The Mayor

I thought I would dedicate a full post to my father during my rural homestay, Gérard Rasoloson, Monsignor Le Maire. He was a very interesting guy and hopefully this post just gives most insight into what I did the last week and a half.

Living with the mayor of a large district in Madagascar was surprisingly similar to what you may expect. He wasn’t around to often but our time together was always awesome. He was a very arrogant, proud, sweet family man who enjoyed his job. He was the only one who spoke French in my family and so it is no surprise that he is the one I connected with the most. When I first arrived in Tsinjoarivo, he was off in some other town because he was in the process of opening a new government building in town and needed to go through the proper bureaucratic process. When he finally arrived at home, we spent about 4 hours talking up on his third story balcony about a wide array of topics while watching bocce ball players, zebu herders and the sunset over the mountains. Part way through our discussion, he went a got his bottle of J&B scotch that was a gift brought to him from France that he only drank when he had guests over. Shortly after he pulled out the scotch, a plate of sausage and manioc was brought to accompany. We discussed his family, Malagasy culture and politics, the US and much more.

Gérard was an extremely proud guy, of himself and his accomplishments, of his family, his town, and extending out to Madagascar. He loved it whenever I complemented anything Malagasy. It probably made him feel great to think that anything from Madagascar was good enough for an American, who as far as he knew had every single thing possible. This included anything I saw, ate, did etc… Eventually though, his pride encompassed me as I truly felt welcomed into his household and family in an extremely short period of time. He would do things like tell me to invite my friends over to the house to express to me that the house was mine.

When we would visit my sister in the hospital (you will hear about this later, she’s okay though) he and I would go run errands after an hour or so while the rest of the family stayed with her. It was during these errands/tour of the town that we passed the rooster-fighting stadium and he stopped so that I could watch my first fight. Afterwards, he bought us a couple beers and some meat skewers for a snack. As with the house, he was evidently well off, but it was clearly “rural well off”. He loved to flash any chance he could and so buying things like beer and snacks was a big source of pride for him. He did have quite a bit to be proud of. When he first became the head of his village, there were about 1000 people living there and it was not too developed. Now, part way through his 2nd term as mayor of the district (that includes many villages), the population has risen to between 3,000-4,000. He started two schools in the district, added classrooms in almost every village in his district, started the Tuesday market that has continues to grow in Tsinjoarivo, multiple public water sources throughout and most recently built new government offices which he actually designed the blueprints for. All of this without a college education.

One of our homework assignments while in our home stays was to interview someone for their “life story” for which I, of course, chose Gérard. He was a self made man who started as a cattle herder and then began farming until he raised enough money to buy a car. At 23 he was elected head of his village and began his political career. Afterwards, he used his car to drive crops from his village into Tana and later to bus people from one place to the other. He then served a term as mayor of the district where he began some of the accomplishments listed above. Then in between stints as mayor, he served as president in his district and simultaneously the vice-president for the entire region of the micro-finance institution in Madagascar. Even today, while serving as the mayor, he takes days out of the week to continue his work as a taxi-bus driver and shuttle people around. For all his arrogance, he is very big on his community and while he would drive his family to see his daughter, he still picked people up and dropped them off along the way; although they may have paid him, I never saw any money transferred during those rides.

I don't want to take up more room on my homepage with pics, so click the link below to see pics of him and his family!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/benjacohn/sets/72157627735651351/