Antananarivo Madagascar!

We've just returned from Madagascar!  We traveled with Elder & Sister Eppel, who will soon leave the office and become the Johannesburg Temple President & Matron.  We will really miss them.

So Mada (as the locals call it) was quite an experience.  It’s a third world country side by side with the modern world.  It was like stepping back into biblical times in many ways.  I took most of these photos from the back seat of the car.  Not too bad!! :)

Stick stores out the front window

Streets were lined as tight as you could pack them with vendors in rickety stick or wood plank stores that I could have built, standing on the red dirt and crumbled stones. 

Bundles of garlic and folds of fabric.

Hanging from the store fronts were all kinds of things for sale...old parts from old stuff; lots of meat of all kinds like chickens hanging by their heads, cow hooves etc;  lots of produce; used shoes dangling on strings from the roof edge & clothing that should have gone to the poor but never made it past the vendors.  

Notice all the chickens hanging by their heads

Sugar cane for sale on a cane 

Yes! We have more bananas!

Driving was very slow because the road was shared by not only vehicles but many bare foot or sandal footed pedestrians, rickshaws, young men pulling hand carts loaded with anything you can imagine, cows (zebu) pulling carts, motorcycles etc...just so crowded and very very slow moving.  There are no traffic lines on the road and no traffic lights. 

From the farm to the market

Where's the beef!

We saw a huge rock quarry where 100's and 100's of people, even children, were hammering away making gravel.  Hand made gravel!  They would load it by hand onto trucks that would haul it off.  There were so many brick fields, each with it's own little smoking brick oven where the bricks were being fired.  Men, women, children were digging in the red dirt to make bricks & men carried the bricks away via a stack of them on their head.  Most homes do not have electricity or running water.  They are made of wood planks or the nicer homes are made of mud walls...mud, manure, eggs & milk". 

mud walled homes

Neighborhood by the rice paddies.

 The dirty brown rivers were lined with women doing their wash and then laying the clothes all over the ground (often it was dirt) or bushes to dry.  Women then carried the tub full of wash on their heads to their home.  There is so much to tell...I haven't really had time to process it all in my mind.   90% of the population live on less than $2.50 per day. We withdrew the equivalent of $90 in cash from an ATM and received 200,000 Ariarys (local currency). 

Something cute I wish I could have gotten a picture of was a couple little children shuffling a stick down the street with a flattened curved water bottle on the end of it.  They were probably imaging themselves to be great hockey players. :)

Wash day at the river

A most unusual Mada tradition that we saw happening as we drove past was a celebration called “cleaning the bones”!  They dig up the ancestors every 5 to 7 years and re-wrap the bones in a shroud for reburial.  On the coast they actually clean the bones in the sea water!  There is a feast and music and dancing.

One thing really fun we did is go to a Lemur Forest where 9 different varieties live free and unfenced.  (They stick around because they are fed.)  We got some awesome photos.  They aren't afraid of people so they come right up to you - but they bite if you try to pet them so no holding those soft furry critters.  Chris says  "I can honestly say I was leapt on by a leaping lemur that leapt from a limb with leaves and landed lopsidedly on my languid limb (arm) without leaves."  Ha ha…yes, he was briefly leapt on by a lemur.

Our audits in the Manakambahiny & Ivandry stakes went really well. We also trained a new assistant area auditor whose name is Solofanirainy Fanambinantsoa Randrianirinaniarivo.  Thankfully he lets us call his Nambinina.  The people are wonderful and gentle.  They are small Asian looking people ...actually they look Filipino. 

Back row is Elder Spears & Elder Bates.
They translated for us in sacrament meeting.

In the Manakambahiny ward where we went to church, we had the Elders & a couple others translate for us from the Malagasy.  Elder Spear from Pennsylvania translated for Chris & myself.  Man, what a great young man.  He had light in his countenance.  I sat by Sister Adams, the mission presidents wife, & she asked Elder Spear if he had felt any homesickness.  He replied that when he felt homesickness he relied on Alma 32 where it says that "even if ye can do no more than desire to believe, let this desire work within you".  He said he trusted that even if he could do no more than desire to love his mission, he would let that work within him & it worked and he loves his mission.  I was so inspired by his comment.

Palace of an ancient king

Notice the stone to the left.  We saw several of these stones,
used to roll across passageways,
much like the stone rolled across the Saviors tomb. 

Our work is picking up and very busy now.  Chris & I have decided to take French lessons to prepare us for an upcoming trip.  French would have really helped us in Mada & will help us in many other places we will probably go.  Even though Madagascar speaks Malagasy, French is also known by most people.