Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Every boy's first memory

I saw little Divul running around in a skirt the other day. Strange, I thought to myself. Had I mistaken this infant for a boy the whole time I’ve been here? I interrogated his mother about this. “No,” she chuckles, “he just had a snip snip down there.” She lifted up his skirt and sure enough this little guy’s little guy was scabby and sore from a recent circumcision. But why now, and not right after he was popped out into the hands of the rasazy (mid-wife)? By Malagasy custom a young boy age 3 to five undergoes a very painful rite of passage: circumcision. All of the child’s relatives are invited to attend the ceremony. The foreskin is later eaten ontop of a banana. If there isnt a banana its simply chased by toaka Gasy (home made liquor, think of moonshine) by the grandfathers or if they have already passed the uncle on the mother’s side. I later on asked some of my male friends if they remembered when this happened to them.
“Of course…it was my first memory,” says my buddy Gaeton.
“Really, why,” I question.
“well because ummmm…it hurt so much.”

The other guys confessed that this was there first memory too because of its traumatizing affect on them.

At Band Practice

I was walking home with my bicycle along one of the main unpaved roads in my village when I heard a cacophony of noise coming from behind a home. Curiously I followed the noise down a narrow path to find a group of children around ages 4 to ten completely immersed in what was their band practice. I am surprised everyday by the inventiveness of children here, since they don’t have things like little league softball or videogames to keep them occupied, but this was creativity to another level. A group of five girls danced and sang in unison, mimicking their favorite Malagasy pop star in the front of the “stage”. I am so taken back by how well people in my village dance and even more at how shamelessly they do so, even the men. One boy was beating away masterfully at his “drums”, which was a discarded piece of aluminum propped on a bamboo stick, old bowls, and a plastic bottle. Another was on his guitar which was made out of a small piece of wood with green rope tied from the bottom to top to resemble strings. The last boy was tapping imaginary keys on a keyboard on a broken piece of cardboard. I feel like a decadent wasteful Westerner when children ask me for my trash. Garbage is a huge commodity here for children. I always try to remember to save my plastic bottles for them since they are used as playthings. This has also made me a lot more conscious of my carbon footprint. I try to minimize the amount of trash I burn or bury (since that is the only way of disposal here) by buying unpackaged foods and carrying them in my straw basket and then later giving the animals (pigs, zebu, dogs, chickens, and goats) that roam around my house everything that I don’t eat.