Christmastime Hope

Today, Thursday the 24th of December, has passed much like every other day thus far in Madagascar. I don't work on Thursdays, so these are my errand days: the early morning saw me sleep in (until 7:30!!!!!!), eat my customary breakfast of bread with butter and jam, venture out to the MVola stand to make a withdrawal, and buy laundry soap and jus natural (corossal, of course) from my favorite hotely on the walk home. Late morning was consumed by laundry, taking my customary 2-2.5 hours to complete. Then lunch with my father, cuddling with the cat, language studying, and general free time until dinner. I risked a look at the weather today- RealFeel of 87 degrees Fahrenheit and 70% humidity. Never having been one to enjoy heat or sun, the weather right now is oppressive. Mafana be ny andro!!! Today was a typical Thursday here in Tanjombato, down to the last minute detail.

Suffice it to say, Christmas has actually been the last thing on my mind lately. I checked my email today and saw a full out list of blogs from fellow YAGMs reflecting quite beautifully on spending their first Christmas abroad- how things are different, how homesickness is being felt, and on finding the beauty of familiarity in Christmastime celebrations at their site. I felt obliged to write something similar... So in order to get myself in the Christmas mood, I popped on my holiday playlist.

And the first song to play was "Happy Xmas" covered by Maroon 5. Well, that's cheery. For those of you not familiar, it's melancholy, acoustic, and slightly minor. The first lines are: So this is Christmas/And what have you done/Another year over/And a new one just begun/And so this is Christmas/For weak and for strong/For rich and the poor ones/The world is so wrong. 

The next song to come up was "Christmas Lights" by Coldplay, which is about a couple breaking up on Christmas Eve. Oh, lovely. A sampling of the lyrics: Christmas night,/Another fight,/Tears we cried,/A flood/Got all kinds of poison in, of poison in my blood...When you're still waiting for the snow to fall/It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all. 

Wow. To tell the truth, I really identified with these songs. The overall feel of them fit my mood: acknowledging the season without really having any real feeling invested in it. Kind of melancholy, disappointed, negative, maybe just a bit hopeless... I don't mean to say that life here is any of those things- I am very thankful to be where I am. I love my family, students, community here. But as a person who is prone to such feelings at all points in my life, these emotions were what stuck out to me most prominently in those songs and what I identified with. 

How am I going to write a happy, well thought out, theologically meaningful, 'I love YAGM and Madagascar and Jesus all the time and life is sunshine and rainbows' blog now?!?!

And then I was angry on top of all that! Angry at my own inability to write beautifully about Christmas here like other YAGMs, angry at my feelings of 'what am I even accomplishing here?', angry at having such downers of Christmas songs, and angry at the damn heat!! 

And that's where I'm at. Truthfully, raw and unashamed, this is where I'm at. This Christmas Eve, I don't have any meaningful observations about seeing God here in Madagascar. No heartwarming stories of my community sharing in Christmas traditions new to me and new to them. 

I got stuck on the feelings of meaninglessness. 

It's too easy to get bogged down in these feelings. 

We lose sight of ourselves in the midst of the world, getting lost in the constant deluge of evil that can seem to emanate from every pore. We lose sight of the world in the midst of ourselves, falling so quickly into the sin of pride that allows us to place ourselves at the center of our lives. 

I look at things like the terror attacks in Paris a month ago, at the wars being waged by ISIS, at the way in which my country is responding to the refugee crisis... And I feel so angry at the evil, the selfishness, violence, and hate that exists in our world. All of that darkness, it feels overwhelmingly vast. The world is so wrong. 

I look at my life, here and before, and can't help but to wonder what I am actually accomplishing in the long run. YAGM- young adults in global mission. Sometimes I wonder- what's my mission, really? Teaching English? What have you done? 

And I know that these thoughts aren't the absolute truth, that there is a deeper truth that runs underneath; that of God and light and love. And I also know that I will always be prone to believing first the dark feelings of disparity and meaninglessness over that of God's truth. Got all kinds of poison in, of poison in my blood. 

...and in the writing of this blog, I looked up the lyrics to quote them accurately; and in doing so, I read a few lines more that I had overlooked on my first listen. 

From "Merry Xmas": And so happy Christmas/For black and for white/For yellow and red ones/Let's stop all the fight/A very merry Christmas/And a happy New Year/Let's hope it's a good one/Without any fear. 

