Madagascar School Project Blog

If you would like to sponsor a child in Madagascar, so that he/she can get an education, you could join “Toonie Twinning” and give the equivalent of $2.00 per week.

To choose the child that you want to sponsor, go to my Facebook page “Kathy Boesch-Lucking” and choose a child to become friends with, to help through school and even to write letters to if you wish.

Check out the website under ‘Toonie Twinning” for a more complete description of the program.

thank-you.

The year 2011 was a busy one for the Madagascar School Project and for Tenaquip School

One of the most exciting aspects of the year was hosting ten volunteers at the project!

Judith Goodwin and son Luke; Joseline Beaulieu (MSP’s Vice Chair), and her 11 year old son, Evan; The Porter Family (Michelle, Dave, 17 yr old Jordan and 15 Yr old Alex) from West LeHave, Nova Scotia; Catherine Wilson, a graduate from McGill and daughter of our MSP secretary, Nancy Wilson; and Jessica Beehler, a high-school student from Ontario.

Some of the highlights of the year in brief are:

EDUCATION

• The volunteers taught dance, art, music, physical education and exercise, to our students. They also taught English, guitar and keyboard to interested villagers.
• we added another grade so that we are now teaching 10ieme (equivalent gr 2/3 Canada)
• we began a school for young girls who didn’t get an opportunity to finish their education because of lack of family finances. We have 38 students working on grades 5-8 Canadian equivalency. They are very happy to be back in school and we are pleased to know that the education level of the parentsof our next generation of children will be higher than in the past.

• we witnessed the opening of a new school in Manga Be built by parents and made possible through the “Toonie Twinning Operation”
• we began classes teaching sewing (coupe and couture) where the students learn to make their own patterns and sew clothes by hand.
• Catherine took on training a young deaf student, Denis, and his family how to communicate using the gestures from the language learning program AIM. Denis became an active member of the school community as a result.
• we hosted a student apprenticing in administrative studies for 3 months. He is
• we trained 3 young men in construction through an apprenticeship program with our engineer and his team. Two of the men are employed in construction full time as a result
• we began using the program AIM (augmented integrated method) to teach French and then English to students and villagers
• we helped a local student go to university by having his sister (one of our teachers) train teachers in another village how to use AIM, and translate English readers into Malagasy.
• we had a swing set built with money from the Cornwall Rotary Club for our students at Tenaquip
• we transformed Lova Soa into a school to teach trades. It is now housing classes for local young people and adults in sewing and embroidery. Wood-working class is our next goal.

• a donation from a church in Long Sault has allowed us to plan to send another palette of books, and this time we hope to send textbooks in French to support our elementary and young girls school

Preparing for gym class - students had never seen balloons before

Dave with new solar oven he built

• bought more land for gardens at Tenaquip
• planted trees all around the boundary of the school (leaves to be used medicinally)
• built a rice mill so that villagers would not have to walk an hour to mill their rice
• built a new 4 classroom building with a two-room medical clinic
• installed two solar water heaters, allowing for staff, students and volunteers to enjoy hot showers
• installed another solar panel for teacher’s apartments and volunteer house

GARDENS

• we sent our gardener and a committee member on a week long learning experience to Park Ivoloiny to learn the essentials of organic farming and caring for a tree nursery
• we built an irrigation system at Lova Soa using an electric pump in our well and a reservoir to water the plants

SOCIAL WORK

• we purchased 250 raincoats for students and staff of the school with a donation from Tagwi High School in Ontario. Special thanks to Mme Thompson and Mr Blaine
• we ran the feeding program again in both villages helping more than 500 families
• as part of the feeding program, a new kilometre-long road was built by villagers to travel over the mountain and avoid the mud of the regular road
• we bought two bicycles, one for each school, to facilitate getting supplies
• Dave taught the local people how to repair bicycles and gave them the tools to do so. He also showed them how to make solar ovens and successfully made our delicious meals using solar power.

