Sojourn to Madagascar Part 05 - Year End

Sojourn to Madagascar Part 5

Year End

While we were at Domaine Saint Francois (DSF), we asked the manager, Fanja, Parany’s sister, what the purpose of the institute is. A large poster explaining their operations hung on the wall, but all of the writing on it was in Malagasy which is still as mysterious as ever to me. DSF is financed mainly by lay people in France. It takes 20 destitute families in Tana each year into the institute. They test them for eligibility and aptitude. As soon as they are admitted into the program, then both parents must work full time for DSF for a year. During this time they are intensively trained with classes for parents and schooling for the children.

DSF Mission

The second year these families learn and practice farming on the DSF campus. If they pass these two years, they are provided with a brand new home in a remote area about 200 km (125 miles) west of Tana. They are financially set up for farming and housekeeping for the full year. They can use the proceeds of this third year to finance themselves for subsequent years. The Catholic Church gains 20 new self-supporting families in a region that is semi arid and has no one living in it. The families develop a loyalty to the church and have the drive and capability for independence, living on their own and becoming responsible members of the community.

DSF has very nice rooms that they rent out to people like us to help raise funds for their program. Fanja thanked us personally for our support for their program. She is 10 years older than Parany. I guess she is in her forties. The institute has a small dairy where the cows are still milked by hand. They have a model garden with a variety of vegetables and fruit and not a weed. Lovely warblers and some flashy red birds graced the garden.

We were told when we checked in at DSF that there was an American woman from California who was staying there. She was quite sick and hadn’t eaten anything for several days. I wondered if that were a tummy bug that she got as a result of eating the food served at DSF. When we got to supper, our first meal in the institute’s dining room, she showed up and sat at a nearby table. We invited her over to sit with us, and she complied weakly.

She looked to be in her sixties and rather frail. They brought her a salad plate before they brought any of our food. I suggested that we could pause in the conversation if she wanted to say grace. She demurred by saying lightly,” Oh it’s all right. I’m sure he understands,” and she pointed vaguely upwards.

She had flown down to Toliara, a coastal city south west of Tana. There she had spent a few days then joined a tour that was coming back to Tana over land. The group spoke about a certain mountain that was very interesting, and she joined the group to tour it. When the group started up the slopes of the mountain, she went along. Apparently the group didn’t speak English, so there was a major lack in communication. She said, “If I had known they were going to the top, I wouldn’t have gone!”

However, as they climbed higher and higher, she said she felt as though she was going to die. Finally she made it to the top with them. From the symptoms she described, I’m sure she was suffering from heat stroke. Her symptoms sounded very like mine did when I had a stroke as a teenager from working all day in the tropical sun outside of Bulawayo in the tropics in what is now Zimbabwe.

We eventually introduced ourselves. She told us that she is Dr. Diana Prince, with emphasis on the Dr., from San Diego. She has published a number of books and is working on a travel book, Adventure on Planet Earth. She toured much of Southern Africa a while back and now is working on her last two chapters on this trip—Namibia and Mada. She planned to fly out of Tana for home before the new year.

While we were talking about everything, our food arrived. The other eight of us at the table stopped for grace before starting to eat. She then apologized for not praying, but it was obvious that it was not her custom. From her conversation I concluded that at best she is a skeptic.

At one point I mentioned that something we had seen was so old it must have come out of Noah’s Ark. Her eyes lit up, and she told us that four years ago she had published, through Amazon, a book called A View from the Ark. In it she reports on a find on a mountain called something like Chudy or Judy in Turkey about 2 miles (3 km) from the Iranian border. A structure has been pushed up partially out of the ground that has the exact measurements of Noah’s Ark in Genesis. Some device something like an ultrasound has revealed compartments in the structure. The mountain is within sight of Ararat so fits the Genesis account well. She has written another book on Mary Magdalene which follows her travels including her sojourn in a cave in France. I think she says she has published about 12 books.

We saw Diana at breakfast the next morning. The food and sleep seemed to have revived her considerably. I may have to revise my estimate of her age downward to upper 50s or close to 60. I asked her if she had family that she notified about her being so ill. She indicated that she has friends who were shocked about where she went. I took it that she is single and may have been single all her life.

I had told the group about my experience on a two-night-three-day bus ride from Ikizu to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in about 1967. The bus stopped away out in the plains so that people could get out and take care of their biological needs. The group all filed out and formed a large circle on the open plain and relieved themselves. I was too self conscious or too proud to do so. A couple hours later I need to go so badly I was almost blowing bubbles. When the bus finally stopped at another barren spot like this, I joined the circle! I asked them why they stopped in such an open area where there was nothing to provide privacy. They were afraid of snakes and lions. In an open area they didn’t have to worry about these dangers. Privacy is highly overrated anyway. After I told him this, Gideon called stopping in the bush to relieve ourselves “going to Tanzania.”

On our way back from Andasibe National Park, we took things a little easier. We stopped at a couple of the falls and took some pictures and “visited Tanzania”. Some of these beautiful spots were on a steep climb from about 3,340 to 5,570 feet in altitude according to my watch, which measures altitude by sensing barometric pressure. It is seldom accurate about the altitude of a spot unless it has been recently set. It is, however, reasonably accurate when measuring the change in altitude. So the road went up some 2,240 feet (680 m).

