Over the last few years, thanksgiving has become one of my top holidays. Of course I love Christmas, don’t get me wrong. And doesn’t my mother know it: I’ve abused her for years with enormous present-pressure requiring each person of the family to receive equal and obtuse gifts and over-bearing Martha Stewart decoration regimes. However, I think thanksgiving is becoming my secret true love that I don’t want Christmas to find out about.
I love thanksgiving because it has all the wonderment, all the hearty good food, all the beauty and all precious time with loved ones, but without the hype, or the violent parking lots of Christmas. It doesn’t have the commercialization of any other holiday. We all know Christmas is atrocious, but even Easter (which I will defend vigorously as my other favourite holiday for reasons more profound) has the energizer bunny droning on in offensive pastels. That does wear on one’s nerves so.
Thanksgiving is, naturally, an opportunity for some quality time with family, and it never seems to have the angst-filled snappishness of a holiday previously named. One year I booked myself a tour with the Eric & Jeanie Travel company (I have a brochure on their fantastic itinerary to France if you're interested). That particular Thanksgiving my dad and I had a lovely bonding experience along the Naramata wine route as he taught me how to taste wine properly while Jeanie drove the tour bus. And it was such a treat to be able to give - in person - a hearty congratulations to the Alberta cousins (that we so rarely see!) who participated in the Kelowna marathon that year. Sharing in the post-run spoils without actually doing the run itself is entirely justifiable if you have come such a distance just to see them cross the finish line. Of course, we stayed in bed while they were running and crossing all lines, but it was great to see them later that day, after their respective showers.
In the last two or three years, I have also come of age through Thanksgiving. I baked my first turkey last year, which provides no end of mirth and merriment to this day as I recall showing up with a half-thawed bird at my friend Krystal’s house ready to bake that thing into submission a mere three hours before guests were to arrive. That night was one of the evenings that I cherish most to this day. It encapsulates my life in Vancouver – we ate until we couldn’t fit any more. We decided the definitive top 10 reasons to de-friend someone on facebook. We learned that turkeys take DAYS to defrost and that Jamie Oliver means what he says about stuffing. We laughed so hard the wine may have come out our noses.
Last night, a friend and I hosted a Canadian thanksgiving dinner in Antananarivo for 19 guests at my apartment. I didn’t know I had 19 friends in Tana! And think of the ones who wanted to come, but couldn’t! How lucky I am! How obscenely blessed I am that I could cook for 19 people! How ridiculously rich my life that I could have my cook, Perline, to help!! She came for the whole day and managed the turkeys (last year’s escapade was delicious, but it didn’t give me much of a boost of confidence) and I handled the desserts (to which I will pledge undying affection for all my thanksgivings to come). I had never done a sit down dinner for that many people and I admit just to you, dear reader, that I was terrified.
I woke up at 6 am yesterday morning (after a week of jet-lag and sleep deprivation over a big work project) with feverish anxiety dreams about a dearth of potatoes. I managed to procure an extra bag of potatoes by 9:30, but I still had those two birds to worry and wring my hands over. Let me just tell you – Gasy turkeys are not the same as Canadian turkeys. For one thing, there is no butterball here. We get them as they come. That means that you have to buy two to get what you’d get from one back home. Oh and they come home from the store with all the body parts God gave ‘em. They still had claws attached. I wish they wouldn’t leave the claws attached. It humanizes them. Poor Gus and poor Sylvia – may they rest in peace.
But, lo and behold, it was scrumptious and fantastic and we had more food that we could possibly imagine. What a day to be thankful for indeed.
Many of my friends here are not Canadian, as one would imagine. I have quite a few, in fact, who are British, who are less familiar with thanksgiving á la Canuck, than with the well-touted American version. I was asked on Friday night what the point of it is for us, since we were more reticent than our American neighbours to be done with our colonial master mother. Well, you know, we have a um… a harvest, and we’re… we’re just generally grateful people… But it is more than that. As one lovely person remarked during the toast, it came from a time when people were pulling in the harvest and batting down the hatches for the coming Canadian winter, it was a time to be grateful as one looked the worst square in the eye.
