Sojourn to Madagascar Part 7 - Taking Stock

Sojourn to Madagascar Part 7

Taking Stock

In our own minds, Sylvia and I often compare our living conditions here with those we had at the beginning of our marriage at Ikizu Seminary and Secondary School in Tanzania almost 50 years ago.

Ikizu 1967 to 1971	U. A. Z. 2016
High school level academically	Elementary language instruction in a university
I taught upwards of 40 (40 min) class periods plus was in charge of maintenance, electricity, water, printing press	Teaching from 5 to 13 (50 min) class periods per week.
Remote, about an hour’s drive over dirt and gravel roads to the nearest town with a market	Remote, about an hour’s drive over a potholed tar road from the nearest town with a market
No car. We had to rely on the generosity of others, especially the principal	No car. We have to rely on the generosity of others, especially the rector.
Electricity 3 ½ hours a day	Electricity 24 hours a day but with frequent outages
Water sufficient but not plentiful	Water plentiful during the rainy season; other-wise they have rationing in place
Drinking water—we boiled our own	Drinking water—We boil our own
Bathing water—gas water heater	Bathing water—Electric water heater after the first 8 days
Laundry—We had our own washing machine and line dried our clothes outside	Laundry—We use rector’s washing machine and line dry outside, with high risk of rain, or on limited covered lines on our back porch
The bed was more like a hammock than a bed.	The bed is more like a hammock than a bed. We get real’ cozy this way.
There was no heat in the house. Being a degree and a half off of the equator, we didn’t miss it. There was no winter.	There is no heat in the house. Being almost 20 degrees off the equator, we have missed it. We’re lucky not to be here in the winter
We had many books along with us, and we spent our evenings reading.	We have practically no books along. Pam has leant us a hard drive with a number of movies.
Vegetables—many brought to our door by locals, the rest through the town market and a grocery store	Vegetables—occasionally brought to our door, eggs available at local farm, the rest through the town market and grocery stores.
Communication—regular and dependable mail service; radio-telephone that was flaky and eventually discontinued	Communication—mail totally undependable; email flaky; local cell phone; U.S. Wi-Fi phone
Languages—multiple local languages, Swahili predominant; English widely understood	Languages—Malagasy predominant; French widely understood; English rarely understood
Radio available with limited local stations; no TV; no computer or Internet	No radio or TV; Internet available nearby
Security—very safe, petty thievery, walked everywhere—even at night	Security—safe; I wouldn’t walk far outside at night. We have a 9:00 p.m. curfew.
Home security—no bars on windows and simple locks on doors. We left them open during the day	Home security—rebar bars on all windows. Two heavy half inch steel bolts on solid wood front and back doors. Closed during the day.
Respect by students—very good	Respect by students—very good
Friendliness—Everyone was very friendly	Friendliness—Everyone is very friendly
Malaria—present mainly during the rainy season. We took a prophylactic	Malaria—nominally not present. But Pam caught it a couple weeks ago; we are taking a prophylactic
Sidewalks—sand	Sidewalks—clay, very muddy and slippery when wet
Lawns—mowed by mowers I kept working	Lawns—mainly neglected, on rare occasions cut with shears or sickle
Countryside around partially cultivated. Lots of natural savannah bush	Countryside around intensively cultivated, especially near the national road. No natural rain forest left.
Majority of faculty were expatriate missionaries	Majority of faculty are Malagasy
Weather was very dry and never got much above 80° (27°C) or below 60°(13° C) all year round, even in the rainy seasons	Weather never gets much above 80° (27°C), and right now the humidity stays very close to 100%. In the winter time they can have frost.
I wore sandals, shorts, and a T-shirt all year round	I wear socks and shoes, long sleeves, long pants, and an undershirt every day in summer
There were no toilets in any of the classrooms or dining room.	There are toilets in the buildings. They are not labeled by gender
When you arrive at someone’s home you call “Hodi!”	When you arrive at someone’s home, you call “Oidia!”
People go to bed early and arise early. It does not make them wealthy.	People go to bed early and arise early. It does not make them wealthy.