While we were eating breakfast in the Parany’s unit at the Hotel Le Guayave, their five year old Valerie sat next to me. She is a sweet little girl who speaks a fair amount of English and is both well trained and well behaved. She sat looking wonderingly at my naked forearm. Finally she looked into my face and saw that I was amused by her interest. I nodded approval, and she gently touched the hair on my arm. Satisfied, she removed her hand and continued eating. Here the people’s arms are hairless as if they had been waxed. Mine, on the other hand, are closely akin to those of Esau. Obviously in their eyes I am proof positive that at least my race descended from apes.

On our way home from Andasibe, just before entering the terribly narrow streets of Manjakandriana, we turned south on an unmarked dirt road that leads to Mantesoa, the site of a large man-made lake created to help in the generation of electricity. It was built in the 1930s and called the Reservoir de Mantasoa. An English couple who used to work for the Scripture Union, an international missionary organization, has lived there for 21 years now. They are Martin and Mary Barb (spelling?). He has built a large campus for the Scripture Union. On the other side of one arm of the lake he has built several lovely rooms with space to house various conventions or for people to rent for rest and relaxation. His buildings are very carefully built to his exacting standards and completely finished, unlike anything at UAZ or other places we have stayed in Madagascar. They are built almost exclusively of local material so are not very expensive.

Main Building on Scripture Union Campus. Martin at the door

Mary has set up a factory staffed with the local people who produce handicrafts, also to exacting standards, like homemade shopping bags which she ships to England where they are sold in the better class of shops for very good prices. Martin says they have twice yearly furloughs back to visit their relatives in England. This has, I’m sure, benefited their finding ways to market their handicrafts and earn hard currency.

Vadette in Mary’s factory

Peter and Vadette Delhove run ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Agency) in Madagascar. He and his wife were staying in one of the “homes” Martin has built right at the edge of the high water mark of the reservoir. The water level was way down because of a severe drought they have had over the past couple years. Peter remarked that the water had come up several meters in the last couple days, so I think the rains are helping solve their problem. Delhoves find it very restful to take the two hour drive out from Tana and spend a weekend there. Peter claims he does it in an hour. It took LaLane almost an hour to drive from the Scripture Union campus back to the tar road. LaLane handles the nasty traffic in Tana much better than he handles rough dirt roads.

Martin’s latest “Home” L to R: Peter, Gideon, Pam, Sylvia’s back, Vadette

We stopped short of DSF, and Harimalala got 3 pizzas—two “grand” size vegetarian and one personal size with meat for LaLane. He was very happy. That evening we ate back in the DSF dining room. They made us boiled potatoes and a quiche. Harimalala had suspected that that wouldn’t be enough, so she purchased the Pizzas to supplement dinner. The dessert was pineapple slices as it had been two nights previously.

I got up about 5:30 Wednesday morning (December 30) and sat out in their outdoor dining area and wrote in my journal for about two hours. Breakfast was the same white bread, “chocolate” croissants (a big croissant with a minute dab of chocolate inside somewhere) and tea. This time, at our request, they brought Sylvia and me a couple eggs each.

After breakfast we packed up and were on the road by 9:30. Gideon phoned Mr. Manda, who lives in Tana, and found out a route that he reported was clear of traffic. We took it, but by the time we got there, it was stopped dead with traffic. It took us 3 hours to do 17 km. (10 miles)! At one intersection it took us ten minutes just to move one car length. I timed it. We bought a bunch of groceries at Shop Rite.

We sat at this intersection for about a half hour

Pam had been feeling quite sick for the previous two days and was feeling even worse by Wednesday. At the Seventh-day Adventist Indian Ocean Union Mission they have a medical clinic that is open 24/7 to help locals as well as workers and missionaries. This is where they have promised to take us if we get sick. We got there about 2:30 and found the place closed for the year and locked. I’m praying that we don’t get sick! Apparently the doctor on duty wanted to do some shopping before New Year’s Eve and simply went AWOL as did his whole staff! So much for 24/7! Pam went into the nearby dental clinic and found Hanitra who joined us in the car and guided us through a maze of streets to a Doctor Etienne (Steve in English). He felt Pam for a fever, chatted for 20 minutes or so, gave her a malaria shot, 4 more vials to be given at home over the next two days, an antibiotic, and some ibuprofen pills to keep the fever down. Pam was sure this had been a misdiagnosis because “there is no malaria at UAZ.” However, she started to feel much better by the next day. She figures she may have gotten it when they stayed overnight at the ADRA compound the time they picked us up at the airport. We’re taking our anti-malaria medicine faithfully!

Indian Ocean Union Mission Headquarters

Adventist Medical Clinic

Here people greet friends they haven’t seen for a while by leaning in towards each other and touching right cheek to right cheek, then they touch left cheeks, and finally touch right cheeks again. It is done with either sex and at times with people whom they have only recently met. I don’t know enough about when it is done it initiate myself.

