Tag: Madagascar

Can Your Skin Cream Transform Your Mind?

Can Your Skin Cream Transform Your Mind?

Meg

“Our teachers weren’t kidding when they said we’d take lots of walks and that people in the villages are very content to do nothing. No plans, nothing. I thought I’d handle that well because I, too, like to do nothing. But I only really do nothing for brief interludes during the day, in between finding something else to do. When I sit and knit, read, write letters, make necklaces, etc., I consider that pretty much doing nothing. Here they just sit. It’s not an easy lifestyle to adjust to.” – me, March 2, 1996

I had to laugh when I read this journal entry from my village homestay in Madagascar. In the U.S. we live in a culture that is so go-go-go that I didn’t even recognize that my doing nothing was still doing something. That was true 20 years ago, and it remains true today. I just happen to be more aware of it now. Doing nothing and remembering to breathe are literally things I need to practice. Five minutes sitting still without my mind wandering to a hundred different items on my to-do list is impossible. Truly. Try it and you’ll see it’s not just me! “Monkey mind” is the Buddhist term for the incessant chatter and sense of unsettledness in one’s mind. It looks like this:

Monkey Mind image
This is what a monkey mind looks like; illustration by Lilian Leahy

That phrase evokes images that just crack me up, quite like this Lilian Leahy illustration. The ring-tailed lemurs shown in the following photos that I took in Madagascar also crack me up. They are very Zen. This is NOT what having a “monkey mind” looks like.

Ring-tailed lemur posing
Ring-tailed lemur relaxing in the sun
Ring tailed lemur as opportunist – that banana was not for him

When I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, and finally accepted it (that’s another story altogether), I considered all options for how to live my healthiest life given the cards I had been dealt. Besides doing all the regular stuff my doctor asks – take all the prescribed medications, see her every three months, have bloodwork done at the lab regularly, get exercise – I wondered if there was anything else that would help. I had two very little kids when I was diagnosed. And I love leading a busy and active life. I want to be as healthy as possible and have left no stone unturned in my quest.

Having RA has taught me many, many philosophical but also practical things about life. My diagnosis and subsequent eventual acceptance was like a massive 2×4 smacked across the head saying, “ummm, hellooooo, for real, you need to pay attention.” It has taught me about cherishing the little things in life, and not taking any day or any thing for granted. It’s like a constant anatomy lesson – yes! that pain I was wishing could be solved by a root canal is in fact a jaw joint (too bad for me). It has taught me about control, and that it turns out I am not in it. And, it has taught me about how stress and my monkey mind can be implicated in RA flares and general feelings of being overwhelmed.

After a bit of research and a lot of finagling of schedules, five years ago I enrolled in an 8-week course at the Benson Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine (BHI) at Massachusetts General Hospital. This course introduced me to the term “monkey mind,” not to mention to the fact that I have an extremely active monkey. You may have already figured that out from the sheer breadth of subjects I write about. I am not exactly focused on one thing, rarely one thing at a time, and I am passionate about many!

For the record, I am not one to buy into the concepts of meditation and relaxation easily. The term self-care makes me cringe, as do the words snuggle and cuddle (but that’s an aside). Bluck. All that touchy-feely stuff gives me the shivers. So you could say that I entered BHI skeptical at best. But I figured since I had devoted my time to this, I might as well go all in and have an open mind (pun intended).

Did my life change overnight and was my RA banished for good? No. It takes a long time to learn new habits, and the brain tends to tack back to its well-trod neural pathways. It takes effort and practice to become aware of the mind’s motivation. For me, sitting still and doing nothing were bad words. My inclination is still more towards whirling dervish than calm Buddha.

But I learned an incredible amount about how important the act of doing nothing and sitting still is for the brain. It’s a biological reality that is now backed up with MRI studies and scientific data. The scientifically validated benefits of mindfulness include: decreased stress; reduced symptoms associated with depression, anxiety disorders, pain and insomnia; an enhanced ability to pay attention; and a higher quality of life. Don’t believe me? Check out Harvard researcher Sara Lazar’s TEDx talk on the effect of meditation on the brain.

Or Dan Harris, the ABC anchor who had a panic attack on live television that led him to meditation and eventually to writing the book 10% Happier.

Personally, my most notable takeaway from the course happened on the first night. The instructor flashed a powerpoint slide that read, “If you can’t make room for exercise now, you’ll have to make room for illness later.”

I was already making room, lots of room, for illness. But I wasn’t prioritizing myself. AT ALL. This one quote completely changed the way I viewed my calendar and what was and was not negotiable on it. I began swimming and made it a permanent item on my calendar. I trained myself to take a deep breath every time I come to a stop sign or stoplight. I downloaded a million mindfulness apps (still working on pausing long enough to actually use them).

My message to you is this – skin creams may help with wrinkles and dry skin, but meditation enhances a wrinkled mind. 

Breathe. Deeply. And often. It helps.

Serenity Prayer

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

Reinhold Neibuhr

Vanilla, Powerfully Plain

Vanilla, Powerfully Plain

Meg

I mentioned that my family has bit of a love affair with the chocolate chip cookie. You know what the smallest make or break ingredient in a chocolate chip cookie is? The vanilla. The difference in taste that a single teaspoon of vanilla makes is astounding.

