Do you like Mangos? Do you like Diego Mangos? Or Long Mangos? Or do you like the sweet tartness characteristic of Round Mangos? Did you even know there were more than five species of Mango, all of which have their own devotees and inimitable tastes?

 

How about bananas, do you like bananas? The green ones or the yellow ones? The fat, short ones or the long, slim ones? The tiny ones or the big ones? Do you like them fried? Boiled? Grilled? Just plain? Do you, as I do, love the fat ones sliced up and boiled in coconut milk and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar? Yes, yes, you do — or would.

 

Who would have thought that one of the innumerable advantages of being a Peace Corps Volunteer on a tropical island would be tropical fruit?

 

Yes! One of the benefits of living in a country that has yet to enter the supermarket era of all foods all year round is that seasons and regions come to be identified with their respected fruits. For example, here in Madagascar, mango season begins in December and lasts until about March. By November, however, people are already starting to talk about the impending deluge of mangos and indeed have already begun to consume unripe mangos in the form of what is locally called “lasary manga,” or, “mango salad.” The mango salad is made by grating unripe mangos, chopped chives and tomatoes, a little vinegar, and finally salted to taste. People here eat the salad here like a condiment on everything, but its mostly used as a side dish with beef kabobs and fried cassava.

 

Ripe mango season arrives like a quietly impending storm. You see, it hits different areas of the country at different times so there is a small window of time where you can purchase ripe mangos, for a premium mind you, from surrounding areas and then garner face from people by giving them as gifts. The market is the true barometer of mango season, however. My market is divided into neat little sections, with the fruit peddlers neatly stationed in the southwest corner. At first all they carry are these bulbous green mangos called “manga-esoo,” which are used to make the mango salad. These are sold in bunches of five for the absurd price of one-hundred ariary (about five cents). (Try to imagine this writer’s apprehension as he handed over five cent’s worth of money for five mangos, mangos which I believe sell for no less than eighty-nine cents apiece at your local American grocer. This writer, being new to the whole cheap mango thing, made sure to make steady eye contact with the fruit vendor, searching for any sign that his calculation had been mistaken and incredulously placing each mango within his market basket, and then departed briskly from the market for fear of being pursued by the authorities.) Slowly, ripe mangos enter the market. At first supply is low, demand is high — each ripe mango costs five cents apiece (if you can believe that). But after a week or two, prices come down to the standard five cents a bunch.

 

Mango season is nice for many reasons aside from the obvious one of gorging yourself daily on delicious golden-orange mangos. First, people cherish it. In my experience, supermarkets leave little left to cherish in terms of seasonal foods and regional delicacies. The closest thing I can think of, in the Midwest at least, is sweet corn season. Sweet corn season in Wisconsin is one of the few times during the year that you might be better off driving down an old country road than you would be driving straight to your local commercial grocer. There’s nothing inherently good about that. Obviously it would be more efficient to go to the grocery store over a farmer’s market or local farmer, but the latter is more conducive to creating connections, in more than one way. One way you make a connection is with another human being. You interact with someone who’s put time and labor into growing food for consumption. A second way, is you are more connected with the land. If you eat according to the seasons, you are in a very real sense, living in harmony with the environment. You know what and when the land is capable of producing. Obviously, this is easier and more fun on a tropical island devoid of harsh winters, but I think it’s worth thinking about.

 

Here in Befandriana one of the local specialties is a species of mango called round mango. Round mangos are uniformly green and, well, round. They lack the red and yellow hues and the oblong, somewhat-conical shape of typical mangos found in America. Inside they are more yellow than orange, and have a distinct tangy-sweetness that I reluctantly confess is — Starburst-y. Another type of local mango is the long mango. The distinguishing feature of long mangos is their copious amount of veins. Veins are the things that get stuck in your teeth as you bite toward the pit of your typical mango. Long mangos, however, are completely comprised of veins. The downside of this is manifest: Do not eat unless within range of floss or toothpicks. The upsides are firstly that long mangos are comprised of significantly more juice than other mangos, which means an especially succulent mango. A second advantage is that if you don’t enjoy flossing, the social implications of walking around with a mouthful of mango veins is a very good incentive for keeping up with your dental hygiene.

 

(I should note a second hazard that has been known to afflict prodigious consumers of long mangos. Occasionally, should one dispense with the rituals of civilized eating, throw forks, knives, and spoons to the wind, and instead opt to simply consume long mango after long mango, alone, sweaty, and pressed for time during his or her break, by simply masticating mouth to mango (the way mangos should be consumed in this writer’s opinion), there is a small chance that the juicy residue could leave an orange ring around the eater’s mouth, which would, were such an event to occur, lead his or her colleagues to stare impolitely and propel the eater, perhaps already paranoid about his or her excessive mango consuming habits, to all but sprint to the nearest source of water and vigorously scrub his or her face all the while still being watched by suspecting colleagues and students. Eater beware.)

