Speaking French
Bonjour! That's what the kids in Madagascar yell out at me with a smile everytime I pass by. It doesn't get old and makes me feel like a rockstar; and with the beard and my new haircut (see below) you'd be hard pressed to argue! The fact that it's in french underlies how hard it would be to travel here if you didn't speak or understand at least a bit of french. Nobody speaks english. Not everyone speaks french either but it will get you far. Malagasy is the native language but one foreign language at a time, eh?
All my interaction with hotels, taxi drivers, waitresses, locals and tour organizers has been in french. Now, I'm nowhere close to being bilingual, but it seems that all that extra effort I put in keeping myself enrolled in "elective" french classes conjugating verbs and learning different tenses has me speaking in scentences with properly conjugated verbs in the correct tense. Or at least they are "correct" as far as i am concernerd.
My main problem is that my working vocabulary of non-verbs, useful things like nouns and adjectives, is terrible. This has me speaking in more scentence fragment type things like "Je cherche ________". Since whatever I'm looking for I don't know the french word for I end up going around in a circle like "I'm looking for something that is sort of like this thing that I do know the word for but is sufficiently different that it's more like that [point] or is [gesture until the person starts listing things that I might recognize]. Anyway it's working. I even had a conversation with a woman. Sure she turned out to be a prostitute but before I found that out we exchanged a lot of other information. And I understood her perfectly when she suggested that I pay her money for sex. "Um. non, merci". Followed by a quick look at the watch and dash out the door after failing to come up with a sasisfactory answer to the follow up question "Pourquoi, pas?"
Lack of Internet
The internet here is slow. It's like if you took Mom and Dad's dial up service that Matt used to use to access bulliten boards back before the internet was even invented and then watched it work in slow motion. You have to be extremely patient. I am not extremely patient but I am waiting for my ipod to charge (I thought that CDG airport would have all kinds of shops where I could get converters and bank machines and stuff before I left but I guess they save that for the terminals that service countries where you can get that stuff when you arrive anyway). Hence, I'm at 1:45 and have typed 4 paragraphs. Don't even get me started on why they moved all the letters on the keyboard around either but they used whiteout to relable it so that's nice.
Playing the Waiting Game
Much like the Carribean tradition "Cayman Time", stuff just happens here when it happens and the way it happens. I don't know if there is a similar phrase like "Temps Malagasy" or whatever but there should be. I've been waiting to commence a 3 week excursion to see all kinds of cool stuff for 3 days now. When told today that, rather than leave at noon as planned we'd be leaving tomorrow instead, I just knew it in my bones that the tomorrow's group would now be the maximum 6 instead of the five that it was two days ago. If I could have accessed the internet I would have bet everything I have! Sure enough, three of them turn up in Antsirabe (central Madagascar jumping off point for tours) with the message that two more would join us tomorrow. 6 total. I don't imagine I missed a big payout though. The odds would have been short as it was just too obvious.
In the meantime the waiting allowed me to take a scenic velo (mountain bike) ride to check out the country side which was stunning in that it was mountainy, with green trees and vibrant red clay that they use to make bricks from that only took me 15 kms further than I meant to ride because the scale on the crude hand drawn map I was using didn't measure up with real life. About 45kms all in a lot of it hard work back up what was a very comfortable and long downhill bit. As I flew or struggled past them (downhill/uphill) I got to hear lots of loud and friendly "Bonjours!" from all the kids plus lots of other stuff as well which I didn't understand but assumed was encouraging. What exactly all those kids were doing on the side of the road on a Friday afternoon breaking rocks, making bricks or playing in the dirt instead of being in school is another story altoigether.
The Best Haircut Photo Ever!
I took a photo of me getting a haircut that certain beard enthusiasts will love and others will just think "big deal it's just a photo of you getting a haircut". When I finally can upload it though remember, to add some context to the photo 1) I'm in freekin' Madagascar; 2) No, seriously, Madagascar; 3) I negotiated the haircut in french (as is the custom in Madagagascar - where I am); 4) I had been turned away by two other Malagasy "Coiffeuses" (possibly a made up word) on, I'm still unsure what grounds, but they were adamant that under no circumstances did they either cut hair (I would have thought that the sign with scissors was an indication otherwise) or would they ever cut my hair (fair enough, it's a free country. Or is it? Who knows?).
Anyway, no bother. Time is on my side. Hope you're checking this from work!
Bonjour! That's what the kids in Madagascar yell out at me with a smile everytime I pass by. It doesn't get old and makes me feel like a rockstar; and with the beard and my new haircut (see below) you'd be hard pressed to argue! The fact that it's in french underlies how hard it would be to travel here if you didn't speak or understand at least a bit of french. Nobody speaks english. Not everyone speaks french either but it will get you far. Malagasy is the native language but one foreign language at a time, eh?
