Despair for the Fleas, Hope for Everything Else

A squash seller in the Karamena market

A Karamena man harvesting coconuts

The mountain to the south of Ebobaky

This girl got dragged along to the baby-weighing with her younger siblings

Hanitra (in white) and Marie-Louise (in pink) give children Vitamin A supplements in Ebobaky

 Written February 4, 2012
Fort Dauphin

    The fleas are still here.
    Well, I was pessimistic about the poison working to begin with.  From the bites on my body, I’d say maybe a third of the fleas were killed; the rest are still alive and well.  I envision them as miniscule Talibs kicking back in their caves with some hashish, cackling about how the stupid blundering American will never get them.
    According to a book on parasites which I discovered in Israel’s house, it may take up to twelve applications of the poison over a period of six months to fully destroy the fleas.  So I may be in this fight for the long haul.  Much like American forces in Afghanistan, in fact.  Thankfully my date for withdrawal is already fixed, though it be far in the future.
    So, with this new perspective, I’ve resumed my habit of putting absurd amounts of garlic in all of my food.  Back in October, mere days before the fleas arrived, my parents sent me a large jar of Costco garlic powder, intended to last me the rest of my two years.  The jar is now two-thirds empty.  But the garlic seems to be impregnating my skin enough to keep most of the fleas from biting me.  They’re still there, though, and they still wake me up at night.
    Well, they say people who live next to waterfalls stop hearing the water after a while.  Maybe the fleas are one more aspect of Madagascar that I’ll have to learn to live with.
    ...And pray there are no outbreaks of bubonic plague near me.  The south is actually the least likely region for a plague outbreak to occur, which is nice.  And even if it does, this is the twenty-first century-- plague is easily defeated by modern antibiotics.
    Things are pretty good in Manambaro otherwise.  I’m healthy, the tannest I’ve ever been, probably the fittest I’m been since I wrestled in high school.  Last night I stumbled upon one of the tastiest dishes I’ve ever cooked here, simply by combining eggplant with plenty of garlic and oil.  My mango trees are growing well.
    On Tuesday I went around my yard pulling up invading plants, grumbling about how my upstairs neighbors should at least make a perfunctory offer to do the work themselves.  Their kids use the yard a lot more than I do.  But then Silvie, the ten-year-old girl, came out and spontaneously began helping me.  We worked for about an hour, with me getting more and more tired and her keeping a constant, energetic pace.  We bonded a little.
    I went to Ebobaky again on Friday with Hanitra to help her weigh babies, and found out more about the structure on top of the nearby mountain.  It’s visible on clear days from my house, and it’s clearly manmade. It’s not a fortress, as I first though, but a tomb.  What I thought was a wall is more likely just a ring of stones that are level with each other.  The central part, which I thought was a tall sloping roof, is probably just a larger triangular stone, maybe the actual summit.  Sooner or later I’m gonna climb up there, but first I have to scout the approaches some more, make sure there’s not a crocodile-filled river running through the foothills into which I could stumble.
    One day at a time.  Is it really February already?