But I have often heard vanilla used as a synonym for plain. In fact, Merriam Webster dictionary defines vanilla as, “lacking distinction : plain, ordinary, conventional.” And, yet, a world without the vanilla bean would be flavorless and bland.

Where does the majority of the world’s vanilla grow, you ask? In one of the least plain, ordinary, or conventional places on Earth. That’s right, my old love, Madagascar.

Madagascar boasts more than 75% of the world’s vanilla fields. All of Madagascar’s vanilla is grown in the SAVA (Sambava, Antalaha, Vohemar and Andapa) region in the country’s northeast. Vanilla is Madagascar’s largest export, which is pretty remarkable given that the plant, which was introduced from Mexico during the French colonial period, needs to be hand-pollinated.

SAVA region, map from Wikipedia
World Map Highlighting Madagascar

This CBS video from 2017 discusses the recent vanilla bean shortage, a little about the price fluctuations over the past two decades, and the impact of the shortage on US businesses. What the video alludes to but doesn’t dive into, is what life is like for vanilla farmers in Madagascar now that vanilla is second only to saffron as the most expensive spice in the world.

Used to flavor so many sweet treats in the west, with the US, France, and Germany being the primary importers of its vanilla, vanilla beans in Madagascar are labor-intensive to cultivate. In a developing country like Madagascar, where the rule of law is flimsy at best, corruption is rampant, poverty is beyond most westerners’ comprehension, and cyclones can wreak havoc on a crop that takes three years to be marketable, sustainable livelihoods are elusive.

When Madagascar was a French colony, the French government set prices for vanilla producers. Madagascar gained its independence in 1960, after which the Malagasy government set the vanilla prices. During both of these periods, prices were low and predictable. In the mid-1990s, however, just about when I arrived in Madagascar, the Malagasy government de-regulated vanilla prices because of pressure from global financial institutions. This was the beginning of the dramatic vanilla bean price fluctuations that have been on-going ever since.

Vanilla Factory, Andapa 1996
Vanilla beans
Andapa view
Lemur in Andapa

Increased demand and higher prices would, ostensibly, seem to be a good thing for Madagascar, one of the world’s poorest countries by GDP (the 10th poorest according to the World Atlas). Global vanilla prices were hovering at about $450 to $500 per kilogram as of August 2018, with the expectation that this year the prices would decline somewhat due to increased production. For context, this is about the same as the price for silver.

Demand pressures, however, have led to farmers harvesting beans too early to prevent theft; increased need for security at vanilla fields; and generally more dangerous conditions for vanilla farmers. Much of the vanilla profits go to middlemen, though the SAVA region has also benefited from this boom period. For vanilla farmers, it has been documented that they typically don’t know what to do with the windfall. In the context of rural Madagascar, where the closest bank is often a day’s walk along routes patrolled by armed bandits, long-term savings are not realistic. A large influx of cash in rural Madagascar turns into a liability pretty quickly.

Because of the vanilla boom, in addition to demand for rosewood, protected rainforests in the northeastern part of Madagascar, like Masoala National Park, have been illegally cut to create more vanilla fields. It makes logical sense from the perspective of the local population, the majority of whom are barely surviving on a daily basis, with absolutely no social safety nets. No one wants to miss the opportunity to become a “vanillionaire”, and the long-term implications of their actions on the island’s unique flora and fauna, like the use of its vanilla beans, are luxuries that appeal to those who live in another world. They are irrelevant to day to day survival.

Except that, in the end, it isn’t irrelevant at all.

For the long-term sustainability of the region, of the very vanilla plant that is the source of such demand, it makes no sense at all (check out this 10-minute BBC documentary to learn more, starting around minute 7:30). Other aspects of the local economy benefit from tourists interested in seeing lemurs, wild orchids, and rosewood trees in their natural habitats. Even more esoteric to the rural population, but still meaningful, is the potential for medicines cultivated from plants that grow in Madagascar’s forests, such as from the Madagascar periwinkle, which is an ingredient in leukemia treatments. These are much the same issues I observed in 1996.

Where do we go from here? Trust me, this is a question I have been asking myself for over 20 years, since I first set foot in Madagascar. There are no easy answers. Education has to be one component. Functional government is inevitably another. There aren’t short-term solutions for long-term, sustainable outcomes. For creative ideas, I like this World Bank blog that reports on initiatives happening in Madagascar, and also Madecasse’s efforts to establish bean-to-bottle production within Madagascar. As in so many aspects of life, I also think it’s a good idea to have small, specific, achievable goals that can be accomplished in the short-term, but that begin to establish the path toward a larger, long-term goal.

So, for now, the next time you buy vanilla extract or vanilla ice cream or almost any sweet treat, think about that little dab of vanilla and what a difference it makes to your taste buds, but also what an impact it has on a little country way on the other side of the world. The story of vanilla is more complex that it appears, and it is far from plain.

The orchids that produce vanilla beans have no natural pollinators in Madagascar; the plant must be pollinated by hand — a labor-intensive process with little margin for erro
A worker checks for mold in vanilla pods at an Antalaha warehouse.

