Travel Update #2

After about 31 hours of travel, I arrived in my hotel room in Madagascar. And here I will wait for at least the next 24 hours until the collective results of the plane’s PCR tests return. It goes without saying that taking a Covid test outside the United States is just as bad as getting one in the United States. It still involves someone telling you to look forward, that they need to swab both your nostrils, although I am convinced they are really trying to reach my brain, and then the nurse asking if you’re okay after a few tears inevitably fall down your face because I believe the medical world has actually convinced itself that when you shove an elongated Q-tip up one’s nose, it is not a natural response to produce tears. Anyways, whether the Malagasy government will contact me directly or inform the hotel of my Covid status is still a little lost in translation. Either way, I will try to recount my long yet uneventful journey as briefly as possible.

I got on the bus in Portsmouth around noon where my loving parents and I parted. The bus-ride proved to be uneventful, and I think I dozed off a bit. Upon reaching the airport, I realized that I had not fully considered whether I would actually be able to carry all of my luggage. I am traveling with two full-sized check-in bags, a carry-on, and a backpack. After exiting my ground transportation, I proceeded to transform myself into pack-mule, managing to carry the nearly 130lbs of luggage on my back and shoulders until, by the grace of God, I found a luggage trolly already taken out. I loaded up, breezed through check-in and security, and got on my plane for Paris. The only peculiar thing that happened was after we scanned our tickets to get on the plane, we walked through a room with probably a dozen combat-ready French police who were randomly stopping passengers to check their credentials. The unusual part of this is that I was not one of the randomly selected winners. I slept for the majority of the flight, although it was rather difficult considering it only felt like 5pm.

Charles-de-Gaulle Airport is pretty unsightly, or at least in the parts I was in. I moved to another terminal without a problem before going through another security check, just incase I had managed to slip things through TSA in Boston or had somehow acquired contraband while in-flight. Believing myself to be rather prudent, I filled both my water bottles in Boston, and proceeded not to drink any of it because, well, you can’t bring water through security. So the kind Frenchman allowed me to empty them in the bathroom and come back only to have both my bags pulled aside after x-rays, one rightfully so because I had forgotten another water bottle in it, and the other, apparently, because it looked like I was carrying dangerous things. Regardless, I could not escape the watchful eye of French security and I watched as they sifted through my bags and found not much of interest. The rest of my 3 hours in Paris were uneventful.

Did I say 3? I meant to say 5. Our flight was delayed by 2 hours for reasons I will not know until well beyond the grave. I somehow managed to get on the plane relatively early and immediately fell asleep, waking up an hour later only to realize that we hadn’t actually taken off yet. The 11-hour flight itself was not very interesting. I slept on and off for about half the total time. I also made the correct choice of being rather close to the plane’s rear bathroom. The strange thing about flights that long is how much water your body decides to use even though it’s not doing anything. I pounded water the entire flight and used the bathroom accordingly. I’m sure the steward staff thought I had some kind of problem. But in no time at all, we were making our descent into Ivato International Airport outside of Antananarivo (Tana).

Flying into Tana isn’t quite like flying into other airports. First of all, it’s dark, horribly dark. The city does not have many streetlights, and there are few to no large building complexes. Oh yes, the city from above and below is incredibly dark at night. We landed, and I walked out the back of the plane. I looked out across the dark horizon and took in a muted deep breath, and my first thoughts of Madagascar were, in order, “Thank you Lord for bringing me to this place,” followed by, “huh, it smells like charcoal,” and finally, “holy smokes I’m actually here.”

I walked onto the tarmac where my fellow passengers and I were greeted by a long line of probably 30 young Malagasy men with yellow vests and crossed arms. No one said a word. I proceeded to get into a long line which began what I can only describe as the most disorganized assembly line I’ve ever seen. The BBQ line at Boy Scout Camp looks like an automated car factory compared to the mess I entered.

In theory, the process should be a seamless line of one thing to the next with clear, concise directions and orders. This is what actually happened: receive a ticket like I’m at a deli line for our Covid PCR test, go to a booth to pay for said PCR test, receive terrible exchange rate for my change, wait in a row of chairs until my Covid-deli number is called and to which booth, get my nose violated and hand someone a document saying that I’ll stay in the hotel until I get my test results back, talk to border customs, have one of about a million eager baggage aids approach me and find my check-in luggage in a literal sea of bags, have this man follow me with my bags, place luggage through an x-ray machine, have them not say anything about the three knives in my check-in bags, hand a lady a document with which hotel I’m staying at, hand another lady the same document so she can say the same thing, walk out of the door where 50 very eager people are holding signs for various hotels and taxi services, have my taxi man find me, walk with my taxi man and bag man to the taxi in the most dangerous parking lot on earth, ward off the half dozen boys and young men trying to “help” me or exchange coins with me, accidently give my bag man too small of a tip, tell him I don't understand what he's saying because I don't, get left in the taxi alone with my luggage while the taxi man goes and searches for the other passengers, stay there for nearly an hour, introduce myself to my fellow Malagasy passengers, drive through the shadiest roads on the planet in a van that, by some miracle, turns on let alone drives, get to hotel room at 3:30am, locate and brutally murder the 3-5 mosquitos in the room because I decided not to take my malaria pills while on the plane, lie in bed with jet-lag induced insomnia until 8am, wake up after about 2 hours of sleep to the hotel man giving me the last call for breakfast, take malaria pill, write and pray for blog readers. And that’s about it. Pretty simple, isn’t it?

You can end here if you want, but I think it would be irresponsible of me not to make note of a few things that I observed. First, the Malagasy are very family oriented. I was rather impressed that the airport staff made it their top priority to get families with children through the chaos first. And from what I could tell, families did not receive the same haggling that I did as a vazaha. Second, I saw my future in 9 months. The first line I was in, or rather the first part of the line, was outside and stretched along a long window. Inside the window were passengers for what I can only assume to be the 1am flight to Paris, the same flight I will take home on August 31st. Third, Malagasy women are the definition of strong, independent women. I saw at least a half dozen Malagasy women tell off a pack of lurking men trying to get money, or whatever else, from them. Fourth, documents in the 3rd world are just for show. The customs officer barely looked at my visa before signing me off. In fact, most of the body language or actions that seem unusual to us, because they are, are actually a subtle way of expressing power or authority over another. Making someone wait a little bit, glossing over a document as if it were actually important, pretending that one had no idea the exchange rate was 1-3,900 instead of 1-3,000, watching a hotel worker carry one bag after another instead of helping, and other little, nearly imperceivable actions that denote one’s power over another. I wonder to what degree this is reminiscent of the colonial period. Nonetheless, having read the history of Madagascar, I would make the strong case this kind of behavior is all too human rather than strictly European. Fifth, there is a very strong essence of hospitality. Obviously I realize that I’m staying in a business literally dependent on how hospitable it can be. However, there is an earnest sincerity in the service. I was awoken by one of the hotelmen this morning because I had not called in for breakfast, and they knew that I had come in late. It was a small but very appreciated act. Regardless, the rest of the day will be spent drinking water, keeping myself busy, and then trying to fall asleep later tonight after, hopefully, resetting my body’s time cycle. Tomorrow orientation begins.

May God be praised.