Excerpts from the Peanut Gallery

Wu Chao Ying

Ahh I see I have been remiss – and after being so good for two whole weeks! Well, fret not my loyal, if small, following. Have I got a treat for you. I do so hope you will accept it as a humble offering for my degenerate failure to post last week.

If you’ve been here a time or two, you may have surmised that I am a bit of a fan of coffee. I am confident enough to admit that some nights I climb into bed and shut my eyes tightly and tell myself if I am good and fall asleep quickly, then I can get up and have coffee first thing in the morning. No seriously, I’m like a child on Christmas Eve when I realise that there is a bag of beans wrapped in a shiny package nestled under the cupboard in my kitchen.

You can imagine how I felt when I moved into company housing with a cafeteria that, while happily offering soft bacon and a solid salad bar, had the traditional cafeteria sludge that can only be made from ground up coffee branches instead of beans. There is a vending-style espresso machine that offers a selection of beverages that are quite drinkable, but regardless, the fact remains that both of these options are a six minute walk from my housing and only available during concise eating hours and I need a steady drip rather than a one-shot betty each morning.

Something had to be done.

Concurrently, I had a hankering last weekend, as one does, to do a bit of shopping. I didn’t really need anything, but I thought it would be nice on a Saturday afternoon to go do a bit of window shopping, visit the butcher, get something tasty to nibble on Saturday night and maybe find a new kitchen tool or book to treat myself. The answer to this in Vancouver would be a toodle down to Granville Island, or an hour’s stroll on Broadway.

The answer to this in Tamatave is a $4200 ticket purchased electronically on expedia.ca back to Vancouver. That was not the kind of money I was looking to spend (and you thought translink tickets were atrocious). Happily, there is one magical place where both my desire to peruse the latest merchandise and answer the more long term and disconcerting issue of coffee supply is a little place I like to call Wu Chao Ying’s (because that’s what the owner named it – it’s painted on the sign).

How can I describe Wu Chao’s? Let me count the ways… there are not many that I think will do it justice, so allow me to use my humble words and when all else fails, defer to a photo.

Wu Chao is like no other place you’ve shopped at – unless you are 102 and then you probably have, but when you patronized such an establishment, it was called “ye old general store” (kudos to you for making it this far, by the way).

Now, the more astute of my readers (or the Vancouver ones at least) will notice that the name is not particularly Malagasy, but has distinct Asian undertones. You are correct. There is, of course, a Chinese business presence in Madagascar. We’ve all heard tales of the Chinese diaspora growing in Africa and perhaps you are curious about their strategy for ingratiating themselves locally. Direct military intervention? Diplomatic manoeuvring? Land acquisition? Bold faced flag planting? None of these things. The way I see it, they are doing it the same way they did it in North America: Sell the unsuspecting fools every possible dazzling item that can be manufactured so they are desperate for more.

And do they ever. Wu Chao has a veritable smorgasbord of items on offer: plastic basins, gadgets and utensils, rice cookers, soap – laundry, dish, hand – treats and booze and pickles and pasta. There are rain slickers and tools and widgets and wing-nuts. I bought a very stylish pair of white rubber boots and kettle when I was there last. Today I was after the prized coffee maker.

I decided upon a sleek, understated and modern affair from a trusted name and at the right price. These qualities are all quite exceptional, because at the other appliance merchants in Tamatave, you are either paying through the nose for something far fancier than you ever wanted or you are getting something that will most likely spontaneously combust. Case in point, I bought a $10 toaster at the grocery store a few weeks ago and the shop assistant prepared to do the typical “look it works madame!” plugin test before I was allowed to take it home, but this time he wouldn’t actually plug it in until he had actually replaced the plug part. I chose to overlook that. It did, after all, work.

At Wu Chao, I was confident I was getting quality. And quality service. Wowee! Now, should you ever be in Tamatave and wishing to purchase … um, anything… let me just brief you before your maiden Wu Chao voyage. They have a system. It’s unlike any other system you will encounter. It’s a delightful system, once you get used to it.