SIXTEEN HOURS A WEEK

 

Pens; notebooks; a blackboard; chalk; tables to seat eighty students; four hours a week with each section—these are the resources my students and I have to work with. Half of the time my blackboard is a metal slate painted black. The other half it’s a piece of wood painted black. On the first day of school I walked into my classroom and tried to write an exercise on the board—incomprehensible scratches. The blackboard had yet to be painted; my chalk was too old. Ninety students; one teacher; zero blackboards; zero chalk. I leave the room and search out a coworker. The following discussion ensues:

Me: “Look my students can’t see anything I’m writing. There’s this big craggy, metal slab where my blackboard should be and I tried using these little white sticks to write with but, uh, they just break. So…

 Coworker: Which room are you in? Oh you’re in that room. They haven’t painted the board in there yet. You need to find another room on the compound somewhere. But don’t use that room and that room because they just painted the boards there and they need to dry for at least twenty-four hours.

Me: You mean school was supposed to start last week and the boards aren’t painted—won’t be painted until Friday (it’s Tuesday).

Coworker: Yes, you see that’s the problem with developing countries. The proviseur (principal) and proviseur-adjoint (vice-principal) have been dealing with enrollment issues and can’t be expected to take responsibility for everything. It’s we the teachers who should take responsibility for it.

Me: Okay…anyway what about this chalk?

Coworker: Oh (pulls out magic plastic container) take a piece of this chalk. (Hands over chalk.)

Me: Thanks. (Immediately notices the superiority of coworker’s chalk. Mind begins to reel: Why wasn’t I given this chalk? Where can I get this chalk? Where can I get a cool plastic container like that. The mental notes go on and on.)

 

I return to class. Rally my students and we head across the compound to a different classroom. Rules are laid. Exercises are done. Class. Must. Go. On!

 

Let me take a moment here to describe the school. The Lycee, or high school, is comprised of a series of buildings which are composed solely of classrooms. Walk out the door and you’re in the middle of a small field the center of which is marked by a Malagasy flag and occasionally by a small herd of goats searching for food.

 

All students in Madagascar where uniforms to school. The uniforms for all levels of study follow the same general pattern, a rather long button up shirt with no collar and deep pockets at the waist. The shirts are complemented below with a simple pair of shorts, no pockets. Color is the identifying feature of which level of study the student is currently engaged in. Bright pink at the elementary level (EPP), sky blue at the middle school level (CEG), and at the high school level (Lycee), where I teach, the most noxious shade of beige you ever did see. Teachers in the public education system, like myself, have the option of donning a white overcoat that hangs down to the mid-thigh level, comes equipped with two deep pockets (one for colored chalk and one for white chalk), protects your clothes from pesky chalk dust, and also imbues the wearer with tremendous amounts of authority and respect. Why is the coat optional? Because if one wants to acquire a white overcoat, one must buy fabric from the fabric seller, and then take fabric to the tailor, all of which will cost you the not-so-small sum of seven thousand ariary (about three dollars). Yes, all the uniforms, including those of the students, are made by local tailors. You can tell school is about to start because the tailors all have different colored uniforms hanging outside there stores.

 

I chose to don the white coat for reasons. One, the coworkers who do where the white coat command my respect. Two, try doing clothes by hand—you will do whatever it takes to keep clothes clean for as long as possible. Three, to garner respect both from students and coworkers. Finally, the white coat is a physical manifestation of how I view myself as a teacher. In my white coat I am an English surgeon. I walk into class holding my chalk as though it were a scalpel. “Please class, this will only hurt for a moment—I’m going to cut open your minds and surgically implant some knowledge.”

 

TWENTY HOURS A WEEK

 

So first week goes by without a hitch. Standing in front of eighty students and teaching them English is easier than I imagined. “Maybe sixteen hours a week is not enough,” I think to myself. “Maybe I should start looking for other ways to fill my time. For instance, what are the extracurriculars here in Befandriana-Nord? Yeah, I think I’ll mention something about that to the proviseur.”

 

Now, the proviseur lives right next to me. Our houses are in the same building—along with the main office for the Lycee. More on the details of my house later, but for now suffice to say that we see each other on a daily basis. So one night we’re sitting out just chatting when I think I’ll ask him about the sports teams at Befandriana (I have this fantasy about starting a frisbee team or coaching a track team, and coaching a soccer team too until I remember that the nine year-olds here are better than me at soccer).

