My puppy, “Puppy”

Below are two journal entries I’ve written from the village this month. This laptop is incredible… (Rachel managed to post one story herself from Tana today. Here is the other, briefer one.)

Voloina

What a strange and wonderful world this is. I sit in bed under my mosquito net and write this entry on my laptop by candlelight. In the huts around me I can hear Maman’i Mesido prodding the fire in her cooking hut, and the faint squeak of a rat in the thatch roof of Maman’i Mora’s house next door. Puppy’s head is resting on my knee as he assumes the endearing position he’s mastered to be close to me, while not technically in bed (which he knows is not allowed). His feet are resting on the floor and his upper half stretched out on my sleeping bag. It’s our little compromise. Dogs that wrestle in the mud and go out into the fields at their masters’ heels are not allowed in my painstakingly hand-washed clean sheets (except in the event of cyclones when I need that warm presence enough to brave the fleas).

Every so often Puppy lets out a long sigh of contentment, obviously in raptures that I have finally come home to the village.

White Thighs (Fotsy Fehy) and Clear Soup (Ro Mazava) also seemed glad to see me, at least as glad as chickens with tiny brains can be. So were, of course, the children. It’s lovely to be surrounded by Maman’i Lito’s troop again, Lynda peering shyly through the cracks in my thatch walls until I notice her, then giggling and hiding her face in her hands, strong little Stella, baby sister on her hip like an accessory, tiny Frankline, and the always endearing, but mischievous Franko and Franklin, asking if they can go fetch water for me (for a reward, of course) and disappearing with my two plastic buckets.

I saw one of my favorite fruit sellers in the market in Maroantsetra today and exchanged the usual string of Betsimisaraka greetings with her, in which much is uttered but nothing is really said. Yesterday, I discovered her at the airport and asked what she was doing there. I assumed she was one of the crowd of peasants huddled against the glass of the waiting area windows, watching for the body of their relative to be unloaded from the plane so he could be buried with all the other ancestors in the family tomb (the Malagasy will go to incredible lengths to ensure that a family member’s remains are laid to rest in the appropriate place, no matter how far away they have to send for them).

To my surprise, Vegetable Lady said she was at the airport on her own, saying goodbye to her son, who was going off to Antananarivo to study. I could hardly believe it. How incredible that a little vegetable seller in the bazary of M has managed to put aside enough money to send her son to Tana for an education. It is so rare that youths get out of M and can experience more of the island than this intimate, northeastern corner…

The humpback whales are making their way out of the Bay of A and back to colder waters, and the days are getting warmer as our southern hemisphere summer begins. All is mangina [quiet] here…

Much love to all and please keep in touch (by snail mail, otherwise forgive my long delay on email, as usual). Rachel