The system you are used to probably goes something like this: you pick up your shopping cart at the front entrance. The finer establishments will let you have it for free because there is a mutual respect and regard between you and the proprietor, though some places must take the silly precaution that you may want to keep the useless, cow-sized buggy for free and insist on you giving them a whole quarter as a guarantee you’ll replace it in the appropriate receptacle when you are done. Now, I wouldn’t know from experience, having not really led much of a life of crime to speak of, but I do secretly doubt that a quarter would be sufficient deterrent for those hell-bent on keeping the cart, but I trust there is plenty of market research to support this business policy. So we progress – you take your cart and you proceed inside and you wander aimlessly the aisles lined in a similar fashion, the world over: dairy, fresh produce, meat and baked goods along the outer walls and packaged items, such as but not limited to: dry goods, chips and pop, salad dressing, paper towels and other sundries, on the parallel inside aisles. You are pretty much left to your own devices to peruse at your leisure. In fact, you’ll be damned if you can’t ever find a stock boy, a manager, anyone! who can help you locate molasses. They do, of course, move them on a quarterly basis as a matter of policy. Once you find your items and give up hope on the molasses, you proceed to the check-out counters. These are also in neat rows and, if you are at Walmart, will number about 24 stands, with only number 2 and number 18 open. Of course, you had the misfortune of putting toilet bowl cleaner last on your list, which would conveniently spit you out of aisle 12, just in front of checkout stand 18, which is inconveniently preceded by a mass queue snaking in front of it. You naturally look for another checkout, and start making your way to #2, but since it’s a football field’s distance away by the time you make it there, it has also grown a line and you are no better off.

At Wu Chao, it’s a brave, old world. The first time I – and anyone else I know who has ever shopped there – came, it was a startling experience. We all did as we normally do, minus the cow-sized cart, which were nowhere to be found. We entered and proceeded to wander the aisles and peruse the merchandise. Everything seemed normal, until you reached out to take your first item off the shelf. Even if you were just meaning to read the label, you wouldn’t get that far, because every time – Every. Time. – there is a shop assistant that will materialize out of thin air and gently supersede your reach, taking the item down for you, gingerly showing you and asking the pre-requisite “c’est bon madame?” prior to adding it to your list.

Oh yes, you have a list.

You have a list and you’re not allowed to see it. That’s right, they hold the list. And all your items. No cow-sized carts, just the heavily laden arms of your new friend.

The slogan written over the door at Wu Chao is, after all, “Vous trouverez de tout… meme un ami!” And they guarantee that you do indeed find everything, including that friend, by providing one, and then a few extras in stock just in case. Of course, you can’t take them home with you, because they have to finish their shift, but they’ll be here for you when you need a helping hand. Wu Chao is single-handedly employing more than half the city – and who can fault them for that? They have one person to follow you around and write your items down on a draft list. They have another person who then transfers that list to the real good receipt paper and adds it up at the front desk. Then down the long bench you go to the person who adds it up again for verification and takes your payment. Incidentally, they sell cash registers, but they don’t use them. After paying, you, naturally, return back down to the end of the long table and benches to where your goods were originally tallied. What ensues is usually a complex dance with the person who tallies and the shop handyman/assistant and your driver. Eventually, after a few uncoordinated steps to the left and left again with the bag, without the bag, you will be in your car with your new goodies and on your way.

Yes, Wu Chao is an experience to be sipped slowly, methodically and without question. You want to carry your own shampoo selection? You can’t. That is interdit. You want that boot in size 9? Try 6… just try it. Go on. You wish to pay? Right away madame, in 35 agonizingly long minutes, we will have you on your way. It’s not a place for the independent power shop of the average North American woman. But Wu Chao, I feel, is somehow good for me. It forces me to do things in someone else’s mind-boggling way. Too often, I know my way is best. And that may be, but it’s not always about having things my way. And the side benefit is a funny, simple pleasure from doing things someone else's completely different way.

