Winter in Madagascar?

I know, it sounds like an oxymoron, right? And all these past six months you’ve read about how hot it is, and the eternal summer of Madagascar, that tropical island off the coast of Africa. Well, that part is true, but apparently as you start to experience warmer weather there in the Northern Hemisphere, things are getting cooler here. And I’ve had some funny conversations as to what actually constitutes winter here in Madagascar.
First of all, the coldest it’s ever gotten in Madagascar is maybe 45 degrees, and I think I’ve heard mention of a frost in a town high up in elevation, but I don’t know if I believe it. The landscape of Madagascar is such that the high plateaux area (or the center of the island and where Tana is located) experiences cooler temperatures and less rain starting about the month of April, and this is what they call winter.
I’ve done my best not to laugh. The other day someone mentioned to me that now we are in the “saison du froid” and I must prepare myself. I was wearing sandals, jeans and a light-weight button-up shirt and I was hot. I just stared at this guy and said “Ca, c’est le froid?” Apparently, yes. I’ve tried to tell stories of winter back home. Wearing warm socks, good shoes, thick pants, several layers on top, coat, gloves, hat, scarf and still every time you go outside you feel like you are going to die from the cold. Well, that’s how I remember it at least. But they just laugh at these stories as impossible and look at me like I’m telling ghost stories to scare them. The idea of snow, at all, or ice, is just unreal to them, even though they know very well that it exists. So for now, they just think I’m the crazy vazaha that will complain it’s cold just like the rest of them, once the saison du froid actually starts.
And maybe they’re right. True, Madagascar has never seen snow, but for a developing country where it’s normally an eternal summer with sweltering heat, 50 degrees can seem frighteningly cold. Plus, central heating here means finding wood and building a fire. That doesn’t work too well in a shack made of wood and palm fronds that’s built to stay cool (or a Tana apartment on the 7th floor for that matter). Moreover, Tabitha has complained of her time here last June, and said she never really got warm, because there is no heat anywhere. That particularly worries me, because she’s an Ohio girl and knows what winter’s truly about. So here I am, going back and forth between laughing at the Malagasy notion of winter, and panicking that I have no warm clothes and I’m going to freeze. I think it will meet somewhere in the middle and of course there will be days when I’m cold, but I’ll just remember walking back from the Vassar library late at night in February and feeling like my nose was a leaky faucet, but I couldn’t actually feel my nose, and trying not to slip on the icy sidewalks (there were several close calls) and just looking forward to a cup of tea and American TV at home.
Okay, so the mention of TV is just my own recent longing for TV shows in English… really, that’s my only requirement now… they don’t even have to be good. I saw the BBC on TV and was shocked to find English being spoken on TV… I’m so used to French or even Malagasy now, that English sounded foreign to me. This is just one of many signs that I’m no longer American. The worst one… I forgot St. Patrick’s Day. I must have written March 17th several times and I never realized it. And what’s even worse, I love St. Patrick’s Day… green is my favorite color and what could be more American then using a holiday to celebrate Irish-Americans as an excuse to start drinking at 8 am. Plus, I think I have some Irish blood somewhere in my heritage! It’s really a sad story, isn’t it? Okay, so enough of being over-dramatic… I’ll keep you posted on how I deal with “winter” here and I promise to try not to forget anymore major American holidays. As for religious holidays, those are ever present here in Madagascar, and there are church services (signaled by church bells in my neighborhood) all this week for Easter. As for me, I'm celebrating Easter in Ft. Dauphin (a town on the south-eastern tip of Madagascar) and I promise to post pictures soon... really, I do!