ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar - By now I am a connoisseur of cultural faux pas. I have embarrassed myself in the cobblestone streets of Norrkoping, Sweden, and the sandy streets of Dakar, Senegal. I learned how to eat crayfish in the former and to form rice balls with my right hand in the latter (the left is reserved for personal use).
I have stumbled through linguistic frustrations. My Senegalese host sister once told me, "You don't speak Wolof. You don't speak French. You don't speak any language!" I've floundered at cross-cultural romance (Does anyone know how to say "I don't want to have sex with you" in Dogon?). I even failed to learn the 'splash method' for cleansing oneself after peeing in a hole in the ground.
But this semester is going to be different. I arrived in Madagascar armed with a passable knowledge of French, a policy of disengagement on the romantic front and several rolls of toilet paper. With these tools, I am ready to take on the world's fourth-largest island - just don't ask me what the first three are.
Let me try to describe Antananarivo. Concrete houses of red, yellow and white rest one upon another, clinging to the hills that make up this city of three to four million people. Narrow, winding streets of cobblestone race between walls of rock and concrete. When I turn a bend, I often find myself teetering on the edge of a cliff, my breath stolen by the dizzying landscape before me. Long and treacherous staircases plunge down the hillsides like a rollercoaster. The steep, uneven steps are lined with vendors selling everything from eggs to stamps, honey to underwear.
Welcome to Antananarivo, the city of 12 hills.
In central Tana, throngs of people crowd the market Analakely, once the largest open-air market in the world. Analakely is one-stop shopping for used books, wedding dresses, tamarinds, slabs of meat, scrap metal, school supplies and just about anything else one could think of. Yesterday, I dogged my host mother's steps as she bargained deftly for vegetables, which she employed a young man to carry. I have a strong stomach, but the sheer amount of raw meat hanging about, including sheep heads, cow tongues (which is apparently my little brother's favorite dish), octopus and animal parts of every sort made me feel slightly ill.
Antananarivo, the "city of 1,000" in Malagasy - apparently, that was a lot back in the day.
Among the merchants, barefooted children carrying their younger siblings on their backs compete with elderly beggars for spare change. Traffic pulses like a living thing through the city. Bicycles and pedestrians dodge 40-year-old Peugeots and man-pulled carts as they struggle through bottlenecks and roundabouts with no traffic lights or signs of any kind. The smells of gas, burning wood and tropical flowers mingle with prostitutes in the night.
Antananarivo, my home for the next few months.
So maybe I haven't quite conquered this island. I'm bound to trip-up before my trip is up. Or, more likely, I'll fall through a hole in the sidewalk - something we have plenty of. I'm ready to be laughed at- I can't even pronounce the name of this city. I'm ready to laugh at myself. And if I do anything really embarrassing, I'll be sure to tell you.
You can reach this columnist at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
