Dancing With Dead People

9/1

Tuesday night was our last night at Ralais du Rova. To celebrate, the family that owned the hotel threw us a party! Apparently it isn’t normal for them to do so, so we were lucky (I think it was in part paid for by a guest who had eaten dinner there for a night or 2 and had enjoyed our company). Rather than eating inside at our huge, 25 person table, we ate outside and stood around. They made 2 huge fish by steaming them on the grill with vegetables. Normally, I don’t like fish, but this wasn’t too bad. We also had zebu skewers and fried cauliflower and little zebu eggroll things. They also made a ton of chocolate cake. Can you tell that we are never short on food to eat?

Last night, after we had all mostly finished eating, the power went out (which had also happened the night before for about an hour) This outage lasted about 2 hours. Me and 5 others stayed outside and talked with the owner of the hotel around a fire. She was really interested in learning about the US and about what types of food we eat and how we treat animals (they have 6 dogs, 1 of whom is sweet as can be [Fox], one of whom is a really good guard dog [Fox’s son, but super duper mean], and 4 puppies that they are training to be guard dogs [who are really nice right now but probably won’t be soon enough]). When the power acme back on we went inside. I ended up playing cards and eating fresh pineapple with a group of people before doing a little packing and heading to bed.

Yesterday morning we left the hotel after saying goodbye to the entire staff and headed into Antanimena, the neighborhood where the SIT classroom center is. The drive took almost an hour but we made it! When we got there, we had to unload all of our bags from the tops of the vans. We ended up forming an assembly line and passing the bags down which worked really well and we unloaded really quickly. Then we headed up to the 3^rd floor (called the second floor here) where the classroom space is. We actually have 3 big rooms that can be used as a classroom, as well as a storage room, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen, and a few offices. We have the whole top floor to ourselves which is nice, but which means that we have to ring twice to get in so that someone can come unlock the door.

Then we split into 5 groups and took a little guided tour of the neighborhood before returning for a delicious lunch made for us by Madame Lalao, our housekeeper/cook. Then we were let off on our own for a little while. I went with a few people to the bank and then to an internet café. I was finally able to post all of my blogs! Of course, I realized that I really need to do all of my typing on my computer because the cyber cafes have European keyboards and it is really weird to type on one of those (so if you get an email from me with some weird misspellings/punctuation, I can almost guarantee that that is why).

Then, finally, it was time to go meet our host families! We walked over to a big venue where, when we walked in, we were greeted by a lot of applause. We stood in a long line and waited until our name was called to go meet our families. I was one of the first to be called and went to meet Jacques, Baku, and Tania, 3 members of my family who had come to meet me. We ended up talking there for a while, during which time I learned that my siblings are 14 (Mikaël), 13 (Tania), and 8 (Cynthia). Then we drove over to get my stuff and went home. Here is something I found amusing though: the apartment is located in Chinatown. In Madagascar. What were the chances? I talked for a while with the family and we showed eachother a bunch of pictures before dinner time. A few family members came over (Jacque’s sister and her husband in particular, who are leaving for France today). Their neighbor’s kids also stopped by to say hi and see me (it isn’t too normal to have a vahaza over). After dinner I played war with all 3 kids while Baku and Jacques watched. It was fun! I won the first game, and Cynthia the second, although I am pretty certain that she cheated. Then I was ready for bed.

I took my first bucket shower! Basically what happens is you get a 1/3 full bucket of boiling hot water (literally, they used a hot water heater like people take to school) and then add cold water to that and use a little cup to pour it over yourself. Although it was sort of weird, it worked and it was really nice to have warm/hot water for a change! I think I’ll get good at taking these new types of showers pretty quickly. I think the hardest part is getting my hair entirely wet without wasting a ton of water.

9/4 Dancing with Dead People

On Friday, classes ended at noon and we were all given 20,000 ariary (a little over $10) and told to go find a restaurant to eat at in small groups. I ended up going to a restaurant called Le Poivre Vert in Analakely (one of the main markets that we had already visited) with 6 others. The restaurant had mostly Italian food. It was more on the expensive end (well, for the standards here, but not at all for the US), but it was quite good. Then we walked around and went through some little side markets, one of which was definitely just meant for Malagasy people. We got a lot of attention in the market, being a group of 7 white girls, although we are definitely getting accustomed to it, which is sort of strange to say. It isn’t that big of a deal though, it is mostly just a lot of people saying hi or whistling at you.

