Lantra and Florence: Poverty in Tana

Those of us who are more analytically minded often like to look at statistics, graphs, and all other tools that help us visualize data. This is all very useful when it comes to trying to wrap our heads around hard or very large facts. But these kinds of tools only go so far in aiding us. Unfortunately, our tools can work against us in the sense that if we stare at graphs, statistics, and regression models for too long, those numbers cease to represent facts and simply become abstract numbers. We can often lose sight that the numbers we see aren’t numbers at all, but rather a collective assessment of real, living, and breathing human persons.

Consequently, I’ve always been an advocate for tangible and physical experiences. We are embodied creatures after all, so it should be no surprise to us that experiencing something with the senses is far more powerful than reading summaries or assessing graphs and charts. Sometimes you have to go to where the numbers are to see what you’re talking about. I had two experiences like this in my life, one of which I saw numbers and then met the people those numbers represented, and another in which I met people and then had to represent them with numbers. Let me explain.

In college, I went to Guyana in South America for a week-long mission trip. Being me, I read up on all sorts of economic and social data about the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. I did all my homework and knew all about various aid programs, economic plans, and the general idea of the country’s human development index (HDI), which is an index created by combining life expectancy, levels of education, and mean income. When I got to Guyana, I saw firsthand what and who those numbers and that data represented. I met with people, spoke with them, and heard from them directly about their experiences. I’m happy to report that many of the economists do a good job in assessing situations as the data lined up very well with what I saw. But at the same time, my week in Guyana provided me with an invaluable experience of actually being with the people the numbers represented and it made my understanding of the data much more comprehensive and meaningful.

Later, I worked with a civil society outreach program at the university where I did a whole bunch of research on food insecurity. Our major project (just my professor and I, actually) was to put together a survey for a local food bank. We’d later use our findings to write a report that would help the food bank identify certain details about their operations and where they could improve their services based on our survey assessment report. That was the whole point of the project. My professor and I conducted the survey ourselves. We went to the food bank for several days over a three-week period and interviewed the people we met there. We met all sorts of people from more states of life than I can share here. When we didn’t have anyone to interview, my professor would just pick someone to sit next to and chat with them. I followed his example and learned some pretty heartbreaking things.

For example, I met an elderly gentleman, Phil, who was on food stamps. Phil was in his 70s and told me, “You know, I never thought I’d be in this position. But ever since my wife passed away a few years ago, it’s just been impossible to keep things together. Food is one of those things that goes first when you might lose the roof over your head. I never thought I’d be here. I never thought I’d be here. . .”

When we finished our survey period, I was tasked with manually entering all 100+ surveys so we could run some tests on them and identify some patters. Speaking with people about their experience with hunger, food insecurity, uncertainty, fear, and anxiety is one thing. Having to then take all of that information and put it into a bunch of 1s and 0s is another. I remember meticulously going through every survey to make sure I avoided errors. Every now and then I would get to a survey I conducted. That’s when it dawned on me. Everyone has a story, and the numbers I was entering onto my excel sheet could only tell so much of that person’s story. I even got to Phil’s survey. And as I was putting in the 1s and 0s, I thought to myself, “This isn’t just another data entry. This is Phil. I know Phil. Phil knows me. There is so much more to Phil than this. So much more than numbers can tell. Phil was a husband, a father, a friend, an employee, a grandfather. Phil wasn’t a statistic. Phil was a human person.” It struck me all the more when I realized that the date Phil and I spoke was also the anniversary of my grandfather’s passing, also named Phil. I don’t believe in coincidence, only Divine Providence.

You’ll have to forgive me for this long and seemingly disconnected introduction. Talking about poverty, especially here in Madagascar, is, let’s say, difficult. I’ve seen a lot of things that I will never be able to unsee, and it’s been my intention for a long time now to share my processed experiences with you when I felt ready and knew how to best do so. Now, however, seems like a good time to talk about it whether I’m ready or not.

Nonetheless, my point is that poverty looks different, and numbers cannot tell you everything. I could tell you that Madagascar is consistently the 4th poorest country in the world in any given year. I could tell you that more than 75% of the people who live here live on less than a $1.90 a day. I could tell you that the average cost of living (which is higher in the city and lower in the countryside) is about $45 a month. I could tell you that 40% of children under age 5 suffer from stunted growth, that 97% of children aged 10 can’t age-appropriate texts, or that 4 out of 10 children do not even complete primary school. I could even tell you that 85% of homes throughout the country don’t have electricity, and the stats on water are worse. But all those statistics don’t really mean much as the human mind can’t really fathom what that looks, feels, sounds, smells, and tastes (yes taste) like. They’re only part of the story. So let me tell you about the poverty I witness here in the capital city of Madagascar.

