Marary = sick
April 12, 2019
When Katherine and Gisèle got back from the FAD, much later than expected (of course), we packed up a lunch Gisèle had made and got into a large pirogue with an outboard engine driven by a friend of Sisy’s. Sisy came along too. The driver pointed us across the bay toward Tanihely, a little island about five km away that is a national park. Fifteen minutes into the long crossing, Sisy pulled cold beer and soda out of a bag by his feet. We shared little glasses and felt tipsy within sips.
The island was beautiful. A handful of speedboats waited in the unloading area. Paul’s boat was there too (Paul is Gisèle’s grandson and a leader for a voluntourism company on Nosy Be, he was coming home from leading a 10-day boat trip). We waved. Many white tourists lay in the sand on the little strip of beach. Gisèle found a suitable spot for all of our things. We ran into the water and left her behind with Sisy and the driver. The coral reef was fantastic. Soon, Gisèle joined us. We swam for more than an hour, following schools of fish around the coral. Some corals reminded me of glacial erratics at home, huge boulders randomly plopped in the landscape. The others saw a turtle. My favorite thing was the purple sponges that looked like little tubes all gathered in a vertical bunch like a children’s xylophone fallen on its side.
Eventually we were called out of the water to eat the rice Gisèle had made with a light salad and fish for the meat eaters. She had brought some street donuts too. So much food here is so fried, far more drenched in oil than at home. I eat much more of fried stuff, but it does not always sit well in my stomach.
We walked up the concrete staircase to the lighthouse with Sisy and the driver later, shouting “Malakilak, malakilak!” at each other. Faster! Faster! Sisy loves to shout that ever since James got home late from a meeting one day with the key and left the other three of us stranded outside the house for a while.
Back at the house, I felt sleepy. The crossing back in the afternoon breeze was longer, choppier than the morning. The others went to the hostel to work, but I had a meeting with some female guides at five and it was already after three so I stayed. Almost immediately, I felt myself starting to fall asleep. I set an alarm for right before my meeting and succumbed to the pull. When my alarm woke me, my head felt light abs heavy all at once. I wanted to keep sleeping. I dragged myself to my meeting instead. It was only down the road, at the high school. I walked there barefoot, having broken my sandals yet again that day. People stared. They called to me in Malagasy, asked why I, a vazaha, was barefoot. My head floated on my shoulders. I focused on the ground.
The interview was bad. I spoke in French and English because one woman, who was incredibly surprised to learn that I spoke French, spoke little English, but the other preferred English. I no longer really needed any of their responses, since meeting Narindra I knew I would only be focusing on coral conservation. They had nothing to say when I asked about working as a woman in the guiding industry. I do not know how to search out the answers people do not offer. My head felt light. I did not record the interview and barely heard the responses. Occasionally I write things down. Eventually, I ended it, thanked them, walked home.
Back at the house, I told Gisèle I felt unwell and went back to sleep.
As the evening went on, I got worse. Chills came on and with them that pain of fever that makes your whole body suffer with no noticeable cause or probable reprieve. After dark, Gisèle made me sit on a stool over a pot of steaming tea and draped cloth over me, trying to induce sweat. I endured it because I lacked the energy to argue. She gave me tea, but it was full of sugar and I could not manage it (I like my tea unsweetened). When she left, I abandoned it and returned to bed.
April 13, 2019
I barely slept all night. The chills came and went. My lower back ached. My whole body ached. I breathed hard in the night, pulled a sheet over myself against the cold that was all in my head. In the morning, I felt slightly better, in far less pain. I walked out into the hall to go pee. Gisèle and Katherine we’re both there, trying to talk to me. My head felt far too light to talk, to focus. Speaking took far too much energy. I tried to move past them, stumbled into the wall, kept going. The next thing I knew, Gisèle was crouched next to me on the floor. Now, she said, I had to go to the hospital.
I made it to the bathroom, Meghan watching over me, then back to bed where I lay until Gisèle said it was time to go. She had made Paul call a bajaj. Before I left, she made me change out of the ratty shirt I was sleeping in. I felt so gross with the sweat of my breaking fever, so lost in a land of floating heads, that I would have gone to the hospital wrapped in a towel. The stairs up to the road were a journey. Meghan walked right behind me and i kept a hand out to ward off the wall. The ride felt a thousand times longer than the drive to the hospital should have. Meghan our her arm around my shoulder. I closed my eyes and sank into her.
We got to the hospital before it opened and ran a bell to get in. They took my vitals and then took me to a hospital bed where I fell asleep again. The building was empty, clean, with white and blue walls. The nurses were young and beautiful. At one point, maybe five of them were gathered around, laughing and joking in Malagasy. They put an IV into my hand. A couple people said a few things in bad English. I did not understand why no one spoke to me in French, but I was too tired to do more than do as told.
I slept. Someone took my blood. I slept.
After a few hours, I asked to go to the bathroom and was walked there clutching the pole from which my IV hung. Another young vazaha woman, sweating and complaining of stomach pain, was moved into the bed next to mine. A series of people with superficial wounds were treated. Many were vazahas. I asked in Malagasy if there were many vazahas every day. Yes, said the nurse who had been watching me. Vazahas are fragile. We are not the same, vazahas and Malagasy, we are different. We are not always fragile, I said. Oh really? I slept.
Eventually, the doctor broke through my haze. He said some words in a quiet French I could not hear or understand. I asked for clarification. He just said, “Typhoid” and “prescription.” He left. When my IV finished an hour later I was allowed to go. The bill was 540,000 Ar and we had to call Katherine to come with the money. I felt the heat pressing through the bajaj ride home, noticed every bump in the road. Katherine was let out early and sent to pickup my prescription, a note incursive with drug names I did not know. James got home just before us. He gave me his hand when we got to the stairs and walked me down, step by uneasy step.