On our way out of Tana we stopped at Jumbo Scores. It is a large department store something like Walmart or Target. There is one in Antsirabe, but it is much smaller, rather like the two other grocery stores in town. Sylvia had brought her electric curling iron from the States. When she plugged it in to the standard 220v, without thinking, there were a lot of popping noises. This brought her to her senses, and she unplugged it immediately. I don’t know whether she has ruined it or not. My guess is that the 110v she brought with her is no longer worth carrying back to the States to see if it works. Anyway, we found another one at Jumbo.

We left Tana in the hot late afternoon sunshine but quickly ran into heavy rain. The valleys that are carefully bisected into hundreds of rice paddies that are carefully supplied with enough water to keep about 6 inches of water in them while the rice grows were covered who knows how deep with the yellow-red water that had rushed off the surrounding hills in floods. The rivers came up almost to the bottom of the bridges. I felt really badly for the thousands of peasants who plant the rice as their only income for the year. They use a hand cultivating device that is a six or seven foot long steel rod with a handle at one end and two multiple star wheels, each placed one foot and two feet (30 and 60 cm) respectively from the other end. They run this up and down between the rows. Of course with everything flooded like it was, cultivation is also impossible. Fortunately the rivers went down as suddenly as they had come up. As I write this, two weeks later, we are again getting a lot of rain, so they may rise again.

Rice paddies from the road

We arrived home close to 7:30 p.m. in the dark. Short of a few chips and a couple pieces of broken bread, I ate nothing other than the white bread breakfast for the day. Much of the day had been spent in the terrible Tana traffic—no traffic lights and few if any traffic police.

#UAZ, #MADAGASCAR, #ANTANANARIVO, #SAINTFRANCOIS, #ZURCHERUNIV, #TRAFFIC, #RICEPADDY, #FLOOD, #TOLIARA, #NOAHFLOOD, #SCRIPTUREUNION, #ADRA, #MALARIA

Sojourn to Madagascar Part 04 -- Lemurs

Sojourn to Madagascar Part 4

Lemurs

Where I grew up the day after Christmas was also a holiday called Boxing Day. Every time I heard the term, I imagined guys with big, fat gloves try to punch the other guy in the nose. However, it apparently came from the idea that wealthy people would receive a horde of gifts from well meaning or favor seeking people. They would then box them up and pass them on to the poor and underprivileged. I have never witnessed this generous event; instead it was simply long lines of disgruntled recipients trying to cash in on the unwanted gifts at some store or other.

Our Boxing Day also just happened to be a Sabbath. Neither Sylvia nor I could stomach sitting in church for another 5 or 6 hours listening to long speeches in a language we could not even distinguish a single word, one translated by someone sitting two or three people away with a very unfamiliar accent whom I could barely hear. I could sense that the quality of translation varied considerably by the various people who did it. I am very aware of the problem of translating when the speaker pauses to give the translator time to do it. But running a continuing translation from a continuous speech is an almost impossible task. I have tried it many times, just to myself, to see if I could do it. So I have deep appreciation for anyone who tries.

In consequence we decided to go to the University Church connected with UAZ. Most of the service was done in French. I don’t understand spoken French although I can often make out the meaning of written French. The trouble with French is that it has a lot of English words in it, but they are pronounced extremely incomprehensibly. So it is a puzzle to understand and a puzzle I enjoy doing. We always had volunteers ready who would sit down and do their best to translate for us. I found that often I could supply a word that the translator was groping for.

Sylvia has more trouble with these translators. She often sits and writes her thoughts about the snatches she does catch from the translator or the French itself. She catches a lot of the French as well.

We attended the English Sabbath School lesson. Both the former president and the current president of UAZ were in attendance. Their theologies don’t quite match, especially on the position of “grace” in a Christian’s experience. So they were both very restrained in what they said. From a certain amount of inductive thinking, it appears to me that the former president had been slated to teach the lesson but at the last minute insisted that one of the female theology students do it. (They have several female theology students, but there is no way in the present local church policy that they can ever become a pastor in Mada.) From my glance at her quarterly, it was evident that she had studied only 20% of the lesson, so she stretched out that part for the whole time. The lesson tended to drag on account of that.

UAZ Church

They have a sermon between Sabbath School and church that used to be called lay activities years ago. This was done in Malagasy. Church had three women on the platform (no men), which is apparently very unusual at UAZ. There was another sermon for the offering. (I’ve found that this is standard for churches in Mada.) Finally they had the sermon of the day labeled a “homily”, although the label is misleading. The woman who did that had a Power Point Presentation to go along with it. As usual, I found that I could understand her PPP much better than I could her spoken French.

It was raining very lightly when we left church. By the time we had walked the 1.2 km (.75miles) home, we were fairly wet. The jacket I brought with me is dry clean only, but it seemed to stand up okay to the mistreatment. So we changed clothes as soon as we got home.

Sylvia fixed lunch, and I helped make the Spanish rice. We also had some potato salad that I had made for our Christmas Eve supper. Pam and Gideon joined us for it. We had a great visit. Then they went home, and we all took our afternoon “lay activities.” Whoever coined that term for church missionary outreach needed his (her?) head read!

That evening we met with Pam and Gideon and Parany and Harimalala Razafimahafaly about six o’clock to plan a four day trip to see Lemurs. I also finished the second part of this Sojourn, but when Gideon took me to his office, the Internet was down, so I couldn’t send it until after our trip.

