Fellow Malagasy diaspora, how do people treat you generally?
I’ve lived in Réunion (very young), Canada, and the US, along with visiting France and South Africa so I’m curious about other peoples experiences.
Generally people start with some form of “do you like to move it move it?” But after they exhaust any jokes related to the movie most people are clueless. No one really has stereotypes about Malagasy people or pre conceptions about the country beyond “Lemurs and jungle”. Or asking me to say random words in Malagasy and just nodding.
Only time I was genuinely baffled by something was “if Madagascar’s African and Asian, are guys big or little?” Caught me fully off guard, the girl was African too so I can’t even say what prompted it.
But yeah, the fact that people have no idea about the country has two sides I’d say. On the one side it’s nice that there’s not really stereotypes or negative ideas about the place or people, even people who only know “jungles and huts” know they probably shouldn’t say it out loud. But on the other hand it means a lot of people expect me to be like a textbook and teach them all the details and know random facts. Which is bad because I’m incredibly white washed :)
Does my experience track with anyone else’s?