August 21, 2007
I'm comforted by the sight of little green men. Not real men, you see, nor from my imagination. Let me explain.
Since the moment we landed in Madagascar, we've been surrounded by advertisements for the Indian Ocean Games. (Actually, its the Islands of the Indian Ocean Games, but that doesn't roll off the tongue so easily.) Almost everywhere there are billboards, posters and television spots for the games. Not that we've watched any TV; it's just that the volume of every set in the country is turned up to be easily heard from neighboring rooms, lobbies and several blocks down the street. A rhythmic ten second ditty associated with the advertisement for the games begins to replay in your mind after a while. Visually, the most noticeable feature of the ads are the little, green, fan palm-headed men rendered in a schematized fashion and engaged in various sports. Oddly, after several months of daily exposure, the sight of the little green men is familiar and sort of comforting.
All of this was brought home a few days after we arrived in Toamasina, when I found myself standing outside a bakery in the pouring rain, frustrated with my failed attempt to buy bread and the complex response in French from the baker, which I didn't understand. It was a common type of frustration when I'm found in a far flung part of the world and unable to speak any of the local languages. But then I noticed a poster for the games and slowly read each sport in my mind, assisted by a picture next to each word: volley ball, athetisme (track & field), basket ball, boxe, cyclisme, foot ball, halterophilie (weightlifting), karate-do, lawn tennis, lutte (wrestling), natation (swimming), petanque (boccie), tae kwon do and tennis de table. Gradually, I became comforted by the green figure in the middle of the poster (and, partly, from the illusion that I spoke French better than I actually do.)
Thus buoyed, I re-entered the store and bought the bread I wanted with my own particularly animated mix of broken French and pantomime.
