coming home


Malagasy huts are meant to be lived in.  I know this now because mine was left to it’s own devices for a month and it did not fare well.  It was my first vacation of the year, I hadn’t taken any time off at my new site because I had so much re-committed myself to Peace Corps in this village that was motivated, friendly, and welcoming to me.  Alas, I had planned this trip to the states since before I had left it in the first place, knowing that my best friend from high school, Wally was going to propose to my best friend from college, Shannon and that a wedding was sure to follow.  That is the kind of wedding you don’t miss.  So despite my attempts to truly be integrated and not use my privileges to leave whenever I want, come mid-September it was time for me to go.  

And for my hut to be eased the stomping of my large foreigner feet.  I thought it’d be good for it; the floors were starting to stretch after all!  I had packed away all my stuff, brought my valuables to the Peace Corps bureau, and asked friends and small children to water my plants and keep my yard looking decent so to deter pangalatras (thieves) from thinking that the items in there were up for grabs.  

I still believe this was a good plan in theory.  And maybe in part it worked.  For example, the young boy that I had hired to keep my yard weeded and cleaned definitely made appearences in my house.  When I got there, the front and one side of the hut (what you can see from the road) had absolutely no trash and the dirt was smooth from spikey weeds.  Unfortunately, the fact that the yard had been swept was hard to notice because there were two giants holes in my fence, the wood crumbling down in disastrous piles.  Apparently a couple of drunk dudes had been walking home from a balle (dance) and drunkenly fell into my fence.  And didn’t remember to come put it back together afterwards.  On the other side of my hut where the fence was also bashed in it was surmised that the neighbor’s cows must have been led astray.  Into my yard.  That explains the lack of any vegetation growing in the space where had recently bloomed tomatoes and eggplants.  And I thought my friends had just forgotten to water.

So this was my first site upon getting off the taxi-brousse.  Of course, coming in I had a parade of children traipsing behind me, my little sister Sheila already clamoring to have a piggy-back.  I was happy to see them, so I brushed off my irritation that no one had thought to at least make-shiftily put my fence back together.  They were stoked to see me and that was the most important thing.  I threw my belongings, already filthy anways, to the ground and pulled out my key.  And with 13 little nuggets surrounding me I opened my door to find that a bomb had clearly gone off in my hut.  My mattress was shredded (thank you mice), my furniture gnawed to sawdust (thank you termites), and a thick layer of dust covering every surface (thank you vertatraza (windy season)).  

One could hardly breathe in there, which helped a little bit because it dissuaded the tribe of children from entering.  It’s always quite overwhelming when you are trying to clean or arrange your hut and there are a bunch of children trying to get in and look your pictures/touch everything.  My best friends’ little sister and I spent the next two hours sweeping, wiping, and shaking out everything in the house and it still had the kind of vintage smell you aren’t looking for in second-hand stores.

Now that I have been back to site for a few days with windows and doors letting the sweet end of the veratraza rush through my house it is starting to feel like home again.  I was nervous to come back after being gone for so long, but it turns out that the people in my village, no matter if they give me a hard time about where I was, seem to genuinely be happy when I come back.  I think its going to be hard to leave. 

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