A week in a malagasy village

So I just got back from my eye opening experience at the village stay. I stayed in a little village 4km from the village of Faux Cap in the Tandroy reigon of Madagascar. There were four houses, each about 10ft by 7 ft and 6 feet tall at the peek. There was Papa, Mama, and their kids and grandkids, ten to fifteen in total. I really liked the family, they were all really sweet. We went to the beach to bathe, worked in the fields, planting sweet potato and watermellon, and helped feed the cattle. There were zebu caddle and chickens running around the lawn all the time, none of which they eat by the way. We had dance time everyday. It was an hour to an hour and a half of Malagasy dance. At first I thought it was rather repetitive but each day more and more people would show up to dance and see us. Eventually we learned more complex moves and I started to really like the dancing. That was definitely a highlight. As for food we at the rice and beans that we brought, plus lots of sweet potato (the malagasy version is not as good as the american version). We would occasionally eat eggs from the chickens. I had a lot of fun with Elizabeth, the other student that I was staying with, we got along very well and have similar academic interests so the academic side of the stay went very smoothly. I really enjoyed learning about the culture and lifestyle of the Tandroy people. Instead of a life based on making money and getting power through material possesions, they collect cattle because the number of cattle that you sacrifice at your funeral determines your status in the afterlife.
I really liked my parrents in the village stay. Mama was very sweet and always smiling. Papa also seemed to be high on lifem grinning from ear to ear when ever we would communicate. It was hard to communicate with them at first but by the end my few words of malagasy, his few words of french and my improved skills at explaining with gestures made things a lot easier. There were also tons of super cute kids in the village, I had some photo shoots with them and one of them tought me some awesome dance moves.
My favortite observation was that everyone in the village only worked 4 to 5 hours a day doing all of the various chores. I am extremely impressed that they still manage to live a subsistance farming life, doing that little work during the day. Granted their diet is not to diverse, eating sweet potato, manioc(nasty chalky potato), corn, milk, eggs, beens, squash and watermellon only. I think it says something true about the value of living simply. There was nothing bogging down their lives and they had plenty of time to spend enjoying eachothers company, dancing, and relaxing. It has allowed them to develop some very rich cultural traditions. It made me think about living more simply back in the USA.

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