Drinking beer with nuns
by Danny Lutz
"Anything can happen in Madagascar," my professor Nat Quansah said. And right on cue a local dog named Cafe sauntered into the classroom, situated himself behind Nat, and marked his territory with a puddle of urine.
As fun as it is to write about dog pee, this isn't a story of Cafe's bladder. Instead, I write about the quest of every study abroad student: to be a part of a culture. And for me it's about the desire to become a local here, to be a true Malagasy.
It began last Saturday morning, when I slid into a car with Vontzy and Joba, two Malagasy I hadn't met before. The plan was to visit an ecotourist site close to the capital city of Antananarivo, and interact with the nearby villagers. "Be ready to be flexible," Vontzy said, referring to the common occurrence that events never go as planned.
We reached Anjorozonbe, a town 15 kilometers away from the ecotourist camp, at midday. There we bought raw meat to bring to the villagers as a "voloandala," or gift from the road. Unfortunately, at this point, the road had turned into something of a motocross course, and Vontzy's 1980 Passat practically laughed out loud when we tried to continue on it. Or maybe it was just the sound of his broken muffler. Unable to continue by car, we strapped on backpacks and hiked. Two hours later, 15 kilometers seemed a lot longer than it had originally sounded, and the raw meat was starting to cook under the Malagasy sun.
Once we reached the ecotourist camp, I was shocked to discover that Vontzy and Joba did not plan on stopping there. The local village was still two kilometers away. I began to worry about whether the villagers would welcome us. It's times like these that I like to compare Madagascar to the United States. I wondered how well we'd be welcomed into a small-town, Midwestern home in the United States if we showed up with only a few slabs of meat, asking for a place to stay.
In Madagascar, I discovered, it's quite easy. The villagers took us in immediately, cooked the meat for dinner and shared with us, and then gave us a pile of straw to sleep on. That night, looking up at the sky, I wondered if friends and family back home were sharing the stars with me.
After being woken extremely early the next morning by a rooster who had apparently lost his sense of time, I was injected with a bit of Western Culture. On our return, after the villagers sent us off with a top-notch Malagasy breakfast of rice and leftover meat, we passed by the eco-camp, where we were nearly mauled by two mountain-biking Americans.
Oh god, I thought, another local village and culture overrun by American tourists. The couple invited us to sit with them during their breakfast, where the man introduced himself as the vice-consul to Madagascar, to my surprise. These guys weren't tourists at all, but rather they were part of the American Foreign Service working to develop Madagascar and its relations with America. I realized my judgment of people here had completely fallen apart, even with fellow Americans.
The biggest shock happened in Anjorozonbe, where we returned to pick up the car. Vontzy had left the car at a Catholic church, and upon our arrival the sisters invited us in for lunch. While they prepared the food, we waited in a room full of portraits of local church men and read religious magazines. They then invited us to the table, where I immediately sat down without realizing that everyone else had remained standing to perform a group prayer. During the prayer they all did the sign of the cross, and I tried to follow; but, it being my first attempt, I flailed my arms in every direction. Luckily for me, no one noticed and we finally sat down. They served me the best meal I've had so far in Madagascar, consisting of four courses, yogurt for dessert and plenty of beer. Originally, I thought the beer was only for us visitors, but the nuns on each side of me filled up a glass and knocked it down. Jesus would be proud.
After lunch we began the journey back to the capital. I was left to try to unravel and sort through the unusual events of the weekend. Would I ever be able to understand the world around me in Madagascar? In other words, could I ever be a local? This wasn't the conclusion I expected to reach, but I realized that I am an American. Whenever I felt lost throughout the weekend adventure, my thoughts kept returning to Tufts, friends and the girl back home. Even in attempts to isolate one's self by traveling to the end of the Earth, it seems that a tiny world will always exist within.