I could just tell you a bunch of things that I see regularly, and that would be sufficient to make my point. But I think a better way of sharing this with you is just to take you through a typical day for me these past months of teaching.

I wake up between 4:45-5:00am every morning. I eat, shower, get dressed, pray, pack my bag for the day, and then leave the house by 6:00 or 7:00 depending on the class schedule that day. Immediately after I leave the house, I walk past an enormous garbage dumpster that is always overflowing with refuse and often has the equivalent or double the amount of garbage piled on the street next to it. On top of the garbage pile is a dumpster diver or two, homeless people who squat at dumpsters and sift through the trash looking for food, clothing, or anything they could sell. Sometimes I have a bag to add to the overflowing pile. And as soon as I toss it on and start to make my way down the hill, whoever is watching the pile that morning makes their way to open my bag to see what they can salvage.

I turn down a thin alleyway barely wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. Little shops are opening up although there are rarely people around this early in the morning. Most of the people in the alley know me by now, and I never feel threatened because they all know I live in the neighborhood and speak a little Malagasy. Eventually I make my way to the street and start moving along the sidewalks, when there are sidewalks, that is. I walk around the stadium, avoid getting hit by cars, wave to the taxi drivers who know by now that I rarely need a ride, and watch as long lines of people form at the taxi-be stops waiting for the chance to get a ride on overcrowded vans that act as public transportation. On Thursday mornings the road encircling the stadium is bustling with vendors setting up tents and coverings for market day. I have to duck sometimes to evade bamboo and metal poles, and sometimes it’s difficult to navigate with the bumper-to-bumper traffic. On Friday mornings, there is an abundance of plastic and paper on the ground leftover from the busy day before.

I turn down one road and start climbing a hill where I start passing kids with school uniforms, often accompanied by their parents since there’s a middle school and primary school nearby. At the top of the hill I encounter the first beggar who is sleeping on the side of the street. She doesn’t stir as I walk past. Her head is on a concrete stub, and she has a thin, dirty blanket wrapped around her. After about 15min I reach the tunnel. I’ve nicked named it “the tunnel of widows”. I put on a mask because the traffic here is always at a standstill and the fumes congregate in the tunnel. In fact, someone told me that the tunnel is sometimes the second most polluted place on earth. It’s not too crowded in the morning, but you will see why I gave it its name later. After walking through the tunnel, I pass by a small colony of homeless who live on the side of the street there. There is a broken water main that spouts water. At this early in the morning, they are typically still sleeping, although sometimes there is one or two women washing their clothes in the puddles collected in the cracks in the sidewalk.

I precariously cross the street and make my way down the busiest road in the city, which is lined with busses, cars, and moto scooters, all parked because the traffic jam will be there for a while. I make my way down l’avenue and ward off some of the vendors who are there early. There are maybe 2 or 3 people with brooms sweeping the street, picking up trash, and removing dog and human feces from the road that appeared there some time in the night. I get to school after my 30-35min walk and start my long day teaching.

For lunch I make my way to a food court on l’avenue, often waving away street vendors and telling the homeless children that follow me that I don’t have money for them. The beggars and street vendors/conmen in centre ville (center city) are particularly aggressive. They know that vazaha like me go to centre ville. Thus, that is where they set up. Everyday when I walk down those streets, all I hear is, “Monsieur, monsieur ! S’il vous plaît monsieur ! Pour manger monsieur ! Pour l’enfant monsieur !” “To eat, monsieur! For the child, monsieur!” Oftentimes the children follow me, stepping in front of me, sticking their hands up at me, and repeating these lines over and over. The young ones have been trained that someone of my complexion is a walking bank, a mobile money machine who can be guilted into handing out much needed cash. That if anyone has money, it’s me, a vazaha.

The street vendors in centre ville are the worst. They’re rude, crude, pushy, and persistent. Normally I use persistent as a positive trait. But here I use it negatively as it would seem to any decent vendor that someone who says, “Tsy te-hividy io aho,”I don’t want to buy that, it means they’re not getting the sale. They follow me around for a bit. They hold out their merchandise in front of me so I have to go around them or move their arms from my path. It’s a rodeo getting to the food court, which is in a western-style shopping mall and provides some much needed quiet. But that is only for so long before I head back to school after purchasing a water from the grocery store across the street and telling the taxi drivers outside I don’t need a ride or the street vendors that I simply don’t want to buy whatever they’re selling.