Pictures courtesy of Madecasse and National Geographic

 

 

 

Madagascar, and I don’t mean the movie

Madagascar, and I don’t mean the movie

Meg

If there is a traditional or typical path in life, I am almost assuredly not on it. Because I tend to wander down uncharted paths, a lot of my stories require a backstory to answer the inevitable “how the heck did you end up there?” And so it is with Madagascar. I have a lot to say about Madagascar, but I’ll start with the backstory for now.

In college, I went through a bit of a lost soul phase. The university I had chosen to attend wasn’t the best fit for me, and I belatedly discovered that just because I was physically going to the library didn’t mean I was actually learning anything (mostly because I was spending my time there sending email and writing funny haikus). I had been a pretty strong student in high school, but that wasn’t translating well into college. I temporarily lost track of who I thought I was and had a bit of an identity crisis.

The good news is that my crisis made me brave. I felt like I had nothing to lose so I kept trying new things. One particularly fraught semester I read a description in the Student Conservation Association catalogue for the backcountry trail crew at Baxter State Park in Northern Maine. I had only been to Maine once before, but I nonetheless decided that that was where I would find salvation. My attitude at the time was, “it can’t be worse than this,” so I applied. Long story short, sometime in late May, my mom dropped me off at the Molly Pitcher rest stop on I-95 in New Jersey where I had arranged for one of my new trail crew-mates to pick me up. And off I went into the wilderness for three months. Really? This was the plan? I can’t imagine what it was like to be my parents during those years. I mean, you dropped your kid off at a rest stop on I-95 in New Jersey? Clearly this was well before helicopter parenting became a thing.

Living in northern Maine was absolutely one of the best curves on the path of my life. I was immersed in a brand new environment, living completely off the grid in a physically stunning and remote rural area. I lived in close quarters with people from widely varied backgrounds, with different interests and challenges in their lives. I had tons of time for reflection – countless miles on the trail deep in thought, and no phone or electricity at the rustic cabin where we lived. There were few distractions. I hiked, I read, I wrote, I thought. We made a single trip to town each Friday to collect mail, use the payphone, do laundry, and go to the grocery store. We worked incredibly, mind-numbingly, body-achingly hard. Life in the park was basic and simple and incredibly rich.

Katahdin from South Turner
Trail Signs
Hikers at Roaring Brook

One part of our job was to spend a solo week on “mountain patrol”. When it was my turn, I climbed Katahdin daily to be a resource for Park visitors about the trails, the flora and fauna, or whatever other questions they might have. In my backpack I carried extra water, a first aid kit, and a hand-held radio. I spent my days patrolling the trails above treeline and talking with hikers. Did I mention that I grew up in Philadelphia? This was one of the most foreign environments compared to my prior life experience in which I could find myself. And I loved it.

While patrolling the summit, I came across a group of campers enjoying lunch with a view before descending. Their group leader had lots of questions about my job, what I was studying at school, and what I planned to do next. I explained that my parents had encouraged me to learn a second language, and were hoping that I would spend a semester studying in France to solidify my French fluency. The notion of living in a big city, even if that city happened to be Paris, held zero appeal to me. I couldn’t fathom what I would find of interest there and I knew with 100% certainty that I’d cheat and speak English most of the time anyway. “Have you ever heard of the School for International Training?” she said. “You could study in another French-speaking country,” she said. And then she rattled the school’s phone number off the top of her head and I wrote it down on the back of my park trail map.

As soon as I got out to town, I called the 800 number from the payphone to request a program catalogue. This was at the dawn of the internet, so cellphones, google and email were not yet widely available. It was old fashioned phone and snail mail (and, no, this wasn’t the Dark Ages. It was the mid-90s). When I read the course description for the Madagascar program my eyes welled up with tears. The program combined all of my academic interests, from French language to environmental issues, and also the mystery of exploring Madagascar. I felt called to be there, like finally someone was speaking my language.

That February I touched down in Antananarivo and began the most transformative five months of my life.

Boarding Pass
Dictionary
Tana Early Morning

What is the point of this story? I ask myself that question all the time. Sometimes, admittedly, there is no point and it’s just a good story. In this case, the point is that taking the less traveled path can be a good idea (just ask Robert Frost) and that being open to unfamiliar worlds -environments, people, lifestyles – is important, eye-opening, and life-changing. You learn a lot more about yourself when the familiar is stripped away. And you learn a lot more about others when you meet them where they are and attempt to understand their reality and see the world through their eyes.

Zebu in Sambava
Rice Paddy
Fort Dauphin

“The real treasure, to end our misery and trials, is never far away – it is not to be sought in any distant region; it lies buried in the innermost recess of our own home, that is to say, our own being…if only we could dig. But there is an odd and persistent fact that it is only after a faithful journey to a distant region, a foreign country, a strange land, that the meaning of the inner voice that is to guide us on our quest can be revealed to us. And together with this odd and persistent fact there goes another, namely, that the one who reveals to us the meaning of our cryptic inner message must be a stranger, of another creed and foreign race.” – Heinrich Zimmer, “Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization”

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes” – Marcel Proust