Sojourn to Madagascar - Part 9 - Potluck and Farm

Sojourn to Madagascar Part 9 Potluck and Farm

Sylvia Arriving at the Potluck

The Language Department organized a “Potluck” on Sunday afternoon, the 17^th of January. The students each paid 2,000 Ar. to attend and brought their own rice, plate, cup, and spoon and fork. All the chairs were placed around the edge of the largest classroom in the Technology building.

Potluck

Several tables were placed down the center of the room where the food was placed. A large pot contained curried chicken (the school cafeteria serves only strictly vegetarian food, so this was a great attraction) and curried vegetables. They also served a delicious drink made from the many passion fruit that Dr. Prity Bairagee and her husband grew in their garden. Sweet cut up mangos served as dessert. Students and several of the Language Department faculty had spent Saturday night and all Sunday morning preparing and cooking for this event.

The Bairagees, Pam, Danielle, and Anitha

After everyone had eaten their fill, they moved the tables into a tight square. Then they turned the music up to the pain threshold and started some traditional dancing. It is more like line dancing than anything else, and they really got into it. I took short movies of two of these dances before I went home to take a nap.

Malagasy Dance

In the late afternoon we joined Pam for a walk down the north side of campus through the farm. They have four milk cows that they keep permanently tied in their milking stalls. Their hooves have grown to the point it must be painful for them to stand on. Past the milk barn we came to the chicken farm. Their chickens are all kept in the egg batteries. The place was at least clean, unlike the cows having to stand in their own manure. Sylvia figured there must be a gross of chickens in this battery. I opened the door and walked into to see how the chickens were faring. (Pam & Sylvia were ahead and at the other end of the building by then.)

They Lay Very Hard-shelled Brown Eggs

A cat snuck into the building behind me and then dashed up onto the rafters overhead. The fowls seemed to take my presence in stride, but when they saw the cat, they about went berserk. I figured it might actually be a threat. It took me a while to catch it. When I did, it submitted calmly to my picking it up by the scruff of its neck and gently carrying it outside. As soon as it was put down, it immediately resumed its superior air and stalked away haughtily. I had taken the precaution of securing the door before putting it down.

Cat in the Hen Coop

On past the farm is a group of buildings owned by the university called the bungalows. They are wooden buildings (all other permanent buildings on camps are made of baked mud bricks). Girls stay in these rooms for a cheaper price than the dorm. They put them 8 to a room with not even any wardrobe space.

Bungalows

Further on we walked by an orphanage run by a woman in the states. She demands that they support each child on a dollar a day. This is impossible even in Madagascar. The stand-off is hardest on the orphans.

Orphanage

We walked back up to the university behind the women’s dorm, a little over a half-mile east of our home. We saw a soccer field that a former school administrator had carved out of the hillside below our tennis court. He did it without committee action. It was all done by shoveling out the hillside by hand. Since it is on the hillside, it needed a rock facing to keep it from being washed out severely by the frequent heavy rains during the rainy season. Out of money, the administrator went to the finance committee to seek funds to finish facing it. The committee turned him down, undoubtedly some dirty politics at play, though I have no evidence for it. With only a half height wall, the field, which I think is actually a good idea, is now seriously eroded and probably beyond repair. The shunned administrator tried to raise money to finish by making bricks out of the same hillside. Unfortunately the mud is of inferior brick-making quality, so he was unable to dispose of them. So the bricks are piled in untidy heaps over much of the field. The administrator is, I assume, long gone; his boondoggle remains as a shouting mute witness.

Would-be Football Field—Leveled Off Entirely by Pick and Shovel

On Monday I went to chapel as they like us faculty to do. When I discovered it was going to be something in French, I almost got up and left. But I didn’t see how I could do so without making a scene, so I stayed. Dina came over and sat next to me to translate for me. I’m amazed how they always get someone to do a running translation whenever I show up for worship or chapel or church. Since these are mostly students, their knowledge of English is necessarily limited; furthermore, a continuous translation is almost impossible for everyone, even experts, so one typically gets less than 50% of what happens. Nevertheless, it does relieve the tedium and gives one an idea at least of what is going on. They had a cultural “Jeopardy” kind of quiz with three or four different possible answers for each question. Since the questions, written in French, were projected on the front wall of the church, I had essentially no trouble reading most of them faster than Dina could translate them for me. I got better than 50% of the answers correct before the translator had finished translated them. She was utterly amazed at my accuracy and kept asking me, “Are you sure you don’t speak French?”

