Yearning for more
Madagascar was the right choice. When I’m choosing destinations, I want to find the places where I can see the big differences in the life styles. Differences between our lifestyle and theirs. I felt their desire to be rich. It’s always like that – you want something you don’t have. It’s hard to realize that you have everything to be happy. Here in the western world we have everything but we wish to live on a tropical island near the sea and all the tropical fruit. To be less stressed and to live a slower paced life. Just like people in Madagascar.
I stayed in the city of Moromanga for a few days because of the rain. Andasibe national park was really close so I was still able to go there and see the lemurs and other exotic animals with chameleons and frogs. While walking through a market in the evening, I was stopped by a young girl with her child. She was around 20 years old and her child was 3. She knew how to speak English, she was educated and was working in a hotel where she met English-speaking people every day.
We had an interesting conversation and we continue it while we were walking towards her home, not far from the market. Her home was a humble wooden shed, which was connected with other wooden sheds. She lived there with her brother. I drank a cup of instant coffee and left with a wish to meet the girl again. I headed to my hotel in the evening. I slept in a wooden room on top of the building. The wood created a nice ambience and I wrote a few words in my diary before I fell asleep. I was turning in bed and couldn’t fall asleep. I stared at the wall and at the ceiling, thinking about the day.
Suddenly I heard a knock. What’s wrong now, I was wondering. Hotelier must have a message for me. I opened the door in my underwear and saw her again. The girl from the market. She found me, but why? She held my hand and asked me not to send her away. She just wanted to see me one more time and hopefully, not for the last time. She told me her story in a couple of sentences and soon it was clear to me that she wants to escape this island. To a better world. To the world where your salary brings you more than just a meal for you and the baby.
She was looking at me in tears and begged me to take her and her child with her. It was a week since the first story has happened and the same thing was happening again. Only this time, I wasn’t provoking people with my jokes. Night became morning when we were still talking about our differences. My life is too special and not for her in any case. She is used to family life, a calm life. I’m always on the run – a job, my farm, a thing or two in between and I don’t rest. No, I can’t just pick up people and take them home. I need something more. Maybe some sparkle, love...
She didn’t say goodbye till the morning when I was leaving. The weather improved and I was rushing to the airport. I couldn’t help her. I could only understand her, but that wasn’t enough for her.
And that’s another story with mixes emotions. A story that I was thinking of on the plane. Memories and an experience for me, but for all of us a story that we find too often in the poorer areas in the world. We don’t need to bring money into these countries for people to live better. They don’t need anything more. We have too much. We live in abundance and we don’t even realize it. It’d be best for the mass tourism to not exist and that the tourist agencies wouldn’t bring buses of rich people for the poor to see. That way they wouldn’t think that they are missing out.
We aren’t able to change the world but we can look at it differently. Sometimes we need a moment to point us in a different direction and that we can see other forms of “normal”. Madagascar completely awoke my senses, which were put on the side for a while. I started thinking about humanity and the point of life... But it’s better if I stop thinking. I just got another urge to travel... Will I go further than my neighbouring village?