 

How conversation (in Malagasy) sounds in my head:

 

Me: Hey proviseur, what are the sports like here?

Proviseur: Oh there are a lot of sports. Every grade has their own sports. But we really don’t have enough coaches.

Me: Oh really? You know, I used to do track and I really like running. I run everyday. Who are the coaches here?

Proviseur: Oh Honore and Henri are the coaches.

Me: You know, at some point in the future, maybe not right away, I’d really like to work with them on that. Do you think you could speak to them for me?

Proviseur: Oh of course no problem. Sure is warm isn’t it?

Me: Sure is warm. Gosh I really like it here.

 

How conversation must have actually sounded:

 

Me: Proviseur, what do the kids do here for physical education?

Proviseur: There is physical education classes for every grade in which the students partake in a multitude of sports. However, we are currently lacking a gym teacher for some of them.

Me: Well isn’t that quaint. I happen to be extremely qualified to teach physical education. I ran track in college and played frisbe—, er, other sports in college too. I still run every day. Who are the teachers now?

Proviseur: Honore and Henri.

Me: Do you think they’d be willing to work with me right away? I mean, I know it’s short notice and all, but there is nothing more I would like to do with my time that teach PhyEd.

Proviseur: Wow this is great. Of course they’d love it. I’ll speak with them tomorrow. Sure is warm isn’t it?

Me: Sure is warm. Gosh I really like it here.

 

 

Conversation with Honore (also in Malagasy):

 

Me (still flabbergasted by what I’ve gotten myself into): So look, Honore, do you, err, think we could sit down for a minute and go over how to teach gym class here? I’ve never taught gym before, so, uh, yeah anything you can tell me would be great.

Honore: Like what?

Me: You know, like what you do for the first hour…and then the second.

Honore: Sure. First of all, there is a curriculum you need to follow.

Me: Oh great there’s a book?!

Honore: Yes.

Me: Okay could we look at some examples:

Honore: Sure. (Paging through curriculum.) First week: Long jump (this is in French and much time elapses before I figure this out). Second week: high jump.

Me: Oh wow? I didn’t think we had a high jumping pit.

Honore: We don’t. Third week: Javelin.

Me: We have a javelin?

Honore: Yes. It’s in the closet. Fourth week: Judo

Me: That’s amazing! You know judo? No way.

Honore: No I don’t. You just do the punches (punches air).

Me: Huh….

Honore: Fifth week: Karate.

Me: You know Karate?

Honore: No (Punches air again. Smiles.)

Me: Look Honore this is all great but I was more thinking along the lines of just how to teach a class. You know, like what you do for the first half an hour, and the second…how you fill two hours of time with physical education…

In the end I just made my Malagasy students run for half an hour, watched my them do calisthenics like drunken marionettes, and blew some minds with a couple of cones and some frisbees.

“To be or not to be, that is the question”—at least in English it is. In Malagasy, however, not so much since, while there is a verb for ‘to be’ it’s almost never said, but simply implied. When I questioned Robert, the Malagasy training manager, about this I was met with a mischievous grin and an enigmatic statement: “What is ‘to be,’ anyway?” To which I replied: “Well yeah, isn’t that the question?”

 

In this post I want to talk about the hurdles I’ve encountered while attempting to learn not only official Malagasy, but also a variant patois of it called ‘Tsimihety,’ which is spoken in my region—Sofia. I’m going to talk briefly about the Peace Corps philosophy about language and community integration, describe the rudiments of the language’s structure, discuss the dearth of language resources in Madagascar, and finally touch on the strong oral tradition found here in Madagascar.

 

Language training in the Peace Corps begins in the classroom, with daily four-hour sessions that incorporate rudimentary vocabulary and basic dialogues that get progressively harder—SOP as far as language learning is concerned. However, the classroom is only where the plowing is done. The real planting in is done on the home-front through one’s daily interactions with one’s host family members, interactions that not only employ one immediately with survival vocabulary, such as ‘spoon’ and ‘eat’ and ‘I really don’t eat meat,’ but also create constant opportunities to put into practice the material learned in the classroom.

 

In this regard I was particularly fortunate to have a peer to converse with. Josef, my twenty-one-year-old Malagasy brother, and I would pretty much sit down daily with dictionaries and notebooks and just talk about whatever came to mind for a few hours over delicious coffee and peanut butter—I’m already nostalgic. Our conversations helped me to progress my language skills quickly and before long Josef could explain words in Malagasy to me instead of having to ask a teacher the next day during class.

