My First Quip
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, the cockroaches play the guitar. I’m not quite sure if the twangs they produce by clambering over the strings of the guitar that hangs on the wall are entirely purposeful—their sense of rhythm, for one, is atrocious—but it definitely grabs my attention. I can also hear them less-than-melodically creaking between the faux leather couch cushions. But I’d like to be clear. I am not afraid of bugs, of any kind. In fact, I’m a huge fan of bugs. Spiders? Great. Dragonflies? Lovely. Centipedes? Annoying but not scary. I try to avoid killing them if possible.
After a cockroach woke me up one night, crawling up my chest, I decided to revise my stance. Cockroaches deserve death. Slightly miffed by the constant skittering (and twanging) noises in the room, and just a tad spooked by several crawling on my bed, I have gone to war against the roaches. Armed with flip flops and a can of permethrin spray, I’ve made significant progress. Each night I flip the lights off for ten minutes, and just as the buggers start to squirm out of the furniture, I slam the lights back on and rain death upon them. Permethrin spray causes them to flip over and twitch for a long time before expiring, but my empathy flew out the window a week ago. Besides, when the noises start back up again after my rampage, I can pretend it’s just the sound of the croaking roaches.
Luckily for me, cockroaches are about as scary as bugs get here. There are no dangerously venomous creatures of any kind on the island, and the only threatening critter is the Nile crocodile. Not to discount crocs. In fact, if any crocodiles are reading this, I’d like to emphasize how much respect I have for these modern-day dinosaurs. Dinosaurs in the sense of cool, massive, deadly reptiles, not as a metaphor for old and out of touch. Just to be clear. Alida, one of our program leaders, comes from a town called Marovoay, which translates literally to “many crocodiles”.
Crocodile free rice paddies
“Do you know anyone who’s been attacked?” I asked, expecting a dismissive, “that hasn’t happened in 50 years,” type of answer.
Alida has a really wonderful accent, which comes from growing up in the South of Madagascar, moving to the North, then attending university in the capital, before learning English while she got her PhD in Germany.
“Well actually you guys,” she said, putting extra emphasis on each “y”, “I know some people, yeah.”
My eyes must have popped out of my head.
“How many?”
“Okay, so like where I grew up, there was the old man, who was pretty much the wise man. And so sometimes he would say not to go in the river for a certain month, because the crocodiles would attack. This is because of the color of the river or something, he could just tell. But some kids and teenagers would not listen, and so yeah, they were eaten.”
“But how many people?!”
Alida’s face turned more somber. “For me I knew three people who were killed, and I think about ten who were attacked.”
I’m still coming to terms with this information. The United States has plenty of dangerous animals; but bears for example kill less than one person per year throughout the entire country. I can’t imagine the American response if three people were killed by animals in one town. They’d probably bring in the National Guard. Luckily, Alida told us the failsafe way to defeat a crocodile in 1v1 mortal combat.
“Apparently, you are supposed to grab it by the left arm and flip it over.”
Great news. All it takes is a firm handshake on its stubby, dinosaur arm and the crocodile is K.O’d. My biggest fear is accidentally grabbing the right arm (which in this case is the wrong arm) and being dragged under and crunched up. More realistically, I’m going to give all murky freshwater bodies of water a wide berth.
Unthreatening and calm chameleon
And in the city of course, there are no crocodiles to be found, and the biggest reptiles are chameleons. We spotted a few down by the lake with no small difficulty. Chameleons have grabby little hands, and their name in Malagasy is Tanaly, which is easy enough to remember. Other words are not as easy. Every single verb begins with an M.
I’m making progress though and have started to construct some rudimentary sentences. My eventual goal is to be able to tell jokes in Malagasy. I will say it’s a fine line between being intentionally funny and unintentionally funny. I have for example, accidentally said that someone looks like a mango.
A few days ago, I used up a lot of brainpower coming up with a funny sentence.
“Manana okondro lehibe aho,” I announced with a satisfied smirk.
In English, that means “I have a big banana”. A piece of comedic genius on my part. With an extremely limited vocabulary, and banking on the universal power of phallic symbols, I had said something slightly amusing. Unfortunately, and probably justifiably, everyone assumed that I had said my sentence on accident.
Telling jokes at a local bar
Languages are hard. I already had a lot of respect for immigrants before I came here, but now that I am learning a new language from scratch that respect has multiplied tenfold. I cannot fathom the difficulty of moving to the US and trying to start work, school, work, and day to day shopping without knowing English.
And then us Americans go abroad expecting other people to speak English. Absolutely nutty. One German researcher who visited us for lunch has never bothered to learn Malagasy in the 20 years he has been working in the country, instead relying on guides and picking up the French words thrown into everyday speech. That anecdote underlines the global attitude towards Madagascar: the developed world has a lot of interest in the resources and wildlife of the island but seems to have little interest in the people who live here.
It’s important for me to consider the global perspective, but I won’t offer much more on the socio-economic factors that keep this country impoverished just yet. I still have a lot to learn! For the time being I am graciously accepting the hospitality of a family and community that could not be more polite and friendly. Yesterday Gene and I played petanque, the French game where you throw the big balls to get close to the little ball, for hours. A game was a great way to connect and learn more of the language, although I did not try to crack a one-liner amongst strangers. I already have the feeling that developing relationships will be the most important aspect of my time here, and I’m not going to go around calling people a mango.
Gene throws a mean ball