About 4:00 a.m. something on my bedside table started making a steady beep about once every 2 or 3 minutes. I didn’t want to awaken Sylvia, so I tried to figure out what was making the beep while lying quietly in bed. There was a phone and 2 Lumix cameras on the table. Finally, after at least 10 minutes, I sat up in bed and placed one camera on the foot of the bed, one on the floor at my feet, and the phone on my bedside table. It was the camera on the floor. I pulled it out of its case, and the back was all lit up with the error message saying that the zoom was working right on the camera. I tried to switch the camera off, but it was already off! I switched it from photo mode to view mode. It dropped the error message and showed the last picture I had taken. I switched it back to photo mode, and the lens came out this time since it was not in its case. I pulled the battery out of the camera, and it died as expected. As soon as I reinserted the battery, it switched on. All of the functions seemed to be working--except the on/off switch.

 We left UAZ at precisely 8:00 a.m. the next morning. Well… that was the plan anyway. It was closer to 9:00 by the time we got out away. Our first destination was the Domaine Saint Francois (DSF) institute west of Tana. Parany’s sister Franza runs the institute sponsored by layman and the Catholic Church in France. So we were trying to follow him. However, he seemed to be able to get around the big trucks on the road more easily than we did. So they would pull over and wait for us every so often. We noticed that the rivers were considerably higher than they were nine days previously when we drove south from Tana upon our arrival in Mada. We ate lunch under a roof in DSF. While we ate, a rain squall caught up with us. If you are ambitious enough to look up our progress on a map, we came north on NR-7 and then west on NR-1.

Rear L to R: Wil, Sylvia, Gideon, Pam. Front: L to R  Parany, Veronica, Harimalala, Adriana, and the Manda family

After we cleaned up from lunch, we deposited our cases in our rooms at DSF. Our room was called Orchidee, I’ll let you guess what that means. Then we headed to Lemur Park sandwiched between NR-1 and a river that was definitely in flood. They have about 10 or 12 families of different species of Lemurs. Each family lives in its own tree. Because the Lemurs are very territorial, they don’t move away from their tree as long as they are fed. The staff feed them well, and we had the privilege of seeing them feed several families. Also because they are terrified of water, the lemurs don’t try to cross the river. So there are no cages about the lemurs. They’re free to come and go any time they wish. We paid 20,000 Ar each to get into the park, about $7 US, which included our guide, Heri. We walked around the park for well over an hour and saw many of lemurs. Fortunately the rain had stopped by the time we started walking.

Ring Tailed Lemur and twins

We had arranged with a rental company to provide us with a nine seat vehicle and driver for two days. The driver was supposed to arrive at DSF at 9:00 in the morning to pick us up. This included, besides Sylvia and me, Pam and Gideon and Parany’s family: wife Harimalala, Veronica at 5 years and Adriana, a babe still at breast. When he hadn’t arrived at 10:00 and we had received no communication from the company, Harimalala got on the phone and phoned for about a half hour. At first she tried the company and driver. She could get no response out of the driver. Then she phoned around until she had found a new company that offered us the same service for 60,000Ar less.

Our goal had been to get to the Andisabe National Park in time to tour it that day. Then we would find a place to sleep and come back the next day to DSF. We had a distance of about 200km (125 miles) to go. The worst part was to get through the south end of Tana and out on NR-2 going east. Tana has terrible traffic and no expressways or traffic lights.

We finally left DSF about one o’clock in the afternoon. Our driver, LaLane (I have no clue how he spelled his name), was a nice soft spoken young man and an excellent driver. His only English was “I’m sorry, I do not speak any English.” The road went through gorgeous mountains almost immediately after leaving Tana.

One of the first mountains we encountered was a massive rounded granite boulder towering at least a thousand feet (300 m) above the road, called Slaughter Rock. In the 1800s the Catholic Church sent missionaries to Madagascar, and thousands of people became Christians, especially in the central highlands where we were. A new queen came to power and decided to return the island to its animist heritage. Thousands of Christians were hurled to their death from this rock and many other such rocks up and down Mada. There is a great inscription on the rock that I can’t read. I’m guessing it is in Malagasy. About 80 km (50 miles) further east, the road plunges down about 2000 feet through second growth rain forest and eucalyptus trees. Beautiful cascades and waterfalls are visible on almost every turn. We got Andisabe (pronounce this “and disobey”) NP, but the guard at the gate turned us back and told us the park was closed. They do have night tours, but none of our literature nor the guard chose to mention this.

Slaughter Rock

The park hotel nearby charged over $200 a night per room. But we had noticed a brand new hotel, Le Guayave, with a most delightful architecture just outside of the town of Andisabe. We went back to it, and Harimalala talked the agent down to a total of 220,000Ar (about $70) for all three rooms. I had promised to pay for this night, so I was very grateful for her efforts. Each room was a building in itself, built in Malagasy style: Red brick exterior and porch, all topped by a beautiful thatched roof, and inside all wooden doors, tables, chairs, etc, made of very heavy dark red and black wood. Nothing was nicely finished off. There were holes in the ceiling where lights were not installed, toilets that flushed--sometimes, parquet flooring with pieces missing in the corners, mosquito nets that didn’t close enough to keep the mosquitoes out.