And from "Christmas Lights": Up above candles on air flicker/Oh they flicker and they glow/And I am up here holding on to all those chandeliers of hope/Oh Christmas lights light up the street/Light up the fire once in me/May all your troubles soon be gone/Those Christmas lights keep shining on. 

Ha- and there we have the nice neat ending I'd been despairing over. The Lord shall provide, after all. 

For those of you to whom this seems all just a bit too conveniently placed, too neatly wrapped up with a bow, I assure you, it was not my intent. 

Honestly, I was too wrapped up in those feelings of despair and self pity and helplessness to listen to the messages of hope in the end of those two songs. A Facebook friend of mine the other day posted a link to an article describing how hopelessness was in itself a form of privilege- that there are some in our world who cannot afford to lose hope. For some, hope is the only thing they have to survive on. 

Hope... In the end, hope seems to be the overall message of Christmas to me. The prevailing reason for the season. Christians celebrate this time of great hope, given to us in the form of Jesus; I like to think also that other religions all celebrate this same thing in their own way. I believe it is the common thread that unites all of us. I've heard people say that we are all united as children of God, as creatures all having the same divine spark, the imago dei... But I'd disagree. From a Christian standpoint, yes- everyone is made in the image of God and we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. But from a Muslim standpoint, that view might not make much sense. To a Buddhist, it might not be compatible with their beliefs. A Hindu might be lost completely. 

But we all believe in hope. All of humanity. We cannot escape that pesky, overwhelming sense of hope. 

Some despise hope. "Hope is the worst of all evils, for it prolongs the torture of man." Friederich Nietzsche

Some revel in hope. "Hope is the thing with feathers." Emily Dickinson

But we all feel hope. And sometimes, I think we take that sense of hope and call it God. 

Maybe that's sacreligious, I don't know; all I can say is that right now, that's my faith. That God is hope. Above all else. One of my dearest friends holds very firm to her conviction that God is love- the most predominant definition of God I've heard by far- and to her I would say, where is the evidence for that? In Jesus, most obviously. "For God so loved the world." But in my opinion, that defines God by what we need him for. When I say God is love, I only see humanity's overwhelming need to be loved, to feel validated. 

In seeing God as hope, I see layers of hoping- the hope that God must have had in humanity's potential, the hope of Jesus in the outcome of his sacrifice, the hope that has been given to us by God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Is love still part of the equation? For certain, it isn't possible to have hope without love. But hope seems a more fitting, encompassing qualifier than love. 

God hopes in us as we hope in God.

In the midst of darkness the Christmas light will continue to shine on year after year- one small pinprick, just one man, can shatter our darkness. 

So that is where I will wrap up this rambling blog of thoughts. 

With hope. 

Christmas lights light up the street, light up the fire once in me- may all your troubles soon be gone. Merry Christmas, and a happy new year- let's hope it's a good one without any fear. 

Welcome Home

The Madagascar YAGM program just completed our first in country retreat- a time for us to get together, worship God, appreciate some of the beauty of Mada, and to speak English with native speakers again. It was a glorious week. 

On Tuesday, our MadYAGMs started filtering into Antananarivo for Thanksgiving and the Tana dwellers began planning our feast. Then two of our YAGM family were with us, then all 9 of us were together again. We cooked dinner (and I made a pie!) and hung out. We travelled to Andasibe and spent four days hiking in the rainforest, chasing down lemurs, holding ginormous bright green roly-poly bugs, planting treelings, and listening to the constant indri symphony. We had Sunday devotions under a lean-to as the lemurs played on top of our roof, we swam in yet another waterfall, and I even tried slack lining (with a lot of help from Nicholas and Ryan). At the end of our retreat, I sang Holden evening prayer for us and Kirsten treated us to pizza; we all slept at her place in a tangle of limbs on the hardwood floor. 