I love thanksgiving because we know that winter is coming. We know that we will always face hard times and that we should always cultivate a grateful heart. But we need a reminder to do it and we sometimes even need a reminder of the very things for which we are thankful: beautiful friends and family, a full belly and a full heart, change of season and change in circumstance. We know that these things are good and I know the One from whom they come, but I don’t always remember to admit my gratitude for them. Thankfully, he is more than willing to put them right in front of my face all at once, usually about once or twice a year, to make it very obvious.
My lovely guests around the tables
This is what was left over AFTER 19 people had gone through (My co-host and I twisted their arms to go back for seconds, thankfully).
Lost in Translation
I would like to dedicate this post to Walter.
Some time ago, I wrote a post that introduced a Spanglish dictionary I compiled of the ‘niquismos’ (nicaraguanisms) that found their way into daily conversation over the time I spent in Central America. Being an Anglophone in Madagascar is a double challenge, because you have both the French and Malagasy language barriers. However, similar to life in Nicaragua, ex-pats tend to have a dialect unto themselves. You mix languages and slang and, my personal favourite, just generally butcher proper speech with a horrendous accent, not because you can’t pronounce the sounds, but because you’re just plain lazy. I am sure one of these days I’ll update the dictionary to make it multi-lingual and then you’ll all be really impressed. Rightly so; it’s a pretty neat trick, this language business. Today, however, I want to focus less on vocabulary and more on the advanced translation component.
Let me first get out all the appropriate provisos, caveats, and qualifications. I know first-hand that learning a new language takes guts. I remember talking with a Korean friend who once made the point that she felt that people assumed she was stupid because she was inarticulate in English. This is a serious error that often gets applied to the whole lot of foreigners. It’s easy to mock that which you don’t understand.
It takes a lot of courage to sound stupid so that you can be smart – anyone who knows five languages, like my Korean friend, can hardly be considered a twit. So I would like to preface this post with admission that I am writing this from a place of utmost empathy. Heaven knows I’ve massacred the French language since coming to Madagascar, although if you ask me, the French had theirs comin’. Mark Twain is supposed to have once insisted that “in Paris they simply stared at me when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.” Quite.
And long before French, I more than had my way with Spanish. Although I’ve pretty much got that one down pat now, there was a time when I too would make the classic blunder between ser and estar (pfft, amateur..). Now I know when I am and when I am, but to show magnanimous I really am, I will start this off with my shining moment as a hispanohablante. When you point the finger at others, after all, there are three pointing back at you (the thumb really just points awkwardly at hapless passersby).
My friend Noel is the owner of Artesanos, which I can confidently say is one of the best café/bars in Latin America. While living there, I had come into a bit of renown among my friends for my frequent baking. Here’s a good tip too for those of you entertaining the thought of moving to a new country but worried about how to make friends in your new surroundings: nobody, regardless of culture or creed, ever turns down a banana streusal muffin. I was talking with Noel and a few other friends one morning over breakfast at the cafe about how my contract was coming to an end and I wasn’t sure if I’d stay in Nicaragua or go home. Noel, bless his pea-picking heart, told me that if I wanted to stay in Nicaragua, I could come work for him. He was the type of guy that would hire you first and find something for you to do later, so as an afterthought he asked me, in Spanish, what I’d want to do. I replied – tumbling over my words as usual because I just have so much to say and not enough time to say it – that I’d be happy to bake for everyone.
Or so I thought. You see, to bake in Spanish is “horñear,” pronounced “orn-yey-ar.” But that ñ can be tricky and if you don’t pronounce it properly, it comes out awkwardly sounding more like orinar (orr-yee-nar). That, my friends, means “to urinate.” Noel’s response was to look at me with his most serious face and say “lo siento amor, pero aqui todos podemos orinar para nosotros mismos” (Sorry love, but here we can all pee for ourselves). That was the sad end to my career as a Nicaraguan pastry chef.