It also doesn’t help that LJJR sits on the very edge of the Analakely Market, the busiest market in the country and most notorious for pit pockets and pushy salesmen. The market is pretty big, and I’ve never really walked through it. I experience enough of the shouting, the people with merchandize on blankets on the sidewalks, the people walking up to me and trying to push their products on me, being called monsieur or vazaha. It’s a whirlwind of activity even on the fringes of the market. There’s also a mad rush when police come by. Someone yells out that they’re coming, and suddenly everyone selling things on blankets on the ground pack up and get ready to dash if necessary. It’s technically illegal to sell things in this fashion. There’s a nice big billboard around the stadium demonstrating all the different ways you CANNOT sell your merchandise. I see the billboard often. And the more I look at it, the more I laugh to myself because of maybe the dozen examples the government has propagated on the sign, only 2 of them are legal ways of selling things. By my rough estimate of walking around the streets of Tana, I would guess that only about 30% of all stalls and vendors would be considered legal.

The smell in the city and the markets is probably the worst part. There is a lack of public, or private for that matter, bathrooms. The edges of the streets literally have grey and mirky water. And it’s not uncommon to see someone relieving themselves on the side of the road, whether they’re watering the sidewalks or so kindly fertilizing the pavement. At least once a week I see someone drop their drawers, pop a squat in the middle or side of the road, and squeeze out a nice blob of manmade goop.

To be fair, there is one vendor I like there. He’s a tall, goofy-looking guy with big old lambchops on his face who sells board games and other cards right outside the store across the street from LJJR. He holds up a Monopoly box and asks me almost every day, “Monopoly Monsieur?” “Tsy misaotra” No thanks. “Ça va, monsieur.” Okay, monsieur. I’m thinking I might just buy it from him my last day of school. He’s such a gentleman about it.

After school ends, I follow the same route to get back home. By 3:30, 4:30, or 5:30 (the times I leave school any given day), centre ville is packed with people and my return journey is much less peaceful than my journey in the morning. Let me walk you through it.

I leave my school and immediately enter the Analakely. It’s loud, smelly, and filled with people, many of whom are watching me. There are the men who sell puppies out of cardboard boxes every day outside the school. People walking around with arms and hands full of belts and sunglasses looking for potential customers, like a rich vazaha like yours truly. But I ignore them and turn down a street to make my way to the main road. Oh, and there’s a dead dog on the street who got hit by a car. Its brains are splattered on the street. That’s nice and not uncommon. In fact, it’s the third I’ve seen this month. Sometimes it’s a rat instead of a dog, flattened for convivence’s sake.

I get to the main road and cross busy streets. A man comes up to me asking for money and rubbing his stomach. I pass by a row of taxis and kindly tell them that I don’t need a ride. I wave my hand at money changers. I get to the corner of the street where there is a nice patisserie (bakery). There are three homeless boys eagerly reaching down into a trashcan where they just saw a broken ice cream cone get thrown away.

I keep walking down the street, nodding at vendors, taxis, and moto taxis repeating probably 20 times, “Tsia, azafady.” No, sorry. The line of buses and cars are still there, even worse now. There are children and people going up to the windows of these vehicles holding out their hands and begging for money. Some of them come up to me, mostly children, calling me “monsieur” and stepping in front of me or putting their hands on my legs to try to get me to stop walking. I keep going until I reach the tunnel of widows. By then the entrance is filled with small colonies of homeless. There is a woman whose foot is decaying, being eaten by some kind of infection. Another woman has half her face covered in something similar. Someone is missing a leg or a foot. People are gathered around in circles playing with cards. There are women in the tunnel nursing their children, occupying the thin sidewalk such that you sometimes have to walk over their legs just to get by. Children sit around and play with each other. Others are begging strangers that go past. Still others are sitting in front of empty bowls, their mothers a few dozen yards down the sidewalk to maximize their share of the scare sidewalk real-estate. There’s one child screaming and crying, and no one is there to claim or calm him. One child is playing with a crushed plastic bottle. Another is putting dirt in a can. There is another pooping in the middle of the sidewalk. There’s even one, not yet old enough to talk, reaching his hand out to me because he's already been trained that my skin color means money, and there’s no possible way that this child knows about the concept of money. These children are completely unaware that they are homeless or that anything is out of the ordinary. For many of them, this tunnel and these noisy, dusty, fume filled streets are their homes where they will be raised and eventually, if they make it, come of age.

That’s why I call it the tunnel of widows. Unlike the United States where the majority of the homeless are black men, here in Madagascar the majority are single mothers. It’s not common to see a homeless man. On the other hand, the majority of homeless children are boys, not girls. And because of the high propensity of stunted growth, it’s impossible to tell how old any of them are.

I make my way through the tunnel, down the road, and back to the stadium where, on Thursdays, I navigate through the closing of market day and sometimes stop at the hat stands to chat in Malagasy and maybe buy a bootleg hat for $2.50.

