On Thursdays, We Do Laundry

I've been asked what's it's like to do my laundry here... The short answer? It's hard work and I'm very slow at it.

The longer answer needs to be illustrated with pictures. 

This^ is our "laundry room" (and kitchen, and slaughterhouse, and occasional shower...) As you can see, we are very lucky to have our own well! That means I don't have to walk 20 minutes to the community pump to get water, hallelujah.

Then you gather supplies... These^ are typical laundry soap here. I bought both of these at my favorite hotely for 1000 Ariary. In addition to this soap, I also need a packet of powdered hand washing detergent that I typically buy at Score (the Western grocery store). 

Oh, and a scrub brush is essential. 

Dirty clothes go in the bucket^ with the powdered detergent (and much less water than ones first instinct would tell them). The less water there is, the easier it is to scrub the clothes. 

And then, you get to scrubbing.^ Big items and things that need more scrubbing than others (jeans, underwear, button down shirts, sweaters) are placed onto the cement block and scrubbed. Otherwise, the other items are piled on top of each other to make a "surface". 

Basically, you grab your soap and scrub it across the shirt (for example), turn it over and get the other side; then, put the soap to the side and grab your shirt in both hands and rub violently together- as if you were rubbing your knuckles together. Continue scrubbing, using a brush on any particularly dirty parts, until entire shirt is covered in suds. "Rinse", wring, and put in new (clean!!) bucket. Repeat. 

Finished! ^ well, finished scrubbing.... 

Yuckkkkkkkk! All that^ dirt was in my clothing!! 

And now for the rinse cycle... Get to drawing^ that water! I typically go through 2 cycles (about 8 or 10 buckets full). My host mother would want me to do 3, at least (until the water is clear! Madio, madio, Ana!!) but since I am extraordinarily kamo (lazy) when it comes to laundry, my number of rinse cycles depends greatly on my mood that day.

After wringing the clothes as hard as you can, I take them to the back of the house^ and hang them up on "my" section of our clothes line. 

Phew! Finally done!! (about 2 or 3 hours later) 

I almost always end up grating my fingers^... But my nails have never looked cleaner than right after doing my laundry!

How I Twisted Purpose Into Arrogance

When I was in my sophomore year of college, my depression was continually getting worse and worse- medication wasn't helping (talk to me later about the trial and error process of finding the right medication...) and counseling didn't seem to be doing much good. One Wednesday night after the Celebrate! service at the chapel was over, I sat in the second pew from the front on the right hand side, curled up with my knees to my chest and stared at the Christus Rex figure. I wanted to be mad at God, but all I could do was stare blankly. 

I don't know how long I sat there. The chapel was dark; silence reigned; no one else was in the building. And then a noise broke the silence- the pastor, coming up from his basement office under the chancel. I willed him to move on. He didn't. 

He came and sat next to me, just sat and stared at the Christ figure with me for a while. Eventually he asked what was on my mind, and all my depressed existential musings spilled out. I asked him what the point of life was; why should I continue fighting so hard, when my quality of life was still so low? I don't remember his answer. 

But that was a question I continued asking, for a long time: What's the point? Why should I keep going? Is there even a purpose to all this...life stuff? 

I never got a satisfying answer. 

And it wasn't until a few days ago that I finally figured out why there had never been an answer that satisfied me... I've always thought that I needed to do something to justify my existence, that I needed to do some awesome thing in my life in order to give it all meaning: Cure cancer, catch murderers, become president, save children from a burning building. Think how selfish and conceited that is- it's all about my life, how great it needs to be, how I have so much potential and skills and talents that the world could benefit from. 

The problem was that I'd been viewing my life as a given, as something I was entitled to; therefore I felt the need to do something great with it to make it mean something.

Instead I need to view my life as a privilege, to recognize all the advantages and luxuries I've been afforded in my life, the things I've been given by luck of the draw (being born in America, being born white, being born middle class) and then use those things to live for other people. To help them in ways that they can't. 

It's not what I will accomplish that will give my life purpose, but rather that my life's purpose should be others. 

How have I missed that for so long? 

Ok, what do I do now with this new revelation? It's one thing to recognize that I need to live for other people, and it's another to actually do it. How does one go about doing such a thing? I'm not really sure, but I'm going to start trying. 

Maybe in another 20 years I'll figure it out. 

Some Six Word Memoirs From Madagascar

In college, there was a weekly Sunday night service called Candlelight that my friends and I attended religiously (haha that was a bad pun, sorry not sorry). One year, Pastor Char gave a message on six word memoirs- she had just finished reading a book that was a collection of six word memoirs in which people described their entire lives in six words. Six word memoirs stuck with me, for multiple years until this August; when I attended YAGM orientation in Chicago, my small group leader Jen asked each of us to say how we were feeling in six words or less daily before our time together. 

Sometimes, when I can't bring myself to journal intensively, instead I write down six words- a memoir of my time in Madagascar so far, or six words to describe my day, or how I'm feeling at the moment. 

Here are some of my favorites that describe my time in Madagascar thus far:

Overwhelmed... Feeling negatively about the future.

Looking forward to a day off. 

Trampoline jumping, scraped hands: worth it.

Really wanting deep theological conversations now.

"Marble soccer"- innovation even in children.

I've eaten entirely too much liver. 

Can I go to sleep now?

Feeling guilty for neglecting Malagasy studies. 

First broken taxibe yesterday. How exciting. 

TPFLM asked for some poetry.... Gulp.

Wishing something helped combat my depression. 

Messaged Jen- feel better about life.

Questioning Gods relationship with humanity today.

"Lord I believe; help my unbelief." 

