I, as an American, am inherently fond of boundaries. I am helpless to this particular penchant: it both runs in my blood and has been enforced since youth – from colonial homesteading to Frost’s fences (“Good fences make good neighbors”), from my kindergarten cubby to my college cubicle. Ingrained with deep set notions of personal space and private property, I proceeded through life never recognizing these as just another cultural construct.
That is, until I moved into a small town in Madagascar. For the two years thereafter, my concept of space has been under attack, barraged relentlessly, eroded in the most subtle, creeping ways. I am simultaneously fascinated and frustrated by this process, as I (stubbornly American) keep erecting boundaries and my community (persistently Malagasy) keeps gobbling them right up.
Under construction for six months, my fence has also, unfortunately, been under the counter process of demolition for eighteen; it has been a steady, painful, stick-by-stick decline. And as the fence has fallen, my neighbors have crept in with quiet assurance of my inability to resist. First the yard was conquered, by the infiltration of soccer games and the enjoyment of afternoon shade. What remained of the fence was soon a jungle-gym; my laundry line rarely held my own clothes; kids hung from the branches of my trees, grabbing at the fruit, as their mothers chattered, harvesting my moringa. Even my latrine was involuntarily committed to the neighborhood and I was forced to ask myself why I felt such a strong sense of ownership over a hole in the ground.
At last my porch was consumed: now a marbles arena, a nap location of choice, a terrace we can all enjoy. My neighbors lounge at ease within the remains of my shattered boundaries. Once I left for a single night to return and find that someone had quite literally moved in under the overhang, mat and cooking pot complete.
It might have been this final incident—this most blatant and unapologetic invasion—that forced my recognition of a simple fact: these boundaries exist only in my mind. Malagasy people conceive of space in a fundamentally different way; they do no perceive the world as I do, neatly partitioned and clearly delineated. This is a product of my culture, a culture that values boundaries and allows them to dictate behavior. Instead, Malagasy culture hesitates to circumscribe space, to award its possession, to declare what is public and private. What boundaries do exist are fairly porous and born of necessity; within a village almost all is shared and communal.
As proud as I am of my integration, the collapse of my private space can still drive me to wit’s end. When this happens, I think back to my first months when I entered as the ultimate outsider into a closed, comfortable world where everyone knew everyone and everyone knew their place. I hardly realized it, but I was just a little pocket within the larger confines of my village, ensconced and inaccessible behind my sturdy fence.
Now the fence has fallen and as a result I have been invited into the communal world by the very actions of invasion I once despised. I do not feel myself that I am entirely integrated (it is clear I need a husband and a baby for that) but I am no longer an outsider either. I am another sort of anomaly, accepted, even embraced, within the physical bounds of my community, but not its fundamental social structure. It is ambiguous but it is progress, and I will give up my sole right to a hole in the ground for such any day.
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