All my interaction with hotels, taxi drivers, waitresses, locals and tour organizers has been in french. Now, I'm nowhere close to being bilingual, but it seems that all that extra effort I put in keeping myself enrolled in "elective" french classes conjugating verbs and learning different tenses has me speaking in scentences with properly conjugated verbs in the correct tense. Or at least they are "correct" as far as i am concernerd.
My main problem is that my working vocabulary of non-verbs, useful things like nouns and adjectives, is terrible. This has me speaking in more scentence fragment type things like "Je cherche ________". Since whatever I'm looking for I don't know the french word for I end up going around in a circle like "I'm looking for something that is sort of like this thing that I do know the word for but is sufficiently different that it's more like that [point] or is [gesture until the person starts listing things that I might recognize]. Anyway it's working. I even had a conversation with a woman. Sure she turned out to be a prostitute but before I found that out we exchanged a lot of other information. And I understood her perfectly when she suggested that I pay her money for sex. "Um. non, merci". Followed by a quick look at the watch and dash out the door after failing to come up with a sasisfactory answer to the follow up question "Pourquoi, pas?"
Lack of Internet
The internet here is slow. It's like if you took Mom and Dad's dial up service that Matt used to use to access bulliten boards back before the internet was even invented and then watched it work in slow motion. You have to be extremely patient. I am not extremely patient but I am waiting for my ipod to charge (I thought that CDG airport would have all kinds of shops where I could get converters and bank machines and stuff before I left but I guess they save that for the terminals that service countries where you can get that stuff when you arrive anyway). Hence, I'm at 1:45 and have typed 4 paragraphs. Don't even get me started on why they moved all the letters on the keyboard around either but they used whiteout to relable it so that's nice.
Playing the Waiting Game
Much like the Carribean tradition "Cayman Time", stuff just happens here when it happens and the way it happens. I don't know if there is a similar phrase like "Temps Malagasy" or whatever but there should be. I've been waiting to commence a 3 week excursion to see all kinds of cool stuff for 3 days now. When told today that, rather than leave at noon as planned we'd be leaving tomorrow instead, I just knew it in my bones that the tomorrow's group would now be the maximum 6 instead of the five that it was two days ago. If I could have accessed the internet I would have bet everything I have! Sure enough, three of them turn up in Antsirabe (central Madagascar jumping off point for tours) with the message that two more would join us tomorrow. 6 total. I don't imagine I missed a big payout though. The odds would have been short as it was just too obvious.
In the meantime the waiting allowed me to take a scenic velo (mountain bike) ride to check out the country side which was stunning in that it was mountainy, with green trees and vibrant red clay that they use to make bricks from that only took me 15 kms further than I meant to ride because the scale on the crude hand drawn map I was using didn't measure up with real life. About 45kms all in a lot of it hard work back up what was a very comfortable and long downhill bit. As I flew or struggled past them (downhill/uphill) I got to hear lots of loud and friendly "Bonjours!" from all the kids plus lots of other stuff as well which I didn't understand but assumed was encouraging. What exactly all those kids were doing on the side of the road on a Friday afternoon breaking rocks, making bricks or playing in the dirt instead of being in school is another story altoigether.
The Best Haircut Photo Ever!
I took a photo of me getting a haircut that certain beard enthusiasts will love and others will just think "big deal it's just a photo of you getting a haircut". When I finally can upload it though remember, to add some context to the photo 1) I'm in freekin' Madagascar; 2) No, seriously, Madagascar; 3) I negotiated the haircut in french (as is the custom in Madagagascar - where I am); 4) I had been turned away by two other Malagasy "Coiffeuses" (possibly a made up word) on, I'm still unsure what grounds, but they were adamant that under no circumstances did they either cut hair (I would have thought that the sign with scissors was an indication otherwise) or would they ever cut my hair (fair enough, it's a free country. Or is it? Who knows?).
Anyway, no bother. Time is on my side. Hope you're checking this from work!
4 comments:
Ah ha!!!! LOL! (Prostitute!!!)
Glad first impressions are colourful.
By the way, can you buy me any interesting jellewery you see, please? You know ...like for Christmas or just as favour. You can ship it to me if that makes it easier at our expense.
Address:
1418 Queenston Rd., Cambridge, ON, N3H 3L6.
Thnx.
Catharine
always better to find out too late that the girl you're talkin to is a prostitute than to find out too late that the girl you're trying to solicit is NOT a prostitute! I took your bike out today, only took me 15 minutes to solve the padlock logic test too, otherwise life is same old same old here. Keep living the dream.
bonjour. yes it does have a certian je ne sais quoi to it.
good to hear you’re dominating madagascar G. you'll be happy to note i scavenged plenty of juici patties in jamaica, and have also had some prostitute ‘encounters’ in panama of late. looking fwd to reading the next update from your laptop (per kez it's working splendidly - well she didn't actually use those words, but she did pull the plastic off the back when cleaning it - have warned her she'll be in strife for that on your return!).
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