Thoughts From A Different Life

OK, so I know it has been a while since my last blog entry and I think most of you will know that it is because the last three weeks have been VERY busy for me. I have always tried to keep my business here in Madagascar separate from my personal blog for various reasons but it is becoming increasingly difficult. On the 8^th of May 2013 my life became very full because of 3 very tiny bundles of joy… but before I get to that, lets go back to the beginning of the story.

My mum and stepdad were coming to the end of their trip and we had ticked many of the things we had needed to do off the list. The closer their departure date got the more I was beginning to lose it a little. While Pierre had been here he had taken the lead in our meetings and so on, as well he should, but I think I had become a little scared of what would happen once he left. Also I behaved badly with my mother on a couple of occasions which I attribute to the fact that a) we both got sick about a week before the end of her trip and b) I had still not made many friends in Diego and I had worked myself up about her leaving and me being alone.

You see while in Tana I had been at Akany, one of the only English speaking associations in Madagascar, and I had a ready made group of friends in the form of the volunteers and staff who lived with me on site. In Diego, however, I had not had the time to really make an independent life for myself before my family arrived and then I filled the days with them because I was so pleased to be able to share this experience with them. This did, however, leave me at a loss as the end of their sojourn approached. And then, in the space of a week, several things happened that changed everything about my life.

The first thing was that the furniture began to arrive. Until this point it had been hard to imagine the empty house-come-office building as a centre for children, but once the cots and beds and cupboards started arriving I really began to settle into the house. My furniture arrived too, a bed and shelves and bedside table. Anyone who knows me, or has ever lived with me, knows that I move A LOT, and this has resulted in a strange need to establish a nest somewhere ASAP. This is my 13^th house and usually I carry most of what I own with me from one place to another (unlike some of my friends who have always had a room at home where most of their stuff stays while the drag only essentials round university accommodation with them). My first few hours in ANY new residence are spent unpacking all my things (including an obscene amount of knick knacks, cards and pictures) and arranging them nicely around my space until I feel right back at home no matter where I am. Now for the last few months this had not been possible; lack of fixed abode and subsequently no furniture had meant that until this point I had been living out of my suitcase. I cannot explain why, but this makes me both uneasy and unsettled and I do not like it. Thus the arrival of my bedroom furniture and the opportunity to create my nest (I even invested in some raffia baskets and a carpet to brighten it up) really was the changing point for me.

My nest

A few days later the second in the series of good changes happened in that a day guard and a housekeeper started working for us. This was a huge shift for me as until this point I had been in the house alone and had been pretty much the only member of staff. Priscilla and Antonio work 6 days a week from 8am-5pm and their arrival and departure, their activities in the house and even their interest in the work we do really gave a structure to my day. As did the creation of an office separate from my bedroom (where I had been working until this point) with my own desk and cabinet, which marked out the work time from my own personal time. Small stressors which could have played on my mind had I been brooding alone in my room, were diffused by the presence of other people in the house. Here began my creation of a work persona; in the office who dealt with things one at a time and had regular responsibilities to employees and so on and thus I began to grow into my role as ‘director’.

The next thing that happened was the arrival of a VERY unexpected guest. Twice in one week I had gone outside to find dead kittens on my doorstep and I was beginning to get worried that it was being done on purpose, so when I was woken by a horrible screaming noise one morning I ran out to see if I could catch the ‘perp’ in the act, as it were. Instead I found not a hooded, murderous, adolescent, but a trembling, tiny, frightened puppy. And that was it. Alika (which is ‘dog’ in highland Malagasy and allows us to call him Ali) joined our family on Monday 6^th May 2013 and hasn’t left our garden since. I later found out the he had belonged to a neighbour so I tried to give him back, but he is such a pain in the arse that she refused and waved me off smiling with a “good luck”.

Me and my Alika

Thus I was situated in a furnished children’s home, with my first staff and my own office and a good routine and now an excited, bouncy, falling over itself bundle of fluff and I began to feel more ready for the imminent departure of my family. Then the phone range. It was the director of population and social affairs in Diego informing me that we would have our first children (10 month old triplets) arriving with us the following afternoon. The triplets’ mother had sadly passed away and their father was not in the picture. They had been being raised by a grandmother but it was all a bit much for her and the result was that the children was severely malnourished and in need of specialist care (which, thanks to Pierre, our in-house nutrition expert) we were ready to provide. This was a landmark for us, something we had all been working toward for months and their arrival was like manna from heaven. Plus they are really really cute, which helps.

Me and my ikkle babbies

The final piece of my little puzzle came the night before mum and Pierre left when we went out to dinner with friends. They brought with them their god-daughter, Laurence, a French 24 year old studying the same masters as I did in Paris and here on an internship program with a local NGO. Not only was she staying till September and living a stone’s throw away from my house, but she spoke perfect English (having lived a while in Australia) and was keen to have a contact in town to have dinner or go for a walk with. Without wanting to scare her away (because she is probably reading this) I want to make clear that she could not have walked into my life at a better time and that having someone to try street food with, or go to bands with or just have a normal chat with, has balanced out my life and SERIOUSLY chilled me out.

Meeting Laurence for the first time!

This is how, just one day before the departure of my family, which I was so worried would leave me feeling empty and directionless just one week before, I found myself managing our beautiful babies, 3 nannies, 2 house-staff, one doggy and feeling altogether more ready to face the world with a friend and confidant to lean on.

 It was an absolute delight that Pierre got to see the first children enter the centre that he has spent so much time dreaming of. To watch someone be able to see all their hard work and determination come to fruition was the perfect end to their trip. Needless to say, I was still sad when they left. I love my family very much and had got used to having them around, but my world didn’t crumble, as I had thought it might as I sat on my mattress on the floor in an empty house. Instead I have been so busy with babies and nannies and paperwork and running the house that I take delight in the time I get to spend curled up on my bed reading a book and trying to get the dog to not sit on my hair (which he seems to like).

And so I hope you will see that although I am not trying to make lame excuses for my absence the past few weeks, it has been a busy time for me and one which I had struggled to put into a ‘personal blog’ which avoids talking about work because my life has become so very intertwined with the babies and the house that not talking about it seemed like a silly lie. That is not to say that the rest of the blogs will be about work or the children, I would still like to avoid that (although if you are interested in our progress feel free to read our Foundation blog at www.arnaudguesryfoundation.org) but at least now perhaps you can put my life into context and see that any other activities or outings I might write about are occurring in parallel to my role as house-mother to a fast growing Malagasy family at La Maison d’Arnaud.