Thursday, September 20 -- Hike on!

The village of Ioborotra sent a guide to take us to Ankeniniheny which was 5 miles away. There were rumors of foreigners (Vazaha) coming and cutting out the eyes of the Malagasy, so the guide went with us to tell the village that we came in peace so they wouldn't all run away when they saw us. We hiked at a little over 3 miles/hour. (You gotta love those GPS gadgets! They give you all kinds of handy information!) When we got there we asked the chief some general questions about the village. He said the population was around 10: about 3 families. However, there were a lot more than that present in the village, I guess from somewhere else. They have no school, hospital or church. Iaborotra is where they would go for a hospital or school, but none of the kids go to school. The common illnesses that they have are yellow fever and seizures. They have 2 witch doctors that live in the village.



This village also celebrates the Famadihana. Another practice in this village is the circumcision of babies. They sacrifice a Zebu and place the foreskin in the zebu head, then raise the skull up 3 times. Then they celebrate. They also make sacrifices to their king, then the king goes to Zanahary and the ancestors on behalf of those making the sacrifice. The taboos and beliefs were much the same as the first village, but the exposure to the gospel was even less. I interviewed a 23 year old girl who had a 6 year old, a 3 year old and 5 month old twins. I got to hold one of here babies! The women in Madagascar carry their babies on their backs tied with a lamba (large scarf). She wanted to know how we carried our babies around in America.

This particular girl knew a little bit about God because she used to live elsewhere. She used to pray and felt that because of sin, people were separated into 2 groups: those who pray and those who do not pray. She no longer prays because there is no church in her village. A common belief that came across in my interviews was that many seemed to think that in order to pray you had to go to church and if there was no church, you could not pray. How sad it is to see such a high level of lostness and so many people living a life with no hope.

Here are a couple of pictures of this young mom and her home. It was very common to have a house full of people when we were doing the interviews.

After finishing up with Ankeniniheny, another guide took us to Antanimary which was a 4 mile hike. This guy walked FAST! (Like 4 to 4 1/2 miles per hour fast... a good pace with a 30 to 40 pound backpack on!) We arrived in Antanimary hot and tired, but the chief was not there. We obtained permission to set up camp and then had a look around the village. Their corrals were made with huge yucca-type plants and they had a heard of 70 zebu which they guarded with guns because of the rumor of thieves. They also had the most interesting chicken houses that looked like tee pees. While we were looking around, I even got to try my hand at hulling some rice. They use this big stick/log/post that they pound into the rice to break it out of its shell. It is hard work!

It gets dark here early, by about 6p.m., so at dusk we sat around, ate and chatted. We brought dehydrated camping food to eat on our trip. The mountain house brand we purchased had awesome meals like oriental chicken, lasagna, sweet & sour pork, macaroni & cheese, peas, green beans etc. You just had to boil water and pour the water into the foil pouch and wait 5-10 minutes and then eat! I may have to adopt this type of cooking at home! After our tummies were full, we crashed and looked forward to our morning wake up call from the chickens... who don't have a snooze button!