The First Christmas in Paradise

Written December 28, 2011
Manambaro

    The postman slit open the cardboard box and a strange green powder puffed out to waft in the air.
    Oh, great, they’re gonna think my grandma’s sending me drugs.
    But no, the customs officials were just as perplexed as me to what the substance was.  Turns out, after hearing me extoll the virtues of moringa, my grandmother in Florida sent me a canister of moringa powder, which works as an all-natural multivitamin.  The can had ruptured in transit, coating everything else in the box in fine green dust.
    After leaving the post office I went to the Kaleta Hotel for some Friday morning Internet.  I already had the last blog post written, so I had enough time to stream the first episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones.  And it was glorious.  Sansa’s just as annoying as in the books, and they captured Arya perfectly.  Sure, the direwolves are just big fluffy huskies and the Dothraki are Middle-Eastern-ish instead of Mongolian, but I realize HBO doesn’t have the resources to get trained wolves (especially extinct direwolves) or a host of Mongolian actors.
    I ran some errands around town, then met Jess and her boyfriend Haja at her place.  We made tuna quesadillas for dinner.  Jess wasn’t feeling well, so we all decided to turn in early that night.  But after hearing me gushing about Game of Thrones, Jess very generously offered to let me watch more episodes on her laptop.  Episodes two and three!
    Saturday morning we went to Libanona Beach and hung out with the crowd of kids who adore Jess because she’s “their vazaha.”  They’re mostly the children of the fishermen and shopkeepers who live along the beach.  She doesn’t know all their names, but she greets them all as “namako,” “my friend.”  They seem fine with that.
    The kids swam all around us, treading water easily while we stood.  A trio of French tourists swam nearby, sporting snorkels and masks.  When they came back to the beach I introduced myself.  One of the girls had a sudoku puzzle, and the children were looking curiously at it.  In a pidgin of French and Gasy we explained the rules to them, and they were hooked, entranced.  Sudoku hurts my head, so I left them to it.  I looked back a good forty minutes later and the kids hadn’t moved an inch .  They were going to beat this strange vazaha game if it took all day!
    In the afternoon Jess and Haja butchered a chicken.  Her kitchen is only big enough for two people so... more Game of Thrones!
    That night there was a Tence Mena concert at Sacrée Coeur, the top private high school in Fort Dauphin.  We met Paul there.  According to him, Tence Mena is the Malagasy Lady Gaga.  It’s pretty obvious how the one directly followed the other, but hey, derivative Gaga is better than none, right?  Tence Mena is also a force for individualism and personal empowerment in a highly collectivist society.
    She cycled outfits throughout the show, first a gold tube top and miniskirt, then a revealing Japanese schoolgirl ensemble, then a strange garment that looked like a white tank top with a hood.  Her outfits were original, her stage personality sexy and avant-garde, her music... Paul said it’s just the same centuries-old Antandroy beat through everything.  The one song of hers I sort of understood was one of empowerment encouraging women to dump alcoholic boyfriends.  Essentially the message was, “Don’t waste your time with a drunkard, you’re sexy enough to get another man in a heartbeat.”
    Next day I decided to accompany Jess and Haja to church the next morning.  I figured I’d watched enough Game of Thrones and there were better ways to spend my morning.
    It was a Pentecostal church.  We walked in the large low-slung building at 8 to find the congregation in song as the children’s choir danced on a stage draped with shiny blue and purple cloth.  Lights flashed behind them to further attract the attention.
    Are they gonna do the raising hands thing?  Yep, there they go.
    I’ve never understood the raising hands thing.  I tried it once at church with my cousins and did not get one iota of spiritual pleasure from it, just sore arms.
    Maybe it’s because my ancestral church, the Episcopal Church, was founded by stone-faced Scotsmen, but I see little place for dancing during a service.  To me it’s like dancing in the shower.  You sing in the shower, sure, but otherwise you go about cleansing yourself sedately and then step out feeling refreshed.
    Are those boys doing the robot?  No, more like Michael Jackson dance moves, but should I ever have to ask whether they’re doing the robot in church?
    After an hour and a half (halfway there!) the preacher started his sermon.  I didn’t understand most of it, but I entertained myself by trying.  I know he didn’t talk much about the Nativity story, because I would have recognized the words for “star,” “shepherds,” “gold,” “angel,” etc.
    And the preacher kept going.  And going, never flagging in his enthusiasm or the vigor of his words.  If nothing else, he was a paragon of athleticism in the name of the Lord.
    The three of us perked up when he announced that he does not approve of Tence Mena, and he would have preferred that those of us who went to the concert had spent that time in prayer instead.
    Finally, at about 10:45, he stepped aside... for more dancing from the children’s choir.  Eleven o’clock came... and went.  The service was still going?  Of course it was.  After ten minutes or so Jess said something to Haja, and he led us out.
    I dare say that’s enough worship to get me through to next Christmas.
    More Game of Thrones in the afternoon while Jess and Haja set up a hammock outside.
    For dinner we walked over to Jess’s neighbor Barry’s house.  He’s a Northern Irish expat who’s lived in Madagascar for the last thirteen years.  He works with several programs, notably the American SIT study abroad program in Fort Dauphin.
    He served a delectable meal of cheese-laden potatoes, smoked ham, salad, stewed carrots, and hard-boiled eggs, with pineapples, mangoes, and passionfruit for dessert.  I plowed through my plate, finished off Paul’s, then methodically destroyed two pineapples.  And the beer started to flow.
    Keep in mind that the bottles here are twice the size of American beers.  So after one Three Horse Beer I’m feeling relaxed.  Two is a comfortable level of buzzed.  Three is pushing it a little.
    Eight THBs...
    Well, drink with an Irishman, you get what you get, I guess.  I blame him entirely, deftly cajoling and pressuring me by turns like a manipulative teenager out of a public service announcement.  He said we had to finish the beers, both cases of ‘em, and we did.  I didn’t think it’d be possible, but we did.
    I actually wasn’t that hung over by the morning.  Yeah, drinking on a full stomach rocks!
    Jess and Haja were still asleep so... last episode of Game of Thrones!  Now that I’ve finished the season, I’ll lend Jess the books so we can geek out over both.
    Yeah, this was one of the better Christmases.