Hotel Le Guayave

Parany was suffering from extreme abdominal discomfort from gas. I had a bit of his symptoms myself. Pam was feeling very uncomfortable and had a slight fever. Fortunately we had brought both charcoal capsules and ibuprofen. So we all got to sleep reasonably well.

The next morning we ate breakfast in Parany’s room. It had been raining lightly but steadily ever since before we arrived in Andisabe the previous evening. We arrived back at the entrance to the national park. Hundreds of people were milling around. A guide came up to us eventually and asked us what we wanted to do. The expensive tours, 3 hours and more, left from this point. The regular 2 hour tour left from a different point, and we probably could have found our night tour there the previous evening. Edwin, the guide, climbed into the van with all of the rest of us, and we went to the second place, paid our 20,000Ar, and started out.

It was still raining but got lighter and lighter as we walked. We were using our umbrellas for the first 20 yards or so until we entered the second growth rainforest itself. Then the path was too narrow, and we closed them for the rest of the tour. The vegetation was a wonderland of an almost infinite variety of different plants. The first thing we saw was a young male Parsons chameleon. There are over 80 species of chameleons in Madagascar. The Parsons is the largest species in the world and is always green. It doesn’t change colors like other species. This one was well over a foot long (30cm). The trails crisscrossed this section of the rainforest in every direction. Visibility was very limited. There were lots of parties out, and the guides would notify each other when they saw something of interest.

Parson’s Chameleon

We crossed over a suspension bridge made of branches an inch thick or less (2.5 cm). After crossing the bridge we ran into some brown lemurs first. The brown lemurs didn’t like our company and moved away, sometimes making flying leaps from tree to tree. We followed them through thick undergrowth for a while, but they had the distinct advantage of speed over us.

Footbridge

Edwin  had promised us he would show us the indris lemur, the largest lemur species. Unlike the other lemurs, its tail is less than 4 inches (10cm) long. I heard the guides talking to each other, and then we took off through the forest, not on a trail, and found a large family of indris high up in a large tree. Edwin and another guide started calling them, mimicking their shrill, piercing cry. We had heard a lot of these cries the previous night while we were at La Guayave. The indris made no move to come down from their tree or to even leave it. We watched them for a long time.

Indris

Eventually Edwin called us to come and see a leaf-tailed gecko. So we walked back to a trail and along it for a while till he stopped, retraced his steps, and pulled a young tree down to reveal a flat grayish lizard the same color as the bark. He took hold of the gecko and turned it crosswise on the narrow stem. It slowly readjusted itself until it blended perfectly with the bark. It eventually grew tired of the repeated man-handling and walked slowly up the stem until it was out of reach.

About this time Sylvia saw a chameleon higher up on the same trunk. The guide identified it as an elephant chameleon. It is named that not from its size but the shape of its ears. Then the guide took us out to the road a long ways from where we started, where our driver had mysteriously appeared with the vehicle.

After driving down the road a little, I discovered a little back leech about 3 cm long (inch and a quarter) on the back of my left hand. It had its head starting to attach when I pulled my left hand up. It then put its tail down and felt all over that part of my hand before suddenly flipping its head up and over its tail and back onto another spot on my skin. It walked all over the back of my hand and onto my wrist watch. Then it tried to find a place on my arm above the watch. But it was distracted by all the hair on my arm.  While this was going on, I pulled my camera out of its case with my right hand and took a number of pictures of it. Finally I took it off of me and gently dropped it out of the window onto the rain soaked highway.

Leech on the back of Wil’s hand

#UAZ, #MADAGASCAR, #LEMURPARK, #ANDISABENP, #LEMUR, #GECKO, #CHAMELEON, #LEECH, #SLAUGHTERROCK, #ANTANANARIVO, #SAINTFRANCOIS, #ZURCHERUNIV, #RAINFOREST, #JUNGLE

From Lusaka to Harare--Almost

[i]

Galatians 1:8, 9

King James Version

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than ye have received, let him be accursed.

Hitchhiking from Lusaka, Zambia, to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, I caught a ride in a little, old gray Hillman. The driver, a kindly man old enough to be my father, stopped and offered me a ride as far as Salisbury, now Harare, Zimbabwe. I accepted gratefully, tucked my suitcase in the boot (trunk), and climbed into the front seat next to him. We exchanged the usual pleasantries and spoke of our various occupations. I was selling Christian books in the Copper belt region of Zambia to earn my way through Helderberg College. I forget his actual occupation, but he was a leader in the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Zambia.

After an hour or two we started down the escarpment into the Zambezi River valley. Suddenly a great, tropical thunderstorm burst upon us. Lightning flashed, thunder rolled, and the rain came down so heavily that we couldn’t see beyond the bonnet (hood) emblem of the car. He found a spot on the shoulder and pulled over to let the rain ease off.

While we sat there he started talking very earnestly about the doctrines he held so dear. One of the topics he spoke about at length was the eight New Testament verses that Protestant pastors use to support their keeping Sunday, the Catholic holy day. I had been exposed to those verses previously and countered with proofs he couldn’t contest that none of them supported a change of the holy day to Sunday. Another was the Arian heresy that Christ was merely a good man and not divine. Again I countered with Scriptural evidence that indeed Christ is God.

