La Lune (photo is clearly unrelated)

[8/1/07 Dear Catherine, The moon was bright, waning just past full. It breathed milky light into the midnight sky, illuminating the fog of mosquitoes that floated above Sandra’s head -- like thought bubbles in a cartoon. Hope the research for your book is coming along well. – John]

In Asia or Africa, rickshaw guilt

[7/31/07 Dear John, My rickshaw runner wore yellow flip-flops that cost about $1 at the local market. He was speedy. Wearing my $80 Sauchony running shoes, I probably could have kept pace with him – assuming I didn’t have to tug a rickshaw behind me. His wooden rickshaw is painted in primary colors (red, blue, yellow and some green) and has streamers that blow in the wind. He calls it a “pousse-pousse,” not a rickshaw, because, in French, pousse-pousse means push-push. And that’s what he does, all day long. He pushes people around the city of Mahajanga -- up its gentle hills, around the craters in its aging, rocky roads, and, in my case, home from lunch at a restaurant on the bay, down a touristy boardwalk, past a 700-year-old tree. My meal – fish, noodles and vegetables – cost $2.50. My ride home cost about 50 cents, a price that included the driver’s grunts as he charged up a hill. When he dropped me off, near an ATM machine, he was dripping in sweat. I was dripping in guilt and embarrassment. I rode the rickshaw to have a unique experience here, but on the ride, under a searing winter sun, all I thought about was how difficult it must be to run around the city all day for work, making almost no money, and then waking up the next day having to do it again. Yeah, it’s a job. Many here don’t have one. But it is a rather abusive form of employment. Some of my friends wanted to pay two rickshaw drivers to race. Like that’d be funny or something. It would be a fun game for them, my friends said. I doubt it. Love you, John]

"No bikini ... NO BIKINI !!!"

[7/29/07 Dear Christian Groth, When the Sakalava people cleanse the bones of their kings, they do so in the strict privacy of a temple. Being a nosey journalist, I had to try to see the ceremony first-hand. There are many rules for would-be entrants to the temple, the most bizarre of which is that you can’t wear underwear underneath the sarong that’s wrapped around your waist (another requirement). Christian, the translator I had hired for the day, knew I wasn’t following that rule, since I tied the sarong around my shorts after my taxi pulled up to the entrance of the dusty ceremonial grounds. Christian lives about 200 yards from the site of this ceremony, but never attended until this year – and then only because I paid him. He believes the ancestors will curse people for breaking their rules, or fady. So, out of genuine fear for my safety from commando-minded spirits, he tugged on the sleeve of my shirt and pleaded with me not to try to talk my way in to the temple. “You cannot have undarageraments,” he said, his accent thick enough that I didn’t understand. A moment of silence passed. Christian reformulated his thought. “No bikini, NO BIKINI!” he said. “Who’s going to check?” I said. “No bikini!” he repeated. I tried to get in anyway, shorts and all. I failed. Maybe the ancestors here have x-ray vision. Superman kings or something. -- SUTTER]

I bring you my zebu (it's like a bull)

[7/29/07 Dear Mom, People bring gifts to the king at this ceremony, asking to be healed or to be granted good luck. Six zebu -- the scrawny, hunch-backed cattle found in much of Africa – had their necks slit for this ceremony. They were splayed on the ground next to the temple where the king’s bones are cleaned. – John]

Pickpocket paranoia

[7/28/07 Dear Carrie, I’ve been alone only a few times in Madagascar. My first night in Tana, I went on a walk at sunset by myself. I got so lost -- in the flippin neighborhood --that I had to call Elana, my roommate, for directions. Those didn’t work. So I had her meet me at a sign that we both recognized. On Sunday night, at the Sakalava festival, I got separated from Bobby, a Peace Corps volunteer whom I was walking around with. The crowd was swarming. I figured it was a good idea to keep my hand on the expensive camera in my pocket (worth about a year’s salary here). That’s when I felt fingers brushing against my hand and drifting along my shorts, feeling for what I was carrying with me . Later, I noticed that money was missing from my back pocket. Not much. Just enough to make me feel uncomfortable. The longer I’m here, the smarter I will become about gauging safety. Don’t worry, I’m being careful. But I think the more time I spend fending for myself here, the less I will feel helpless and paranoid, as I did temporarily that night. And the closer I will be able to get to this place. Hope Deter, the nose-biting dog, is keeping you safe, happy and sound. – John]

Troomba Room(ba)

