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.