I got back in bed. I slept.
Nat came for lunch. I came out to be polite because I was woken up even though I had told Katherine I did not feel well enough to eat. Both Gisèle and Nat started to insist that I eat. I refused several times, feeling the tension eat away at my almost nonexistent energy. Finally, I gave up and returned to my bed to read.
In the afternoon, I had to escape the house and Nat’s patronization. I went to Tamana with Katherine and drank fruit juice, but my computer stopped turning on and I had no book or phone. I just sat on the roof, feeling hollowed out. Being here in the languid stretch of daily life has certainly increased my tolerance for just waiting. I can sit for hours with nothing todo and hardly notice.
After the others ate dinner and Paul came home from his trip, full of concern for me, we decided to go back out to tamana for drinks. I felt weak, but no longer particularly tired or sick. Paul managed to convince everyone to plan to come all the way to Ambataloaka, the touristy town where the volunteer tourist kids go dancing at the night club on the weekends. We shoved money into our sports bras and gave James our visas to put in his pockets.
I drank half a glass of orange juice while everyone else had beer. There were tons of the volunteer kids, gap year students from around the world, drinking on the roof. Paul split his time between our table and theirs. I drifted in and out of the conversation.
Some friends of Paul’s showed up, a couple Malagasy guys, one of whom spoke a bit of French and was very drunk. The other was quieter, nicer, spoke no French. The loud one kept insisting that one or the other of us must not know how to speak in French only English. He forgot our names and when James started to go around introducing us, he asked James immediately if I was his wife.
Before everyone went out to the nightclub in Ambataloaka, I had them walk me back to the house. I slept.
April 14, 2019
We woke up to Gisèle already cooking up a storm and spent much of the morning chopping for her.
She made us rice and eggplant for lunch and I ate a little. In the afternoon, we had to get out of the house, so we took a taxi to Ambondrona. I’m getting better at getting in the taxis here, at just pushing through the herd of screaming drivers and choosing the fullest car. Meghan and I showed James and Katherine the hidden beach around the corner we had found, the one with the old stone foundation. We splashed in the ocean together and talked, feeling the salt water dry out our lips. At some point a few weeks ago, I stopped wearing hats or sunglasses and know just squint against the sun like everyone else here.
No one reallly wanted to go back to the house and the celebration that Gisèle had made there. At home, I often enjoy being the center of attention, but here it is such a constant state, and so unfounded, that I dread it. We dragged out our time at the beach and got back to the house a little late. Gisèle had an impressive spread of food, including samosas, pako pako made from cassava, crabs, rice, and pitcher in pitcher of cold homemade juice made from guavas, pineapple, papaya, and more. I ate little but well and felt well fed. Sisy, Roland, Nat, Paul, and pails little brother were all there.
When we had finished eating, there was a huge cake to serve. It was moist and citrusy and decorated with little balls of fruit Gisèle had made herself.
When the food was done, it was still early. We danced for a while in a space cleared in the middle of the room.
April 15, 2019
I ran with Meghan in the morning. I rarely run here. The roads are all cement and you cannot get far without running on the main road. I miss my mountains and woods, my winding paths and dirt roads that roll across the flats of the valley.
The hostel was closed so Meghan and I went somewhere else in the morning to try to get work done on our projects and paperwork for home. My computer broke over the weekend and Meghan’s has been dead for weeks, so we shared James’s. Tsiory called me in the morning to ask if we would come teach English class at his school. I agreed. He texted that he was still in Tana, we’d be alone, the director was expecting us. Meghan, Katherine, and I took a bajaj to the school after lunch. It was not what we were expecting. The school had big metal gates, unlocked. We were sent to present ourselves to the director upon arrival. The campus had several buildings with big, shady verandas lined with hooks for all the students. There was a playground, an office building, and a porch set up to be a cafeteria. Most of the teachers were vazahas. The children were predominantly mixed race, with coffee skin, light eyes, and curly light brown hair. Some looked like most Malagasy children, darker skin and African or Polynesian features. Some, a surprising number, were blond haired and blue eyed. Clearly, Tsiory taught at the vazaha school, the expat school, the rich kids school. We were handed off to a teacher who gave me an attendance list and walked us over to a shade structure covering some benches and tables. About eight elementary-school aged children waited there. She told the children we would be teaching today and tomorrow. News to me. The next hour passed slowly as we tried to keep a bunch of six-year-olds in line and teach them English with no lesson plan. It was fun to speak French with children who were much more likely to be native speakers. We played Simon Says and stopped worrying about the ones who ran off because there was really no where for them to go. I wish I knew how to teach language, but I had a blast anyway. I love that age.
After, Katherine, Meghan and I went to Casa Mofo, the bougie bakery/cafe with tables full of vazahas. I hate being there, but I was about to crawl out of my skin with stir craziness so I took James’s computer and tried to get a little work done. I was too fidgety for success, but I did manage to talk briefly to a friend studying abroad in Copenhagen. Speaking to people who already understand you and can thus predict what you will be feeling when you are telling a story is a great relief after spending time in another cultural context. After my second cup of coffee of the day I had the jitters something bad.
At night, in the house, Meghan and I did ten minutes of core to work out some of the excess energy. Paul was roaming in and out and acting crazy. I came home once to find him and Katherine wrestling. They were both on the ground and Katherine’s head was pinned Erwen his ankles.
Katherine joined Meghan and I after our core in a four-song dance party. We shook and twisted and flung ourselves around the living room floor to familiar songs from home. I danced in the light of the lone bulb in our house by the ocean and laughed until I had sunk myself back down to this earth.
zucchini walking 