2 - Acting Vezo in the present

Summary

You, when you arrived here, people said: ‘Ha! this lady [madame] often goes out fishing’, and now I say: ‘Haven't you become Vezo?’; and yet you are a vazaha [a white] from far away. But if you go fishing every day here: ‘Ha! that lady is Vezo!’, because you struggle with the sea, because you paddle the canoe, and [therefore] you are Vezo.

The first intelligible conversation I had in Betania was about swimming. I wanted to find out whether I could swim in the ocean, and I was told that I could; when people saw me swimming, they told me that I was Vezo (fa Vezo iha). Later on, when I began to imitate my hosts in the way they ate fish – stuffing my mouth with a piece of fish, flesh, skin and bones all together, swallowing the flesh and skin and spitting out the bones – I was told that I was really Vezo (fa Vezo tokoa iha). The first time I was taken out fishing, I found a large crowd of people waiting for my return on the beach; they asked whether I had been sick, if I had been hungry or thirsty, whether the sun had burnt my skin. I told them that I had been fine, that I had liked it, and that I had actually caught a fish.