upright?

Father of host mother plus some kinds sitting on the commemorative stone in the front yard.


I went to the countryside for about twenty days. I stayed with a cousin of a teacher here at CNELA. IN his family there are five children: the oldest, ~15 is a girl, and the rest are boys. The girl and a seven year old boy sleep at their grandparents on their mom's side. I was told it was not because I was staying their. Anyway, I have my own bed; well, I have the bottom bunk. Up top are boys of ten and thirteen, Natolotra and Didi, respesctively. They are, in the majority of ways, more useful than me to the family. But I try to pull my weight. At first the petense of my visit was vacation. So I was treated like royalty. But eventually, I made it clear (lots of using the same words to mean different things) that I really want to stay for a while to learn Malagasy and farming. The parents sleep with a two or three year old in a big bed in the other room of the house.

The kitchen is out back in what what is a wrap around porch for people who can walk through the kitched wall. I say that because the house was built in 1957. There was a big fight with the French in '47 and the town, Antsarasoatra was burnt. The house resides on the southeast side of town, with the front door onthe west side, like all the houses in the village. There is a big church that has long services. There had been electricity in the village for three years up until about two months before I came. I mean, three or four of the twenty or thirty houses had electricty. So my mini solar panel because the town cell phone charger. In town there are a couple of places to buy oil and vinegar and salt and candy. There is a more serious like pasta and bread equipped place about fifteen minutes west of town. East of the house is a steep descent into a rice valley.

Its the town in the background

THe work I did, farming work, was divided pretty evenly between beans and rice. That was, for the most part the menu as well. At first, it took quite a substantial effort to stomach it all, but after two weeks, I started looking forward to the next meal right when I cleaned my plate. The rice is red and sweet. At first I was bothered by the lack of salt, but then, I remembered that while coking for myself when living in the city, I probably was adding altogether too much salt. Anyway, the lack of food between meals and the necessity to walk to move made me pretty happy.


Right, but I harvested some rice and beat the grains off the stalks. The rice is dried in the sun on big mats before it is taken to a big, old, its-going-to-blow-up-any-minute machine that takes the encasing off of the rice. It costs 30 ariary per kilo to 'mitoto' the rice at this machine. I am staying with a rice merchent, married to an older sister of my host mom. He is happy to make 100 ariary per kilo at the market. The farmers sell for 1200 ariary and it calls 100 per kilo to transport the rice to the city.  One ariary is a two thousand two hundredth of a dollar. Anyway, I can keep up with the work in short spurts, but the people in the village are really at a completely different level of physical usefullness. Like, I can chop wood with an axe, but like about as quickly as a seven year old.






Well, no sense in complaining. I am sure I will improve. Where I excell is in soccer. I brought a ball and I found that I am still capable of juggling pretty well. But I guess there is no sense in bragging either. I try to practice martial arts but it attracts a lot of attention. I read a decent amount until I finished my books. I learned that in the bustling part of the city, mouth type tobacco is prohibited and that home brewed alcohol, made mostly from sugar cane, is illegal. Of course, people can more or less freely drink professionally bottled alcohol, a lot of which is foreign. I wrote down some pretty interesting dreams. Like, some nights I remembered as many as five different segments. And there was a testing theme. Like I prepared, took, and got results from a test over the course of like two weeks worth of dreams.

 

I am in Tana, at CNELA. I am going to go to the English club meeting today. It is nice to be here, because, even though not eating between meals is nice, eating between meals is also nice. But really, I am working on paying for my visa. I almost don't want to talk about it. I didn't keep great records of the whole process and it frustrates me today. But my memory of this week is still fresh. I was given approval for a one year work visa. After a short confrontation about whether I had already paid, I was proved wrong and asked to pay (I confusd the transferable visa fee with the actually visa fee). But along with the visa, I also have to buy a one year resident's card, which will expire in nine months. The fee for the later is a whopping 228.67 Euros. Anyway, stomach it I did, perhaps my parents support needs mentioning here: thank you. After getting instructions on how to make the payment I headed to the bank to pay for a resident's card. At the bank I was informed I need a bank account to make the payment. Well, I said, sign me up. They said: you need a resident's card to open an acount. At this point my head blew up and it is a small miracle that I didn't completely metamorphisize into some sort of earthworm chasing and running away from itself like a dog angry with its tail. That reminds me: I went fishing for rice paddy fish in the river. We used bamboo poles. I got a sunburn and caught no fish, pre pubescent boys filled small sacks with fish. I made a tour of the different banks in the city and found one that permits one to open an account with , merely, a certificate of residence, rather than a residence card. I was fortunately able to provide said certificate after a pleasant trip to the Fokontany office in Antsahabe. Now I am waiting till tomorrow for the Ministry of Interior to stop partying so that I can show them the payment receipts for the visa and the resident's card.

Was this Christmas morning?

I finished Invitation to a Beheading by Nobokov in the first week of the New Year. There is one of those user reviews on the product: “Nobokov writes fiction like I should be written: ecstatically”. I thought, well great if the author is happy, but what about the reader. But really, this guy is in tune with the effect of his writing. The plot is at once predictable and fulfilling. He lays everything out every step of the way. For me there is a point in reading books, especially long ones, where I think there is no way the author can pull this book off, as in end it as well as it began. That feeling was drawn out in this book. And he ends it better than it began.

I read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It was good in a very different sense that Nabokov's book. Like the former is a very American book. It is like good by default. What I mean is that he interestingly explains topics that appeal to me. And the default part of it is that he there is a really wide range, and the weaving starts out very good. Like it is really a big mac vs. steak hachée type of thing. We just throw everything good together and as long as we have good arms, the result can't be bad. And it isn't (bad) in the case of Infinite Jest but he end is not that satisfying. It is like the author is admitting that he can't put everything in the book. You know, a book with a bad endling isn't a bad book though, especially when it is 1000 pages plus like 150 pgs of footnotes. I really like Hal and the whole facial correspondance issue. The depiction of the Tennis Academy makes me miss freshman year at Reed when my main tasks were sports and studies. All the drug stuff was informative and whatnot--especially the stuff about pot. And I really do like Gately, but I am just not sure about the spiritual connection he had at the end of the book. You know, its OK he wasn't an actual witness to the movie. And I see the parallel between media and drugs. There is even something nice about the twin heroes--one academic and drug affected, the other muscly and drug affected. I want something about Mario and his interest in media to sort of romantically Tie things together with Joelle and some type of light at the end of the tunnel for Hal. If that is done, I will forgive the lack of resolution at the national level, because I could at least project, but as it is I really don't know how the main characters end up and consequently don't dare think about how their environments are supposed to change. I did write a summary/review in the bush right after finishing the book, but I can't find it; this one is pretty hairy, but anyway, MOVE ON. There is a bit more to say about how grammar quirks are related to sort large scale physical quirks in movement and so on but right now I still sort of ruminating.

This was Christmas Eve

I read this book by Jack Kerouac, Visions of Gerard. It is from the perspective of a kid. The story is of the death of the little brother of this kid. There is definitely a gloominess to the book. And I read it in down time at CNELA; it is a library book. The little brother is made out to be a saint and the author struggles a bit with like the idea that it should be him who dies. But it is a bit boring. The writing is good, but it is very personal. It was like the author was subsuming his personal life into his life as a writer so that he could write other things later. I did connect a bit because I feel like my little brother is better than me, but Sam doesn’t get the praise for saintliness that this author attributed to the little boy. I really think that he exaggerated it a lot though.


I ate pig heart and I liked it. 

Also: special congratulations to Delphine-Matt and Jo-Claude on family making. 

Lastly: prayers go out to my grandpa.