Easter Lily
It is Easter season, and the volunteer Easter lilies are
blooming all around us. There are not a lot of flowers now towards the end of
the summer. So their gorgeous beauty is a welcome sight.
As I hurried to class on Tuesday afternoon about 4:00, it
started to rain. The closer I got to class the harder it rained. Half a dozen
students were in class waiting for me. The rest, another dozen or more, dripped
in by ones and twos. I had a final exam review prepared using PowerPoint, and
we started right in and finished just at 5:00. Outside the window it had been
raining steadily. Now the rain picked up to resemble a cloudburst. The driving,
heavy rain continued for the next hour. I sat in the classroom for that hour,
not wanting to walk a kilometer home with my computer on my back in that
downpour.
Several students were sitting around waiting for the rain to
let up, too. A student, not from that class, whom I’ll call Marc, walked in. He
spoke English much better than any students of my class. He asked if he could
talk with me, and I readily agreed. I recognized immediately that he had an
agenda but said nothing. I listened to him go on for twenty-five or thirty
minutes and said nothing except just enough to keep him talking. Three other
students pulled up chairs close to us, but Marc did all the talking. He thanked
me for coming to Madagascar to teach them. He wished I would stay until the end
of the year. Then he remarked about my going home and knowing a lot of people
in America. He kept hinting that all these people would have plenty of money.
Marc pointed out how there were many students who had no
money. Yes, there were scholarships available, but if a student had, by no
fault of his own, failed a class, then he wasn’t eligible for the scholarship.
He finally began to be specific about himself. If he failed a class, the
university might require him to stay a fourth year. (A bachelor’s degree at U.
A. Z. is a three year program, like the universities in Europe, rather than
four years like in the U.S.) He felt that was eminently unfair, but he wanted a
degree. I mentioned that he might look for a job and earn some money he needed.
He parried by insisting there was nowhere that he could work. I suggested that
he speak with the president or the treasurer or the dean or the man in charge
of plant maintenance. He immediately indicated that there is money available,
but that it came with conditions, with strings attached. He needed money with
no conditions. I and the other students still listening to him laughed heartily,
and I asked him if there was anybody on earth who would give money away free
and with no strings attached.
His request that I could do something for him became more
pointed. He was sure that I would like to see him finish his program and would
be willing to talk to my friends to see if they could help him. He also was
sure that I could help him.
I laughed sympathetically with him and said, “Let me tell
you about my experience. I had no support in university, so I worked between 30
and 35 hours a week to pay my school fees. It took me five-and-a-half years to
earn my bachelor’s degree because I had to work so much. I feel that my
education was worth every effort I put into it. This is why I suggested that
you earn your way through university.”
Marc was momentarily stunned. He had set a trap for himself
and fallen right into it. True Malagasy style, this didn’t stop his talking. He
went right on with all sorts of reasons that he thought would justify his
receiving money. If there is anything I have learned while in Madagascar it is
that no self-respecting person will say something in ten words if he can say it
in a thousand. Just calling for the morning offering in church literally takes
at least ten minutes.
By this time it was six o’clock. The downpour had settled
back to a steady rain. A woman whom I hadn’t seen before stuck her head into
the classroom and asked, in Malagasy, that we leave so she could lock up the
building. The students with me told me what she had said. We were all ready for
a change of venue and conversation. They headed on out to the highway and their
rooms. I headed back up the kilometer long hill. I had a student walking with
me who shared my umbrella for a couple hundred meters (yards).
As I write this the neighbors’ pretty little white terrier,
Pato, [pronounced pa-too] is howling forlornly. My guess is that she probably
weighs less than 10 pounds (4 kg). This is its standard behavior. Pato is
confined to a tiny little box outside the back door. Short of feeding it once
in a while, the neighbors ignore it completely. We are serenaded by poor Pato’s
loneliness. There is no animal rights group to appeal to. Most dogs simply run
loose. Most are so underfed that their ribs stick out and they are always
hungry. Confining Pato is perhaps the only humane thing to do because some large
dogs are severe bullies and appear to kill simply for the joy of killing.
I’ll call another neighbor’s dog Fido, since I don’t know
his name. My guess is that Fido is closer to 100 lb (40 kg). People have asked
his owner to restrain him, but he runs freely around the more than 400 ha (800
acres) of the campus.
