Cultural observations on major life events

The title sounds pretty clinical but the reality is that the typical Malagasy circle of life is a lot more condensed than the typical Canadian one is. A good friend and colleague mentioned this to me before I came down on assignment and I didn't give it enough credit at the time but the truth of the statement has really set in since I've been here. So today, I'm going to blab a bit about how different it is here compared to home in a little more detail than normal.

Your typical Malagasy is born into what most Canadians would refer to as extreme poverty (~$1.5/day GNI/person) and it only gets different from there. According to World Bank data on Madagascar the average lifespan from birth is 67 years and that is if the person is born today and we're working in some optimism. These two factors alone translate into a world where life, death, marriage, births, divorces(they sure have a different attitude towards marriage here), and all the large life events you can think of seem to happen far more often than they do in Canada.

Depending on how you look at it these stats can be pretty sobering, or in some cases scary but the fascinating part about it is the Malagasy that I know don't look at it that way at all, to them it is just life. They have certainly adapted an interesting way of socializing and sharing these major life events as a group of people in the work place. More specifically for every major life event you can think of there is usually a collection taken from all members of whatever team they happen to belong to.

In our case in IT we've got about 75 team members and it's not uncommon that once ever week or two there is some sort of a collection being taken. At first, I was honestly quite taken aback by the "Hey, so and so that works here that you don't know had a kid, would you like to donate?" or "Frank's brother died, would you like to donate?" or "So and so's Mom is ill, would you like to donate?" type requests that fly around the office but being Canadian politely opened my wallet and donated.

It was only after a couple of beers and a totally misguided whining session with some other Expats that I gained perspective. You see, along with the faster pace of life here also comes a greatly reduced social net to help out when the shit hits the fan.

There is no social medicine, and what little medical coverage you get from your employer, if you're lucky enough to actually have a formal "job", isn't usually adequate (unless you work for Ambatovy or a couple of other larger firms here, thankfully).  Furthermore - actual medical care is few and far between as the population is quite geographically spread out and  the doctor patient ratio is in the high thousands. Combine all of these sobering statistics and your hopelessly ignorant hack of a blogger here realizes that the net at the office is not only a sort of awkward nice-to-have but a critical part of life for most.

So the next time you're in a shitty spot and need a healthy dose of perspective throw yourself in the shoes of your typical Malagasy and see how your situation stacks up.

Grocery Shopping

In this quaint little town of 200,000 there are approximately 3 grocery stores. There are however about 4.8 million medieval style food stands that you can buy food from, that is if you like 3 day old non-refrigerated meat and are looking to consort with the porcelain gods. Or, there is two grocery stores called SCORE and one called Shoprite (a South African chain) that you can purchase various forms of almost-like-home-but-not-quite food and other grocery type stuff from.

Recently the roof in good old 5B4 began to leak something fierce and though ignoring it for a while was a sound strategy the constant 1/4" of water on the floor was beginning to get annoying. As such I hatched a plan along with three friends I've made while here and we are now all sharing the same 4 plex at 9A. The unfortunate part is that I am now a full 300m further away (and this interferes with my laziness) but the nice part is that we all pitched in and have decided to buy a couple of basic appliances to attempt to make to feel the common area of the 4plex a little more hospitable.

I only moved in on Tuesday and Sunday's are the only days we get off so today was the first shopping day. We caught the 12 o'clock bus and hit the bank and then headed over to the first grocery store. We did some price checking and determined that we'd be buying no appliances if they wanted $75 for a cheap Chinese coffee maker. While commiserating and complaining that we didn't want to pay triple the Walmart price for half of the Walmart quality the first of the lights shut off. Odd I thought, if the power was out (as is usually the case) the whole store would be dark. At which point the rest of the lights started going off.

I guess this particular grocery store closes at 1PM with no exceptions. We quickly hustled to the entrance, which had already had all of it's lockable steel panels pulled shut, and made nice with the security guard who begrudgingly let us leave. On to the Shoprite it was.

We were pleasantly surprised at Shoprite as it was still open and we managed to find some pretty excellent deals on shoddy, lead painted, cheap Chinese appliances and dishes. After much careful shopping (grabbing the cheapest things we saw) we managed to snag a 2000W dual burner counter top stove thing, 12 cup coffee machine, 3 pots, 4 bowls, 4 mugs, coffee, coffee filters, 16 pc utensil set (in stylish off-white), and 2L of water for a whopping 196,000MGA or approximately $95. Not a bad deal! Take that Walmart!

It was after the purchase that I experienced something very strange. There is a little desk that sits after the check out but before the door where a little guy sits. I'd always wondered the few times I'd been through there what this magical desk was for and it was today that I learned this is where they unbox all electronic items you buy and test them in front of you. The burner worked first try aside from a little smoke but I assumed that was just packaging oil burning off and we moved onto the coffee machine. It also made smoke of the melty short circuit oh god it's on fire kind.

The poor fellow plugged this wonder of China into the wall and the plug immediately melted... in his hand. Rather than scream like a girl and pull away (like I'd do) he manned up and grabbed the now completely molten 240V plastic inferno death plug and yanked it out of the wall. I guess he gets fired if the place burns down eh? Thinking that he'd take a minute to recover I was even more astonished when he flipped the coffee machine onto the desk whipped out a knife and snipped the plug off the end of the still very hot wires. In broken English he says "plug no good" and pulls another out of his magical pocket, strips the wires, and reassembles the whole thing and plugs it back into the socket. This time the little red light came on and no power smoke came out so in his eyes we were golden. This happened in no more than 60 seconds. Amazing.

Hauling the newly purchased slightly melty goods back involved spending 45 minutes waiting for the bus. The bus stop just happens to be a bar, which happens to be on a beach, which happens to sell cheap beer... We caught the later bus. :)

Following bus stop beer rigorous testing of the appliances occurred this afternoon when we made Chocolate Peanut Oatmeal with Madagascar 100% pure cocoa powder (mancooking 101) and some coffee at 4PM. It was the best meal I've had in camp yet even if I'm sure it contained at least 1000PPM lead contaminants from the Chinese pots and bowls. Things are definitely looking up. Next on the list is a BBQ - hopefully this week if we play our cards right.