Nice pair of Jellies, Sweetness.

(This blog was originally written on April 26th, 2008)

You know I can recall one Brooklyn night about a year ago when Stompy, Natesies and myself headed out for a Saturday night soiree. It was a Stompy-related party on a rather questionable block in Crown Heights, but the Hienies and Brooklyn Pennant Ales flowed abundant and a good time was being had by all. Then Stompy’s boss showed up and really weirded things out. He was just making socially-awkward comments and demonstrated general social ineptitude. Well, Nate and I weren’t ones to be bested on the weirding-out scale, especially at Stompy-related events. So as I recall we selected one single Depeche Mode song off the playlist and we just had it loop, over and over again… Oh sure, people started to notice about the third time it came on, so we promptly acknowledged the “blunder” and did the same trick with a Smashing Pumpkins song. Okay, so fast-forward one year and you’d find a similar situation, albeit with a slight alteration in setting.

It was a chilly night in early April. Summer was winding down and during the nighttime you could tell. My stage, now down to 11 people from the original 19, had just finished our IST conference in Mantasoa, the Peace Corps training center/modern luxury haven just outside the capital. It was our last night there and the ’06 Health stage, the one right before mine who trained us, had just arrived to begin their MSC conference. The evening clouds promised an autumn rain and debauchery abound. Final word was there was to be an ‘awkward’ party in the tranobe after dinner. This idea was to be interpreted as freely as possible. Ben dressed in a bomber vest, no shirt, sunglasses, and slicked back hair with a set of mutton chops. Becca, pictured above, dressed in a moo-moo, in some misguided attempt to look awkward that way, and ended up most resembling an old, old Afghani refugee woman. I had the dumbass idea of wearing my pants backwards.

Before things got too weird I tried flirting with Natalie, who is an extremely cute third year extension girl living in Tamatave, but to no avail really. So after that didn’t work and she had taken off I decided it was sort of time to take things up a notch. I nonchalantly walked over to the playlist and in between songs I put a little number by Journey on repeat. I think it made it to the fourth rotation until people started complaining. Stealing a page from our playbook the year before, I apologized for the “mishap” and started 1979 by the Pumpkins on repeat; I then ran away giggling. The night ended, as those types always do in the tranobe, with a few die-hards sitting around nursing the last bit of booze and bitching about Peace Corps bureaucratic bullshit.

On to the next topic, it’s currently late April and we’ve just wrapped up “Samy Salama ny Reny sy Ny Zaza” week here, or “Mother and Child Health Week” to the lay person’s ear. The main program was to bike out to the countryside and preach about basic health messages (not different from the normal program), but with the doctor to administer infant vaccinations and de-worming meds. During that period I helped record who was getting what vaccination where, and was thusly exposed to many Malagasy names at a rapid pace. Basically, mothers with babies under one year of age would essentially line up, and successively tell me their child’s name and their own, which I would then write down on their new state health card and on the hospital’s permanent record sheet. During the first ten or twenty women I tried my best to double check I was spelling correctly but often the very woman who’s name it was seemed uninterested in correcting or I would get too behind and have to just do my best. In many ways it reminded me of what it must have been like at Ellis Island when waves of immigrants were pouring in and being registered, and how their original, sacred family names were butchered by the immigration officers who didn’t want to hold up the line. My own conversation with the women often came down to something like this:

Me: What’s ya name.
Them: My name is Randriahetsisoa.
Me: Ranisiso? Over there. Next!

Or like when people couldn’t understand each other and their last names ended up being the small European village they were from. Except in my case, it was *me*, the person *taking* the names who couldn’t sometimes get the language he was supposed to. So sometimes the conversation would go like this:

Me: What’s ya name.
Them: Noro.
Me: What’s ya kid’s name.
Them: We’re from Sarodrano. Is that what you were trying to-
Me: Next!

But just names here in general can be pretty funny. They all mean something. And I suppose you could argue that in America too. For instance, a popular name in America is Ryan; which happens to mean ‘Little King’. But it’s not quite the same over here. When names mean things here, it’s not like vague symbolism that goes back to the ancient roots of the words. It’s the actual words in the language that literally mean whatever the word is, that is just then applied as someone’s name. Some examples of these names include, but are not limited to, Health, Good Health, Good Luck, Happy, Life, Uncle, Big Daddy, Lots of Money, The Wall, Trustfulness, Welcome, Necklace, Perfume, Pretty Girl, Complete Girl, Bee Honey, and by far the most common, Sweetness. My name is most often mispronounced as Jesmin, Jeslin, or, of course, Jonistan. (?!?)

The last amusing thing I’ll report on today is the popularity of Jellies here. You might remember last seeing these clear, plastic sandals worn by toddler girls when you shared a similar age. It’s a *fun* age, and a great time for Jellies, especially if you’re a girl. In the adult world they remain a source of amusement, perhaps most notably in the popular film “The Big Lebowski.” In this film we all enjoy a chuckle at The Dude’s bizarre fashion sense in his employment of Jellies footwear. Probably due to economic reasons, but nonetheless an odd choice given the wide array of alternatives here, Jellies are by far the most popular choice of shoes for men in my community. Masculinity in my southern, spiny desert community is prized very highly by men. But not only are Jellies popular among exclusively men, they are something of a status symbol as well. It is an urban legend that even the Dahalo prefer Jellies and cut out the middle part of the plastic near the toes to define their notorious status. I have not yet seen this. Frequently the village elders or chiefs opt for the Jellies, while many with less means opt for the cheaper, standard flip-flop style sandals with the upside down V going between the first and second big toe. I opt for the flip flops. Incidentally, for apparently no reason whatsoever the Malagasy word for flip-flop sandals is “Scooby Doos.” I cannot explain it, I can only witness and report it. In summary, I love the Malagasy people. I guess when you go halfway around the world, some things are bound to change.