Blog #3 "The Train 'Home' and a Cracked Screen"

Blog #3

10/10/11

The Train “Home” and a Cracked Screen

I copied much of this from my journal.

The train leaving Moramanga actually ran this morning, and it’s where I sit to write now. It even left around 7 A.M. instead of the scheduled time of 7:30. I barely had time to pay for my bedframe transportation and get my ticket “home”. It’s interesting to try and call my town “home”…

When I was at Clemson, even so close to home, able to get there in 30-45 minutes, I called the dorms—and later my apartment—“home”. It happened so quickly and so often that I stopped noticing this peculiarity after a while. It was the place I lived most of the time during college, and so with my life there, it followed that it was “home” for me. That’s not to suggest that it replaced Greenville for a minute, it was just different.

I was at USF for only a year but witnessed the same phenomenon, though truly a bit farther from the place I’d grown up. I believe that it took a little longer for me to feel like I had ownership in the new town and maybe several things played a part in this: I had a more measurable and palpable separation from my actual home, and my life had to be built up a great deal more than at Clemson because I couldn’t carry my good friends or family with me, and definitely couldn’t drop by on a weekend at random.

Now I’m on this train back to this place where I live, the farthest I can possibly be from my home (really, the other side of the world), with the greatest amendments to my daily life that I’ve ever encountered being made. Maybe this is why I can’t bring myself to call Lohariandava my “home”, at least not yet. I’m thinking now, though, about how I need to let this place be a part of me if I want to be able to affect people and help to bring about any sort of change and let it change me as it should. The attitude of being a visitor here would keep me from properly integrating, would keep me on a different plane than the Malagasy people, and therein would keep me from being a true stakeholder in my community or with projects here. The biggest advantage that the Peace Corps has in working in these countries an-dalam-pandrosoana, “on the road to development”, is that its volunteers live in the communities and really try to become a part of one before trying to accomplish anything else.

I think it won’t be easy or quick that I plant lasting roots here or mean it when I call my site my “home”, but I’ll be interested to see when, how, and if it really happens. I will say that during training, especially when living with my host family, I felt different than I do at this moment. Now I’m in the business of finding out what life is like out here compared to the training town of Montasoa and am looking forward to making some great relationships like the ones with my host family. It’s time to make this place my home. First reasonable goal: by January the people I see walking around town will know my name instead of saying “vazaha” all the time.

Also I cracked my laptop screen. It fell off of my hotel bed, so that's genius. It's hopefully not a big deal because there aren't exactly any Apple stores near me. Haha that sounds whiney. Anyway, that's all I have for now, but I hope to write again soon.