Today was a long hike! We went 10 1/2 miles and the heat was exhausting! It was a beautiful hike though, lots of areas that were similar to hiking in a dry creek in Kansas. I wish that the WHOLE hike would have been like that... with a canopy of trees for shade! 
Who knows how hot it really was, Byron is guessing about 90 degrees, and not a stitch of wind. We had two locals who "guided" us to the village (of course they weren't carrying a pack), but despite that, I'm sure they were feeling the heat too. However, during one of our "rests" instead of taking a break, one of the guides actually used his sickle to chop down a tree! AND strip it of the bark to make a rope! We didn't stop long enough for him to actually BRAID the rope, but holy cow! That's ambition!About 4 hours after we started we arrived in Anavabe. We were very glad to sit down, even though there was a terrible stench of something dead in the air. I think that we were all too tired to immediately notice the thick cloud of darkness that hung over this village... but looking back, it certainly was present. Anavabe was not huge, maybe only about 30-50 people. The houses were not at all as nice as those in previous villages we had visited: the sod was falling from the walls, the roofs were leaning, doors were falling off, etc... It just didn't look nice, prosperous or hopeful at all. The chief wasn't around, but we were able to get permission to set up camp and survey. The village had a school (but the teacher was on a holiday), there was no church, hospital or medical doctor present. Once we started doing surveys, we discovered that it was taboo to pray (except for before meals), and that if someone came to the village and tried to teach them about God, then that person would not be welcomed. What a dark, bleak place! Not only had they not heard about Christ, they did not want to hear.
With the exception of one curious older man with a fisherman's cap, I really got a cold feeling from the people there. (This man was just as welcoming and genuine as you could be. I really got a kick out of his A&F fishing cap and wanted a picture. But when I asked to take his photo, he wanted to put on his "best" hat, so he got up and changed into his cowboy hat!)The sadness I felt in the village was incredible. As I prayer walked the "streets" I asked that God would tear down Satan's stronghold on this village.
That being said, I was not at all sad to leave the next morning! I interviewed a 13 year old girl who was married (to a 16 year old). In this village, you were not allowed to marry someone who was originally from there. The women I spoke to seemed reluctant to share any "excess" information with me other than what I had directly asked. And they did not seem interested in the information I shared about us (unlike other villages where they LOVED hearing about America). The general concept of the afterlife here was that there wasn't one; once you were dead... you were dead.
No wonder it seemed so hopeless! They also worshipped a tree that was in the middle of their village. They had it all "fenced" off and offered sacrifices of zebu to it too. Although this village was the most obvious, words can not even express the darkness and oppression that Satan is inflicting upon these people that we visited in the Madagascar bush. Please pray for them!
Byron interviewed a "road crew" of men/boys who were there working on building a house. They wanted their picture taken with their work and of course that escalated to all of the kids nearby wanting to have their pictures taken. (This actually was one of the only "light" moments in the village).
It rained, so in the middle of the night Byron and I were up putting the rain cover on our tent. It was so HOT with the cover on! As soon as the rain quit I pushed back the cover by the door and opened the screen so I could get some air in. However, it started to rain again later (inside the tent) and my poor journal got soaked! I was so blessed that the ink didn't run; but I was concerned that all of the pages would stick together when they dried. I put my camping toilet paper to good use and lined between all of the pages with it to help absorb moisture and keep the pages separated. YEAHHHHHH it worked! All of my journal pages were able to be salvaged! Praise GOD!!! I wasn't looking forward to rewriting all of them!
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