The following passages are excerpts from the paper I wrote upon my return as part of my Tucker Fellowship at Dartmouth.
The two and a half months I spent in and around the town of Fort Dauphin on the southeastern tip of Madagascar were by no means easy. In fact, Madagascar challenged me tremendously, and I’m thankful for that. By engaging in an otherworldly lifestyle, I experienced, did, and saw things that I may never again be privy to in my life. From October to December many of my perceptions were flipped on their heads, I reconsidered the problems I thought I had, and I witnessed some extraordinary events. I took a lot of time to think about the things in life that I value, and certainly these things evolved over the ten weeks.
As a preface, I am confident in saying that Azafady is a solid and effective NGO. Year-round they engage in grassroots development projects that have shown to drastically impact some of the poorest communities in Madagascar, thus improving the quality of life in these communities. School building, well building, latrine construction, sanitation education, and conservation work are the staples of Azafady’s agenda. They are well organized, they have good leadership, they integrate local personnel and knowledge into every single project, and the men and women running the organization are all intelligent, caring people.
I recognize that in this regard I got lucky, as NGOs are difficult operations to run. Azafady is not perfect, and there are adjustments and improvements that continuously take place within the organization’s framework. However, I do know that the NGO successfully acts on the mission they project, and that mission is of the most respectable and humanitarian nature. I worked along with seven other European and American volunteers in their mid-twenties to achieve construction projects on schedule. To say the least we worked extremely hard, and the determination that was fostered within the group allowed us to achieve construction goals very quickly. In retrospect we accomplished a lot; we built a 1000 square-foot school in Fort Dauphin, a latrine in Beandry, and a kitchen and storage room for one of Azafady’s camp sites in Sainte Luce, a work location in the bush outside of Fort Dauphin. These all serve as meaningful accomplishments for me; I knew why I was going to Fort Dauphin, and I got the job done. But the construction and the service I performed were merely the backbone of my immersion into Malagasy culture. Perhaps the things I will cherish the most in the coming years of my life are the surprises I encountered, the customs and extracts of this other world that I found right in front of my eyes. And then there were the bitter moments, the periods of exhaustion and illness, the occasional pining for the comforts I had left at home, 5,000 miles away and across two oceans. These things I will remember for their sculpting effect on my mentality and my resolve.
The source of Madagascar’s pervasive poverty is important to note. Following its independence from French colonialism in 1960, Madagascar began its 50-year slide towards economic turmoil and unprecedented levels of poverty. This unfortunate series of economic downturns and the incapacitation of the Malagasy people can be attributed to several factors. One is the frequent political crises and coups d’état within the country, which most often result in the exclusion of the capital city of Antananarivo from both domestic and international trade. Another is the succession of unwise economic policies installed by various heads of state from the late 1970s onward, particularly those of Didier Ratsiraka, whose policies of centralization and nationalization during the 1980s essentially unraveled Madagascar’s economy, as foreign aid packages were rejected and the country’s natural resources were not properly exploited. For 25 years GNP growth was zero, and as the population doubled, GNP per capita was halved. Today Madagascar stands as one of the poorest countries in the world, and life there presents many difficulties. From an ecological standpoint, Madagascar’s unstable and weak economy greatly threatens the country’s globally important biodiversity. In order to subsist, people must perform slash and burn agriculture, which is an unsustainable farming practice and the source of rampant deforestation throughout the country. The last remaining segments of Madagascar’s original forests are quickly dwindling.
I first witnessed these realities during my first day in Antananarivo, the capital city. Here I passed countless people sleeping on the street. Vendors relentlessly pleaded with me to buy their handicrafts in an effort to make ends meet, and the women who asked me for money carried their babies in one hand while making the universal feeding gesture with the other. I saw that people’s lives were similarly difficult in Fort Dauphin upon my arrival; in this coastal town people find livelihoods in fishing, construction, basket weaving, and selling goods in the marketplace, but living standards and daily earnings remain extremely low. This was the location of our first project, the construction of a three-room schoolhouse for the lakeside community of Lani Rano. For the next ten weeks, each volunteer slept in a single-person tent on a sleeping pad, and that first night I lay under the stars as the crickets lulled me to sleep.
The school’s skeleton was built from a series of long wooden beams that were chiseled to lock onto each other where horizontal and vertical sections met. The work was intense, as there was a lot of sawing, chiseling, and nailing to be done every day for four weeks. Rocks, bags of cement, and wooden planks had to be carried from one location to another, holes needed to be chiseled, sand needed to be shoveled into buckets to mix mortar, and wooden beams had to be sawed—at times the sawing seemed endless. Chisels and saws were blunt, shovels bent easily, and the hammers rattled flimsily with every strike. The NGO had a tight budget, and we were just going to have to do with what we had. So we did. That first day of work was a memorable one for me. As the teeth of my saw shredded through a wooden beam, my tank top became heavy with sweat. I paused for a moment, and I came to the realization that this was the purest form of service I had ever taken part in. I felt purposeful, important, and that I was working for a respectable cause. It was a great feeling, and I would have that same feeling of selfless purpose many times again over the next 2 and a half months.