Many times in Nicaragua, we’d cackle over spelling errors in English documents. One of my favourite restaurants in Managua had a typo at the bottom of the first page of their 20-page menu that said “If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask your walter.” While the poor chele who translated 20 pages of flowery culinary descriptions deserves some whole-hearted respect, it never got old to ask if Walter was available to take our questions about where babies come from and the meaning of life.
In order to highlight just what a global affliction mistranslation is, I give you the “Sunny Golf Guide to Gasy Life.” The other week, I was staying at a hotel in Tamatave and the proprietors had thoughtfully placed a bottle of water, a tea set and the “Inside Procedures” on the desk for me. Usually things like this might provide one or two mistranslation gems, but the whole page was pure gold, so I have selected for you my very favourites:
- You are asked to not serve some current water than exclusively for the purpose of toilet (I am not sure what they are referring to with “current water” or “the purpose of toilet,” but I for one, am not touching the bottle of Eau Vive they left me).
- For your dirty linens and ironing, our laundry services stay at your disposition. It is prohibited positively from ironing the clothes in the room, to wash the linens in the sink or tub and to throw some objects there can obstruct them (Utterly and positively).
- Thank you to respect the sleep and rest of the other. To avoid the nocturnal uproars. (Oh but I do so love a good nocturnal uproar).
- In order to avoid possible temptation, all values […] can be deposited at Front Desk (You just can’t make this up).
- The non respect of these Inside Procedures entails the exclusion of the hotel directly.
- ENJOY YOUR STAY
In light of the positive prohibition on nocturnal uproars and treacherous toilet water currents, I feel that the last point is more of a command than well-wishing, but I can’t quite tell. Some things are just lost in the translation.
The Most Terrifying Thing I Ever Did
The most terrifying thing I have ever done was hand small children highly flammable objects, light them ablaze and then send the kiddies out into the dark streets of their already dangerous capital to play.
Now before all my dear friends at UNICEF start howling at me in outrage, remember that a) it was all conducted with a respect for the culturally acceptable celebratory practices; and b) that I did at least make a concerted effort to keep the large kitchen knife used for cutting up candles away from the smallest members of the party.
It’s not always clear what is best (or worst): over-zealous, cautionary parenting born out of a culture that loves their law suits in the west and the lackadaisical, free-for-all in the rest of the world. I am not sure if one is better actually, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, which one I found myself in on Saturday night.
The event started off on the right foot. I had made plans with a friend and about Thursday or Friday of last week, she sent me a text saying that she had a proposal. June 26th is Independence Day here in Madagascar. Since it ain’t no party ‘til you spend a week lighting off firecrackers and tooting party horns into the wee hours, the Saturday night, (the 25th) was just as exciting. In fact, I think it’s the big event, sort of like Christmas Eve – you have all the fun and excitement and anticipation and then Christmas morning involves a lot of quality family time spent in one’s pyjamas.
My friend sent me a message saying her housemate, who runs an orphanage, is going to do the traditional Independence day lantern walk and would we like to come along and help, because they could certainly use some extra adult supervision. Well, who’s going to say no to a bunch of orphans?
Not me.
We decided to go do the lantern walk and push our plans back a few hours. I have volunteered in a few kid’s homes and youth programs as volunteer before this and I even did it for pay in my own wild youth. I worked at a high-adventure camp for kids. We routinely sent kids off a 70 ft zipline. We woke them up in the middle of the night and told them the camp was being invaded by the bad guys from the Matrix and that they had to save it with their flashlights and smelly-felts. We had milk chugging contests and let them wrestle for inner tubes. We devised all sorts of madness and nonsense for crying out loud. Nothing prepared me for this.
