Pages

Friday, June 21, 2013

Sounds

        I figured one of the best ways to give folks back home a good sense of what it's like to live in a rural Malagasy village of 250 individuals is to describe the aural environment. The things that I hear on a daily basis truly make the reality of the place that I live in. The sounds tell the story of the life, so I'll do my best.

         The roosters begin crowing around 4am. Not that I'm usually awake at this hour, but occasionally I am due to the effects of the malaria prophylaxis I take. When one rooster crows at this time of night, all the other ones chime in and for about 2 minutes the entire village is full of the sound of chickens crying the great "I AM". It's like they're saying, "I'm over here. This is my spot. Where are you and your spot?". Every fifteen minutes, another round of crowing will ensue through sunrise, with the time between rounds gradually becoming less and less. In the pre-dawn darkness, the town will begin to wake up. The sound of rice being pounded with mortars and pestles, a dull thud-thud-thud-thud. A truck rolls by on the highway, 30 yards from where I sleep. After the rice is pounded, it gets winnowed, which sounds very similar to a straw broom being swept on a concrete floor. The women will go down to the rocks in the river (which lies just below my house) to scrub their aluminum pots free of the resin left from the firewood from last night's cooking. They use sand and their feet to due this. Another truck rolls by on the highway, failing to miss the potholes with a very loud B-BOOM clankclank. While scouring the pots, the women will often gossip together, usually complaining about their husbands. Somewhere a kid starts crying. Firewood is being chopped to get the morning rice ready. A car goes by on the highway.

          The sun begins to rise and the village wakes up. Conversations begin in houses, children are laughing or crying. The roosters still crow. Pigs wake up and grunt, and scream. Palm doors slam against wood frames. Someone has started doing some kind of construction with a hammer. A taxi brousse going to Moramanga, the nearest market town 31km away, honks as it passes through my village, looking for passengers. The ducks and geese have made their way down to the river. The people in my village find it funny when I blow my duck call; whether that's because of how similar it sounds to the ducks or because they're surprised Americans would make such a device, I don't know. I have previously written about my feelings on the sound of geese in the morning, and my opinion has not changed. I wish I could eat more geese if only to help reduce the general noise level that those foul (sp?) animals create. There's also the high pitched singing of the indris in the rainforest about 1km away; they're the largest and most vocal lemurs in Madagascar. Here's a link to a video I took of what the indris sound like in the Maromizaha Forest. Yes, I hear them from my house and, yes, it is awesome.

      At around 7:30, the elementary school children will begin to pass by my house on their way to school. Some run by, most yell at their friends or say hello to me as they pass. After the students are in class, the town falls into a bit of a silent spell. Most adults have gone out to their farm fields, the kids are  all in class, and the roosters still crow. The sound of chickens (the peeps of chicks, in particular) become kind of like a white noise throughout the day Occasionally, the sounds of the kids yelling out their repetitive lessons will make its way to my house, babies are often crying, and cars goes rolling by on the way. When class starts in the morning, the kids trickle past my house. But when class is over and they are released to go home, they all go running by in a torrent of laughter and screams, happy to be out of school. A rooster crows, a taxi-brousse goes by.

       Depending on the time of year, you can also hear different kinds of native species of birds. The "toloho" (Malagasy Coucal) and the "boloky" (Lesser Vasa Parrot) are just two of the different kinds of birds I hear from my house (look them up and give them a listen). I particularly like the toloho.

At the local general store, there is a table set up for playing dominoes. By table I mean a worn out old tire with a hard plastic top put over it. When playing dominoes, the men will often SLAM the pieces down on the table. Intimidation, I guess. But this sound also carries throughout the town, over to my house. The game will also evoke sounds of laughter, arguments, and surprise. POW! Taibe izany! Oi lelena! HAHAHA! Malagasy curse words, ha. Another semitruck passes through the town.

The Malagasy are also incredible whistlers. Not like the carry a tune kind but the get your attention from way far away kind. This is the preferred communication method over long distances and out in the forest.

Come dinner time, it's back to pounding and winnowing rice, back to chopping wood, the chickens are still going at it, and the cars keep passing along the highway.

The highway that passes through my village and the cars, taxi brousses, and semitrucks that travel on it are foreign to most of the people in my town. For them, to travel in a car is a rare occurrence. There's a man in my town who's never traveled farther than Moramanga, 31km away, in his entire life. The highway does nothing for the people in my town except remind them of how immobile their lives are. Taxi brousses are going places that they will never see, places that really aren't very far geographically. But they don't have the money to get there. To get to the capital would cost 8000Ariary (about 4 bucks). And when you're only making about 120,000Ariary (60 bucks) a month, taking a trip out of town just isn't going to happen. The goods that the semitrucks are carrying will likely never come to my town, those goods are a part of the "haves" economy. The world flies by my village. And all it can do is watch it. And try to stay out of the way.