Labels: Coffee, Shopping, Tamatave

posted by Kiki @ 11:02 AM 2 Comments

Treats

One of the little luxuries that life abroad afords me is fabulous nail care. I was a loyal and frequent customer of a salon called Cocooning in Tana. Aside from the strange verb form of the name, it is a bit appropriate in another sense. Inside Cocooning are the real ex-pat and local elite wives of Antananarivo, getting their nails done or bringing their children in for a most unwanted haircut. There is the normal assortment of beauty magazines – Glamour, Marie Claire, Paris Match – and it’s clear and bright with fresh orchids accenting the chrome and white leather décor. In Tana, I got a pedicure almost every two weeks – why not, it was a ludicrous fraction of the price back home? I would walk over from my apartment on a Sunday afternoon and sit and have my feet massaged and primped and painted by a middle-aged Malagasy woman who had a spark of glamour and smoker’s cough. I would flip through the fashion magazines and pretend for a moment that there was realistic scenario on this planet in which I would actually consider picking up that $2000 purse on my next trip home.

One particular day a few months ago, I walked back home, up the drive past the chain link fence with roses stubbornly, defiantly pushing through the metal, pick my way across the world’s 7th most terrifying intersection and walked back down towards my gated community. I crossed the Jovenna petrol station parking lot and was as usual joined on the other side by the horde of street kids who walked in step for a few meters, madaming me, only to peel off when I proved impervious. After this I came out on the narrow road and try to simultaneously avoid garbage and speeding cars. I remember as I turned onto the street a mother and daughter with a small baby in tow turn kitty corner towards me from a the opposite cross street. They weren’t the poorest Tana has to offer, but they were bad enough off. They have nothing to do with the $2000 purse, I thought. It may as well not even exist.

This is the life of an expat. Regardless of whether we are talking missionary, aid worker, diplomat or someone who is working for a foreign company, we all have vestiges of this experience. Maybe many don’t experience the ultimate extremes of this, but there is usually this baffling dichotomy that they walk between daily when living in a developing country. They see this type of poverty daily, a good lot of them working hard to improve things, and often they take an evening to go for drinks at the one nice restaurant in town or a pedicure to keep their sanity.

This post isn't an apology for my pedicures. We all have treats and these just happen to be one that I can afford here and not so often at home. I was reminded of this scene in my head today and it got me thinking a bit. I walked down to the beach on this leisurely Sunday afternoon, because, after all, I said to myself, how often is the Indian Ocean just a 6 minute walk away? The beach is luxurious no matter where it is and the best part is, it’s free. This particular stretch of Indian Ocean was near-deserted with a handful of fishermen down on the jetty and three other foreign workers strolling in the distance. The sand is golden and fine and the waves roar impressively. I found that, similar to our annual vacation to Cannon Beach, I am glued to the waves, always watching to see if the next wave that starts can beat the last one for height and sound and spray.

As I walked back there was a beat-up old blue mini-van with some kids scampering around on the path up from the beach. They were much better off than the ones that madame me in Tana, and they were enjoying the afternoon at the beach as heartily as I was. For some reason I was struck by a moment of free luxury in the simplicity of it all.

I have given up wine for lent. It was a decision that was made retroactively (as I realised Lent started about 4 days earlier, but the Lord isn’t known to be picky about these things). Aside from the primary reason of foregoing something in order to enter into a deeper understanding of what was foregone for me, and to enter into the discipline it must have taken to stand there and take it all, there is another side-benefit that hinges on something I’ve been mulling over lately.

My people (as in, Canadians, westerners, young 20- and 30-somethings, redheads, Vancouverites, etc.) aren’t really known for the virtue of discipline and simplicity. Sure, I know many people who discipline their bodies, pushing them hard to excel in some sport or other, doing cockamamie things like sleeping in the snow or running for days on end. Those are all impressive and good, but they aren’t quite what I mean. We aren’t known for depriving ourselves of anything we truly, or even marginally, want. What’s more, I don’t think we’re known for being any more satisfied that any other segment of society. Now, I will certainly give the caveat that until I’ve had to scrounge for food in a rubbish heap, I probably can’t fully comment on what satisfies and what doesn’t. However, this post is not about getting into a debate on the lavish excess of the west and the virtue of the poor. As a good friend of mine once quoted, poverty isn’t itself a virtue.

But being content and satisfied with your gift is.