We spent weeks six to eight building a latrine in Beandry, a village in the bush 30 miles from Fort Dauphin. These two and a half weeks marked the highlight of my time in Madagascar. This is where I really saw another side of the world, where peoples’ lives were starkly different from mine. In the evenings I would sit against our makeshift longhouse, watching scenes of hills and the setting, pink sun, thinking about where I was and why I was there. Beandry gave me an invaluable awareness of the world and of myself in the world. I helped build a latrine for a remote and underdeveloped community. I danced and played soccer with people who had seen white people only once before our arrival. I witnessed the ceremonial slaughtering of a cow, I cut off the head of a live chicken, and I hiked across stunning countryside to assist with health and sanitation education in the town of Mahatalaky.
The Azafady volunteers and I met the chef du quartier, or head of the village, on our first evening in Beandry. Our Malagasy guides took us on a forest path through the village. Naked infants eating cassava ran around their parents, waved to us, and shouted the standard hello, “Salama!” Peoples’ homes were simple structures made of straw and wood, elevated slightly from the ground for protection from the rain. Each family had their own plot of land, and pigs and malnourished dogs trotted through bushy terrain in search of food. We arrived at the chief’s home, removed our shoes, and sat down on straw mats in a semi-circle. He and his wife looked at us with friendly eyes. We introduced ourselves, told them where we were from, and expressed our enthusiasm to work with the community. With the help of a translator, he expressed the deepest gratitude towards us and for our work—the construction of the village latrine. He told us we were a gift from god, heaven sent. This introduction to the community was heartwarming, but it was only the beginning of what the community had to offer.
The next night was the most memorable of the ten weeks for me and a night that I will cherish for the rest of my life. At eight o’clock in the evening, the volunteers and I, along with our guides, entered a crowd of about sixty people. This was the village of Beandry. Children, adolescents, adults, and elderly men and women surrounded us, creating a circle with a comfortable distance between us and the chef du quartier, who knelt before the members of the community. The vice chief of Beandry accompanied him, and before the two men lay an assortment of gifts: five chickens and four large glass bottles of Coca-Cola. Before our group was a Gallon jug of moonshine. This was our offering in return.
The welcoming ceremony began, and the chief’s Malagasy words and sincerity of purpose were silencing. As he addressed our group of volunteers, his words were translated, and I remember phrases such as “You are a gift from God”, “Two years ago you brought us a school, and this year a latrine, both of which are the first in the history of the village”, “We cannot thank you enough; these are small gifts but their meaning is much greater,” and “God will find a way to repay you for helping us.” His hand gestures, his facial expressions, the captivating rhythm with which he spoke, and his genuine eyes turned this exchange of thanks into the greatest display of hospitality I had ever witnessed. This wholehearted welcome was a truly humbling experience for me, and at that moment I wanted to be nowhere else in the world. The illustration of generosity absorbed me; never did I imagine how much happiness could be derived from such a simple exchange of thanks. The other volunteers felt similarly, and we could not contain our appreciation and respect for the community. Being the youngest volunteer, Malagasy tradition made me the one to accept the offerings. I picked up the chickens by their feet, and after we all shared a friendly laugh, I brought them back to our campsite. That night the people of Beandry drank their moonshine, and the next day we enjoyed our chickens and Coke.
I grew in Madagascar because of the challenges I was confronted with, the men and women I came to know, and the realities that struck me. There are great inequalities in this world. The people of Madagascar have less food, poorer health, fewer comforts, and lower life expectancy than we do in the global North. My experience afforded me the opportunity to step into this reality rather than continuing to simply read and hear about it, while also allowing me to perform something concretely beneficial for such underdeveloped communities. These things are obvious. What’s not as obvious is this: the difference between reading about a place like Madagascar and living there for three months is similar to the difference between dreaming and waking up. While dreams are ephemeral, the tribulations of life are real and must be faced, and that is not always so easy to do. Dr. Chi Huang distinguishes between being passive and making a difference in his narrative: What if one room was made available for every tear cried for these street children? Pity is useless and unwanted . Give me rooms. Give me clean water. Give me loving arms. Pity never built a home. (When Invisible Children Sing, 284). I will be disappointed if I do not return to the developing world for a philanthropic cause in the future.
Near the end of my trip I learned of an old Malagasy proverb that says, “When eating rice, some falls.” The phrase reminds us that one cannot possibly consume every grain of rice one tries to eat; some will inevitably fall from the spoon before it reaches the mouth. The words suggest that things don’t always go the way we want them to. Failure and loss are part of life, so we must we cope.
One thing I’ve come to know is that the things in life that are the most worth doing are usually the most difficult things to do. Much of my time in Madagascar was difficult, but it made me a better, more understanding, and more patient person. Everything Madagascar has taught me will influence my actions and decisions in the future—the country has shaped me for the better. And I will always remember lying on my back in my 4 by 7 foot tent, listening to the pounding rain, and feeling both the isolation and the purpose.
