Life in the Peace Corps Madagascar is weird, unfailingly, unflaggingly weird. But after some time, I just forget it. It is only when things proceed to a further extreme that I realize anew.
I am, for example, perfectly at ease being dive-bombed by bats when I step outside with my headlamp at night; it is what I deem an acceptable risk (and when I say “perfectly at ease” I mean that I have ceased screaming and thrashing). But when I spend nearly an hour trapped inside my mosquito net, desperately needing to pee, waiting for the world’s worst sonar-equipped bat to recognize that the wide-open door is the only escape, then I think to myself: this isn’t normal, this is not one bit normal.
But this is my life: ninety-five degrees in the shade; a half hour late and the first one there; a thousand lost staring contests a day; bug spray after a bucket bath; scorpions in my shoes and centipedes in the bed; rats, the Resident Evil; continuing adventures in Katie Cannot Cook.
The heat, and the strange things it does to one’s mental capacity and physical bearings, becomes a non-entity as a result of its very monotony. One hardly pauses to observe a friend curled up in a sleeping bag in the, wait, check the thermometer, ninety degree weather. I have learned to minimize movement to prevent excessive sweating (there is, of course, no preventing the standard variety). And I still chew gum, even though all the sugars have long secreted out and I find myself with an unappealingly slippery and flavorless piece (gum, after all, is more about the entertainment).
I have accepted the hazards of distance and comically-restrained communication: the tenuous connection and awkward delays (“you go…no wait, sorry…you first…oh, I, sorry, no you…YOU DAMNIT!”); the involuntary Toy Story alien voice, “You have written me a letter, I am eternally grateful;” the passing of notes on a countrywide scale; the sad, near-friendship devastating announcement that as we’re not on the same cell-phone carrier, we may not be able to talk much for the next nine months…sorry.
Even the many varied aspects of my community integration no longer seem all that odd. The fact that I routinely witness the not-a-shred-of-clothing nudity of every person in town, from the postman to the mayor to the tomato lady (apparently such is river culture); to the three primary flavors of my diet- salt, oil, and coconut- from which all other flavors somehow emerge (though I suppose this is less of a miracle than the primary colors, as all my food tastes essentially the same; to the way that two taxi-brousses hurtling towards each other, slowly and casually reclaim their respective lanes and pass with the narrowest of margins, while the whole time I am screaming in my head, MAYBE A LITTLE MORE URGENCY!
When I am occasionally struck by the oddity of this life, I try to utilize the nostalgia curve (one day I will find this all terribly endearing/adventurous/authentic/young and free/insightful) without getting too far ahead (right now I find this to be none of those things). Passing premeditated nostalgia aside, it is just another day. Call it strange but I would not have it any other way.
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