Note: We arrived in Antananarivo, Madagascar, on November 20th, 2019. Three days later, we moved into our permanent apartment in the city, which was to be our home for the next nine months. This is the story of that experience.
We had a lot of firsts yesterday— some good, some bad. First thing in the morning we moved into our new house right by the university. It’s a spacious, furnished 3-bedroom in a gated community with 24-hour security. The kitchen is small but well-equipped. We also have a washing machine, but no dryer, so everything has to be line-dried. My French grandmother also line-dries all of her clothes, so this wasn’t really surprising or new to me. Still, we’re trying to use mostly cloth diapers while we potty train Charlotte, so lacking a dryer is a bit inconvenient. Aside from that, the apartment has just about everything we could want, except mosquito nets— more on that later.
We barely got settled into our house before I had to leave to go to a lunch meeting with the faculty of the University of Antananarivo, where I will be teaching while we are in Madagascar. The meeting was also supposed to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the College of Humanities and Letters. One of my new colleagues, Irene, picked me up at the gate to our apartment at 11 am, presumably for lunch at noon. I expected to find 20 or so faculty sitting around a table talking shop. Instead, I found myself in a large banquet hall that looked like it was decked out for a wedding, and a band was setting up on a stage on one side of the hall. Still, the Anglophone Studies department strategically chose a table in the back corner, so I thought I knew what I was in for: the kind of boring all-faculty meeting that everyone longs to escape as quickly as possible. I was wrong.
We arrived at noon, but the hall was mostly empty. People slowly trickled in until finally, around 1:30 pm, the festivities started. The dean spoke for barely two minutes, and then the lead singer for the live band took over. Over the next 3 hours, we enjoyed a four course meal with live music and dancing between the courses. The music was an eclectic mix ranging from Chuck Berry, to Lionel Richie, to “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” from Evita. I really wanted to chat more with the members of the Anglophone Studies department, but the music was often too loud. Still, I met a bunch of people (I hope I’ll remember their names), and everyone was very friendly.
It was about 4:30 pm when I got home, much later than expected. Daniel had had his own adventure while I was out. Sometime around 2 pm the power went out, and a little after that, the water. The power was back on by the time I got home, but the water didn’t come back until 9:30 pm. These seem to be inconveniences that we can expect to happen fairly regularly, although I’m happy to say it’s currently 4 pm, and so far we haven’t lost power or water today.
With limited water in our house and almost no food, our objective when I got home from the “lunch” was to get to the store as soon as possible. So, even though the sun was starting to set, we decided to head down the hill to Shoprite, which is a 20-30 minute walk from our house (it’s not that far, but walking has some challenges). Shoprite is smaller than a typical American grocery store, but still has a pretty good selection of food. We loaded up on a manageable amount of groceries (not as much as we wanted to buy, but as much as we could reasonably carry out of the store) and then hailed a taxi to take us home.
The taxis here are an experience. They’re mostly old French cars, the most popular being the Renault R4, a small 1960-70s model that runs on diesel. They’re small with stinky engines and no air. The cab fare was 15000 ariary ($3) to go the 3/4 mile back up to our place. Our cab ran out of gas halfway up the hill, but the driver was prepared with extra gas in a 2L water bottle. He filled us up and got us the rest of the way there. Tips aren’t necessary in Madagascar, but I gave the driver a bit extra because Charlotte absolutely lost it in the car and screamed the whole way home.
We went to the store again this morning for another load, and did the same thing: down the hill on foot, and back in a taxi. Once again, our taxi ran out of gas going up the hill, and once again our driver (not the same one) grabbed a bottle of gas out of the trunk and filled us up. It seems pretty clear that taxis are not particularly reliable. However, they are everywhere in Tana, so in the event that one breaks down, there’s a good chance we could hop out and find another quite easily.
If you’re wondering, we did bring a car seat for Charlotte and have used it when driving long distances. However, it’s really impractical to haul around on foot, so we decided that given the distance and the speed of the cars (maximum maybe 20mph), we would forego the car seat when we go out on foot and take a taxi home. It’s not ideal— we’d much prefer to have her strapped in and safe— but logistically its just not feasible. Even if we wanted to strap her in, the taxis don’t have seat belts. Meanwhile, most of the time we won’t take taxis. We can call a private car when we need to go longer distances. Private drivers have newer cars (with seatbelts), and we can hire them to take us round trip, so that we can leave the car seat in the car.
Our last “adventure” of the night was bedtime. The house was really hot, so we stupidly left our windows open at dusk to get some fresh air in. Enter the mosquito. We had closed up everything before dark, but it was too late. As soon as the lights were out, we were greeted by a chorus of whining hums. The mosquitoes were nowhere to be seen when the light was on, but seemed to be everywhere as soon as it was off. We killed as many as possible, but ultimately slept to the sound of buzzing.
When I woke up in the morning, I was pleasantly surprised that the many bites on my arms and legs were already gone. But then I rolled over and looked at Charlotte, wedged between me and Daniel in the middle of our bed. At first glance, she looked like she caught chicken pox. Thankfully, most of her body was protected by long-sleeved, footed jammies, but her hands and face are covered in bites. We’re officially terrible parents.
So… today’s first priority was mosquito slayage. We sprayed all of our curtains with permethrin, and hung up permethrin-laden mosquito nets over our beds. This afternoon, we’re closing all the windows by 4:30 pm. I’m feeling pretty good that we’ll be safe tonight. Now I’m just hoping that Charlotte’s bug bites will be a little less obvious tomorrow.