I traveled back to Tanjombato on Wednesday on a packed taxibe, having aggressively used my American-sized-bulk to push on the bus amidst the familiar throng of Malagasy at my usual bus stop. Walking the familiar winding brick road back to my house, my favorite heckler yelled at me from her fruit stand- "Bonjour, Clara! Clara!" Nono (the sweetest man who looks after the animals at our house) was at a hotely halfway between home and the bus, and gave me a handshake and a "tonga soa" as I passed. My host parents brought me into their room and fussed over my excessive mosquito bites (Moka be! Marary ve ianao?), gave me a bag of lychees, told me they missed me, and informed me that there was a surprise waiting for me in my room- a new nightstand/side table. My little host brother Arona burst into laughter when he saw me at dinner, and spent the entire meal waving at me and clapping when I imitated his movements. Mimi the kitten was deemed old enough to be let off her tether in the kitchen while I was away and now has free range of the grounds, so I spent the majority of my night with the cat on my shoulder like a familiar. 

Thursday was laundry day, like it always has been. I washed three entire loads of laundry, and felt ridiculously proud when my host momma said, "Tsy raraka? Mahery be ianao!" She was probably humoring me (after all, it still took me almost six hours), but I was proud nonetheless. And teaching on Friday, my level 2 students asked me to tell them the story of Romeo and Juliet- I got way into it with strange voices, they got way into it with over the top reactions to my strange voices. We discussed potions and witches and ombiasa (in great detail, with labelled pictures of witches dancing on tombs and apparently, "riding their victims like horses"...) 6 of them walked me home to my front gate and I got hugs from each and every one of them, after I repeatedly promised that I would be back again tomorrow to teach. Tanjona (one of my favorites- he's smart as a whip with fantastic English and a sense of humor) defended my honor as a vazaha on the way home- "Aaahhhnnnnn, tsy vazaha!! Malagasy izy! Tsy vazaha!" *heart melt* 

Welcome home, indeed.

I didn't realize how much I had considered Tanjombato to be home already, until I returned to it. 

My most recent musical obsession has been the song 'Welcome Home' by Radical Face. It's beautifully haunting and oh-so-catchy. It's been on repeat for the past two or three weeks now. And while it's been providing the background music for the past month, it's never been more fitting than these past days:

Sleep don't visit, so I choke on sun

and the days blur into one 

and the backs of my eyes 

hum with things I've never done

Sheets are swaying 

from an old clothesline 

like a row of captured ghosts 

over old dead grass was never much 

but we've made the most 

welcome home

All of us together again! Working to put our Thanksgiving feast together :) 

Ryan made us two amazing turkeys... 

Hannah made a mango sorbet and pumpkin casserole that were to die for... 

And I made a voaroy (tayberry-esque), strawberry, lime, and mango pie. Yummmmmm! We were so stuffed.

We saw a double rainbow on our way to Andasibe, a sure sign that our retreat was going to be blessed. 

Soarina kely! On a night hike our first day in Andasibe... 

Tanana! 

What kind of centipede is red?! 

Our guides' answer: centipede mena. 

Thanks, bro. 

Rainforest!! 

We were in search of lemurs, of course! And wow, did we find them... Over six different species! 

My favorite was this guy, the indri, the largest living lemurs and also one of the loudest mammals. 

I called them the land whales, both for their size and for their song.

Fairytale illustration? No, that's just Madagascar rainforest, no big. 

*jaw. drop.* 

Definitely worth the millions of stairs we had to climb to get this view. 

Ginormous green roly-poly bugs... Who knew? 

The SECOND waterfall we've swam in here in Madagascar... I dunno if I'll ever be able to return to just plain lakes now. 

Ryan holding a boa, and Dipsy making sure Ryan doesn't get killed by the boa. 

Believe it or not, there is a gecko in this picture. 

It took us 10 minutes to find this guy... Dipsy saw it as he was walking by. 

I'll give you a hint- it's on the tree trunk. Still don't see it? Right above the big knot in the bottom of the picture. Look for his eyes.

Doing our part to plant some treelings- gotta help combat deforestation!

Cheers! 

#PrayforParis

What a world we live in. 

The news from Paris today, of a concert being attacked, attendees being held hostage, and the death count slowly rising (127, as of now)- it's a grief that's almost too much to bear. The weight of our wrecked world rests on us today, with a bit more vengeance. 

I am weary. I have only been on this earth for 22 years, and yet I have still lived through some dark, dark times in our history. 

I was 8 the first time I really learned what evil existed in our midst. September 11, 2001. I remember getting out of school early that day, momentarily excited before learning what had happened. 

The ensuing Iraq war- the U.S. invaded when I was 10. By the time I saw that conflict end, almost 4,500 American soldiers had died. 