I walk around the stadium, get harassed by some people and followed by some children begging for money, climb back up the hill to the house, pass by a different group of dumpster divers outside at the dumpster, and finally arrive home after a long day of teaching. I work out, shower, maybe make some dinner, and just sit around either playing a game, reading a book, or watching something on Netflix, trying to process the day so I can wake up the next morning and do it all over again. So that’s my typical day.

Now, you may be asking yourself, or a metaphorical version of me actually, “Nathaniel, are you okay? Do you ever give money? How do you manage all of that?” To answer your hypothetical questions in order: I’m not, sometimes, and I’ve learned to. Let me explain.

The reality of poverty never goes away. It constantly surrounds me, and there is no way to evade it. It permeates the entire city and is inescapable for any period of time. I rarely give money. It sounds harsh, but the fact of the matter is that giving money is not the most beneficial thing to do for several reasons. First, I don’t have enough money in my possession to even remotely give every beggar I meet even a small amount. Second, if you give money to one beggar, every beggar around you will expect money. If you meet the beggar again, that beggar will expect money from you again. It’s neither a healthy nor productive relationship. In fact, I stopped giving money to the poor outside the church all together because on one occasion, I told the group of children that I would only give if they shared it. They nodded and agreed. I gave one of the children the only bill I had. And the child proceeded to run off with a smirk for having tricked me. The other children simply reached out their hands and asked for more.

The rules I have developed for giving are simple enough. Don’t give a lot, don’t give often, and there cannot be any other beggars around. It’s hard. Really hard. Sometimes I just don’t handle it well, and that’s not just with giving money. It’s with other things, too. One night I was looking at a thin slice of bread, that part from the end of the loaf which is somehow even thinner here in Madagascar than in the States. I didn’t really want to eat it and was going to throw it out. But then I didn’t want to waste it. Then I remembered that there were dumpster divers outside my house who would gladly open my trash bag and snatch the thin, tasteless slice of bread as part of dinner. I remember crouching in the kitchen with my hands on the counter, overcome with the realities of my situation. I closed my eyes, shook my head, and thought to myself, “What the f*** and I supposed to do here?”

But that’s just how it is. And I can’t escape it. And it’s hard to deal with it, if I deal with it at all. I always think of the line from the letter of James in the Bible where he says something along the lines of, “And what good is it to say to your brother who is hungry, thirsty, cold, naked, and alone, ‘goodbye and good luck?’” Or when Jesus preaches that what we do unto the least amongst our brothers and sisters we do unto Him. So when I walk past the homeless and the beggars, the orphan and bastard children, I, too, walk past Christ in need. It doesn’t sit well with me.

I have found some ways that are productive in coping with this situation. We must always remember that we are instruments of Christ, not Christ Himself. Thus, we cannot do it all. It means that we must do what is prudent and charitable given our states of life and our resources. For me, that means serving my students in my care and those around me with whom I have made relationships.

There is one man in centre ville that I see sometimes. His name is Lantra (pronounced lanch). When I see him, I give him money, no matter where we are or who is around, because he and I are friends. He’s not a beggar to me, but a friend. He does not guilt me and I do not see him as a charity case. We pray for one another and chat when we run into each other. Similarly, I have a friend named Florence whom I see every Sunday on my way home from mass. Florence and I chat for a bit, and I make her baby, one of four, smile with my goofy vazaha hair and beard. I give her the same amount of money every Sunday, and if by chance I see her somewhere else in the city, I stop to say hi, but I don’t give her money then. She knows that I will see her Sunday. And honestly, I look forward to it every week because it’s the best short Malagasy lesson I have. I actually confess that my heavy investment in learning Malagasy was triggered by my desire to speak with her and actually know the woman I see every week. To me, Florence isn’t a widow on the street of the stadium every Sunday. She’s my friend that I am blessed to see every weekend, the friend I ask what’s new, the friend I buy a new lamba for so she has another blanket at night, and the friend I pray for every morning.

Those are the kinds of small differences we are called to make in life. We can’t do it all, nor should we. We’d fall into a sin of pride or vanity if we honestly thought we could solve poverty alone. But this is a glimpse of poverty here in the city. Some people are just alone, forgotten, sick, hungry, jobless, and desperate. Desperate people do desperate things. Children will start crying uncontrollably because they know they can guilt a vazaha into giving a few thousand ariary. Women will beg and grab onto pantlegs or shirts because they know the same. That is what the numbers and statistics of poverty look like in person. So when I say to look at a number is one thing and to know the person behind the number is another, this is what I mean. Lantra and Florence are human persons, not statistics. They’re made in the image and likeness of their Creator who loves them despite what we may think about their living conditions. Most importantly to me, they’re my friends whom I pray for by name every morning.

Indeed, and as always, know that you, too, are in my prayers each morning. All I ask is that you do the same for me.

My God be praised.