On to America

Did you know that the Malagasy, since they adopted the French school system, count one less continent than we count? So do the French apparently, but this does not concern them. Anyway, the Malagasy count North and South America as one continent, as apparently the Panama Canal just doesn't cut it. Literally.

I just spent the last week on the road, traveling north from Ifaty to Tulear, Tulear to Ranohira, Ranohira to Ranomafana, Ranomafana to Antananarivo, which is where I am now - sitting in the airport while I wait for my flight to JFK. I have so many stories and anecdotes that I am going to have pare them down to a few worthwhile ones to put down here on the blog. In the meantime, as I leave Africa after my first visit, here is a piece of writing that attempts to capture a little bit of what my time here was like in the sparsest way possible.


Ambiguous Africa

A heightened awareness of the me in my skin
Living on the cheap
Priceless; sights, sounds, smells
Horns doing what signal lights, mirrors
and driving on one side of the road should
Distended bellies, abject povert, Hope
No concept of Personal Space
Quickly returned smiles, Spiteful faces
The ever-present language barrier broken
by signs, funny faces and laugher
A culture of easy hand-outs
Responsibiliy through serendipitous birth
Crushing overwhelming insurmountable problems
Appreciation of Home
Difficulty in the Simple
Syncopated dancing raising road-side dust
Empty water bottles as precious commodity
Greetings through colour identification
Children too small to know to ask, piping
"Cadeux" from afar with a smile and frenzied wave
The impossibility of true integration
Present Mortality
Simple Solutions

The inability to ever fully express personal experience
This is Africa - to me