MEDICAL

• we facilitated two youngsters having surgery to repair cleft palate
• hired a doctor who works at our project two days a week, serving the community as well as our staff and students
• we raised money and sent Richard, a young man, to Kenya to have surgery to remove a five year old dental cyst and do extensive repairs to his cheek and jaw
• we screened all our students for general health (weight, height, vision, hearing, teeth) to implement a breakfast meal for those who are suffering from mal-nutrition
• we brought an ophthalmologist to the area to screen students and villagers and made eye glasses available to them through donations of eye glasses and monetary help from the Rotary Club of Cornwall

A NEW OPPORTUNITY TO SUPPORT THE PROJECT

• we began the Toonie Twinning Operation which allows young Canadians an opportunity to give a Malagasy child the gift of an education by donating $2 per week. They can also gain a global friend by corresponding with their ‘twin’ in Madagascar. We are pleased to announce that we have 91 children supported as of December 31 2011.
  

  a Toonie Twinning friend

On Monday Nov. 28, 2011 we received registrations of young women between the ages of 11 and 21 years, who had to stop their formal education because of lack of family funds. These girls dearly want to finish their education, and have come in little groups to ask us for classes.

We have started with 4 classes, a split Canadian equivalent of Grades 7/8 who study in the morning 8:00 – 11:00. There are 18 students in that class. In the afternoon, 1:00 – 5:30 we have 16 students in Grades 5/6. Since our school is bursting at the seams with children, we decided to split the large lunch room to allow space for the girl’s school, to work along side the Kindergarten who work at one end. At 11:00 everyone must clear out to prepare the room to feed our 300 students and staff. When the tables are all wiped up and the floor is swept, class begins again in the afternoon.

The girls are taught by Mlle. Helmine, who has graduated high school and has a dream to go to further her studies to become a mid-wife. To earn enough money to pay her tuition, she will work for us for three years, and help others while she helps herself.  She has never taught before but is taking on all of the subjects and is teaching the girls with all that she has to offer. She teaches Math, Science, Literature, Malagasy, English and French languages, as well as History and Geography. We are pleased to welcome her to our staff.

Mindware Academy in Ottawa, and an individual donor, Graham Wells, have offered to help us fund this endeavor. The girls don’t have so much as a pencil, so they need to be provided with study materials, and we are looking out for used French text books for the teacher to use to help her in her planning and teaching. Since exams here are written in Malagasy and French, and most good jobs require a working knowledge of French, we have decided to use it as our language of instruction.

We are starting small, to make sure that we can do a good job for the girls, but the demand is great. Already we have many young men asking if they can also learn. We will make sure all girls get a chance and that we can sustain the learning and teaching before we expand. We feel that it is the women who will play the biggest role in affecting the quality of the lives of their children, and so every opportunity to educate them will be a vote for the positive future of the community as a whole.

This initiative was born when a Canadian volunteer, working in Madagascar this fall, Catherine Wilson, began making visits to the inhabitants who live all around our school. Provided with a voice recorder by Sally and Heather of the Anglican Christ Church in Long Sault, she went out with a Malagasy interpreter and spoke to people in their homes. She asked them about their history in this village, about their hopes and dreams for their children, about how the school in their community may affect them both positively and negatively, and how the school might help them personally.

Catherine received nothing but shocked looks of disbelief at the question of negative impact of the school, and they assured her that everything about the school was wonderful (mahafinaritra) for the community. They often mentioned young daughters who were forced to end their formal education because of poverty, but who wish that they could finish school.

After she went out on a few such visiting days, groups of 5 or 6 shy girls would show up at the school to ask when classes would start. It was really cute to see them because they thought that it was too bold a question to ask, but wanted to ask badly enough that they would urge each other on until some bold soul would finally step forward and ask when they were going to be able to come to school? This happened regularly enough that eventually we would see a small group of girls hanging around, and know their motive for coming without asking.