When we arrived on campus in December, there was a female
stray that would come by Pam’s hoping for a handout. Pam is a pushover, and
Stray usually got something. She was obviously pregnant and very skinny. She
had her puppies a few weeks ago. Since she didn’t have regular food, she became
very gaunt. One day last week I came up to the kitchen to give the cook a
receipt so we could eat lunch in the cafeteria. I saw Stray carrying a puppy
around the side of the building and towards me. She lay the puppy down in the
sunshine to try and get it a little warmer. She licked the fellow all over to
clean him up. This was right between the kitchen door and farm produce door.
Poor Stray was so gaunt it was a wonder she could even stand up. Who knows how
much milk she was able to give the little fellow.
Stray Trying to Protect Her Puppy
The man from the farm came out and carried the puppy back to
where it had been staying. Dogs are an essential part of the community but are
despised and never treated as pets. Sylvia went around and found where they had
put the pup. She came back to me crying her heart out. All of the other puppies
had been killed, and this was the only one left. Pam heard about it, fetched
Sylvia, and the two of them took the puppy with Stray following around next to
Pam’s kitchen door and made them comfortable in a box that used to house
turtles. [Sylvia wrote about the cats earlier. Both are now missing and assumed
dead.] I took the picture of Stray protecting her last remaining puppy in the
box.
While we were down at Morondava for the weekend, the
Petersens heard a commotion outside their back door. Gideon went out and found
Fido leaving having killed the last puppy. He didn’t eat it, nor does he need
food. He just satisfied his bully streak. Stray was standing there, half Fido’s
height and staring forlornly at what was her last little piece of joy in a
harsh, uncaring world. It seems Fido still continues his reign of terror
unhindered.
On Wednesday morning, March 9, I sent out my second issue of
the FAMA Newsletter. I sent out 540
copies before the Internet bully, Google, stopped me without so much as an
“excuse me.” I then published a copy on this blog site. As usual I sent out a
notification on Facebook. Looking down my Facebook page briefly, I saw a
picture of my brother’s niece Cindy’s family. They were holding their third
little baby with everyone clustered around her. The baby had been in NICU for
three-weeks with a defective heart and other troubles, and just hours before I
got online, the baby finally gave up the struggle. Our last week here at UAZ
has turned out to be a sad one.
This last week is also the time we give our final exams. The
rest of the school gives theirs next week. Since we fly out of Tana on Monday,
the day before our visa expires, we gave our exams early. I taught only oral
English classes. So I spent from 5 to 10 minutes with each of 52 students. Each
one made a one to two minute presentation telling me about either her family or
her education to date. Some were good; most were interesting. And then there
were those that went something like this:
“My fadder’s name is Ravaoharimiaina, and my mudder’s name
is Razafimanana. I have two brudders and tree sisters. One brudder’s name is
Mahatolimiairina and de udder brudder is Ninjananamaminy…” Unfortunately they
mumble and murder each name, because they don’t usually pronounce the whole
name. They might just use the first three syllables, or the middle two
syllables, or some other concoction. Somehow a student in this group didn’t
seem to make as good a grade as some of the others.
Most of the students come from “a small family wid 2 brudder
and 1 sister.” “My family is not poor, but nieder are we rich.” They don’t have
federal grants for education here, so the very poor cannot go to university.
The nation is one of the poorest in the world, as are many former French
colonies, like Haiti. In stark contrast, many of the former British colonies
are very well off, like the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, South Africa, Nigeria,
Ghana, India, Hong Kong, Kenya, and the list goes on and on.
Taxi-Brousse, Motor Cycle, and Hand Drawn Carts
Many students’ parents came from larger families, so they
had 12 uncles and 14 aunts. Most had parents who lived in the cities and towns
and were teachers, lawyers, vendors, doctors, pastors, nurses, and the like. They
came from all over Madagascar. As we’ve discovered personally, travel in Mada
is very difficult and time consuming. To get to the university, students often
travel for days and nights in over-crowded taxi-brousses.
These are small busses designed to seat 8 to 12 people but crowded beyond
belief with people, animals, and luggage. They sit in each other’s laps, on
boards set between seats, and even hang out the back doors. Notice that in the
picture the back door is ajar. The “conductor” stands there to pull people in
as they try to board the taxi while it is still moving, as well as to collect the
fare.
We ate our last meal in the cafeteria on Monday when both
Sylvia and I were giving exams. I broke down and took a picture this time. The
pile of rice in the center is scooped onto the tray by a large soup bowl. The
rice is well cooked and free of all flavoring, including salt. The salad on the
left is a sliced local squash and a piece of tomato. The relish at the top is
what I used to call cow peas as a kid. The relish on the right is a mixture of
local greens and potatoes. Both relishes are slightly over salted so that when
they are combined with the rice, the combination is very palatable. They also
serve a drink. This is usually the water used to soak out the burned part at
the bottom of the pot where they cook the rice with some fruity flavor added.
