To me Madagascar will always smell like “Peaceful Sleep.”
I read this article once, about the power of memories recalled through smells. I am not sure where I read the article, it is even possible that I might have heard it on the radio, but the general idea was that the sense of smell brings back more vivid and stronger memories than any of the other senses. We have all experienced this, how the smell of a particular thing cooking always transports you back to your mom or grandma’s kitchen and how certain smells can transport you back to a particular time or place.
This article was particularly aimed at travelers and suggested that a good way for you to remember your trips was to pick a particular perfume that you don’t normally wear at home and use it everyday of your trip so when you return you can occasionally wear this scent again and be transported back to memoirs of the trip you took. I have never been a big one for wearing perfume but there are still particular smells that transport me back to the many places I have lived and traveled.
There is this one particular smell, or rather combination of smells that always transports me back to Italy. Not the smell of pasta or gelato or any of those wonderful things, but the particular smell of mornings in
These days whenever I put on my bug repellent I am transported back to that 1st night with my host family, not understanding a word, being wet and without any clean clothes, writing in my journal by candle light, and being shocked by the poverty my family they lived in. Now a couple of months out, I understand what is being said to me a little better (though there are still huge gaps in my comprehension), and I have come to realize that my host family was pretty well off. They had a nice house, made out of bricks not sticks, they had cows and chickens, a well and we ate meat multiple times a week. Most of the families I interact with these days are much more impoverished. Most people in Anivorano get their water from the communal pump, and almost never eat meat. There are very few cows, though there are a decent number of chickens and ducks, the majority of these are owned by a few well off families. Many of the children in the village show signs of malnutrition and the adults don’t have an extra gram of fat on their bodies.
I am sure over the next couple of years Madagascar will introduce me to many new and delightful (and foul) smells, but the odd scent of this particular bug repellent will always transplant me back to those first few days spent with my host family.
