Disclaimer — Reasonable, Informed People Feel Free to Skip
This piece is meant as an honest reaction to the poverty I saw in Madagascar.
There are tons of breath-taking areas of Madagascar. There are also a sizeable portion of Malagasy people in the middle and upper classes who live lives very different from the poverty I’m outlining here.
I don’t wish you to paint the entire country as indigenous country folk squalloring in mud huts.
However, I want to be honest about my perceptions.
This country, like many others, is growing. While poverty does not define it, it is absolutely an aspect of the country. To ignore the country’s poverty by means of focusing on its “abundance of resources” is as simple-minded as the “indigenous mud hut” perception of African countries that preceded it.
Madagascar, like anywhere in the world, is complex and houses a multitude of realities.
This particular piece will focus on my perceptions of the poverty.
To learn more about the other sides of Madagascar, check out my digital guides.
First Day in Madagascar
The first day on landing in Madagascar, Gisel and I were dropped off in a bar.
We quickly realize it’s a bar full of “working women.”
It was clean, they had tons of drinks and food so we stayed.
I ask the bartender what’s the best rum she has.
She points out a rum that costs as much as an average weekly income here.
I ordered it and 2 hours later we’re drinking beer with one of the women working there.
She explains how she has to wake up at 3 am every morning to go to the well to get water, if not the line becomes too long and water becomes too hard to get.
Well shit – I can at least cover the next round.
We continue drinking.
This ends with me stuttering through tears:
“Je… je sais pas pour..pourquoi je suis né aux etats unis et… et toi ici, c’est pas juste”
(I don’t know why I was born in the United States and you were born here, it’s not fair)
Luxury Behind Walls
After 1 week in, I am writing this right now from a nice hotel.
You walk into the interior of this place, and it’s nearly identical to a luxury hotel you’d find near Napa Valley in California.
High ceilings.
Golden lighting.
Jaccuzis in the bathroom.
Dark Mable flooring.
Ample space between furniture.
On the inside of this place, you feel transported somewhere else.
You wake up in the middle of the night, forgetting which country you’re in.
You’re in a fort, blocked off from the reality around you.
But outside the walls of this hotel:
Children walk around shoeless.
Families sit on the side of a dirt road in makeshift shacks, selling soda and week-old noodles.
This evening, we watched a professional cycling race in France while sitting in a Jacuzzi.
The internet froze every couple of minutes.
We drank local wine.
Wine that would’ve been turned into vinegar in France.
In a Jacuzzi half-filled with water because we ran out of hot water.
Even while striving for luxury, Madagascar never allows you to forget the reality
A reality that seems to stalk me
A recurring theme – Beauty – Poverty – Guilt
While traveling through Madagascar I’ve noticed a theme
Beauty – Poverty – Guilt
Madagascar has no shortage of beauty
Feeling the ecstasy of spotting a lemur in the wild.
Of viewing the massive Boabab trees.
Landscapes, animals, and experiences unmatched in my 15 years of traveling the world.
Then the Poverty
Then you see a child crawling on the side of the road.
In a shirt so weathered and soiled you can barely read the logo.
His mother, a few steps away – sitting on the road selling peanuts.
And you’re catapulted back.
Catapulted to the guilt
You’re in one of the poorest countries in the world.
And white people seem to be blamed for that
In any list, Madagascar is generally included in the ten poorest countries in the world.
I recall my time in Laos.
Seeing people bathe in the river at sundown.
Laos was one of the poorest countries I had been to.
Laos has 4x more GDP per capita than Madagascar.
In the large cities, it’s the first thing that hits you.
The number of poor people on the street.
It’s a poverty so visceral you lose your appetite.
I feel an intense weight of guilt and discomfort everywhere I go.
Shoes as a Luxury
One of the first things I noticed is the number of people who aren’t wearing shoes or even flip flops.
Walking down urban streets barefoot.
Depending on the zone, we see 15 – 30% of people walking around barefoot.