Just a taste of the madness (note the awesome, though somewhat unnecessary, snowsuit bottom right)
There are a range of stimulants that can produce team wall-bouncing in a group of 20 children: new faces, dinner time, fun and games… did I mention there were 20 of them? All these factors together colluded to create utter mayhem. In my amazement, as I watched these kids run and skid into each other like roller derby champions, I felt a nice patting sensation on my head. The patting changed to a light massage and before I knew it there were little hands braiding my hair from multiple directions. This is also not so strange in a group of small children.
However, it was a bit strange that it was the 10 and 12 year old boys who ended up being the stylists. But I am not one to judge. And if that is what they want to be when they grow up, then I, Kiki Tegelberg, will happily be their hair model.
As the makeover was winding down, the boys were drawn to bigger and brighter things – literally. I had made the mistake of pulling out my camera and setting off the flash, at which point (photographic evidence to follow), not a single one of them would rest until they had their chance to strike innumerable poses. Luckily I was saved by other lights: a small rustling over in the corner started gaining more and more participants. What was that rustling? It was the unfolding of accordion-style paper lanterns. Now, I am all for this lantern idea and being the silly vazah that I am, I thought they must have little battery-operated flashing LED lights inside.
Hahahahahahahaha no.
Nothing but live ammunition for these precious little ones. The rustling was the lanterns, but the ominous thwack that punctuated the roaring din of 20 children all talking excitedly at once was definitely from the one child (let’s be generous and say she was eight or nine) who was using a sizable kitchen knife to cut candles down to size and then melt off the ends to stick them in the lanterns. Small hands grabbed from all sides, giant paper bubbles bobbed and batted around and a nice layer of melted wax coated the scene.
Is anyone else hyperventilating at this point? Because my breathing was certainly mildly uncomfortable. If not, well, prolong the mayhem and fire for another forty minutes while each and every lantern was lit and then relit and after that factor in the flailing coats and scarves as the children suited up in their “winter” gear for a chilly night walk. It was, after all 20 degrees Celsius – better bundle up!
Finally we assembled the crowd and set off into a completely dark street, save for the other bobbing paper lanterns of hundreds of other children. I know this is rather anticlimactic, but it all went swimmingly. Maybe it’s because children aren’t pampered here with functional electrical grids that provide a steady supply of light and power and are sensitized to the fact that that flamey thing will hurt like the dickens if you touch it. Maybe we were drenched in divine providence. Probably a bit of both.
I was not quite sure what to expect: how far were we walking? (Please not far) What happens if a candle burns out? (catastrophe) What was the end point? (we’re still not sure). Out in the dark street, I felt a bit of trepidation. It was 20 of them and about 8 of us adults. Sure, good odds if you’re in Canada where people can afford leashes for their children. We had no such leashes. We didn’t even have a street lamp. But I didn’t need to worry about the dark. We quickly joined one of the main roads through the village and there we joined the throng of bobbing lanterns held by other children and their accompanying adults. It was a bit touch and go to keep track of the kids when in that lighting, and since I really didn’t know any of them, they all sort of looked the same as the other 700 running around, but somehow we managed.
The final destination was mercifully only a few blocks, where we proceeded to promptly turn around and head home (my friend who organized this wasn’t completely mad). I can remember as a child going out trick-or-treating and felt like we conquered everything between the Tsawwassen ferry terminals and the North Shore, but I am sure it was a similar situation. We were lucky if we made it to the end of the block with out getting a bunchy wedgie from our costume and needed to be carried home out of exhaustion (or perhaps, my Dad was lucky if we made it any further). I wasn’t upset when it was time to round them up. It’s easier to breathe slowly and enjoy the bobbing, brightly coloured lights when you know that the direction is home.
