It’s been awhile since I’ve written. But sometimes life requires a little more living than writing. I’ve been working on the living part a bit more.
It’s been three weeks since the big arrival, since I landed on an island off the southeast coast of Africa; Madagascar. This rather large island will be my home for a while. It’s hard to imagine that it was once sandwiched between Africa and India in the supercontinent known as Gondwana, breaking free 165 to 150 million years ago. It’s hard to realize that I am here. But I am!
If you zoom in on a map, you will see that it is a long island with a dry climate in the center and a tropical climate on the East and West coasts. I am based on the East coast. I get to hear the ocean when I sleep , when I wake up and well, all the time. I love being able to see the ocean whenever I want.
Life here is very mora mora, which is a Malagasy phrase meaning slow slow. Things take a little bit more time; boiling water to drink, hand washing clothes, walking to the market for vegetables. It’s a reminder of all the things we take for granted in other parts of the world. Mostly I feel like a baby that is trying to walk for the first time. I am learning a new language (pronunciation is not how it is spelled!), I am learning about a new culture. I am learning how to buy things, how to get to places, how to put credit on my phone, where the bank is.
I love that I get to walk to my office everday through a green, luscious tropical environment. My colleagues tell me that if I keep my eyes open, I should be able to see a chameleon on my walk to work. I have tried to keep my eyes upward looking at the trees but then I am precariously close to tripping on the chickens and baby chicks that meander across my walking path rather carelessly. They are too cute for me to be mad at.
When you arrive somewhere as new as Madagascar, your reference points can be thrown out of wack. Let me give you an example. Our house has a rat. Now, in any other situation I would probably freak out (eek!) but here, I don’t know, I suppose the rat just seems like it came with the house, and I’m just extremely happy there aren’t any large insects or centipedes (their bites are said to be extremely painful). And besides, the line between animal and human also seems much more fluid here; all coexist and live together which feels very natural. This is not to say that the rat isn’t a problem and that we won’t do something about it, but my reaction is not what it would have been somewhere else.
As Wendell Berry writes in one of his essays, ‘you grow humble from a place and begin to take it in - to learn from it what it is. There is an ominous - perhaps fatal - presumptuousness in living in a place by the imposition on it of one’s ideas and wishes.’
I feel more than ever that I have a lot to learn and not enough time to learn it all.
Priscilla xo
Lovely ❤️ looking forward to more and hope you are enjoying your new life to the max :)