There have been scores of school shootings on American soil- Columbine (1999), Virginia Tech (2007), Sandy Hook (2012) and countless others. 

I have seen shootings at movie theaters, army bases, shopping malls featured on my nightly news. 

I was alive when the subways in Spain (2004) and the U.K. (2005) were bombed. When I went to D.C. almost 10 years later, I hesitated before climbing onto the metro everyday. 

I've been alive during times of genocide: Rwanda (1994), Bosnia (1995), and Darfur (2003).

And now, violence over race in the U.S. seems to be coming to a head- young black man after young black man being shot by police, riots, police brutality, arson, and college protests all rage on. 

Recently, terrorist attacks have been splashed across my newsfeed, graphic videos and photos of bombings, beheadings, suicide bombings. 

Our world. 

Look how far we've fallen. 

And amidst it all, what do we do?

We respond with a hashtag. #prayforpeace #prayforparis 

We change our profile pic to reflect the French flag. 

We share articles and video clips and picture montages of lighted candles and clasped hands. We say, "our thoughts and prayers are with the victims at this terrible time". 

Is anyone else sick of it?

Friends are sharing pictures, articles, all with the obligatory #PrayforParis tag line. I've seen so many prayers, written in fancy script over calming photos. So many statuses: our prayers are with Paris, pray for peace, praying for an end to this madness, prayer, prayer, prayer.

Is anyone else kind of mad at it?

Borrowing a few words from President Barack Obama (speaking in the wake of yet another school shooting): "Our thoughts and prayers are not enough". 

It's not enough. 

What good are we really doing by sharing that photo, writing that status, saying "our thoughts and prayers are with you"? 

I'm not saying that prayer doesn't accomplish anything. I'm not shaming anyone for engaging with this tragedy on social media (I've done it too). 

But I am saying that I'm sick of the litany of 'our world is broken, pray for peace'. 

How long have we been praying for peace?! 

At what point are we going to admit to ourselves that our world won't be fixed by prayer alone? 

So, maybe instead of saying #prayforparis, we should be saying 'here's how I can help'- and then pray.

 

"Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you." Saint Augustine 

I recommend reading this article about "hashtag clicktivism", where the above image was taken from:  http://www.pedestrian.tv/news/arts-and-culture/hashtag-clicktivism-the-ups-and-downs-of-collectiv/509a7f26-7cc6-4394-8e07-24012aed2188.htm

Bonjour, vazaha!!

 I walk to church. 

I walk to the bus.

I walk to the Printing Press.

Bonjour, Madame! 

Bonjour, Vazaha!

Comment ça va, vazaha?

Tanjombato is slowly starting to feel like home to me... I know my way around my neighborhood, I can take the bus into the city, I know how to order food and juice and laundry soap at my favorite hotely. 

But every day I am reminded that this isn't my home. I'm reminded that this will never be home. I'm reminded that I will never fit in here. 

I will always be the white person, the vazaha- the foreigner. I may live with a Malagasy family, and eat rice 2x a day, and take the taxibe, and eat at hotelys, and speak Malagasy (ish), but I will never shed that identity of being the other.

This isn't a post to make you feel bad for me. Or a post for me to complain about how I'm othered. On the contrary, I'm grateful for this experience. 

Being the other is not new for me. I'm sure most of us can think of some time we were the other- the only Christian in science class, the only person who enjoyed school on the football team, the only gay kid in the youth group, the only disabled person at work... 

But this is the only time I've been the racial other. 

And man, is it different.

It's one thing to be the only nerd in gym class, and it's something completely different to be the only person of your skin color in daily life. 

White people are a rarity here in Madagascar. Frankly, we stick out like a sore thumb. I don't really blame anyone for staring at me, or really even for yelling at me. I even freak out a little when I see another white person.

The thing that gets me is how the topic of race here intertwines with that of colonization. Maybe you noticed- whenever I get "heckled" (for lack of a better word), it's most often in French. 

The word vazaha is Malagasy, it means foreigner. 

But the rest of it is almost always French. 

In 1883, the French attacked Madagascar: it was declared a colony in 1895 until the Malagasy finally won independence in 1960. The French presence is still fairly strong here- there are French tourists, French businessmen, menus are in French, French is taught in schools, wealthy familys speak French, the airline here is AirFrance. 

It's reasonable for Malagasy to associate vazaha with 'French'. 

