Cruise Port Life

Watch this! It’s apparently nominated for an Oscar and does an awesome job of depicting Madagascar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaWEzsLVGiA

Yesterday afternoon, after spending most of the day tackling my first monthly report for PSI (aka the first time I have had to sit down and write something legitimate in over a year) I ventured out of the house to go for a walk and run some errands. Now, I have seen Diego when a cruise ship comes in before, but this time struck me as particularly hilarious, maybe just because I am now more used to what Diego is like on a normal basis.

I see a lot of vazaha everyday here, but they are almost solely groups of retirement-aged men (usually with malagasy women not older than me) and I don’t converse with them, mostly because it’s not really possible. I’ve experience it too many times already—they say something to me in French, I understand but respond in Malagasy, we both feel awkward, smile and walk away. The first sign that there is a cruise ship in port though, is that these groups of Vazaha walking around include vazaha women. By the time I hit the main street and start climbing the hill, it has already become blatantly apparent because every single person selling vanilla, model ships, paintings and every other possible trinket--including carved giraffes and elephants; native species to madagascar—has come out of the woodwork and has begun harassing me as well.

Usually a simple ‘no thank you’ in malagasy reminds them that they do, in fact, see me walking by everyday and I am actually not interested in buying anything. One man who sells paintings and likes to practice speaking English with me, actually told me yesterday that he had already done so well with the cruise ship tourists that day, that he was going to sleep in the rest of the week. There are the few sellers, however, who don’t get it, and hilariously (annoyingly?) believe that I am just that ‘malaky mahay’ (fast at learning) and stepped off the ship and learned how to speak gasy. I mean c’mon man.

Yesterday, I made the entire walk to the market, and thus got to witness the whole tourist loop. Off the ship; stop off at the town center where a temporary craft market has sprung up, maybe a stop at one of the fancy patio restaurants for a taste of the local brand (notice the lack of plural) of beer, and then on to a real food market where people do their shopping. Including this less-than-thrilled vazaha trying to actually do her shopping.

It was all good though, I got a huge kick out of the private 4x4’s carting loads of tourists the less than 2 miles to the port and back, and the police and gendarmes placed every 500 ft or so along the main road. And I actually laughed out loud a few times when a group of 4 or 5 vazaha all stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to take a picture of a woman in a lamba (cloth) or a destroyed old building.

There is a lot to get used to in my new life: a real work schedule, reports, daily internet access…but the fact that I am not the only vazaha in town is going to continue throwing me off for a while.