I gave up wine, because it’s something I genuinely enjoy – not in a desperate, can’t-function alcoholic way, but in a slow sip taken in front of a wide view that washes around your tongue at the end of a well-earned day way and because it’s my other little cheap luxury treat here. I can find fine South African and French wines that I would otherwise not get to taste back home; they are rich and satisfying, just like a nice foot massage during a pedicure. There is nothing inherently wrong with these treats. If you read Robert Ferrar Capon’s chapter on wine in The Supper of the Lamb you will know how heartily good they can be. The point is not what treat I picked to forego – it could have been any number of things – it’s what I do with it this time without the treat. The challenge of Lent is to dig my toes into the luxury that has been given me. It is to gain satisfaction not from the treats that life gives me, but the fact that I have been given life itself.


“For when I gaze at his crucifixion, I see my death indeed – but my death done! His death is the death of the selfish one, whom I called ugly and hated to look upon.
And resurrection is another me.”

-Walter Wangerin, “In Mirrors” in Bread and Wine.

posted by Kiki @ 8:59 AM 3 Comments

Oh Canada!

I see, to my dismay and shame, that my last post was October 2011. Now, whilst I beg the caveat that I still feel like there are days I catch myself writing 2002 and not 2012 on my dates so should be excused from some time lapses, I want you to fear not dear reader – I have turned over a new leaf and will solemnly swear not to let you down like that again, if you will in turn take my humbly apology and forgive me.

Now, much has happened – where to even start? This might take a few posts to catch us up and soothe the distrust that lingers betwixt us. That’s ok. As I said – I’m committed.
Since my last post, I’ve been to Canada (for two whole months!) and back. When I came back to Madagascar, I moved to the Tamatave, on the coast, which – if you know just a teensy bit about me, which of course you do, my faithful three friends + mother – I am a big fan of coastlines all over the world. Let me rewind today to my time in Canada, because I have been meaning to tell you about this for a while.

The first day back in Madagascar, I walked into the office of two lovely ladies with whom I work and was greeted with enthusiasm. One asked me “So, how was Canada??”
Me: (dreamily) “It was… (sigh)… Canadian.

Now that I am safely back in the tropical world, where the cold, wind and rain are but a dream, I am mostly pleased – it’s hard to be discontent when your commute to work involves a five minute walk through a Eucalyptus grove, pungent with the aroma that people back home pay exorbitant fees to smell in a room that mimics the humid, full air here that I get for free. And just wait until clove season. Wow, I can’t even describe it. Imagine riding on the back of a motorcycle, and the smell of cloves rushing to you through the heavy, humid air on the pothole ridden street. It's what I imagine Christmas in Australia must be.

As beautiful as it is, you know that there’s really nothing like going abroad to help you understand where you came from (I think Mandela or Tolkien once said something very profound and eloquent to that effect – trust them to take all the good quotes before I could even get here). Going home for those two months, made me appreciate the wind and the rain (sometimes, it is nice to be able to go a day without showering several times to wick off the sweat and heat). But the weather is inconsequential to the little things that make life sweet. I could easily gather a list of those things about Tamatave, but today, I’d like to dedicate this ode to Canada, and in particular, my hometown, Vancouver.

You miss the strangest things when you are away. Allow me to name a few – so that you don’t feel too jealous of my free aromatherapy deal.

1. Sidewalks. These are not known in Madagascar. Back home of course, we all complain about the broad cement slabs they’ve paved over paradise, but if you value your life – you’ll not speak too quickly on that subject. One of the reasons I love Tamatave is that I feel that it is wider. The streets are wide and there is occasionally a path on the sides of them for pedestrians, where maybe even two or so people could walk side by side. Not so in Tana. People often ask me if I feel safe and I tell them that while I wouldn’t be stupid and walk around with ma’ bling n’ stuff, all alone at night, what concerns me is not theft, but traffic. I am more worried that I’ll get hit by a car in Tana than I am about getting taken for a ride. The city has extended spidery legs around the hills that it covers, narrow streets with houses built often right on the edge. There is a shallow gutter that you can walk in in my neighbourhood, but it wouldn’t matter if two cars are passing each other – one or the other will need that gutter space to make it through, at which point you are clinging haplessly to the cement wall of the house or shop across the street and hoping not to get speared by one of those thorny bushes everyone seems to have here. I love that most people don’t feel the same thrill of danger I do when a car comes whipping by them a foot away at 65kms/hr.