Voyages of Discovery
Sometimes it feels a bit ironic that I live in Madagascar. I am not the most intrepid of explorers among my friends and aquaintances. Ok, sure, I’ve lived in a four countries and travelled to their various neighbours so that's got to make me somewhat credible, particularly if you were the type of person that considers a trip to Bellingham a perilous journey (and depending on border traffic, it may well be). Then sure, I’m a regular Christopher Columbus (actually I’d prefer to be Juan Ponce de Leon because I’d get to discover the Caribbean but on the other hand, people might call me “Poncey” for short so I suppose that has its drawbacks, but this is all neither here nor there). But throughout my travels I have met these real “explorer” types, and trust me, I’m not them. They are the people that roll out of their mosquito net/tent in the morning and don’t have the foggiest clue where they’ll pitch it that night. I on the other hand, generally like to have a room with a bed and a bathroom lined up well in advance. I’m perfectly willing to try going somewhere new, but I’d prefer to be home by 11, because, you know I just don't enjoy pulling all-nighters and I never have. This is perhaps why I prefer to move into a place and make myself at home and explore from within. But the people that run, jump and dive into the complete unknown - that's ballsy if you ask me.
Just thinking about being on the opposite side of the globe is a bit awesome. Well first, in the interest of full disclosure, I should honestly state that the
polar opposite of Vancouver is actually just to the south east of Madagascar, but since there are no inhabited land masses between Madagascar and Antarctica in the southern Indian Ocean, the former will simply have to satisfy.
Secondly, I am fascinated with explorers, particularly the historical sort who have become, in my mind, a bit of the stuff of legends rather than real people who lived and breathed. It boggles my mind that people would sail off for a year or forever. Can you imagine not really knowing how big the world is and just going out “to see what we see”? I am reading Brown’s
A History of Madagascar, which covers everything up to the 1990’s. So far I am at 1664, which was just the time when the Europeans started showing up around here and there and all over the map, if you will. Brown recounts stories of how trading and exploration ships would land on Madagascar’s shores and sometimes would have a friendly trade of goats for beads and sometimes would get massacred by the locals.
In a way, this is so far out of my experience, but in another sense, it is very close to our world today. It is so totally alien in the sense that in order to come to Madagascar it takes 40-odd hours, instead of 40 weeks. I can google Madagascar before coming here and I can use street view to see where I will stay before I touch down. I can watch the
Madagascar episode of Departures to get a sense of the culture looks like to the travelling Canadian. I can call ahead to see what type of visa I should acquire or if there is any significant chance that I will be harpooned upon arrival at Ivato International. Imagine though, for a moment, being a 2nd or 3rd century Indonesian, getting in your canoe and shoving off of Bali thinking '
Well, here we go,' and then somehow crossing the Indian Ocean (ok, realistically, they hopped from land to land around the edge of it, but I still maintain that such a feat is nothing to sneeze at). Or even being a 10th century Mozambican and deciding that sailing out into the middle of the big blue just to see what the horizon looked like up close was a good idea. Or imagine being a Portuguese sailor in the late 16th century and putting up with scurvy on the off chance that you find some incredible pile of gold and rare spices sitting on an abandoned dock somewhere. That’s why these people baffle me.
Yet there are points that I have in common with the crazy intrepids. Early explorers had only a mythical concept of the limits of the earth, or if they did have something more concrete, they assumed that they would not be the ones to finally find it and have to deal with it. Here is where we are one in the same, Poncey and me. I today have but a cerebral notion of the limits of humanity. I know that there are
some 6.922 billion of us, but that number doesn’t really make sense and I can’t get to know all of them, so the limits of the world remain far beyond anything I’d have to tackle.
I wonder though what the motivation was – if it was really the sense of fearless curiosity. Brown tells a story of a 17th century ship that limped home to Britain after sickness and storms destroyed the fleet that was with them and much of the crew. They carried home a paltry cargo of pepper as their prize for years on the seas.
