I noticed it as soon as we left the airport after arriving from Switzerland. It was like a veil lifting, or like rolling down the tinted car windscreen. Or like taking off a pair of ski goggles when the world suddenly takes on a different colour. The colours in Madagascar seem to come from a completely different element. The rice paddies glow a vibrant green, the soil seems somehow earthy and red, making your mouth dry if you look too long. The sky seems closer and the people more tangible and present. It smells of fire and smoke. On the way into town, piles of different things are lit and burnt all along the road, and at the same time the air is filled with a multitude of odours and fragrances that make me pause as I try hard to identify them. Sometimes the air feels sticky and sticky on my skin, despite the altitude of Tana, sometimes it is gentle and caresses a strand of hair from my face with a refreshing breeze and cools my forehead. It's like being immersed in another world, but the transition is not smooth. It feels like I've been ripped out and planted back in a different place. And in a way, that's what actually happened. I'm not sure it was wise for people to invent the aeroplane and thus be able to cross the world in a few hours. You skip everything that happens in between, that changes, that transforms. So it feels as if I've landed on a nearby, yet completely alien planet, and at the same time it's as if I've suddenly arrived in reality. Far away from the clean Swiss streets, the structured traffic, where lanes are not seen as recommendations but as boundaries, where most beggars are at least 20 years old, houses are lined up obediently and painted in dull colours, and where there is an omnipresent and orderly administration. Switzerland just seems like an episode of Black Mirror to me, where we have a very high quality of life overall, but everyone is blanking out their surroundings with headphones or staring at their screens. Where personal interactions are limited to friends and family or transactions. Where this privileged state eventually becomes the norm and we get used to it, while also realising that it's not the same everywhere. I count myself among them. But how strange and paradoxical it is when the exception - the break from this normality (my journey) - suddenly feels like reality, and the everyday life I normally live becomes surreal. It feels less real, blurred, as if in a trance, and suddenly I am wide awake. This is certainly also due to the fact that I am experiencing so many new things at once, and it is therefore stored in my head much more intensely and clearly than everything I already know. So the last year, the last few months in Switzerland blur into a blurred thought, while here every second reverberates, takes up space in my memories and is sharply focussed. The good, warm, laughing, exciting and new, as well as the dark, helpless, heartbreaking and everything that is extremely difficult to endure.

During a walk through the town under some jacaranda trees, a girl, about 8 years old, suddenly runs out from between two large metal rubbish containers. Stunned, I take a second look and realise from the shout that follows her that her mother is sitting in the gap behind, folding a cloth, and whose home I have just looked into. On the steep, dusty path down to the main road, where large cars bump quite quickly over the cobblestones, there are always people lying or sitting at the side of the road. While in other cities you might see street cats squeezing themselves under a dirty blanket to their mums to seek closeness and warmth, here there are hardly any 2-year-old children.

On the first day after our arrival, we travelled to the ADES office. A driver picked us up and fought his way through the traffic past Lake Anosy and along the stadium. In a busy side street, where many people queue for metres to catch the yellow bus with the blue stripe, we squeeze through a red entrance to the office. It is an ochre-coloured house with a small garden. It has an empty, unfinished swimming pool, beautiful bougainvillea flowers and other plants that I can't name. We are immediately given a very friendly welcome and shown round, and are allowed to say hello to everyone. I can't remember everyone's name yet, but it's great to meet so many people who work for ADES, especially those I've already been in contact with online. Suddenly coming face to face is something completely different; you learn so much more about a person. We are also invited to lunch straight away. As usual, the whole team eats together in the conference room. I had already noticed the steaming pot, which was of course boiling on the ADES OLI cooker, in the morning. We have a typical Malagasy meal, which is a huge mountain of rice with some mashed potatoes and salad. We drink warm rice water with it, which still tastes slightly burnt. It is only on the second day that I learn how to politely reduce my portion without leaving any leftovers. The coffee that follows tastes sweet even without sugar and I can drink it black, although I am used to always adding milk. There are always cosy conversations, sometimes in the corridor, sometimes in the kitchen, often outside. You can tell that the office in Tana is well organised. People are friendly and familiar with each other, everyone is on a first-name basis, and it's easy for me to quickly adapt to this rhythm and settle in, even though we're already travelling on to Toliara after our second day.

We dined in a very nice restaurant on our last evening in Tana. A main course with meat, wine and rum for dessert cost perhaps 50,000 ariary per person - that's about 10 francs. While I sat at the table and played with the foot of my wine glass, four children sat outside my window on the opposite side of the street. I deliberately emphasise "children", because the girls wrapped in blankets around their babies and begging on the street at 9pm were no more than half my age. I watched them for a moment until they noticed me too. But once you've made eye contact, you keep looking. They held out their hands to me, pointing at themselves and the children. And I was sitting there, inside, in the warmth, at a table with a white tablecloth, a small and a large wine glass, an empty bread basket, when the waiter brought the dessert menu. I tried to shrug my shoulders apologetically, but felt miserable myself. I looked away and tried to rejoin the conversation at the table. At the neighbouring table sat a smoking white man, about 40 years old, with a Malagasy girl sitting opposite him. She looked about 16.

I looked again. They held my gaze, especially the girl with a black hooded jacket and big eyes. She was the first to notice me again when I looked back. We looked at each other, separated by a pane of glass and yet worlds apart. When we got up to leave, they were already waiting at the door. I walked behind the others, trying to look straight ahead without interacting too much or pausing. Above all, giving money to children increases and supports the child labour that exists and is exploited in Tana. Or am I just telling myself that for my conscience? I felt helpless and they were powerless. Or was it the other way round? Does that make sense? I felt at the mercy of the helplessness I encountered. Although it was actually them who were helpless, I felt powerless.

When we got back to the hotel, I sighed heavily. I had crossed a threshold that was close to the normality I was familiar with. Here I could escape the confrontation with this reality. But as I climbed the stairs up to my room, my thoughts led me back across the cobblestones and outside, into the night, to the children, the young women, the girl with the black hooded jacket.