Bonjour, mademoiselle! 

Comment ça va? 

Bonjour vazaha!

French. 

It angers and saddens me.

"Colonization is violence, and there are many ways to carry out that violence." -Philip Gourevitch

Being associated with colonization leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

I have never clung more tightly to my label of American than when I'm assumed to be French in Madagascar. When people holler at me in French, I usually respond with "Salama!" Or "Manahoana!" (Hi, how are you/good morning). Reactions vary from "Miteny Gasy?!" to broad smiles to a rapid fire string of Malagasy. It is so unheard of for a white person to speak their language that they freak out when I say "hello". And if I say "Mbola mianatra" (still learning)- oh man. That gets me smiles and hand shakes and pats on the back. And almost as soon as I speak those two words in Malagasy, I start hearing "Amerika" being thrown around. Seems to me, Malagasy love Americans- in part because of the Peace Corps, but also in part because we're seen as the white people who bother learning their language.

I don't know very much about colonization yet. I barely know the history of colonization in Madagascar. But I do know it makes me uncomfortable and queasy. And I know that I will be doing a lot of reading and thinking on the topic in the coming year.

Until then, I will keep on trying to exist as an alternative here- not Malagasy, but not a typical "vazaha" either. I will keep on trying to learn to sympathize with being a racial other.

I will keep these two things ever present with me.

Religious Pluralism?

Oh, Madagascar. The land of constant challenges. There have been a few questions I've been working through here in Mada already, but the biggest one right now has been this: 

Is there such a thing as a universal, all encompassing truth; one "right way" to God?  

Forewarning: what ensues is some spiritual wrestling (which is a process, and I by no means am a heavyweight champion) that gets kind of convoluted at times. This is also an incredibly long post, so stick with me and I'll reward you with some pictures. :-) 

I read this blog on Patheos the other day that was arguing that Gods love is a perfecting love- that He isn't content to leave us alone in our sin, but He rebukes and corrects us when we fall back into sin. The author then goes on to say that Christians aren't called to be tolerant, they're called to be loving AND loving people means "standing up for the truth even if people aren't going to like us for standing firm in the truth." Basically, I thought it boiled down to this- if you love someone, you call them out and hold them accountable for their actions. I've dubbed this the "perfecting love model". 

The perfecting love model is an argument I've come up against many times now.

It came up the other day, when I was reading a book I found at Pastor Kirsten's place (Your God is Too Small)-- it said, "We hear, or read, of someone who was 'a real saint: he never saw any harm in anyone and never spoke a word against anyone all his life.' If this really is Christian saintliness, then Jesus Christ was no saint. It is true that He taught men never to sit in judgement upon one another, but He never suggested that they should turn a blind eye to evil or pretend that other people were faultless."

The "coincidence" of running into the same question while just trying to relax and unwind convinced me that it was about time I should work out an answer to it, or at least my feelings on it. 

I have a few issues this whole model... For one, what actually is truth? Right? Isn't the 'truth' (or at least, our perceptions and understanding of it) constantly changing? Even in the hard sciences, where truth is less subjective, we're always discovering new things that change what we previously thought to be fact. (The world isn't flat, there are such things as quarks and leptons, the sun isn't infinite, dark matter exists, etcetera) 

So is there such a thing as truth? And if there is, do you think we'll ever truly reach it? 

I tend to think not...I don't know, I'm reminded of St. Augustine: "our hearts are restless until they rest in you". And I know it is possible to take that to mean we are never satisfied until we are followers of Christ, or any other slew of possibilities, but I tend to think of it like this-- we're always going to be looking for the truth (God, when we get Him right), but we're never gonna find it. We're always gonna be restlessly searching, from now till the day we die and finally rest in Gods hands. Then we'll know truth. 

At least, that's how it sounds to me. 

But for yet another issue, the whole argument is based on the assumption that the speaker (here, the Christian) is the one with divine, absolute truth who has an obligation to share his 'right' truth with everyone else. 

So I looked up some verses about love- Proverbs 3:12, 12:1, and 24:13, John 17:23, Ephesians 5:11, and Hebrews 6:12and 10:24 all kind of support the perfecting love model. Micah 6:8, Matthew 22:37-39, John 10:17 and 15:13, Romans 5:8, 1 Corinthians 4:21, Galatians 5:13, Ephesians 4:15, and 1 John 3:16-19 were ones that all could be used to oppose the perfecting love idea. 