Our principal, Mme Raline, is one of the busiest people I know, with a line up at her office door of people who need to see her at most times of the day, but she was as excited as I was at the thought that maybe we could do something about this situation. We decided that if we could find some funding, find a teacher who could take the work of organizing on her own shoulders, then we would begin. All things fell in to place as we’d hoped. So away we go!!!

Love to hear comments or suggestions. Bye till next time,

Kathy

One of the things I love about Madagascar is the rhythm. Because there are no time saving devices, there is a natural rhythm to each day and the people go at their chores in a slow and steady way getting everything done with energy to spare.

I was standing on the balcony at the hospital (a lovely place of quiet refuge), and about 80 metres away, among many other houses, is this yellow house, bungalo, 2 windows, made of brick with cement overtop. There is a little girl there, probably 9 yrs old who I enjoyed watching at play yesterday. She is all arms and legs and reminds me of my granddaughter, Emma.

At about 5 a.m. this morning the mom comes out in her nighty and takes each chicken out of the nighttime basket, ties a string to each ones leg, attached to a little wooden outhouse at the other end, and lets it go.

Then she gets the knife from the house and chops off bits of wood to start the charcoal cooking fire. She moves the charcoal cooker away from the house, starts the fire which smokes and blazes, and while that happens she gathers her buckets and goes to get the family water for the day.

Returning, she moves the stove closer to the house, gets the rice to pick through and throw up to get chaff out, puts the rice for breakfast on the charcoal. Then she puts on the same clothes she wore yesterday and begins the long job of watering the garden. Barefoot, a watering can in each hand she makes the trip down to the stream and back up for each row, taking about 45 minutes. Time to notice how everything is growing, listen to the birds, enjoy her own thoughts.

By now the rice is cooked and the rest of the family is starting to be seen brushing teeth outside, washing feet, getting to the outhouse, carrying a bucket to the shower room. I presume she will go to work and the family will go off to school etc, and I will see them again at the end of the day as they collect their little shopping bag and go off to buy some rice to go with their vegetables for supper. Then they’ll sit out together and just watch the goings on around them as the sun sets, and they enjoy an evening meal before bed.

I don’t know what appeals to me so much about all that? Maybe it’s the physical activity, or the peaceful surroundings, close to nature. Maybe its the existence of all the people who share the community space and who let kids play around their house, not worrying about who’s kids they are or when they’ll go home. It reminds me a bit of my youth, where all kids were on the street playing from dawn to dusk, reluctantly going home for lunch and supper.

Here there are still babies crying and kid’s voices, mingled with rooster crows and some singing somewhere, probably a smell from the outhouse etc., but life seems to have meaning and one is not alone, but surrounded by others going about their business and greeting each other. A couple of men sit down on the bank for a chat….an older sister puts two hands on her younger sister’s shoulder as they have to pass a barking dog behind a fence. Another young girl sits braiding her sister’s hair. There is human touch, security, sharing, just being, without judgement or criticism. I just love it.

Compare it to home, empying the dishwasher, putting on the coffee pot, pouring cereal or putting toast in the toaster…..somehow it doesn’t seem that we have earned the enjoyment of eating?  I don’t know?  Is it just too simple, too cheap, too easy, too expected, so that when there is a problem, like no bread in the house we feel put out instead of relishing in the abundance and rich flavours and sensations all around?

Problems here are big, deal with survival, but the people do what they can and leave the rest to God, knowing that death is always a possibility and so life is so much the richer.

At home I spend part of my day impatient with the line at the bank, worried about whether our car needs major work, fussing about our heating bills, etc etc. Seems that try as I might, many more negative thoughts enter my mind in Canada than when I am living here. Too many choices…too many advertisements, too much to think about! Maybe it’s because I’m still part tourist, on-looker, able to do some helping here?

In any case…it is a wonderful change and makes me feel like I take away more from this experience than I give.

Kathy

The community behind the hospital