[7/28/07 Dear Julie and Mark, Traditional Sakalava people, who once ruled western Madagascar, believe in spirit mediums, or people who become possessed with the spirits of dead royalty. They call the person and the trance a troomba. A person generally has a life-long relationship with the ghost who rents out his or her body for the purpose of telling modern day Sakalava what they’re doing right and wrong, and offering blessings and curses. An anthropologist, Michael Lambek, of the University of Toronto, told me troomba advise many aspects of life, from sex practices to the direction of the kingdom (which lately exists primarily to support these ceremonies). On Sunday night, the night before this big ceremony when four kings’ bones are cleaned, accordion music and dim light coaxed out the spirits. Sitting on the floor in a one-room palm-thatch building, people clapped along with accordion music and swayed in rhythm. A single candle cast a faint yellow light on the scene. Then, out of nowhere, a woman sprang her feet, and, head flopping back, waved wave her arms in the air, flailing about. That’s the possession. It seems like a performance, since the rhythmical clapping kind of eggs the troomba on. It reminds me a lot, honestly, of a concert festival experience, where the energy of the crowd and the performer ebb and flow as one. – John]

We built this city of tents for you, undead kings

[7/28/07 Dear Augie, On Sunday night, I went to a celebration called the Fitanpoha (pronounced FEET-am-poor), which honors four dead kings from the Sakalava tribe. Actually, my ancestors are probably cursed for my having written that, since people here believe the kings aren’t dead, but live on in a spirit world. You can be cursed for just saying that that’s not the case. Much less for writing it/publishing it online. And much less for doing it on Tuesday, the day of fady, or taboos, when some people in Madagascar virtually don’t do anything for fear of offending an veritable cult of judgmental ancestors, waiting to sneer at their every action. (Snakes are supposedly their messengers, by the way, so maybe it’s to my benefit that snakes can’t read a blog). So anyway, this place was rockin -- kind of like Boneroo or Woodstock, but with a heavier emphasis on spirit possession. A whole city of bars and stores popped up where a dusty field on a hilltop used to be. The throw-up metropolis was held up by raw-cut tree branches and draped in tapestries. Malagasy people like to listen to their music inaudibly loud, and you feel the dissonance and metallic screeching of overblown speakers when you walk down the dirt alleys between the tents. Roulette wheels, made of bicycle wheels and bolts, spin all through the night. People sleep on the ground, waiting for the cleaning of the kings’ bones in the morning. They have a Christmas-level sense of anticipation, which is pretty cool. Hope concert season is on in Oklahoma. – Sutter]

Um, yeah, that bread there ... sure.

[7/31/07 Dear Jenni, Sometimes even the simplest of tasks here remind me of what a goof I am. This morning, I walked across the street from the apartment where I am staying to get some breakfast at an episserie. There are dozens of these places all over the streets. Each is a four-wall construction of corrugated iron, with wooden shelves built inside, and a counter, where pastries, breads and fried munchies are displayed in a glass case. Not that the glass keeps packs flies from swarming the food. But at least there’s a case. So anyway, I go up to the counter, as I have several times now, say “Bonjour,” the language of the oppressor, and ask for “this one, this pastry here,” pointing repeatedly at a cinnamon roll-ish bread thing in the glass case. She points to a croissant. I say, no, “This one here, please,” not knowing the name. Then I ask for “orange juice.” She says, “In a bottle?” I say sure, and then watch as she scrapes through a cooler to find a glass bottle of orange soda. Whatever. Close enough. She uncaps the bottle, and hands it to me, along with the pastry, on a plate, which is rare here. I thought, Wow, she must recognize me, since I’ve come to this shop all of four times now, and she wants me to take a seat on one of these benches, next to other Malagasy customers. I’ve arrived. I’m wanted. I’m not the silly foreigner. So I politely move to the side, and begin to eat my pastry and drink my sugary breakfast nectar. I finish the bread, leave the plate, and decide to walk off with the bottle. I cross the street, dodging a rickshaw and a 1970s Renault taxi (looks kind of like The Mini, if it were in a Dick Tracy comic book). I’m walking down the street, towards home, past the bank, around the corner that smells like urine, when I hear a girls feet clapping on the rocky road behind me. Someone wanting to sell sunglasses, I think, and keep walking. There are people all over this town who tote around displays of Wal-Mart-quality sunglasses on wooden planks. Sometimes they walk down the streets when the displays on their heads. But this girl is persistent, and although I can’t understand what she’s saying I turn around. She says, Blah, gibba blah, Madame would like to see you. Hm, I am really popular in this town, I think. Yes, non-sunglass-selling girl, I will return to your Madame’s shop for a bit of after-brunch chit-chat. But when I arrived I discovered that all she wanted was my bottle of orange soda. She needs to return it for a refund. That’s why she’d given me the plate, so I could sit there and eat and she could watch to make sure I didn’t take her glass. Damn, I am an idiot tourist. Can’t even get breakfast on my own. -- John]