On the other hand, if I didn’t have pepper – or any of the array of condiments now widely available to me largely thanks to the invention of high fructose corn syrup and red food dye no. 40 – maybe the arrival of pepper would be a pretty big deal. Without these and the wide array of amenities, such as strawberries in February in Canada, I wonder if my senses would be heightened (would meat taste meatier?) or would a small taste of pepper drive me mad enough with delight to get on a boat and sail off into the wild blue yonder like a nautical don Quixote? Today… we’ve got the Planet Earth DVDs to answer what those remote places look like and Whole Foods can provide even the silliest of exotic sundries for our cravings.
So why get on the boat? I find the idea of 10 months at sea and 10 hours in a plane equally terrifying, and yet, here I am, at 18°55’ S, 47°31’ E, which is pretty far from 49°15’N, 123°6W. I’ve been thinking and mulling this over with some friends this week. Some of you know how tough the first 6 months have been here, and I’m not going to get into that too much, but one of the themes of my rants to those close to me for the last six month has been an impatient stomping of the foot and the demand to know just what the big idea is here, God.
I am coming to the place where I think perhaps there isn’t a big idea. Perhaps, there are a few smaller ones: maybe like the average Portuguese sailor, I needed a job, and getting on the boat meant a job that would change every other job that would come. Maybe also, a little bit, like Poncey and the Indonesian canoer, I wanted to see what we could see. Call be a naive idealist if you must, but I think I understood that this place would have people and things worth investing in - that it would give me something in return for that investment that I couldn't produce back home. I don’t have to be the intrepid explorer, who bushwhacks her way into the middle of things and finds the climactic answer to all this and riches to boot. I can just come and be and, hopefully, barter some good and uplifting things, in return for enough good and uplifting things to see me home.
There are worse things
This weekend my visa expires and I have been left with no choice but to go to Mauritius for five days to renew it. I have experienced this immigration delinquency before and I am once again reminded that there are worse things in life than a visa expiration trip.
The last time this happened I was in Nicaragua and I was “forced” to go to Costa Rica. Now, this really cheesed me because it the visa expiration happened to fall on the very weekend that all my friends were going up to Matagalpa for a friend’s concert. Those days, I would make the two-hour trip up to Matagalpa about every other week, so it is not like I was missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime event, but you know how it is when you feel like everyone is going to have a party without you. So I stomped around the office in a cranky mood trying to find a place to stay in Tamarindo… stupid beach town… mumble mumble… maldita immigracion... mumble jumble…
Yes, I was a spoiled cranky-pants until I arrived in Tamarindo, one of Costa Rica’s premier surf resorts and realised that there are worse things than an enforced, paid holiday to the beach: My roommie Shannon came along so I wouldn’t get lonely and we had a lovely adventure running away from the other backpackers, getting top notch spa pedicures and even met us some handsome fellas. As I recall, I had a jolly good time all around.
Here’s a bit of advice from Auntie Kiks for those kids who want to grow up and try to save the world: clam down and enjoy the ride. This week, faintly in the back of my peanut gallery mind, there was the kind voice saying “it’ll be ok, this will be good, you will get a visa and if you don’t, they will figure out plan B or C or Z…” Unfortunately, the rest of the peanut gallery was the usual, charming gong show, so poor little gaffer didn’t get much credit for being wise or calm or right. Instead, I stomped around my office trying to get answers and make people run after my anxious inquiries.
So often I hear that in order to make it working overseas, be it as a humanitarian worker, a missionary, in the diplomatic corps or just any old international business, there is one virtue above all others: flexibility. It’s true, but it is something deeper than that. You have to be able to roll with the punches on the surface, because deep down you trust. There is nothing naïve or weak about this trust. You make the best arrangements you can with the knowledge you have and then you let it go. It is also called "faith" and what makes it work is that it delights in people - lovely, flakey, people - but doesn't need to rely on them.
Of course, it's much easier said than done. Of course, it's much easier to be cynical. I hear other expats whine about how people take advantage of you or won’t do what they promise or this or that or the other…
But so what?
