaint. (This really is just a formality, nothing would come out of it other than losing several more pints of sweat and sitting for several more hours in a stuffy office building.) I say no thank you, I'll take what's left of the package now. He tells me not to be mad at him, he didn't ruin the package. I know this, but still, the sweat, the heat, the two years of dealing with nothing that works in Madagascar... this one moment is just the straw that broke the already-broken-long-ago camel's back.

I pay the money with crumpled, dirty bills and move on to my second errand of the day, which holds much more promise of going smoothly; when I'd gone to the Air Madagascar office earlier in the week, there was actually a waiting area with comfortable chairs, fans that worked (though the electricity was out in half the office), and fairly competent staff who spoke an comprehensible mixture of French, Malagasy and a few English words.

The office is a good distance from the post so by the time I arrive I am once again dripping with sweat. Much to my delight, there is no wait! I make my way to the pleasant woman I'd dealt with on Monday. After securing the reservation (all the while fanning myself with a piece of plastic), we go together to the payment desk, which is where the trouble begins. My credit card won't process through their fairly-modern looking machine. She tries again, and again, and again. Several other workers gather around, trying the card. "Do you have another card?" they ask. No. Of course not.

We sit back down at the desk and she looks at me impassively. "Madame? Can I help you?" she asks, dismissing me and looking around for the next customer. I'm kinda -okay, really- pissed off. She tells me I'll have to go to the bank to get cash, then come back. Alright, fine. It's no one's fault, it's just life in Madagascar. Out in the street, back in the sun, I storm off to the closest ATM. As I approach the door, the guard stops me, calling out in Malagasy, "It's not working! You'll have to go downtown." Of course.

I get the fat stack of Ariary, return to the office and finally make the reservation with a new clerk, who is actually a 60-someodd year old man, who is in training and possibly discovering computers for the first time. He politely asks, "Would you like to pay now or at the airport?" Haha! I almost laugh. This whole time, I discover, I didn't even need to pay at the time of the reservation. I could have paid on the day of the flight, at the airport. Sigh.

I need a beer.

do rainbows really kill?

It was a peaceful early morning in my tiny coastal village. Coconut trees sparkled with dew against a dark gray backdrop of last night’s rain clouds as they moved westward away from the sea. Ripe mangoes drop from their branches constantly during these languid days; often their kerplunk! on my rooftop startles me out of a sound sleep. Since I’d woken earlier than most of the village I was able to enjoy a moment of precious solitude as I stood in the sandy path I walk every morning to a nearby coffee shack.

As I approached the seaside shanty, smoke wafting from the small woodfires burning under the blackened pots of coffee, tea and soup, I turned to gaze once more at the brilliant sky, where the sun was rising over the glass-like sea and lighting up each raindrop on every branch and flower.

Suddenly I noticed a glorious rainbow stretching across the entire sky; just as I took note of it, a couple children walked past me.

“Look at that!” I implored them, pointing to the rainbow and asking what it’s called in Malagasy, since it’s one of the many words I can never seem to remember. “Isn’t that nice?” I asked, altogether forgetting what I’ve heard before about Malagasy people: they do NOT like rainbows. At all.

The older of the children looked at me as if I had three heads, which is actually a look I’ve become quite used to; my presence is an endless source of amazement and often horror in children (and adults) wherever I go.

“No… it’s not nice… rainbows kill people!” the poor child retorted.

 “Really? How do they do that?” I asked, half smiling. Malagasy aren’t too good at answering “how” questions- something either is or it isn’t and that’s all there is to it.

“When a rainbow goes down to the ground, it kills,” the child said matter-of-factly, and taking hold of her little sister’s hand, moved on down the path.

Moments later, I sat drinking coffee in the smoky shack, staring out at the same seascape I’ve watched most mornings for almost two years, wondering if it’s true: do rainbows really kill people?

Well, why not? We go around saying there’s a miniature Irish man in green pants dancing around a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow. I’d like to know what a Malagasy person thinks of our folktale about rainbows. Maybe it’s true… the leprechaun kills whoever gets too close to his pot of gold.