On Wednesday the US Ambassador to Madagascar said the country was "on the verge of civil war." He encouraged his staff and any other westerners in the country to evacuate while commercial flights were still available. Over the last several months protest and violence have been ebbing and flowing, led by the Mayor of Antananarivo's claims of corruption and fascism against the sitting government of Marc Ravolmanana.
I lived in Madagascar from 2003 to 2005, working as a health educator for Peace Corps. It's hard to reconcile the country I lived in with the militant urgency that comes through in reports about the looming conflict. As contentious as things become in our country, as much economic turmoil lies ahead, the prospect of living in a country at war is incomprehensible. War is an abstraction in the west, something we've left behind. It's a wedge for arguments between red and blue, the socio-political equivalent of a giant foam index finger pointed at someone else with guilty insinuation. We still fight wars, but they don't happen in our homes. They exist out there, in pictures and on television.
It's sad to think about the migration that happens in advance; the flock of friendly foreigners finally reaching their limit. Bustling regional capitals gradually transform into muted cities of boarded-up storefronts, curfews, and eyes peering down onto the street from a window. Then one side opens fire, and the other side fires back.
I was evacuated from China in 2003 during the SARS epidemic. There was no impending war and no real danger, but it was still a terrible experience to go through. I got the call on a Friday afternoon, I had twenty-four hours to pack my belongings and travel 700km north to Chengdu where we would be flown to Beijing and then home to America. I had been in country for almost a year.
I spent the rest of the evening with the other teachers at the mining college where I taught. We had one last dinner together at the school restaurant, an impromptu banquet with lots of speeches and measured words of gratitude. I felt sick and weak. I guzzled glass after glass of beer with each toast and still felt sober and joyless. My blood pressure dipped and I could barely feel a pulse in my neck.
I looked around the gathered faces, people that had been innate parts of my life six hours earlier. They looked eerily separate, like severed fingers in the road. Our connection was so fragile that a sixty-second phone call in the middle of the afternoon was capable of breaking it irrevocably. I felt like a liar and a coward. I had told these people that I loved them. I had told myself that I loved them. And now I was leaving without a whimper of protest.
I packed my bags and took the 2AM train to Chengdu. I was there in the early afternoon. I holed up in a hotel with some other volunteers and went out with a big group for our last night in country. It was a morose evening. Everyone was trying to behave normally, joking and gallivanting, but it felt hollow. All my laughs tailed off quickly and eye contact was fleeting.
I stumbled back to the hotel after closing time with a woman I had dated on and off during my time in China. I liked her a lot. We hooked up after a few weeks in country and saw each other throughout most of training. I got freaked out at a certain point because I was falling for someone else and S kept an emotional distance that made me uncomfortable. We were sent to different ends of Sichuan province and I only saw her every two or three months after that. We tried to be friends, but we had a special knack of hooking up after a few drinks.
We stumbled back to the hotel. Peace Corps made us share hotel rooms and my roommate was already fast asleep when we returned. We had started kissing in the bar and continued to make out on the long walk back to the hotel. We decided to go into the bathroom. She hopped onto the counter and straddled me as we kept kissing. Soon enough my pants were down and my shirt was off.
We had just started having sex when, in a fit of drunken bravura, I picked her up and swung her around onto the upper portion of the toilet bowl. We started to have sex while she leaned back on tottering porcelain. After a few minutes there was a loud crack and the upper portion of the toilet came apart with a loud crash.
I held S up, precariously wedged between the wall and the jagged remains of the toilet. Everything felt ridiculous. We were having sex in a hotel bathroom while someone was sleeping on the other side of the wall. Broken porcelain and toilet water covered the floor. I looked at S and realized my heart wasn't into it.
I tried to reassemble the bigger pieces of the toilet into something that looked normal, then climbed into bed with S and fell asleep. A few hours later there was an urgent knock at the hotel door. She was on an earlier flight and had to leave for the airport. It was just after 8AM, and a weak gray light was coming in through the window, the perpetually overcast smog of Chengdu masking the sunlight.
It's hard to know where the borders are. What are the hard and fast lines that separate two people? Where is that final point on the map where you cross from one person's domain into another's? I got up and gave her a hug at the door. I kissed her on the cheek. She smiled her gentle little smile, lips closed softly over her teeth. I let her walk into the hallway without reaching out again. "Bye," I called after her, just before the door shut.
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