We drove down and across the mighty Zambesi and on up the escarpment on the other side. As we travelled he went through the major doctrines of the Witnesses, and I very ably countered each one. I confess that at the time I was not a believing Christian and was doing it purely for the joy of intellectual debate. My knowledge of Scripture clearly matched his and was probably better. My speech exhibited neither Christian love nor concern for his soul. On the other hand, he was really pleading with me for my soul.

Eventually I had angered him beyond what any God fearing person should ever do. Hours from Salisbury there was a Sinoia Hotel made for travelers who would stop for the night or at least for some liquid refreshment along their journey. The Hotel was well off the road, but he stopped along the shoulder, got out, and took my suitcase and placed it firmly on the ground. “You’re getting out here!” he commanded. I did.

The exuberance of besting a knowledgeable opponent lasted a long time. But the shame and remorse of misrepresenting my gracious Savior has lasted longer. The poor man did not understand the grace of Christ, and it should have been my responsibility to convey this to him. Unfortunately at the time I had no better understanding of grace than he did.

Thank You, Lord, for Your limitless grace and love for all of us, JW’s included. May I not be accursed because I teach “another gospel”!

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[i] https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2369/5715069061_6b1f693e34_b.jpg

Emotional Religion Pitfalls

Ephesians 4: 24

King James Bible

And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

Twice a year in boarding school we had a week of prayer. These were often conducted by great preachers locally or from overseas. Twice a day for a week they would tell stories and experiences of the mighty power and self-sacrificing love of God. These stories would tell how God renewed the lives of great sinners. They also told of the terrible punishments that God would inflict on wanton sinners.

By the great culmination of the week of prayer series, on Friday nights, with soft music being played on the piano, the preacher would invite us up to the front to tell about our experiences. For an hour and many times longer than that one student after another would go forward and with lots of tears and sobbing the students would tell of their sins. They would bring up a pack of cigarettes or an evil book or an object they had stolen and throw it in a waste basket provided for that purpose, renouncing their old lives.

Then with deep fervor they would “put on the new man.” They would promise that from then on they would live the righteous life God had given them. On Sabbath morning we would witness the baptism of some of these students. I would sit there in the audience, but I would not feel the great emotion that the other students expressed. I did not go forward except on very rare occasions when peer pressure would force me to. On my part there was never any weeping or remorse, even though I counted myself as being a worse sinner than the others.

Like a new garment, this “new man”, would quickly become soiled and torn. I knew this from early experience—these twice annual weeks of prayer had been a part of my education ever since the first year I went to school. I knew what the result would be. The man of God who had brought about such a marvelous emotional transformation in every student would leave to conduct the next week of prayer at the next school. He would be rejoicing that “God had used him” to save so many lost sinners. The conference leaders would claim another great success and heap accolades on the preacher.

However, by Saturday night or Sunday at the latest, the “new man” of Friday night would be so stained and tattered as to be scarcely recognizable. None of these preachers ever showed us how to keep putting on a fresh “new man” every day. The penitents would rapidly sink into greater sin. They would deny the origin of the repentance they had professed and boldly blaspheme God.   

Like a vain dieter who discovers a new diet, loses 10 pounds in 3 weeks and then over the course of the next few months adds 15 pounds back on, becoming fatter and less healthy by each experience, the poor student would be plunged more deeply under the control of the devil.

Lord, create a new man of righteousness and true holiness for me today and see to it that I wear it today.

Sojourn in Madagascar--03 Christmas in Madagascar

Sojourn to Madagascar Part 3

Christmas in Madagascar

On the Tuesday of Christmas week we actually met with Anitha (say “Anita”) who has been doing most of the filling in between Elaine, who started the semester teaching the conversational English classes and then left, and our arrival. This is her first time teaching conversational English, and she must have been pulling her hair out to do all of the work, grading, teaching, etc. for 13 classes. They want Sylvia to teach the advanced classes, Voice and Diction, Written English, as well as one remedial conversational class. I will take over the 13 classes. Our duties are mainly on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, giving us long weekends to catch our breath. I think I will learn a lot, and hopefully the students will learn something.

The university has two WiFi hotspots that are often available to connect to, one in the library and the other in the faculty lounge. However, the Internet is an elusive thing. Whether I’m working hooked up with an Ethernet cable to it or just using WiFi, it will suddenly disappear. Then within minutes it will be back again. At times there is nothing for a day or more. It took me at least two hours just to post my last Sojourn on the blog. That doesn’t count the time creating and editing it.

We were warned before we came that the season we plan to be here, from mid-December to mid-March, is the rainy season. Tourists are encouraged to stay away because many roads are closed. I’m writing this on New Year’s Day, 2016. This morning had a beautiful sunrise around five o’clock; the rest of the sky was heavily overcast. I walked down to the library under a very gloomy sky. The hills to the east of us (see below) were shrouded with a heavy layer of cloud almost to their bases. The walk was very pleasant, however. I pulled out my U.S. phone and could see the Internet, but it wasn’t working. So I started home and got to the faculty lounge, which was locked, and I don’t have a key. Last night Sylvia and I had stood under the window and texted “Happy New Year” to the family. Our phones gave us the error message that our cell phone plan didn’t cover voice.

