A Road to Emmaeus

Time and years pass, here as elsewhere. Last Saturday I turned thirty-two. While I would have preferred to spend my birthday back in DC, I fortunately had two new friends to accompany me on a trip outside of Tana. Let’s call them Sven and Will (again, not their real names). Sven is French-Norwegian, born in Nice but raised in Norway, and speaks English with a North American accent. Will is Swiss German and, like most educated Swiss, fluent in three languages. I met both a few weeks ago at a brunch organized by our mutual friend Mariko at the Café de Gare downtown. The four of use enjoyed three hours of non-stop conversation over iced tea and coffee. We shared our various perspectives on political philosophy as shaped by our home countries, and I again found myself explaining some of the peculiarities of America: our distrust of government, our strong belief in free speech, and our traditional requirement that the federal government’s role in society be limited. “The first ten amendments to our constitution are things the government isn’t allowed to do,” I explained. I was also reminded of how all-pervasive American popular culture has become in the world. Sven is a regular listener of Ira Glass’ This American Life program on NPR and Will is an enormous fan of Bruce Springsteen, having read several biographies of the Boss. Bob Dylan naturally came up when we spoke about music, and I found myself drawing upon the long list of Dylan trivia I have accumulated over the past year; in particular, Dylan’s conversion to evangelic Christianity in the 1970s, his apocalyptic sermons delivered to concert-goers, and the spiritual flameout that ultimately (perhaps inevitably) followed. “I want to see him live, but I think my image of him would be tainted since his voice has now gone to shit,” observed Will. Having heard Dylan live once – at a state fair in Phoenix about a decade ago, where he was all but incomprehensible – I could not but agree.

In the course of the brunch, I mentioned that I would be turning thirty-two in a week. Sven offered to organize something, and so last weekend I boarded a taxi brousse with him and Will for a day trip out of town. The taxi brousse is an iconic mode of transportation in Madagascar. These are essentially buses that run between cities; they are low-cost but also extremely crowded and depart only when packed to the max. This time, though, Sven managed to negotiate a trip just for the three of us: thirty-thousand ariary to take us about an hour east of the city to a public park. Watching Sven speak fluent Malagasy to the driver was an impressive curiosity. I subsequent learned that he has traveled to Madagascar on six different occasions, including one extended trip for the “Norwegian Peace Corps” during which he took language lessons with a tutor. I always find it remarkable when Westerners learn a non-European language; there’s something incongruous, almost bizarre about it. I recall being similarly impressed in grad school when, at a party one evening in Georgetown, I observed three Americans – two white, one black – speaking Mandarin to one of our Chinese classmates. Malagasy is unlike any language I’ve ever heard; the closest comparison I can think of is Tagalog, which makes some linguistic sense as the two languages are distantly related. Sven’s command of Malagasy proved to be instrumental in securing our passage, and he struck up an instance rapport with the driver and his crew. I can only assume that hearing Malagasy from a foreigner is far more welcome than French, the language of the colonizer and a significant separator of social classes in the country.

In the journey outside the city, familiar scenes came into view: rice paddies, zebu grazing in the fields, the endless red hillsides with its savanna-like topography. The high plateau around Tana doesn’t have dense, extended forests, at least not anymore. The hills are mostly bare, or have been reforested with non-native pine trees. We passed through several towns and villages that line both sides of the main highway, stopping occasionally to pick up a passenger. After about an hour we reached out destination: the entrance to a private park whose name I don’t recall, nor could I find it on a map if I tried. Sven had only heard of the place, but he was able to describe it to the driver in sufficient detail to bring us to the spot. With the bus promising to return later in the afternoon, we proceeded to the park entrance and, after paying a nominal fee, found ourselves in a pine grove with picnic benches and a colony of nesting storks. There was a placid, oval-shaped lake, maybe a mile in diameter at its largest, with the eastern shore rising a few hundred feet to a summit that we had seen from the road.

Without a map or a clear sense of direction, we quickly began our own path to the top, starting with an apparent act of trespassing as we jumped a gate and passed a sign that read “forbidden” in Malagasy. I joked that the words “no trespassing” conjure up images of a guy with a shotgun in rural America, but Sven quickly reminded me that this is Madagascar, where such things are not to be feared. “Get off my property,” he joked, raising an imaginary firearm and giving a passable imitation of a southern accent. In case of danger, Will encouraged Sven and I to lead the way, given our military backgrounds. Sven had been a sergeant and machine gun instructor in the Norwegian army, and I had served five years in the US Air Force. If needed, Will would play diplomat and pull the neutrality card – being Swiss, after all – and attempt to negotiate a non-violent resolution. One of the inevitable consequences of meeting people from other countries is dealing with national stereotypes, but this can be an endless form of self-deprecating humor as it was for us. Our assumptions: the Swiss are neutral, unemotional, and conforming, Norwegians are cold and closed off emotionally, and Americans are sanguine, uninhibited, and transparent (which happens to describe our current president perfectly).

The summit was arduous and only occasionally followed a clearly marked path. We crashed through thickets and underbrush and negotiated our way up and down the hillside, doing our best to avoid various dangers like a patch of spiny succulents. Somehow we did manage to find what appeared to be the primary trail, which we followed to the top in a steep, final ascent, passing several Malagasy families on the way. The peak of the hill was a kind of stony plateau covered in grass and a few trees. Surrounding us on all sides were miles and miles of endless hills, a patchwork of grassland, pine groves, rice paddies, and villages, all interspersed with the roving shadows cast by the clouds overhead. The view brought me back to the pelouse fields of eastern Washington state, where I similarly stood atop a hilltop five years ago, gazing into the expanse and contemplating its vastness. The lake, too, reminded me of Idaho and a summer weekend I once spent at a friend’s cabin. I think these recollections show how connected I still am to the Pacific Northwest, and how much I love my native land. I even brought a map of Washington state with me as a reminder of the corner of this earth from which I come. Somehow, being on top of that stony summit on the far edge of the world reinforced my resolve to return home someday for good – though not before I have a few more adventures such as this.

