Green Chameleons

We have all sorts of chameleons in our garden, just outside! We saw one today that was really green. As long as they stay out of the house, I'm happy to have them as neighbors. Our gardener is afraid of them though. It's so funny! He runs away when he sees them. He's always barefoot though so I might run, too! :)

Sarah & Bonboncoco

Last Easter, I attempted to make a "sticky" coconut cookie called Bonboncoco; unfortunately, they didn't turn out to be too tasty. Luckily, they do make them here & they are delicious. Here's a photo of me with my first one. We buy them regularly on the street here. Notice my cool little lemur guy in the background! Our Malagasy friend bought him for me at the market.

Look for the Bridge

The sort of "bridge" you see across the water is the route we walk each day from our home in Mandriambero to go to our language lessons & to the market in Talatamaty.

Rice Paddies Near Home

When we walk out of our gate & turn left, we come to these rice paddies. Yes, it's common to see cows & children in the rice together! These paddies are the open green space in the previous post.

AIM Mandriambero

Our place is hidden in the trees in the middle of this photo "below" the water. The long white building to the right of the trees is a nearby hotel.

The photo in the previous post shows our building/house. Our team leaders have the top flat while the bottom flat at the back of this building is our place (it looks basically the same as the front with a door where we enter). The front part on the lower level is the AIM office.

August Prayer Update

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Antananarivo! We have been in Tana (the nickname for our city) for about 2 ½ weeks. Little by little we are settling into life here in Mandriambero, a suburb of Tana. Last weekend, we did a homestay with a Malagasy family. We really enjoyed the experience & learned a lot about the language & culture. We even enjoyed eating rice three times a day. Well, for the most part… Sarah is glad to be eating oatmeal for breakfast again. We call it “vary vazaha”—the foreigner’s rice.

We thank you for your prayers that have brought us this far & really look forward to hearing from you.

Praise the Lord…

…for our safe arrival & that of our belongings!
…for the AIM team here & all they are doing to help us with the adjustment to Malagasy life.
…for a furnished flat to stay in at the AIM office while we look for more permanent accommodations.
…for helping us find some affordable used furniture which will be great when we have our own home.

Please pray…
…for us to get into a routine so we can begin our Malagasy language study in earnest.
…for the right house in the right neighborhood, near those God wants us to serve!
…for a church family where we can belong.
…for the Malagasy we meet in the marketplace and on the street, that they might see God’s love in our interaction with them.

Our mailing address is as follows:
Africa Inland Mission
BP 714
Antananarivo 101
MADAGASCAR

Don't take a taxi-be on a holiday!

(FYI- if you pronounce taxi-be correctly, it will rhyme with holiday!)

The taxi-be is the cheapest form of public transportation in Tana and also the most popular. It's also the way we get around town (other than walking!) at the moment. The taxi-be are large vans with small seats like a schoolbus down either side of the van. The people squeeze two to a seat and add another seat in the middle when it gets really full (which is most of the time!). In a luxurious taxi-be, this extra seat will be a seat that folds out from the permanent seat, but most of the time, it is just a board that is balanced between the two seats, across the aisle. Most of the taxi-be have doors that open in the back so that you can scramble inside at the brief bus stops along the route. At busy times of the day, climbing aboard is an artform consisting of flying elbows and knees. Being missionary vazaha, we have not yet mastered this art form nor are we sure we really should. For our large American build, the taxi-be are a bit uncomfortable but for the small-framed Malagasy, they are quite nice. Somehow they sit five across with no problems, but we cannot squeeze our long legs into the seats without some aches and pains. I wonder what the Malagasy really think about us hanging out into the aisle, but they are definitely too kind to say anything. They just squeeze in next to us or jump over our legs.

Yesterday was a public holiday celebrating Mary's ascension into heaven (yes, it's Catholic in origin, and no, we didn't celebrate nor do we or many of the Malagasy understand the purpose of such a holiday). Most of the businesses were still open so we took the taxi-be to a craft market. Unfortunately, when we tried to return home in the late afternoon, all of the taxi-be were full. Not having mastered that wonderful art form I mentioned previously, we waited patiently. Soon many of the taxi-be were not even stopping to pick up more passengers. The crowd of people needing a ride began to grow. So we decided to walk to the next stop. At the next stop, we found the same story. So we kept walking...and walking. In just over two hours, we arrived at the commune (or town) that neighbors ours. There, we were finally able to get a taxi-be for the last leg of the journey. We had heard rumors of this happening but to actually experience it was something else. I guess we will be more grateful for our seats, scrunched though they may be, on the next taxi-be.

The Language Learning Challenge

Nearly every day we walk to the nearby market to do our shopping. Along the way we stop at roadside shops to talk with the people and ask questions about their wares. "How is the bread? Is it soft? What is this? How much is that?" Our simple questions yield simple answers, but it's all part of the language learning process. Usually we learn a new word or two. Before we go, we practice a phrase we can use along the way. Then we look for opportunities to use it. We make note of the words and phrases we don't know, then look them up when we get home and ask our Malagasy language helpers.

Learning Malagasy is made more difficult by the French influence here. Being white vazaha (foreigners), it is almost always assumed we speak French. So the conversation often begins with a French greeting (Bonjour!), then we respond in Malagasy (Manahoana tompoko!), explaining that we want to learn their language. However, it's not that easy because it is commonplace to use French words and especially numbers interspersed with Malagasy. Take, for example, our question, "How much is it?" Sometimes we will be told first in French. Then we say, "Please, tell me in Malagasy." Once we interpret the amount, we have to determine which currency they are using. Most of the time, it is in ariary but sometimes in the market it is in francs. If this is the case, then it is five times the amount we will pay in ariary. I think it sounds more complicated than it actually is, but we wanted to give you an idea of what our typical day is like and the language and cultural learning experiences we are having!