MADAGASCAR EXPERIENCE Interview with Mihoby Rabeharison ('97)
Where are you from and do you remember how you came to attend AISB? I’m originally from Madagascar. I came to AISB by way of Senegal, Cameroon and the United States as the child of a diplomat.
Which one of your teachers at AISB made the biggest impression on your life and why? There were so many amazing teachers at AISB. But a few still stand out. Teachers like Mr. Newman cultivated a standard of excellence. I remember completing my first assignment for his class on the bus ride to school. It must’ve reeked of lacklusterness because it was returned with, “Are you kidding?” scribbled at the top! I kept that assignment. It reminded me that crappy work - just like good work - speaks for itself.
I also appreciated that he assigned works like Jane Eyre and its anti-colonial response, The Wide The Sargasso Sea . Reading these books sequentially emphasized that canonical works are in constant conversation with each other. These conversations highlighted how societies often revisit and then re-vision their perceptions. It reflected this idea that culture, and our understanding of history, is not static - but fluid and malleable thing.
Mr. Wilkinson expanded my horizons. He brought students to Stratford-Upon-Avon where we participated in workshops with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Taking my first Cuban folkloric dance class there, I began ruminating about the “theater of the everyday.”
Each teacher shared a different gift. But they all helped cultivate the grounds for me to build a solid foundation for critical thought and excellence.
Describe your current job and the path you took to get there. I have a two-fold career path; the first of them being the CEO of my own boutique travel agency called the Madagascar Experience . The story of how I came to establish the Madagascar Experience is a story as long It articulates this idea that everything we
as my life! But for the abridged version,
do is some sort of a performance. Framing
suffice it to say that whenever I posted
performance this way continues to
about my travels to Madagascar, friends
cultivate, in me, a hyper-consciousness
always asked if they could come with
about how I mediate my life and work.
me next time. So what began as an informal gathering expanded into
Mr. Wilkinson introduced us to the
offering thematic tours and
dramaturgy of Peter Brook (who staged
partnering with boutique organizations.
MacBeth à la Kabuki), the archetypes in
For my second career, I am a real estate
Commedia dell'Arte and the politics of
agent at an international brokerage,
Grotowski. Incorporating diverse
Engel & Völkers , on a team called the
pedagogues into our curriculum helped me
Skybridge Group . I came to real estate
identify a thread within the human
after years of frustration working as an
experience and its artistic interpretations.
educator and in non-profits. I spent
The fact that Shakespeare’s Macbeth can
more time there battling administrations
express itself within Japanese Kabuki,
than I did fulfilling my roles. A career in
affirms that elements of culture exist
real estate posed an interesting
beyond localized identities. But above all
proposition. Everybody in the world is
- theater was a space for me to seek and
concerned with where they live. As such,
practice freedom.
real estate is a business that cuts across all social strata. The broadness within the
And Madame Fabiny . God bless Madame
field allows me the freedom to be myself
Fabiny who, despite my making clucking
and create my niche. Right now, in the
chicken noises in class, always extended
throes of sheltering in place, I’m helping
her love and compassion. In my defense, I
couples and young families establish
was fluent in French before coming to her
stability by finding them a place to call
class. So given my aptitude for theater, lol, I
home. Both these career paths are
channeled a listlessness for French into
beginning to merge as I look forward to
comedy. A safety net of unconditionality,
making property ownership in
the fact that she was never harsh or cruel
Madagascar more accessible to an
to me was somehow very encouraging.
international clientele.