 

Peace Corps encourages its volunteers to learn local dialects in order to garner support and respect from native inhabitants. For the first two weeks of training, all volunteers in Madagascar study the common speech, that is, the speech spoken by the people in the capital city, Antananarivo. Once we found out our sites, however, volunteers were segregated by region in order to begin learning their regions’ respective dialects. In Sofia, the region where myself and three others are stationed, they speak a variation of the standard speech known as “Tsimihety.” Literally translated “Tsimihety” means “those who do not cut their hair,” and it is both the name of the region’s language and tribal ancestors who, in honor of a fallen king, forbore from cutting their hair.

 

If you think learning Malagasy is difficult, try learning a variation of Malagasy spoken only in a small region of the country. I’m not even talking about linguistic difficulty here. Indeed, it’s fairly easy to gain a rudimentary grasp of the Malagasy language. With regard to temporal tenses, for example, there are only three ways to convey the time at which a verb is occurring: past, present, and future. To change the tense of the verb, simply change the first letter of the verb. Past tense is denoted by verbs beginning in ‘N,’ present tense by those beginning with ‘M,’ and future tense by an ‘H.’ Take, for instance, the verb ‘mianatra,’ which means ‘to study.’ Following the scheme just outline, to denote the past tense ‘mianatra,’ the present tense form of the verb, becomes ‘nianatra,’ while to denote the future tense it would become ‘hianatra.’ Obviously it gets more complex than that as you venture into things like the passive tense, but you can see how one could easily and quickly gain functional and even conversational fluency.

 

But I’m getting carried away here—the difficulty I really want to describe here is the difficulty of finding resources with which to study with. Walk into a bookstore in America and you will find a department devoted to selling you whatever resources you need to study whatever foreign language you want to learn. You don’t like books? Buy Rosetta Stone. Don’t have a computer? Put these tracks on your ipod. Walk into a bookstore in China and you’ll find an entire department devoted to selling you the latest and most effective ways of studying English. Choose from a plethora of textbooks, tapes, CDs, DVDs, and maybe even a seminar or two with ‘Crazy English.’ Walk into a store—I have yet to find a bookstore—here in Madagascar and try finding a Malagasy dictionary. That’s right—there is no official Malagasy dictionary.

 

Let that sink in for a moment—no dictionary.

 

Well there is one dictionary. It’s this flimsy little pink booklet that missionaries compiled years ago. And of course there is the yellow one on Amazon.com available for purchase, but word on the dirt road is that the pink one, which is not even a centimeter thick, is better.

 

In China I bought the newspaper everyday, sat down with my electronic dictionary, and cranked out a few articles no matter how hard they were. In Madagascar there are neither Malagasy dictionaries nor Malagasy textbooks. In Befandriana-Nord, the town where I reside, there aren’t even newspapers. In Antananarivo, the capital, where there are at least newspapers, most articles are in French—such is their legacy. No dictionaries, no textbooks, no newspapers—for official Malagasy, the common speech. Now imagine the situation for Tsimihety, my dialect. Needless to say, the tiny notebooks fill up fast.

 

The Peace Corps language training staff has worked hard to create a textbook suitable for learning the rudiments of the language. And it’s a good textbook filled with all sorts of useful dialogues and vocabulary and cheesy pictures and clipart from Word ‘97—but, it can only take you so far for two reasons. First, they only contain two months worth of information, which is enough to get you off the ground, but if you’re aiming for the stratosphere it’s going to take a lot more than that. Second, try sitting the staff down to get into the real nuts and bolts of the language and sometimes you’re just met with stares. They’ve come up with all these silly pseudo-grammatical terms like ‘substantive’ and ‘relative’ to describe verb transformations, but I could never get anyone to tell me when exactly to use them! Recently I asked a colleague, Honore (see below), the Malagasy teacher, if there were any famous Malagasy writers.

 

     “Yes,” he said, “Jean-Simone (I think).”

     “What did he write?” (Meaning, like, book)

     “He standardized Malagasy about fifty years ago.”

     (Astounded) “Any fiction writers?”

     (Honore looks at colleague) “Do we have any fiction writers? No? Nope. All French books.”