So there's biblical support for it, but there's also verses that could contradict it as well. As it goes, if you cherry pick verses, you can support or oppose anything. 

Regardless of biblical support or dissent, I'm still not convinced that there is such a thing as 'absolute truth'. Doesn't almost every group with a belief system (generally speaking, of course) think that they and they alone have the absolute truth, and that everyone else either has only a half truth or is just plain wrong?

I don't know if I can believe that there is only one right religion, one right path to God, one absolute truth we must follow. Have you read 'The Life of Pi'? There's a quote in there that sums this whole thing up for me well: 

"Mamaji has two passports. He's Indian and French. Why can't I be a Hindu, a Christian, and a Muslim?"

"That's different. France and India are nations on earth." 

"How many nations are there in the sky?" 

"One. That's the point. One nation, one passport." 

"One nation in the sky?" 

"Yes. Or none. There's that option too, you know."

"If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?" 

And I'm not sure at all how that fits into my faith. 

I just really don't think that it's realistic to think that God has revealed to us (Christians, Catholics, Lutherans, ELCA, LCMS, take your pick) alone what His truth and His will on earth is. No one has ever told me straight out that they believe their way to be THE right way, but it's often implied. Every time someone tells me that homosexuals go to hell unless they repent, or that it's so good I'm a missionary now because I can share the "reality of Gods love" with the people I meet here (which has its own disturbing implications, but more on that later)... Every time people use the Bible or the teachings of their church to justify political statements that would bring the entire country into alignment with their personal beliefs... To me, that's just like saying, "well, I think that God says its this way; so this is the right way to do it and I'm going to ignore what you think God says because obviously I'm more right than you." Maybe that's oversimplified, or overly sensitive, I don't know. But I do know that's how I hear it, the way that I read in between those lines. 

And that comes off as arrogant and short sighted; and frankly, unrealistic. 

Because the reality is that we are flawed, imperfect creatures that are always gonna screw it up. I mean, come on, that's almost guaranteed, isn't it? We are a MESS. Why would God leave such a big and important thing like perfecting others or living up to his standards up to us, who are bound to get it wrong? In addition to that, the idea that humanity could ever come close to imitating God (or His will, or His love, etc.) is laughable. We just aren't capable-- and that's the entire point of our faith!!

I can't help but think that this idea of us as being called to love our neighbors by perfecting them is kind of pretentious. In a way, it's like we're elevating ourselves to Gods level. 

All that relates back to another article I read a while back: "You say you believe God is in control, right? Do you really believe that? Or are you worried that you somehow have to make that mean anything at all through your own actions? If His power over the world is in any way dependent on your own, maybe you need to find a bigger god." It's a sassy statement, but also kind of true, right? Why should God, the all powerful, the almighty, omnipotent Creator of the entire universe need US to help 'fix' or 'perfect' humanity? 

This has all been on my mind in context of religious pluralism here in Madagascar. The FLM (Fiangonana Loterana Malagasy, Malagasy Lutheran Church) seems to be in constant contention with the people to whom they're trying to minister to over their traditional religion of ancestral worship. It's very complicated, and I don't pretend to even have the beginnings of a basic grasp on the topic. The tiny bit of knowledge I do have only begins to scratch the surface... But this is what I (think I) do know:

There are aspects ancestral worship that a lot of Christians would say is heresy or going against God and the teachings of Christianity. Some Malagasy would view the ancestors as a kind of a "bridge" to God... Which kind of interferes with the idea of Jesus as our way to understand God better. After all, doesn't the Bible say, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me"? 

And there are aspects of ancestral worship that many of us in the West would call superstitious- the belief that ancestors can curse or bless, holding certain places as sacred because spirits dwell there, etc.  

I also know, from my sociological training if nothing else, that ancestral worship is a large part of the culture here. It relates so strongly back to the culture of emphasizing family, that when Malagasy Christians refuse to participate (especially in famdihana- the turning of the bones), they are often ostracized from their family- the most heartbreaking thing ever, because to Malagasy, your wealth is your family. There is nothing more important than family.

Many people here genuinely want to worship Christ, fully and completely. But the church here (from what I've seen thus far, the FLM especially) seems to be telling them that they have to decide...abandon ancestral worship, possibly lose your family, but gain the acceptance of the church...or stay true to tradition and lose the church. 

