Growing up I was known as the foreign kid.

My clothes were crawling with a different language,

My voice was tinted with an accent,

My favorite singer was a middle-aged man

Who sang about the greenlands and hills of East  Africa.

The food my mother produced was not called pizza or pasta or hot dogs.

The food,

saucy and rich and spiced.

 

On the first day of Kindergarten in America,

I had on my backpack,

Swarming with American cartoons

I was not familiar with but what the little girls at the playgrounds had,

And I was ready to strut out the door.

“Maya! Your lunch!”

My mother called.

I grabbed the bag and was on my way to a place that was foreign to me,

School.

 

The place was bustling with sticky-fingered,

Short and drunken-like dwarves.  

Little kids speaking english too fast for me to comprehend.

I felt lost in the sea of rug rats

Discussing the latest episode of Caillou

So I stuck by the teacher who seemed to quiz me on where I had come from,

A large island that she thought was never inhabited,

Madagascar.

 

The day had went well,

My favorite part of the day was approaching,

Lunch.

I made a new friend,

Who shared my love for Care Bears and strangely shaped rocks.

We sat at the rectangular lunch table together

And for once I didn’t feel different from the other kids,

The American kids.

 

Out of my acquaintance’s pink ladybug covered lunchbox,

She pulled out a classic yet American masterpiece,

For what reason,

I do not know,

The PB&J.

I was excited to see the new food,

Foreign and strange to me.

“What do you have for lunch Maya?”

I had the most typical dish you could find in Madagascar,

Cassava leaves and white rice.

The forest green goodness and the savory taste

Was so familiar to me

That I thought everyone had it stocked in their pantries.

Opening the lid,

The smell I had grown so used to in my life infiltrated the room.

“What is that smell?”

Shrieks filled the table as the green mess I called food was revealed.

It later came to my attention that those shrieks were of terror.

“Why are you eating poop?”

My new friend screamed,

Her PB&J flinging from her little pudgy fingers to the ground in shock.

 

“This is not poop”

I defended my favorite meal,

Wanting to cover its ears from the criticism.

“This is my lunch”.

I stared down at the plastic container

Filled to the brim with the meal my mother

Woke up early to make.

Again,

I felt like the foreign kid

Because I was the foreign kid.

 

For the rest of the lunch,

I refused to eat a spoonful of the mushy goodness.

I watched the other kids eat their Wonder Bread sandwiches,

Their pizza pockets and their cheese sticks.

When I came home,

My mother asked me why I didn’t touch my food.

She knew it was my favorite dish

And that I never struggled to down it.

“Satria tsy izay mihinana”

Because it is not what they eat.