Mafy ny fianana. Life is hard. 

Saw another vazaha on the taxibe!!!!!!

Note to self: avoid ampalibe- yuck. 

Power outages are slowly getting worse...

I need to buy more candles.

Why is faith so incredibly difficult? 

Rainy season: never sleeping in silence. <3

Laundry is hard, time consuming work. 

Misy alika roa ve ato?!?! Tsarabe! 

Sometimes I want to sleep forever. 

Got my Malagasy bible today- LOVE!!!

Kirsten, Ryan, Brittany, lemurs- good day.

This world is so damn broken. 

American systemic racism conversation... Tired; Impassioned.

We must invest in Colored communities.

Homemade burritos with Ryan and Nielsen 😁😁

Hunting flies intently... I'm going crazy.

Turkeys, pies, and stuffing- oh, my! 

Retreat. Rainforest. Missing Meridyth. Believing. Beauty.

Land whales. Indri. Constant beautiful symphony. 

When did Tanjombato become my home?

"I had pain too. I understand."   

Hung with Christa in Tana-- AWESOME.

WHY IS THE TRAFFIC SO MISERABLE?????

My Christmas revelation: God is HOPE.

Bacterial infection of the gut- fun. 

Manakara for New Years... beach bums.

Return of the bacterial infection- yippee.

So... apparently, arranged marriages still happen. 

Most efficient taxibe driver EVER today. 

ENTIRE family helped me eat crab. 

First time standing for taxibe ride.

Alikako!

Alikako - my dog! 

Okay, so not my dog. But I've kind of unofficially adopted her, so she feels mine. I know the YAGM guidelines said not to adopt any children, but there was no mention of animals..... ;) 

Animals here are treated very differently than they are in the U.S., where we spoil our furry friends and treat them almost as if they are human too, a part of the family. In Madagascar, it is unusual to see dogs being kept as pets. Dogs are literally everywhere here, but they're almost always strays. As a self-professed animal lover, it is heartbreaking to see so many unwanted, unloved animals running around the street with skin stretched taught over ribs and spines, covered in dirt and fleas, with open wounds and obvious injuries from cars. 

Side note, a lot of what I just said in regards to the dogs also applies to people and children here in Madagascar, and that's even more heartbreaking to see...

For the moment, however, I am going to focus on "my dog". Not many people keep pets around here (honestly, it's just too expensive) and if they do, "pet" means something different than it does in America. My host family has two pet dogs that are hardly ever seen (though they most certainly are heard)- they stay outside, in their own pen apart from the house. 

One, Shika, is my favorite. (Shhhh, don't tell Soky.....) She's a little white mutt with the cutest ears ever that perk up when she's listening; she is less skittish of people than Soky, the gray dog.

She reminds me a lot of my dogs at home. 

This is Kessie.......

And this is Tinkerbelle. 

They're pretty spoiled. 

I may have thought about packing them in my suitcase and smuggling them to Madagascar. 

I've loved dogs since I was kid- might had a slightly unhealthy obsession, actually...

On one of my worse weeks here in Madagascar, I was struggling to just feel okay in this new place. Everything is so drastically different, and some days, all of the change is just too much for my brain to handle. On top of all that, it was Christmastime and I was miserably sick for multiple days with some kind of bacteria that was kicking my butt. This particular day when I went to dinner, a little white furball came charging straight at me from under the table. I almost lost it right then and there, but kept it together until after dinner- when I promptly sat on the floor and cried a little with joy when the little dog jumped right into my lap. We sat there for 45 minutes, while everyone cleaned around us. Finally, Nono (the sweetest man ever, who looks after the animals) managed to get across to me in my limited Malagasy skills that it was time for the dog to go back outside. I must have looked heartbroken, because after he called Shika to him, he kept telling me "Rahamptiso, rahamptiso. Maraina, rahamptiso maraina." Tomorrow, tomorrow morning. 

And sure enough, the next morning, when I got up for breakfast, there was the little white dog waiting under the table for me. 

I never ate so fast in my life. 

After breakfast, I sat on the floor again with Shika in my lap for a half hour. And then I tried something that the sensible adult in me sighs at a little- I asked the dog if I could pick her up, and then proceeded to slowly try it. 

Note to those at home- DO NOT TRY THIS WITH STRANGE DOGS. I'm a very, very bad example. 

She was a little uncertain, but almost immediately calmed down. Maybe she could tell I needed this, or maybe she had been held before, or heck, maybe God calmed the dog down. I don't know. But what I do know is that this sweet little dog let me hold her like a baby for close to an hour and a half. We paced some, we stood outside some, and we sat on the stairs while she slept in my arms. And even though I knew she had fleas, and she stunk to high heaven, and was so dirty that my hands came away black if I pet her for too long, I couldn't help but cuddle her and cry into her fur. It was just something so painfully familiar in the midst of all the different, it just about broke me with happiness.

Ho Avy Ny Orana

Lay here listening to rain pounding down; again and again, over and over. This moment is isolated infinity where nothing but the sound of rain exists. No other noise, no other distraction. Not even any errant thoughts to take attention away from this, the glory of God's rain. This rain demands to be heard, to be felt. Felt in the bones, deep in the marrow, in the place where old men can tell the next day's weather. 

Ho avy ny orana. 

The rain comes- and it is present. There can be no ignoring it. But who would want to? There is something beautifully simple in this suspended moment, this paradox of deafening silence brought by a thunderstorm in the Madagascar new year. There is nothing to worry about, nothing to think about, nothing to do but to appreciate and listen. 

Hear nothing. 

Hear everything. 

But listen nonetheless. 

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!