By the way, as a Malagasy you eat with the spoon and use the fork to push food
onto your spoon.
Typical Cafeteria Meal
On Thursday, March 5, I completed my last duties at the
university. At 7:30 in the morning I told the story of my conversion to
Christianity. I have added my notes of what I planned to say at worship. I
simplified what I said considerably because it was being translated into
Malagasy, and the volunteer translator initially had a difficult time with what
I was saying. Later that morning I emailed my grades and some of Sylvia’s
grades into the registrar’s office. Finally at 4:00 p.m., I gave approximately
three-quarters of an hour presentation on academic cheating and ways to
minimize it to an academic policies committee. I noticed from their minutes
that they had discussed several cases of cheating during their previous
meeting. They also had me give the morning devotional to the Language
Department on Monday morning. After those two devotionals, they’ll probably be
happy to see me go.
Notes for my Thursday
devotional:
My Christian Experience
I am a 4th generation Adventist. Great Uncle Joe
was sent by Ellen White as a missionary to the freed slaves in the south part
of the United States.
I attended Adventist schools from standard 1 through Andrews
University. I learned a lot of Adventist faith, doctrines and way of life. I
had been taught that we must live a perfect, sinless life now because in the
Time of Trouble we will continue to live the same way without an intercessor.
I was taught that there is no sacrifice for someone who sins
willfully.
I had sinned willfully more times than I could count.
Therefore my teachers assured me that Christ’s sacrifice would not cleanse me
and I was damned to eternal hell. I was very well versed in Scripture, and I
knew they were quoting scripture correctly. I accepted that indeed I was damned
to hell, and there was no alternative.
When I was 20 I attended Seminar Marienhöhe in Germany to
learn German. I knew absolutely no German when we got there. And all I heard in
the dorm, in the cafeteria, in church, and in the classroom was German, which I
didn’t understand. In the process I became very depressed when I could
understand nothing.
About a kilometer down the hill from the school was an
American military base, and I walked down to it every Sunday morning and
attended church on base just to hear English spoken. I joined their choir and
made a number of very good friends. A Pentecostal soldier took special interest
in me. When he learned with horror that I was an Adventist, he warned me
strongly to get out of the Adventist church.
Always ready for a good argument, I enjoyed arguing with
him. But my heart was not in it. After all, I wasn’t really an Adventist; I had
been an Adventist, but I was now on a direct route to hellfire. He read me the
texts about how the law was nailed to the cross. I had learned my lessons well
and countered that the Ten Commandments were not included in that verse.
Every time I saw him, he would quote Romans 10: 9. If we
confess with our mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and if we believe in our heart
that God raised him from the dead, we would be saved. He would keep telling me
that my salvation had nothing to do with keeping the law. It had everything to
do with believing that Jesus had died for me and that he had risen from the
dead.
I searched my Bible carefully. It became more and more
evident that this young soldier was 100% right and that the interpretation I
had accepted was flawed. Finally I had to agree with him, and I accepted Christ
and his sacrifice as the only way I could be saved. So I was baptized as an
Adventist when I was 12 and became a Christian when I was 20! Those verses that
had troubled me are true, but Christ’s grace saved me just as much as it saved
David in his sin with Bathsheba.
For the next ten years I studied Adventism all over again. I
read every book Ellen White had written. I read the Bible in several versions
and several languages.
If you haven’t done it yet, I challenge you to study for
yourself everything you can find about God’s grace and his marvelous,
unbelievable love for you. I guarantee it will change your life, forever. Put
aside everything you have learned about our doctrines and teachings and do what
all the early Adventist pioneers did: study the Bible for yourself. Find out
exactly what it says about faith, grace and, love. Every time before you open
the Bible or Ellen White, quote James 1:5 in a prayer to God for wisdom, and He
will give it to you. Your eternal happiness and very salvation depend only on
your relationship to Christ.
#MADAGASCAR, #UAZ, #MALAGASY, #PREACHING, #RICE, #PLANETS, #EATINGOUT, #DOGABUSE, #PETABUSE, #GRACE, #TRANSLATION,
#SALVATIONBYWORKS, #CHEATING, #TAXI, #TAXI-BROUSSE, #LILY, #EASTERLILY