Ancestral worship is tradition, something that sets the Malagasy culture apart and differentiates it. Tradition isn't something to be ignored or glossed over- it's a beautiful, unique piece of the tapestry of human belief and history that should be celebrated and appreciated. 

Why can't we integrate the two, Christianity and traditional Malagasy culture? 

Is there truly only one nation in the sky, and only one passport to get there?

Who's to say that their religion doesn't have some pieces of truth in it? And who's to say that Christianity maybe doesn't have the entire truth? What if the only way to know the whole 'truth' (which I'm defining as God) is by combining all of our various pieces of truth? 

What if that's religious pluralism, in its purest form?

So.... That's the whole mess. Kudos to those of you who made it through the entire, jumbled ball of my thoughts.

 But this is what has been running through my mind for a while now. Well in reality, almost forever. Since I actually started thinking at all about Christianity and faith with any sort of intellectual questioning. 

Madagascar just kind of pushed it back up, front and center in my brain, demanding to be seen and wrestled with. 

I hope I didn't offend anyone, or blaspheme too much. I'm only trying to engage with my faith, and work out the questions that've been eating at me. I'd love to hear others thoughts and responses to help form a better theory/opinion, so leave a comment! 

And, FINALLY, some pictures as promised. I hope to get a few more soon, hopefully of my students and my workplaces! Woo! 

Start of the rainy season = the road outside my house is now a reddish brown river. 

The view of my neighborhood from outside my bedroom window. 

A quote shared by my fellow YAGM Merydith, which I fell in love with. 

A snack my host mom, Francine, just brought me... A MASSIVE bottle of water, spreadable cheese, and some little toast-like-cracker things that are wonderful! I am loved. <3

Liver, Fish Fins, and Bananas

Malagasy food is good. It's really not so different from anything I've had before, but there have been a few......new.....experiences I've had with food, some funny, some interesting, some terrifying.

1. When a fellow YAGM and I were at a restaurant and decided to be adventurous and order by which item had the longest name in Malagasy. The waitress looked at us like we were nuts, but we insisted. When our food came, we quickly found out the reason for the strange looks- turns out we had ordered cow tongue. It had a good taste, but the whole thing was a mind game of trying to trick your brain into not thinking about the fact that your tongue was touching tongue. 

2. Ampalibe is the weirdest looking darn fruit ever. It's close to the size of a large watermelon, oval in size, greenish-yellowish-brownish, and covered in bumps. Odd looking fruit, on the inside as well as the outside. A friend and I bought a bag of the flesh of the ampalibe, and wow. What a strange fruit. They're a bunch of segments, pale yellowish flesh in a shape that looks suspiciously like garlic. The flesh isn't that thick, but it's wrapped around a massive pit. The texture of the fruit itself I can only compare to bamboo shoots. It's the closest comparison I've found. It was sweet, but not pleasantly so. It had a very strange, kind of bitterish aftertaste.

^not my picture, but the best I could find online. 

3. I have eaten so much liver here now. More than I ever planned on. If I had gone my entire life without ever once eating liver, I don't think I'd've been too upset. 

4. Ronono soja is delicious. I literally have no idea what it is. None whatsoever. Ronono means milk, but milk means something different than we're used to in the U.S. Soja, as far as I can tell, is something akin to soybean powder stuff. But there's a hotely right outside the church who sells little mini mugs of ronono soja for 200Ariary a piece, and I'm telling you, it's magical. It's hot and vaguely milk-like and overly sweet. We usually get mofogasy with it, which are little sweet, sticky, dense breads made out of rice. If only I could live off ronono soja and mofogasy.....

5. Salad doesn't mean salad here. Salad, to me, is lettuce with some veggies or something. Salad, here, is a.... Kind of like a small veggie tray with various cold cuts of bologna and salami on top. 