The three of us found a place to sit on one of the boulders, and then unpacked our lunch: baguette sandwiches we had purchased prior to our departure, as well as some locally-produced snack chips with a flavor somewhere between Doritos and Cheetos. Will also produced a small vial of Indian whiskey, the remnant of a large stash had had brought from Switzerland. I told them that I’m not much of a drinker – a glass of wine is the most I’ll ever imbibe – but I pledged to partake. It was surprisingly good, a smooth burn that warms on the inside. “I will remember this as the day I became an alcoholic,” I remarked. There was also a heaping serving of cheesecake, one of my favorite desserts.

After a rendition of Happy Birthday in multiple languages, Sven asked me to reflect on my life. What’s good and bad about turning thirty-two? I could sense we were about to enter into philosophical ground, an unusual place to go for people who barely know each other. “No pressure,” he said. “Whatever you feel like telling us.” I told him that sharing in such a way is normal for me, as I’ve been conditioned to do so by years of weekly, small-group bible study – a bare-your-soul experience equivalent to any AA meeting. Maybe it’s also the American in me. Perhaps as a people we’re more likely to cut through the mundane and share what’s really going on inside. In any case, I started with the positives: two things that have happened to me in the past couple of years that have changed my life. The first, as I explained, was meeting my biological sister for the first time, which happened about a year ago. I didn’t go much into the details, only explaining that I didn’t grow up with her and that we later connected as adults. I described the easy friendship that we have formed, forged by common interests and our striking similarities. The second positive was my discovery of music and my emergence as a singer-songwriter. “I picked up the guitar at thirty,” I said, to Will’s surprise. I described my current group of friends in DC as infectious, a lively tribe of musicians whose love of music pulled me in with some kind of irresistible, gravitational force. Learning guitar was not so much an opportunity as an obligation, a means with which to enter into what my friends were doing and participate on their level. I described how much music and songwriting have become stamped into my identity, so much so that I can’t imagine going anywhere without something to strum or pen and paper to write. Indeed, even on this trip I had brought my ukulele with me, hoping to find some inspiration from new sights and sounds.

And the disappointments? I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go there, and for a time I let the conversation drift, hoping that we wouldn’t come back to this. But Sven revisited the subject, and so I shared a topic that I rarely discuss. “Well,” I said, “I thought I’d be married by thirty-two.” Singleness, as I described it, has become one of the biggest disappointments in my life, particularly when I see my friends getting married and having kids; which in fact describes nearly all of my friends at this stage in life. At this point something in the conversation shifted, and rather than listening passively, Sven tried to peer deeper into this struggle of mine. This kind of interrogation is unpleasant, yet I allowed it to happen, as I’ve learned over the years that it’s sometimes necessary to allow others to pry in order to discover uncomfortable but necessary truths about one’s existence. The difference here is that I’ve never gone through this exercise with someone who is practically a stranger. Even so, I felt enough trust in Alex to proceed, and so I answered his questions fully and truthfully, explaining my feeling of powerlessness over my own situation. He then offered some advice – “You can accept it or tell me to go to hell” – and I encouraged him to continue. According to him, I have allowed myself to fall into a “negative feedback loop,” a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy that has prevented me from changing my situation. As he sees it, the only force holding me back is my own fear and self-doubt. “It’s logically impossible that there would be no one out there for you,” he emphasized. “The universe is not going to give something to you; you have to go out there and find it yourself.” We also discussed the preconceived notions that society gives us about how relationships are supposed to start, which I agreed may also be a factor in my persistent self-doubt.

In the end, I thanked Alex for his observations. “You don’t know me,” I said, “but maybe that gives you a different perspective.” Indeed, I was surprised by how he intuitively understood certain things about my mental state. Our conversation continues to echo in my mind as I write this, as his assessment reinforced things that I think I already knew about myself, but which are now even more apparent and in need of correction. I can add this to the list of things I resolve to address when I return home (so far, there’s this and buying an electric guitar). Perhaps I will one day look back at this moment – this sharing of words on a hilltop outside of Tana – as some kind of turning point in my life.

Will was noticeably silent through the entirety of the aforementioned conversation. “I’d prefer to talk about sports and drinking,” he said, to general hilarity. And we did talk about both for a while, in particular his love of rugby. The mood lightened, we decided to find our way back to the lake. We took a different path, one which led through several ancient gardens that appeared to be only partially maintained. There was also a burial mound of some kind, covered in cement and inscribed with what appeared to be names and dates of the deceased. On Sven’s suggestion, we altered our path to avoid treading on sacred ground, and ultimately found our way to a dense pine forest with barely a discernable trail of any kind. The understory was entirely covered with pine needles, a mass that shifted constantly beneath our feet as we slid our way down the mountainside. We lunged from tree to tree, using the pine trunks to stop our descent from turning into a head-over-heels plunge to the bottom. After about half an hour of effort, and thankfully no injuries, we reached the lake and strolled comfortably back to the entrance. Our drivers, as it turns out, were waiting there to take us back to Tana.

Thus ends the latest chapter in this ongoing saga, which has strangely turned into a portrait of people that I’ve met mixed with autobiography, with Madagascar serving as the backdrop. This blog has not become the travelogue that I expected, but more of a vessel of self-reflection. In any event, thanks for reading and stay tuned for more.