This morning I stood in the same place. This time it let me phone, but the first three Internet calls were terribly broken up. After that I made more calls, and the reception was better than the same phone often has while I’m sitting in the living room of our home in Riverside. By the time I went home for breakfast, the entire sky was a glorious blue, and my spirits soared. I spent about 15 minutes coaxing some water, any water, to run out of our shower. I took a bunch of our wet wash out and hung it on the line while Sylvia went down to the faculty lounge window and chatted with our family who were all still languishing in the old year. We ate breakfast enjoying the singing of birds outside. Sylvia made breakfast, and I did the dishes. I sat down at this computer to work on my syllabus when I heard Sylvia cry, “Oh! No!” Hearing the patter of large drops on the roof, I dashed out to help her bring in the laundry I had hung up only an hour and a half earlier. In a matter of about 10 minutes we got over a half-inch (12mm) of rain.

Last week Tuesday, after we worked with Pam and Anitha, Gideon came by and took us out to the student dining room for lunch. They gave us each a stainless steel tray with a number of depressions in it. The center depression was probably larger than the other six or so combined. It was piled at two inches high with pure white rice. One of the other depressions had a bit of fruit in for dessert; the others held various well cooked vegetables to be eaten with the rice. There was also a fruity drink something like what the Mexicans call agua. I hesitated to drink anything for fear of picking up a stomach bug but was assured I didn’t need worry. So I drank it with no ill effects. I ate my fill and still didn’t clean up my plate, as did the other four at our table. The meal only costs 3,000 Ariary, Gideon told me. That’s about a dollar. I imagine that Sylvia and I will probably have lunch there frequently while teaching!

We have a very solid, primitively attractive wardrobe in our bedroom. It had a key stuck in one of the doors. I worked at it and worked at it with no tools until I eventually got it out. It had been jammed in there with a bunch of sticky gray gook. It seemed to go in and out ok and locked the wardrobe very effectively. An hour or so later, Sylvia tried it. It locked beautifully for her and then refused to come out or turn in either direction. I borrowed a hacksaw blade from physical plant and was told it was brand new, but worthless, like so much other stuff that is imported to Mada from the Far East. Most of our clothes are in that wardrobe. So I stuck the naked blade into the slot between the door and the cabinet and sawed away for a half hour until I had cut the bolt off.

Electricity was off for over two hours that Tuesday evening and 20 minutes the next evening. It seems to go off for short periods of time several times a day. After a lightning storm a couple months ago, we heard the electricity was off for several days.

As I write this we are suddenly in the middle of the second cloudburst of the day. Coming from drought stricken California, I love seeing the rain. In fact I wish we could ship it over there. It is causing major trouble for the people who live in the area. Most of them are extremely poor and depend on their rice crops to support them for the rest of the year. However, probably over 50% of their rice paddies are flooded to the point of destroying their crops.

At nine o’clock on Thursday morning (Christmas Eve) we attended a holiday celebration for the faculty and staff of Universite Adventiste Zurcher. Everyone met in the Dining Room. The speaker of the morning was Priti Buragy (spelling??). During her speech she pointed at me and talked about the eventual aging and decline of everyone. She waxed eloquent about how old I was. She pointed out the wrinkles on my face, the total loss of hair on my head, and how weak and fat I was. She went on and on, enjoying the effect. Of course, everyone stared at me, so I let my head sag onto my left shoulder and my tongue loll out of my mouth. As you can imagine, the whole crowd roared with laughter at my discomfort and distress. I doubt anyone in the room can tell you what point she was trying to make in her speech. But everyone now knows me and greets me with a warm and friendly “Bonjour!” or “Bonsoir!” whenever they see me.

Then they played a game where everyone was given a small square of paper on which was written one word, some in Malagasy, some in English, and some in French. We were supposed to find someone with a word that went closest with our own word. Everyone entered into the game with gusto. Of course, there were several false pairing, and some who found no partner. I got “window” and Priti got “curtain”. So she wound up paired with me!

Then they divided us up into groups by the months of our birthdays. They formed between 8 and 10 groups; some months didn’t have very many birthdays. (There’s got to be a cultural reasoning for this phenomenon!) Each group was given a poster with one of the missions for UAZ on it. They were supposed to come up with ways they had supported their mission of the university in 2015, how they would support it in 2016, and name a mascot for that mission.

Our group received the title “Desire for God” written in both English and Malagasy. The Malagasy title filled two entire lines written in much smaller letters than the English title. The Malagasy never say anything in one syllable that they can say in ten.

The group chose me to be their spokesperson and then promptly started a long and evidently fruitful discussion in Malagasy. They would break every so often and give me the gist. When it came our turn, I stood up hesitantly, not really knowing my audience or what had really been discussed by our group. To start with I read the title in both English and Malagasy. The group had coaxed me in blundering through the long multi-syllabic title. The audience loved it! When I came to the part about the mascot, I told them our choice was “juice,” and pointed to the glasses of juice ready for use on the table behind me. The audience looked at me blankly, not understanding. “We chose juice because it satisfies __________” and said the Malagasy word again. There was great clapping and laughing. I’ve forgotten the term.

Right after this activity the university treasurer, Mr Manda, handed out a “small token of appreciation”--a large bag of rice with a bottle of oil and some cookies and candy nestled in the rice. Even we got a bag—and we had rice for lunch!

