February 16, 2015

Notes from Mom’s email chat with Alex

Tell me about your new companion. My new companion is doing well. He is from Detroit and his name is Elder McCrarry. He has been here for three months. It’s hard because his understanding of Malagasy isn’t that great. I try to include him in conversations, but it is hard. I also miss having a companion that can tell me when my Malagasy is unintelligible. But so it goes – ha ha. I have a call to arms. Please teach Emma, Will, and Tom to drive a stick shift before their missions. Yes, I know that making the church pay for a burned out clutch may sound tempting, but learning how to drive stick in a third world country without traffic laws is the probably most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. I mean absolutely ever. Okay, well, at least the scariest, by far.

I have a driving story. To preface my story, remember that we are in Madagascar, and it’s less alarming than if this had happened in America. The car I have is this little French thing. Is automatic transmission just an American thing? I don’t know. Anyway, my story. So essentially, the first day I got to Tana I hadn’t had very much sleep. When I arrived at the office I was told I had to go pick up some Elders from the bus stop. My companion isn’t allowed to drive, but the old office Elder was still here, so he drove us out there. When we arrived he handed me the keys and told me to take us home. I can’t really explain the setting around what happened, but when they said they would teach me how to drive a stick and drive in Tana, what they really meant is that they just expected me to learn on the job. (That’s how most Elders learn). Everything was going along fine. It was raining and the “road” was essentially six inches of mud and sludge. All was well until (to make a long story short), I took the bumper off a taxi be that was backing out on the other side. Yeah, it was no fun, but apparently most missionaries are involved in minor accidents...  We didn’t argue with them. The office has a former driver for the mission president who is an all around expert on making things run in a country that is intent on not. He showed up and helped us. It almost got hairy though because some gendarmes showed up. At that point we just took off because sometimes they’ll arrest foreigners and try to extract a bribe. So that part was a little scary, but it all turned out well… The prisons are pretty horrifying here. In the prisons if your family doesn’t feed you, you starve to death. It’s absolutely horrible and so corrupt. (Note from mom: Alex and I proceeded to carry on a conversation about bribery in Mada. It feels inappropriate, and possibly incriminating, to post the whole thing. It sounds as if bribes serve a broad function - permit fees, filing fees, tickets, etc.)

How is your health? My stomach has been doing much better since I got to Tana. And I’ve been gaining weight again. I lost a lot in Toamasina. Here it’s easier to get nicer food – thankfully!

What are you eating? I’m eating all sorts of stuff. I have one really gross story about food. I found a cockroach crawling in some rice I was eating the other day. I kind of always assume that there is probably a little extra protein in my diet because of the lack of health regulations here, but every once in a while it presents itself very obviously! The worst thing is I’m used to it enough now that I just flipped it out and kept eating – yuck – ha ha. I eat a lot of French food and Chinese food in addition to the Malagasy food. There are a lot of ex pats here from China. Super interesting. In Toamasina there was a really nice ice cream parlor that was owned by a Chinese woman who fled communism. I get to meet the most random and interesting people. We ran into a Buddhist Chinese businessman the other day who spoke perfect English, but not a word of Malagasy. We spoke for a bit.

Tell me about your work in the office. As far as what we do in the office, it’s all sorts of the most boring stuff imaginable. All church financial records are kept on paper here because electronics are not reliable. So we pretty much do work that hasn’t been done in America since like the 1960’s. It’s definitely a skill that will never come in handy – ha ha.

I have also been doing some translating in the office. The other day President Adams brought me an email from a missionary written in Malagasy text speak. That was really hard to translate. I’m getting better, but my language isn’t where I want it to be yet. When I get home I want to relearn French. Here I have to translate in my head – English to French or Malagasy to French. I’m just not around French enough to get good at it. But I can understand it - everyone in the office speaks French. President Adams speaks French but not Malagasy.

Who are you teaching? The work is going well. We actually have a group of really smart people that we are teaching right now. One of them is studying to be a priest. We have really complicated discussions about the root and purpose of faith. We’re also doing a lot of tracting.  Our area is hard because it’s build on a huge mountain face and the roads that we travel don’t have switch backs. It is a lot of walking up and down super steep hills. This city make San Francisco look very tame!