So they tell you they will do something and then don’t do it for four days. So what? I have the sneaking suspicion that, contrary to what popular culture tells me, my time is not as colossally important as I think it is. I think that's the difference. The beauty of faith is the wonderfully freeing idea that if it doesn't work out - shock and disbelief - the world won't come to an end, because it turns out that I'm not at the centre of it all.
Man I should take my own advice… At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if I am in Madagascar or Canada though. Being at peace with the things I can’t control is not a challenge unique to a new culture. Some days we're better at it than others. I am happy to report that at the end of the day, I can trust that this is in the hands of someone greater.
It’s the other 23 hours of the day that are a problem …
Going Places
I travel a lot for work and there are two key travel methods I’d like to discuss here, one I use all the time and the other I simply look upon with awe. The first is flying: you will be happy to note that I’ve been doing jolly well considering that, as I’ve said numerous times - I don’t like flying, but I want to go places. I don’t love the whole 30,000 ft in the air part, but airports on the other hand – big fan. I’ve been known to peer pressure friends into sky-training all the way from Waterfront to YVR just for an airport starbucks, which is different from regular starbucks. It has the extra sense of anticipation and importance and it comes with the rather exciting warning: “Caution, this beverage is hot and if left unattended, it will be subject to immediate seizure and disposal so your $6.32 worth of coffee-themed milk will be a double waste of time, money and recyclable product packaging.” After all, numerous peace and security studies have indicated that one of the tell-tale signs of a terrorist is their flagrant disregard for environmental sustainability.
I’ve been flying about four or six times a month for work these days, each time to Tamatave, Madagascar’s second city. We take a nice wee 15-seater, where I can sit behind the pilots and heckle them. For some reason, this takes the edge off the fact that I am flying through a lightening storm in rural Africa. No big deal.
Pre-bording at the Tana airport has very specific pleasures, even if it lacks alarmist coffee cups. At Ivato International, one can find second-hand editions of the Economist and the International Herald Tribune for about $2 (compared with $10 in town – highway robbery if you ask me), left behind by business passengers on the international flights. Also, I would like to clear any misconceptions about Malagasy air security. To illustrate just how seriously they take air safety, above the Air Madagascar check-in counter there is a sign that clearly states:
Please ensure that your hand baggage does not contain any of the following:and then, in picture format, what look like:
- Bursting fireworks
- An open can of paint
- An oven, particularly with some sort of sloppy spill on it – perhaps paint.
- Rifles
You know, all I can think when I see this is that at some point someone attempted to bring an oven in their carry-on and the airline was unimpressed either with the girth or the unclean state of the appliance. It was not immediately apparent which from the picture.
Travel in Tamatave is another story altogether. I LOVE Tamatave because it’s hot and sticky and sandy and it looks like what would have happened if Cannes had suddenly been overtaken by a massive hurricane and then deserted for 60 years. I often take an early morning walk down to the beach and there’s nothing – nothing – like the smell and weight of the 6am air that hangs under mango trees that form a sand-swept street into tunnel to the open ocean.
One of the reasons Tamatave so enticing is the movement in the town. It is the diametric opposite of Tana’s tightly packed streets and winding labyrinths of people, buildings and congestion. Perhaps it’s just that Tamatave isn’t smushed into the crevices of 6 or 7 towering hills, so you feel as though you have space to roam and commuting in Tamatave is a different world from Tana. The difference is the second form of transport I mentioned. For all its simplicity, it towers over the sophisticated technology of any other mode of transportation. I would like to herewith attempt an adequate description of these venerable contraptions that you may never get to experience yourself: let us take a ride on
le Pousse-Pousse.
To say it is a rickshaw or a pedi-cab takes away from the mystique. Technically, it would seem very similar to a common rickshaw. Oh but it’s so much more. There is something about the pousse-pousse that even the well-to-do driving lot can recognize. In Tamatave pousse-pousses are given the right of way. If you’ve ever been anywhere outside of the OECD, you will recognize that is no trifling honour. As shocking as this may seem, in other places of the world pedestrians and bicyclists don’t have the pampered existence they enjoy in places like Vancouver or Amsterdam. There are no designated bike lanes and pedestrian-controlled intersections. If you are one of these hapless bipeds getting around on pure human kinetic energy in the global south, you look both ways about ten times and then run for it. Cars don’t stop for you because you’re being environmentally conscientious.