That afternoon I went to Madame Lydia’s house (the homestay coordinator). My host family was going to Antsirabe to visit a sick family member, but had been invited to something on Saturday so I stayed behind. I’m not entirely sure what the whole family situation was, but I mostly hung out with her nephew, Laza, and we played cards. A bunch of other people also stopped in to say hi and I was introduced to them all, and I think most were either sons/daughters or in-laws, but again, I am not completely sure about that.

On Saturday morning I caught the taxi-be at 6:30 with 4 other students and we headed into the SIT center. We ended up leaving there at around 7:45 to go to a famidihana to which we had been invited by the professor with whom we had gone to Ambohimanga. A famidihana is a ritual ceremony in which ancestors are taken out of the family tomb and more wrappings are added. When we first got there and walked in, there were a bunch of people standing around the dancers, but when we were seen, most of the attention moved to us. A group of us was invited to go sit on the inner part of the circle, in the front row, where we had a great view of everything that was going on. After a little while, I noticed a little girl who kept trying to look around us to see so I invited her to come sit up with me so she sat on my lap for the rest of the performances (about 45 minutes probably). Then Laura, who was sitting next to me, also invited a little girl to sit with her, and we took many pictures.

After a while, we were told that it was time to go take a little tour of the “kitchen” and eat. There were 6 or 7 huge pots full of zebu, which had been slaughtered earlier that day for the festivities. We were served rice and zebu (all of which was really oily) out of seeming sort of dirty plates, but Roland assured us that we only had to eat what we were comfortable with. I tried everything and it was good, just too oily for me. SIT had packed cheese sandwiches for all of us so we mostly just ate those. After the meal, we went back to watch the dancers and again sat in the middle. Katie and I were interacting a lot with the kids around us. One of the weirder things that happened was, after a while, I felt the kids touching my back, and Katie told me that they were pulling the stray hairs off of my shirt and smelling them and then keeping them. When I later asked Roland about this, he said that it was a little strange (it is normally fady [taboo] to touch people’s heads/backs) but that it was probably just because vahaza hair was something new to them. After a little while, they started playing with my ponytail. At any rate, the back of my shirt was super clean when the actual ritual started.

We all walked up to the old tomb where the family members began, one by one, taking out the ancestors bones (which had been wrapped in cloth and then rolled in a mat). Each body had more sheets added, and then the body was lifted up and people danced with it. Somehow, Chie, Jimmy, and I found ourselves in the midst of the crowd and were invited to help lift a body, so we literally held up a dead body and danced with it. Definitely one of the weirder things that I think I’ve ever done, but now I can honestly say that I had danced with a dead person, and how many people can say that?

After a long, 2 hour ride back (during which we listened to a ton of music) the 5 of us took the taxi-be back home. That night I ate with more random family members of Lydia’s, including her 3 year old granddaughter, who, interestingly enough, only spoke French, but not Malagasy. She was super adorable. Sunday afternoon, we had a huge meal to celebrate 2 birthdays. There were a ton of different dishes, all of which were pretty good, although I’m not entirely sure what everything was, and that’s probably a good thing. The seafood salad definitely had squid and shrimp in it, as well as some sort of fish and corn, but I had no idea what else, and I have no idea how the zebu was prepared or what the creamy stuff was on the fruit, but I’ve just come to accept that if something tastes good, you should eat it, even if you had no idea what it is.

Finally, her son (son-in-law? Who knows) drove me back to my host family where I was greeted with an ice cream! I played cards with the girls, and then taught them to play UNO, which they loved. Dinner that night was strange. The protein dish was fish (which I’ve been forcing myself to eat, although honestly, it doesn’t taste nearly as fishy here as it does at home), but not a filet like normal. Instead, we all got a whole fish (head, tail, and all) and ate it. The fish was actually pretty good, although I didn’t touch the head. I ate 1 fish, which Cynthia, the 8 year old, ate 3. I have no idea how she managed it, but she did.