 

The point of recounting this interaction is threefold. First, Malagasy, at least in its ‘official’ form is a young language. It’s only been standardized for less than a century. Second, French colonization, as one might expect, has had its way with this country and this country’s culture. Linguistically, anything and everything official is usually in French and numbers too to boot (the woes and headaches of communicating in French numbers and the arcane financial system here shall be recounted in great detail in the future). Finally, modern Madagascar is heir to a very strong oral culture. Here the spoken word trumps the written word. In my region, for example, degree is expressed by differently intoning the voice. A low pitch for something big—’GEEEEEDDDAAAA;’ a high pitch for something small—’kkkkkkkeeeeellllllyy.’ Furthermore, the Malagasy are a breed who love to give speeches on even the smallest of occasions. It’s not uncommon for me to be at a staff meeting and to hear the all-to-familiar and by now ominous, “Tompokolahy sy tompokovavy”—”gentlemen and ladies,” which is, without exception, proceeded by a long and windbagg-y thank you to every who is at the meeting and a small speech about the desks that are broken. Another example that I find to be revealing is the Malagasy word for history “tantara,” which stems from the verb “mitantara,” meaning ‘to tell,’ which, in this writer’s humble opinion, is a marked improvement on its English counterpart.

I have lived in Madagascar now for close to three months. In that time, I have witnessed dusk change to dark at seven in the evening. I have read, studied, and done dishes by candlelight. I have gone from not being able to say my name in Malagasy to being capable of discussing the historical significance of Martin Luther King, Jr.. I have made family of people who I once considered strangers. I have made my own peanut butter. I have gathered water from a rice paddy in buckets and then taken a shower with it—many times. I have lived among a people whom, despite living in poverty, remain the warmest and kindest breed of folk I ever did see.

I have run barefoot with Malagasy and American friends at five-thirty in the morning, and witnessed the sunrise daily. I have learned to discriminate between different types of mosquitoes and felt the majesty that is to sleep under a mosquito net. To this day, I have taken nine pills of Mefloquine malaria prophylaxis and had the dreams to prove it.

I have been greatly embarrassed by many of my compatriots; greatly emboldened by a few of them.

I have danced with skeletons. I have danced with drunken old men, hand in hand. I have danced, and taught, the Hokey Pokey with fifty Malagasy children. I have taught English to Malagasy children of all ages. I have worn an apron in front of class and made a banana and peanut butter sandwich. I have learned the difference between ‘some’ and ‘any.’ I have been inspired by Malagasy pupils whom, despite lacking ample resources and teachers, speak impeccable English.

I have watched forests disappear and be turned into coal. I have been served pitchers of, for the past two months, the blackest, freshest, and most delicious coffee—”the sort of coffee,” as one author put it, “you marry somebody for being able to make”—no less than twice a day. I have eaten no fewer than three different species of banana, and can assure you that the smell of certain species of banana can offend a sensitive sinus. I have not, I assure, drunk Malagasy Moonshine—’tokagasy’—, as it’s not only not allowed but also illegal, but can also assure you, based on unimpeachable sources, that the stuff is vile and wretched and illegal for good reason.

I have killed a chicken—and eaten it too. Ironically, I have become a vegan. I have seen rolling hills turn into rows of palm trees, and green highlands transform into yellow savannah. I have seen, walked in, and been covered in, distinctly red earth. I have seen spiders as big as fists, and now know that lewd drawings transcend cultural boundaries. I have not , much to my chagrin, laid eyes on a lemur.

I have seen clouds like giant steamships, and clouds that look as though the gods themselves were plowing the sky. The sky. I have never seen a sky so big. I have seen diurnal skies that look like upside down oceans, like great blue canvases on which terra firma is but a splotch of paint. I have seen night skies like black velvet adorned with crystal stars. And in one night’s Madagascar sky I have have witnessed more stars, I think, than in a lifetime of skies. I have learned that stars really do twinkle. I have, with the help of friends, discovered a constellation—an enormous brontosaurus traipsing across the Eastern sky (she’s there, you just have to look). I have seen a milky way that was positively creamy.

I have gone hunting for chameleons and in the process walked across tartan rice paddies that meld and bend with the land. I have gotten lost in the mountains, only to find my way home again hours later. I have been proud of myself for hiking six hours, and have been humbled by meeting others who had been walking for three days.

I have met the police, the military, the superintendent, the town council, and the mayor of my small village. I have hired a carpenter to make me furniture. I have now lived alone for seven days. I have looked at my door with unadulterated fear and had to summon courage just to walk to the market. I have felt the oppressive and impressive weight of solitude and ‘otherness’, but also the intense satisfaction of fighting it and winning. I have made new friends. Already I have perceived the once-alien streets and faces change to familiar places and people—unfamiliar characters falling into familiar roles.

I have begun to call this place home. I have lived in Madagascar now for close to three months. My time here has only just begun.