6. The first day I was in my new family's house, they asked me what I ate for breakfast. I panicked. All of my Malagasy vocabulary (limited to begin with) fled my brain instantly. I remembered 'kafe' (coffee) and was struggling to find other food words... The only thing coming to mind was 'akondro' (banana). So I told my family I eat coffee and bananas for breakfast every morning. Confession time: I don't like bananas. Well, that's not true. I don't dislike bananas-they're actually kind of pleasant. I've always wanted to enjoy them. But for whatever reason... Any time I take a bite of banana, I automatically feel like I'm going to puke and start gagging. It's bad. As for coffee, well I drink it occasionally and I enjoy it, but it's not really a staple in my diet. But now, since those were the two Malagasy words I remembered, I get an entire teapot of coffee every morning for breakfast as well as being ambushed with bananas at random times: after dinner, at lunch, one time my mom came up to my room in the middle of the day with a plate full of bananas. A plate. Full. Of. Bananas. 

7. You know how everyone has that one irrational phobia? Mine is fish. I am petrified of fish. If it looks anything like a fish, I'm out. We were served a massive, fancy fish at orientation in Antsirabe (complete with head, fins, tail, the whole 9 yards) and I quite literally had a panic attack at the table because the fish was looking at me with its bugling eyes and gaping mouth and ugh *shivers* It makes no sense, but that's why it's an irrational fear. At any rate, my family's served fish 3 times now, and each time it was a damn struggle to keep my cool and not flip out. I've been very proud of my efforts- there's been minimal panicking, and I have managed to eat some of my fish. But lord, my family are pro fish eaters. My dad plucks off the fins and pops them right in his mouth. You can hear them crunching, like some kind of obscene potato chips. My brother, Francio, leaned over the other night and eyed my leftover fish and asked "you gonna eat the head?" He picked that sucker up and just went to town on it, getting every last bit of edible meat from the skull- and probably even some parts that weren't edible. 

8. Do we have musk melon in the U.S.? I don't think I've had it before now, but there is a word for it in English, so maybe. Here, it's called voatongo (I believe), but I call it the potato fruit. I swear, the inside flesh of that melon, when you chew it, has the exact consistency of mashed potatoes. It's vaguely sweet, but mostly tasteless. It's exactly like eating a bunch of mashed up potatoes with nothing else on them. 

"Doxology": noun, a liturgical formula of praise to God

Ry Tompon'ny harena o! 

Fanatitra an'tsitrapo, 

Atolotray anao izao, 

Mba raiso ka tahionao! 

Amen

I've always been in band in school. Choir sounded interesting, but band interfered and it was my first love. Singing was something I enjoyed, but nothing I ever practiced- or felt comfortable sharing with others. 

But as unpracticed as I am in singing, I am much more uncomfortable with teaching. 

So when push comes to shove in my English classes at the FLM, I end up singing. 

At my home church in Tanjombato, I work with a group of level 2 English students (who are amazingly smart and good at English after only 6 months). They usually work through having conversations, so we had a 'get to know you' conversation about likes and dislikes. As an example, I said that I don't like to dance, but I like to sing. And of course, that lead to them wanting to hear me sing. Oof. 

But it turned out to be a good thing-- I didn't know what else to teach them, so I taught them two songs. We learned the first verse and chorus of 'I'll Fly Away' first, and discussed new vocabulary like "glad" and "glory". 

                      ****Aside: it is really difficult to try to explain the concept of glory or gladness in another language. Try it sometime. It really makes you think about what gladness or glory actually means.****

And then I couldn't remember the second or third verses. 

We still had 45 minutes of class left. 

Uh oh. 

In my mad scrambling to try and find a song that was both 1. something I knew well enough that I could teach & 2. easy enough that the students could remember it, the only thing that was in my brain was the Doxology. 

Lutherans are fond of singing it, before offering sometimes... Our MadYAGM group sang it often as a mealtime grace. 

You might know it: 

Praise God from whom all blessings flow, 

Praise Him all creatures here below,

Praise Him above ye heavenly host,

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! 

Amen 

So I taught my group of 15 Malagasy kids the doxology. 

And when we still had time left, we went over vocabulary. 

I asked them to try to translate it into Malagasy, and they came up with this:

Ry Tompon'ny harena o!

Fanatitra an'tsitrapo 

Atolotray anao izao 

Mba raiso ka tahionao! 

Amen

I love it. 

Half of us sang the English, while half of us sang the Malagasy. The words mushed together, our voices melded imperfectly, our pronunciation terrible-- But I believe God wept tears of joy in Heaven to hear us. 

It was beautiful. 

The view of the sunset tonight and the city of Tanjombato,Antananarivo that's just outside my window as I write this blog. I'm loving this place more and more with every passing day.