While we were eating lunch, two men from maintenance came in carrying a new water heater for our house. They installed it in the attic to our flat, while outside a great electric storm issued peals of thunder. Yay! We got a hot shower for Christmas! You would appreciate it too if your home was in the 60s every morning when you got up and wanted to shower.

In the evening we took a potato salad, Ruth brought some lettuce salad and pistachio nut ice cream, and Pam made pizza at the Petersen’s to celebrate Christmas Eve. We watched the movie Freedom Writing. It is the story of a young woman who taught English writing in the Woodrow Wilson High School in inner city L.A. right after the Rodney King beating trial in 1994. If you haven’t seen it, I encourage you to watch it.

The electricity went on and off at least a dozen times during the show. We had Gideon’s computer hooked up to a data projector. Of course each outage killed the projector but not the lap top computer. Finally we gave up and watched the remainder of the movie on the lap top screen.

On Christmas Day in the morning, Sylvia and I joined up with Pam and Gideon and a student who knows Malagasy and walked across the road from the university toward the mountains to the east of us. There is a long ridge that runs north and south and is probably at least 500 feet high. Fleurot is from Fianarantsoa, about a 6 hour drive south of us. He was a good sport with an excellent sense of humor. He carried our lunch and Sylvia and my bottle of water. Since he speaks Malagasy, he was an invaluable asset. He also predicted that it wouldn’t rain until 5:00 p.m. The sun was shining out of a partially cloudy sky when we left.

We walked east across the UAZ driveway past a little Adventist Church then down into a valley. At the bottom of the valley is a deep gully with water flowing swiftly and apparently quite deep. It has vertical banks, so if one fell into it, she would have a difficult time getting out of it.

We crossed it on some rather flimsy looking logs. No mishap. Apparently students from UAZ used to come down this way and conduct a branch Sabbath school on the far side of the gully. When one of the girls fell into this gully, they decided to move the meeting place and built the church on the UAZ side. They still conduct church there.

We walked along a narrow wall with a rice paddy on our right, an irrigation ditch separating us from the paddy on the left. We eventually had to cross this ditch on a much smaller log anchored on the far side on mound of dirt that was split and collapsing into oblivion.

Then we started up a steep trail lined with sisal plants of two varieties, deep green short ones and green and white striped big ones, both with the deadly thorns characteristic to sisal. At one point Sylvia slipped on the slippery clay path and ran up against the thorns on the leaves. She didn’t injure herself badly. Then the trail ran through the front yards of three or four housed built right next to each other.

We turned and hiked steeply up again, right next to 3 or 4 burial buildings (tombs) built of cement block with some cement decorations on them. The Malagasy have a lot of fady (taboo) associated with these tombs. Periodically they are instructed by the spirits to open the tombs and rearrange and wrap the bones interred therein. It is taboo for anyone who is not of the family to be there when this happens. It is also taboo to take pictures of the tombs.

We got a close look at the irrigation schemes employed to flood the terraced rice paddies that go for hundreds of feet up the side of the mountain ridge. Unlike many other things in Mada, these irrigation schemes work well, and they are maintained by the owners working on them on a daily basis. I’m intrigued by both the engineering intricacies of the irrigation and the socio-political factors that must be in place to keep water flowing continuously without fighting! (Or is there fighting?)

The sun was hot, and it was probably about 80° (26°C) in the shade with close to 100% humidity. Sylvia’s energy was flagging, and she had to rest more and more often. Our goal was a waterfall higher up.

When we found an open steeply sloping meadow, we sat down and drank our water and ate sandwiches Sylvia had made and yesterday’s pizza Pam had made. Back across the valley we could see a rain squall drenching the UAZ campus. In at least four other directions great, heavy thunderstorms were in progress.

The squall came down the hill the way we had walked and crossed the valley and then came inexorably up the hillside towards us. The flanks came in advance and semi-surrounded us just like a military campaign. As it came up the hill, its strength grew, and the sides widened and deepened until we started to feel drops of rain fall gently on us. Then the rain started in earnest and drenched us almost immediately. We zipped up our backpacks and headed for home.

The path became increasingly treacherous. It was very slippery and made of hard clay. With just a little rain the clay became like grease. It gave way under out feet. It stuck to our shoes and pants and made our feet almost too heavy to lift. I slipped once and caught myself with both hands. Now they too were coated with the sticky mud. I found an irrigation ditch about waist high where I could wash the mud off my hands. Gideon was not so lucky and sat down in the stuff and got a seat full of it.

Towards the bottom of the hill, the squall blew past us, and within a few hundred yards the clay began to firm up so that we went more easily. We again made it across the logs without incident. Back in the pine forest we examined deep V-shaped scrapes a Chinese company has put on every tree. They’re catching the gum or amber that flows freely out of the wound. The plastic bags used to capture it are small and poor receptacles and filled with more water than gum. We worried what effect these wounds would have on the trees.

We eventually got home about four hours after we started. We didn’t stone Fleurot for his lousy prophecy. It had started to rain in the morning! We again rejoiced in the hot water we had so recently gotten to clean up in.

We took a long nap then went down to the Faculty Lounge and used Skype to talk to family and friends. Indeed it was a Christmas to remember!