Madagascar School Project Blog

It is September 9th and I am enjoying two weeks in Antsirabe, Madagascar, about 5 hours by taxi brousse south of the capital city of Antananarivo, where I am studying to learn how to communicate in Malagasy.

My time has been very interesting and diverse here, as my wonderful language teacher, Fanja, gave birth, before term, to her fifth child and only daughter. On only the second day of my language lessons she called me to say that she was in labour at the hospital and so would have to postpone our language lesson for the day from 8 am to sometime in the afternoon!!! I told her she was crazy to be thinking about her teaching at a time like this, but she insisted that I come in and get the lessons she had prepared for me.

Picture, if you will, our maternity wards, and now remove from your mind’s eye, the nursery, baby bottles, incubators, diapers, cribs, baby baths, buzzers by the bed, and what you have left is a room with a bathroom and a bed. This is a private hospital, so it is somewhat more luxurious than most. Here you have your own bathroom, with toilet paper and sheets!

Everything that you need while in hospital has to be provided by the family, including someone to look after you, morning and night, as the nurses are there to assist in surgeries, and the orderlies to carry patients (usually in sheets, as there are no stretchers or elevators) and clean the room. No meals are provided and no medications brought around. If you need medication, your helper or family member must go to the pharmacy and buy it for you. There is no nursery so the baby sleeps and stays always with the mother, (no cribs anywhere). No one shows the new mother how to bathe her baby or help her get started breast feeding.

As I was available and wanted to learn the language, I was quickly given the role of being Fanja’s in hospital day helper. So the next two days were spent walking, rocking, changing and generally caring for a beautiful newborn baby girl, “Nariko”. It was a lovely job and enjoyed it thoroughly.

My first morning on the job proved challenging as mother was operated on, as she wanted this to be her last child. The baby had nursed at 7:30 am and then had to wait until noon to eat again as her mother was put under general anesthetic, and there are no baby bottles to be had in this city! Singing, rocking and pacing around the room with a screaming infant and a mother who was delirious as she came out of the anasthetic (no recovery rooms either), was interesting. Fanja kept calling for the doctor, and saying that the baby was hungry, (I won’t easily forget those words), and finally, in desperation, I put the infant to the sleeping mother’s breast. Wonder of wonders – it worked! Peace reigned again in our little room.

Soon after the baby was quietened and back to sleep, I was able to convince Fanja, that the operation was over, the baby and she were well, and she could just rest and sleep. The broken record recording at that point changed from “Doctor” and “baby hungry” to “Praise God its over!” Then Dad arrived with food and hot water in a thermos, as well as a blanket for Mom and diapers for baby. All was uphill after that. I took pictures of the baby, which thrilled the parents, as they have no pictures at all of their other four children.

Ansirabe is a place where many foreigners who are planning to work in Madagascar come to learn the language. I was given the name of a woman who had an inexpensive room where I could stay. Well, what a happy surprise it was when I landed to find out that it is on a small farm and retreat centre! Betty, a 74 year old Swiss woman, started this place about 9 years ago, with the help of a Christian group  in Switzerland. She has built a house for herself and guests, and a very large building that can house 200 people for groups to gather for seminars, workshops, music camps etc.

Having never had a family of her own, Betty has made hospitality to others her life. Her dinner table resembles the United Nations, with all ages and colours and she casually switches from Malagasy to Swiss/German and then to English or French, only occasionally making a mistake and addressing someone in the wrong language. You can always get a meal at Betty’s, the meal will always begin with grace, and the door is always open. This is the only time since I have been in Madagascar that I haven’t had to carry around a set of keys and unlock every room that I want to enter. I pay $7.14 CAD a night and get a private bedroom, desk, three meals a day, and a bicycle any time I want it! How does she do it? Well, she has 4 cows that she milks and with the help of some fourteen Malagasy people she has employed, makes her own butter, yogurt, cream, and cheese. She makes all her own bread and jam, collects leaves for tea and herbal remedies, uses solar heating for water and some cooking. She also raises chickens and rabbits. It is very hard to find her sitting for more than 10 minutes at a time. By providing her facilities at such a wonderful rate, she has been able to provide the opportunity for thousands of children to come to camp for a week.

Many of the things that Betty does here to make comfort affordable, are things that I think we, at the Madagascar School Project, could do at our sites. For instance, she has an ingenious way of allowing many children to wash their hands at once. A long metal pipe, with small holes drilled in the underside, at an angle, over a cement waist-high trough, with a tap to allow the water to flow from a container, down its length and drip in many different places, allows about 50 children to wash their hands or brush their teeth all at once. Since I am not in the main house and therefore don’t have access to the water heated by the solar heaters, I was given a big, black, rubber bag which I half fill with water in the morning and leave in the hot sun. The next morning, I have my own hot (a gross exaggeration perhaps, but warmish), water to shower in. The best thing about this place is the kindness of the people, many have suffered greatly in their own lives, and are set on making life as pleasant as possible for everyone they meet.

- Kathy