Transient lives

Before I left the US I remember telling people that I was excited to live in one house for two years. This would mean all my stuff in one place, not moving all the time, and two full growing seasons (or more, depending on the climate) in my own garden. They laughed that I was joining the Peace Corps and thought it would settle me down. But I was pretty convinced it would be a change from the always shifting life I had in the US, from family to family, friend to friend, not really settled. And I think that for many volunteers, it actually is a fairly settled life for two years. 

 Not so much for me. I spend about half my time between my house and Andasibe, and when in Andasibe, I have two houses I float between. What that means is that I have belongings in 3 houses, not just one, and 3 different groups I’m always balancing my time between. So now I look forward to being back in the US as my time to settle down. But looking at what I want to do when I go home, I’m beginning to think that I should just stop thinking that I need to be settled now, and put that in the plans for a later part of life.

The strange thing here is that people don’t think my lifestyle is strange. Everyone in my village spends significant amounts of time in Andasibe or Moramanga. Well, not everyone, but someone from every family. Partially this is because my neighbors are relatively wealthy and can pay for their older kids to go to school and not be working in the fields, and partly because that is just how life goes.

Even those neighbors that don’t go to the “big” towns of Andasibe or Moramanga are still between at least two places. They have their house in a village that they consider their home. But then seasons change, and certain fields need constant oversight, either to fend of pests or to deter thieves, so temporary houses are made and months are spent in them.

Add in extended family members. Now you have a third, fourth, or fifth place that needs regular visiting. And a family visit here isn’t always a quick affair because even if the kilometers aren’t that many, 50 or less, the time it takes to travel that far can be quite significant. So you might as well go for a week if you go for a day, and you can also help with planting while you’re at it.

What this creates is a constantly rotating population. Andasibe is slightly more static, but when I go home to my village, I never know who will be there. I think there are around 40-45 people who sometimes live in my village, but I have never counted more than 30 at once, and there are only 17 who are there all the time, including the 1yr old.

It’s interesting to see how they travel (my village area; Andasibe is on a different level). Going to the fields for the day looks about like going to Grandma’s for a week. No extra belongings, and for both places it’s reasonable to bring gooney sacks or baskets to carry back what you buy/harvest. Shoes are optional. A change of clothes is a non-existent concept.

At first, I was really sad when someone I was getting attached to would just go away one day, and be gone for months. And on a few occasions, they had actually just been visiting our area, and after a few weeks or months returned to where they were from. But now I am more used to it, and I try to keep my expectations non-existent as to whom I will be spending my time with when I get to where I’m going, wherever that may be. This happens in both my village and Andasibe, but in Andasibe it’s often because many of my friends work with tourists or researchers, and those jobs take them far and wide to places that have interesting things.

A transient life in the US and a transient life here are similar in some ways, but I think personal cars and airplanes make significant differences. We live out of our cars. Their cars are taxi brousses. We can travel across the country in hours. Here it takes days to get places. So when you are transient here, it creates larger blocks of time to be gone. You might not get as far, but in practical terms, you are farther and more distanced from where you started.