Before leaving Paris, I was speaking with a friend.
Who is half-African himself.
He spoke about an African runner who ran barefoot in the Olympics
About the benefits of running barefoot
He is now working to run more and more barefoot.
In one of our hotels, I felt close enough to the staff to ask about this.
To ask why so many people don’t have shoes.
If maybe they’re doing this by choice, like my buddy in Paris
The staff replied:
“Ils sont de la campagne, ils ont pas les moyens.”
(They’re from the countryside, they don’t have the means)
Diving Deeper into the Guilt
I realized while we drove through half-abandoned towns in Bosnia and Serbia I never felt guilty.
But when the people are black there’s a guilt I suddenly feel.
I feel it wrenching my gut.
Every time someone desperately begs for money.
There’s an undertone that barely rises to my consciousness
You are responsible for this
It’s interesting being with my girlfriend Gisel.
A darker-skinned Mexican
She doesn’t feel any of this guilt.
She feels bad.
She feels uncomfortable.
She wants to try to help
But she doesn’t have the same gut-wrenching guilt I do.
I also overheard an older Chinese tourist speaking to his guide
“Yes, I remember when I was growing up, China was a lot like this.”
I realized that many others aren’t blaming white people for Madagascar’s problems.
And they don’t have this fatalistic view of Africa
Of African countries as being forever damned to poverty because of white people
Most reasonable people admit that yes colonialism didn’t help, but there are many factors – most of them having nothing to do with white people
As I write this, I can hear that same voice in my head
The one that tells me I’m responsible
“You know you’re wrong about that, it’s definitely white peoples fault“
That voice follows me all the time.
While it’s much louder in Madagascar
It’s still always there
I could find the source of that voice
And complain about how it’s their fault
Regardless of who caused the problem.
It’s my own voice now, and it’s my responsibility to be more aware of it.
I’ve had enough of feeling guilty for being white.
There’s an impulse to add a “fuck you” at the end of that last sentence.
To give in to the resentment
The resentment of how white people have been scapegoated for the last 15 – 20 years
To pendulum swing to the other side and start defending everything white people have done
But that’s just as silly as blaming white people for everything
Trying To Figure OUt Why
The first few days here, I was floored by the poverty.
I would get in these frenzied states for hours during our drives
Riddling off questions and ideas for Gisel to look up
Data Points
Non-profits
Research
What can be done to help?
I pendulumed between hope and anger.
It was hard to accept the overwhelming poverty around me
There’s got to be a reason for this
There’s got to be someone to blame
There’s got to be a clear solution
It’s uncomfortable to sit with the overwhelming reality
The reality that these problems are complex and can’t be “fixed” overnight
That even doing your best to help may not transform society the way you think it should be transformed
“Fanciful love thirsts for a quick deed, swiftly accomplished, and that everyone should gaze upon it… people are even willing to give their lives just as long as the whole thing does not last an eternity but is swiftly achieved… Active love on the other hand involves work and self-mastery.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov
IS “Fixing” needed?
As time went on, and I got used to the living standards around me, it made me think
Made me think about rich out-of-touch friends I had as a child
Let me explain
I went to a private school in 9th grade.
A school I think my mother still owes money to.
The school was full of incredibly rich kids.
I recall some of the parents felt bad for me.
They could never imagine living in the state my family did.
But for me it was normal.
They thought far more about the way I lived than I did
I generally wasn’t bothered by it
Interestingly enough, I woke up this very morning to a message
One of the friends I had in that private school overdosed and died at 33 years old.
One of the kids whose mother felt bad for us
I can’t even remember how many rooms he had in his house; the magnitude was shocking
He had been in and out of rehab since 15
There isn’t enough money in the world to get me to choose his life over mine
Given the chance, I would always choose my life over his
It makes me wonder
As I drive through the countryside villages.
Villages full of playing children, and tight nuclear families
Am I the rich out-of-touch one now?