With regard to the toilets in buildings, the other day I needed to use the toilet. I walked down the hall in the Technology Building. The toilets are on opposite sides of the west end of the hallway. The doors to the restrooms always stand wide open. The one on the left has a urinal right next to a sink with no privacy panel. I had figured that no one would use it because of its exposure to the hallway. My carefully applied deductive reasoning was based on the false premise that Malagasies have some shame or longing for privacy in a toilet. Here was a guy using the urinal and ignoring all passersby. There are several stalls as well, which I chose to use!

Pam has loaned us an external hard drive with a bunch of movies that her sister and a couple other people have recorded. So far we have watched:

v  Freedom Writing:  a dramatization of the experience of a young English teacher in Woodrow Wilson High School during and after the Rodney King beating trial in 1994

v  Summer Holiday: a fictional adventure of four young men who borrow a London double-decker bus and drive it to Greece picking up four young women en route

v  Journey to the Center of the Earth: A modern take-off of an old Jules Verne novel of the same name. Fun but highly unrealistic

v  Cairo Time: A woman comes to Cairo to meet her husband who is on a U.N. assignment in the Middle East. They don’t get together until the end of the movie

v  The Philadelphia Experiment: a WW II experiment to make a battle ship undetectable by radar causes serious spatial disruption and inadvertent time travel

v  Santa Paws 2: a kid’s movie trying to put the materialism back into Christmas by making it more humanistic. Mrs. Santa saves the day

v  Grown Ups: a spoof on the Peter Pan idea that some men don’t want to grow up. Their wives, of course, have a hard time with it

v  Prince of Egypt: a Hollywood version of Moses from bulrushes to the Red Sea. We watched this before showing it to Pam’s class.

The second week in January was one of a plague of June bugs and mosquitoes. I keep the light on over the front door. Each morning there would be a carpet of bugs on the front porch. Scores of mosquitoes would also be dead alongside the bugs. Scores more would be sitting on the walls, doorway, and window waiting for me to open the door so they could fly in. Scores more of these mosquitoes would find ways to squeeze under the front door or through the cracks in the louvered kitchen window. It is the only window in the house that is not screened in. We killed as many as we could. One night they got so bad that Sylvia sprayed the kitchen and living room with the bug spray she had thoughtfully packed in her suitcase. I spent a half hour the next morning just cleaning up and disposing of their carcasses. In deference to the Sabbath commandment, none (zero, zilch) of them were in evidence anywhere inside or outside the house on Sabbath morning. They were back on Sunday morning but in greatly diminished quantities.

Neither Sylvia nor I were bitten by the mosquitoes, although they would buzz in our ears if we let them get that close. Thank God that none of the mosquitoes were anopheles, the kind that carries malaria. Look them up on the Internet. We’ve almost forgotten how handy the Internet is when it is available all the time. We only have Internet when we are down at school. It took me three days of trying to upload Sojourn 6. On the other hand, we have had fairly good success using our Republic Wireless phones on Internet mode to call people in the U.S. That has been a real treat.

Our home is equipped roughly like homes were in the 1930s except that we do have an old, small electric fridge with all its inner workings exposed.

On Monday, January 11, I gave my talk Numerology and the Hebrew Mind for chapel. See http://faculty.lasierra.edu/~wclarke/nhmx.pdf  It was one, with several modifications, that I gave at a Science and Spirituality Conference at Andrews University some years back. I was asked to speak on Thursday evening. Friday I was lucky, after several hours of trying, to download a copy of the speech. I was concerned that it wouldn’t be understood, even though there is no math in there except adding numbers up to get 666. English is a rather distant third language for most of these students. There was substantial talking amongst the students. But they did laugh when I made jokes and respond at some surprising things I told them. So a fair number must have been following.

On the way home Monday evening, we stopped and picked up some groceries we had ordered through Pam. We got mangos, personal size papayas, bananas, tomatoes, plums, carrots, leeks, and one or two other vegetables for 10,000Ar (about $3.00). This was a special order because it went through with the cafeteria’s order which is in bulk. The same usually costs us closer to 30,000 Ar (closer to $10) for the same amount. If I had gone to the market myself rather than having a Malagasy do the shopping for me it would have cost closer to 100,000Ar. So it doesn’t pay for me to go to the market!

This is a spiritually oriented campus. We pray at the beginning and end of each class. Students want to sing at the beginning of each class and do so in many classes.