Ha! They speed up.
But the pousse-pousses of Tamatave are different altogether. They are a respected herd, like the Riders of Rohan. If they come pounding down towards you, you keep your head down and let them pass.
The pousse-pousse itself is sort of a misnomer. Literally in French it is a “push-push” but it is really more of a “pull-pull.” Most have bicycles on the front, but there is also the simpler model - a wooden bar rectangle that the driver will hold up at chest level and push, with you and your lazy… backside … sitting behind. And it may not be just you in tow. I once saw a pousse-poussse that had a moto-scooter in the passenger seat. They feature brightly coloured awnings that cover the passenger, but the noble driver is out in the bleeding heat all day long. I have no doubt that these men, given permission to unhook the backseat, could easily lap Lance Armstrong. My favourite day was when I saw a pousse-pousse that had Usain Bolt written on the back. Apparently Usain has used his Olympic winnings to invest in an entire cooperative of them here, as there is a prolific number bearing his branding. Another cooperative is “sponsored” by Subaru. One pousse-pousse I have seen is the quintessential representative of all others: on the back is a union jack (best not to ask) and a very friendly “Hello my friend!!” painted across the middle, which I am sure was selected only because “Hello my friend!! Eat my dust!!” was too long to fit.
Make way, all yield to the mighty Pousse-Pousse.
Ends of the Earth
I often think how incredible it is that I get to see places on earth that only a handful of people may ever see. And I may very well be one of a few westerner, maybe only one of two or three a year, maybe not even one or two every ten years. Statistically speaking, I’ve got to be the only Canadian. Ever. There just aren’t enough of us to go around – we’re no Indian subcontinent.
In truth, sometimes I feel like I really am at the ends of the earth and in its secret pockets.
I used to think the same thing in Bolivia, when I was doing my research. The seditious thought came into my head while I was writing my thesis that I could say anything, for who would drive 5 hours into the Bolivian jungle to check my facts?!? (
Note: to preserve my academic integrity, I didn’t conduct my research alone so it is all verified and reproducible). I don’t think I have the particular spirit of an explorer, which makes this all rather funny. Sometimes I think it may well have been more comfortable to stay home and enjoy my cup of coffee at leisure, knowing that I will be safe and no unpredictable misadventures will befall me. In short, I am a hobbit - a very tall hobbit.
But one can’t shrink from it. You can’t say it’s not worth it, at the end of the day – even if at the beginning you sort of dread it, and only partially enjoy the time spent in the blistering heat of the middle of nowhere. After all, you do come to the realization at some point that you are enjoying it.
I think at this point I could go one of two ways: I could finish it off with the simple and truthful point about how the views alone are really worth it. They are. The end.
Or… I could be brutally honest about what it’s like being alone on the other side of the planet trying to work in development (loosely) and how I’m feeling at this point. Here’s that option: It’s like that view at the top of Cypress Mountain when you get off the chair lift and sit at the top of the run. On a clear day can see mountains and mountains for days and days and days to the north and the east. They are absolutely terrifying. There’s no one at all on those peaks facing you – just trees and bears and crows.
But you still want to go and you think,
actually, if I just stretched my arm far enough, I could touch that next mountain over. I don’t think I’m breaking any major news here by telling you that every person working in development notices that projects seem go on forever and ever without the certainty that they’re making a difference. And we wonder if people here would have gotten along just fine without us (we all have a hunch on that, don’t we?).
But you know that there always is the flip side of that coin. Just as often we think: if I just give this one a good stretch – maybe there is something at an arm’s length that will make it all burst forth.
K – promise the next post will be less melancholy. Really!