A teacher asked me to substitute-teach a three hour English class for her. She gave me the animated movie The Prince of Egypt to show the students and try and help them to comprehend the English used in it. They have four overhead projectors for teacher use. I got the one with the weakest lamp and poor sound. Two different teachers loaned me speakers, none of which were really loud enough for the size group I had. We couldn’t see the video because the windows had no way of shutting out the light. I finally commandeered the largest monitor in the lab, cut the security tie restraining it, and used it as one monitor and the laptop monitor as a second one. This worked better than anything else I had tried. The students seemed to understand what was going on. I stopped it three or four times and discussed what was happening.

In Sabbath School on the 30^th of January the English group spent considerable time talking about the story of David and Bathsheba. After the usual condemnation of David’s adultery, they started to move on. I raised my hand and pointed out that at the end of David’s life he was still living with Bathsheba, and asked, “Will he be saved at the last judgment?” Silence reigned. Finally the discussion turned to David being called a man after God’s own heart. He is listed amongst the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11. He did indeed repent but continued to live with her. So the consensus seemed to be that he would be saved in the end. I then mentioned that this is an example of God’s tremendous grace. There are sins that plague each of us, and no matter how we try, they remain with us to the end. But God’s grace is the instrument that saves us in spite of our sinfulness, imperfection, and weakness. I find that Adventists have been very reticent to acknowledge and accept God’s grace. We try to perfect our own lives and then get depressed when we can’t do it. Ours is still a do-it-yourself kind of salvation—which, in the end, is futile.

These English Sabbath School lessons are usually taught by final year theology students. The particular student we had started talking about Eliye. None of us knew who he was talking about. Finally it dawned on me that he was talking about Elijah. I mentioned this to him and told him that no one knew who he was talking about because he was using a Malagasy name for him. He answered by saying, “Yes, I am talking about Eliye.” He never did try and pronounce the name in English. I couldn’t help laughing at him, poor chap!

At the end of the lesson I addressed the half-dozen or so theology students who attend the English class. I pointed out that the great leaders in God’s work throughout the ages, such as Moses, Daniel, Paul, and Isaiah have been highly educated, God-fearing people. Furthermore, they are becoming the educated, God-fearing leaders in our church in Madagascar. They should keep themselves so connected with God that He can use them like he did Elijah of old to reform the Madagascar church when God decides to do so.

Sylvia has found that it takes her at least twice as long to fix a meal here in Mada because she has to prepare everything from scratch. So it was after 2:00 p.m. when we sat down to eat potato-salad that I had made several days previously, green beans fixed the way I like them with tomatoes, onions, and a bit of Italian seasoning, and a ratatouille from eggplant, onion, green pepper, and tomatoes.

Last Week’s Groceries

We make a list of market produce and Pam gets a student to go to the market in Antsirabe on Friday and purchase for us. I include a picture of what we got this past week for about 22,000Ar. ($7). She is young and not very careful about the quality of produce she picks. So some of it has to be used immediately or simply discarded. You might find the papaya (pawpaw in South Africa) hard to recognize.

Sad Papaya

Saturday evening we went over to the Faculty Lounge and spent about a half hour chatting with Joy and Rodney Wright using Skype. We found that we would have a perfectly clear conversation, and then suddenly it would go silent. After 20 seconds or so it would transmit perfectly clearly again and repeat the performance. This is apparently characteristic of our Internet. It is most annoying. Eventually the lights went out and took the Internet with them, of course. We went home. Later the lights came on long enough for Sylvia to fix a lovely fruit salad for supper. Before we sat down to eat, Pam stopped by and mentioned we hadn’t turned the light out in the F.L. I confessed that indeed they were out when we left but not because I had turned them off.

I walked back down, put the key in the lock and opened the door. The lights were off. I did a double take, then walked back outside—sure enough all of the campus lights had gone off during the act of opening the door. I switched the switch off, locked the door, and walked home. We ate supper by the light of the Wacka-Wacka we have. They didn’t come back on until about 10:00 a.m. on Sunday. We were delighted that Mr. Palaya, a missionary from the Philippines, had dropped off a great big old truck battery earlier that evening so Sylvia could use her C-PAP to sleep that night.