2. Tap water: Every day when I was home in Vancouver I got up and my primary cup of coffee was knocked out of first place priority drinking with a tall glass of cool tap water. You don’t miss it, until it’s gone. It’s a very disconcerting and panicking feeling when you get home late at night and don’t know if you have water to brush your teeth with, let alone gulp down should you be struck with a sudden wave of thirst as you often experienced as a 6 year old child just before bed. Sure, those strange moments where your tongue was as parched and cracked dry as the Sahara have largely disappeared – but drinking water, as was the case with the childhood desire to stay awake all night, when you realize that you can’t, that’s when you must. How I long to go into a restaurant and have them seat me and pour a glass of ice water in the same swift, efficient movement. The empty bottles that float around endlessly and cling, flattened, to the side of the road here are neither economical nor environmental. I tell myself that they provide free containers to the local populace, who then in turn make use of them as the building blocks of each and every product you could hope for – from flooring to toys. Yet, I have seen too many indignant documentaries and came of age in David Suzuki’s BC. There is a part of me that just can’t quite sleep easy, knowing the quantity of plastic it takes to keep me hydrated. Or maybe it’s still just a ploy to stay up later.

3. Pickles! One just came with my lunch the first time I was out at home. I didn’t realize how much I had missed a good, juicy dill on the side of a plate with a handsome burger.

4. Soft Kleenexes: I know it sounds needy– one Kleenex is as good as the other, right? Oh but wrong, so wrong. The tissues available here in Madagascar are so scratchy, my nose hurts after one! The trouble is that I am a habit nose-blower. I don’t know how this started, I blame my mother, who seems to have nurtured this which is not in others’ nature with her own need for copious quantities of Kleenex boxes, but now when I visit someone else’s house and there isn’t a box in the bathroom, I think how odd they must be, and perhaps just a smidgen too cavalier about hygiene for my tastes. But in Madagascar, what is the use? You may as well use paper towel (oh the humanity!). Even the ones with tissues avec l’aloe plastered in the side are a mean trick. They may have been spritzed with some aloe scent before leaving the factory, but there is nothing soothing or comforting about those scraps.

5. Milk: Fresh, pasteurized, cold, normal 1% milk. It’s not Hennessey I’m wanting here, it’s milk. And not a lot: note that my semi-lactose stomach can only take so much. Just enough to top up the cup of coffee! It’s not so very demanding is it? But surely, for all those zebus, there is milk in Madagascar? You query. Oh there is, it’s called UHT: Ultra-high temperature. That means that it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. Ever. And you think that ultra-long life comes without exacting a perilous price in taste? How is that even possible?? You demand. I don’t know. It comes from Germany. Trust the Germans…

6. Cafes: Among the supreme pleasures of west coast living is sitting idly in a coffee shop, watching the rain drip by, in time with the coffee. Even their exorbitant prices can be forgiven for what is essentially a hot cup of coffee-themed milk (but there you go again – milk, so ubiquitous to us from North America, turns out, is a precious commodity elsewhere). I can’t quite place my finger on the whole of it. It’s the calming jazz music, the baristas that want to be your best friend for the five minutes you loiter in front of them, and the fact that you are welcome to stay as long as your heart desires. I could wax eloquent on the philosophy I have about coffee as the social glue that keeps us together, but I’ll just reiterate for now how wonderful it is to be beckoned in from the cold to the warm glow of a place meant for talking, sitting, watching and thinking. That space is not to be taken for granted.

7. You know what else is not to be taken for granted? People – some of them just can’t be replaced and it’s a real, darn shame they can’t be in two places at once.

posted by Kiki @ 9:31 AM 1 Comments

Why I Love Thanksgiving (an grade 3 essay by Kiki Tegelberg for Mrs. Cowan)

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.

posted by Kiki @ 8:44 AM 1 Comments

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.

posted by Kiki @ 10:32 AM 1 Comments

The Most Terrifying Thing I Ever Did

posted by Kiki @ 11:32 AM 1 Comments

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.

posted by Kiki @ 12:33 PM 7 Comments