Spring is here!

     Spring is here and the garden is doing well.  The lettuce is growing like crazy, and the tomato plants lived through the transplant this time.  The cucumbers are a little iffy and slow, but the zucchini plants are growing here just like they do in Utah - we will have 'plenty' with just three plants!

Greg waters his garden every morning before we go to the office.

     After the fun weekend in Antsirabe, the week started off pretty calm.  Tuesday night Greg got a call while dinner was cooking, and one of the sister missionaries needed some medicine.  By the time he and the Office Elders got over to their house, it had been decided that they should take her to the hospital.  When you hear the word hospital over here, you are not exactly sure what you are going to get.  They took her to the hospital not too far from where we live.  They drove into this little courtyard and there was a little exam room on one side, radiology on another side, and admitting on another side.  When they decided to admit her, they put her in a wheelchair and pushed her up this open air ramp to the second floor where they put her in a 'tiny' room.  Her companion had to stay with her, so someone took an air mattress and some sheets and blanket down to her.  The room was so tiny that they had to fold the air mattress in half and she huddled on that during the night.  The next day they moved her into another room that had a bed in it for her companion. 
     It was Sister Pani who was sick, she is now pretty much my adopted Tahitian daughter.  She is a sweetheart.  She got here just after we did, so we have a great bond going.  They finally let her go home on Friday, and I'm still not all the way sure what they decided was going on with her.  But she is doing much better now. 

Sister Cloward and Sister Pani in the Malagasy hospital.

Sister Pani has lost over 30 kilo since she got here, I need to follow her around and see what I can get rid of. 

     We took Sister Adams and went back up to the drainage project site the other day.  It just amazes me the different 'layers' of life and living that goes on in this city. 

This is just after we left the main road and started to go back into the neighborhood where they are doing the drainage project.

     The whole city of Antananarivo is built on hills, everything here is either up or down, nothing is level or flat.  You will be walking along a street or walkway and all of a sudden a head pops up, followed by the rest of the person, or two or three.  It gets dark here about 6 pm and everything pretty much shuts down.  Imagine walking along this walkway - and there are no street lights - you could easily fall in one of these stairways without even realizing it was there.
























 

      They have covered all of the drainage pipe that they have put in, and now they are making stairs on top of it.  The people will be able to walk up and down this alleyway, even during the rainy season, without getting washed away.

Just a few weeks ago this was a deep trench with 24 inch pipe in it.

This is back in the neighborhood near where the pipe comes out of the little alleyway.

    The best part of going back in this neighborhood is seeing all of the cute kids there.  They love to have their picture taken, and then they always want to see it, and then they laugh and laugh.   The kids are really cute, and there are Lots of them back in there. 

These little boys have a chameleon on a stick, and there were two more in the tree that they were trying to get to climb on other sticks. 

Sister Adams with some of the kids.

 This little girl is always there when we go.  She is sure a cutie.  All of the kids are usually barefooted; I remember when I had tough feet and loved to go barefooted.  Some of the people wear flip flops but a lot of the time they are barefooted.

     Yesterday four of our missionaries went to the lemur park here in Tana.  Last night they called Sister Shupe, the nurse, and told her that one of the lemurs had bit three of them and was also going around biting some of the other lemurs.  They were wondering if it was anything they should worry about!  This morning they all went down to the hospital and got rabies shots.  They have to get five shots in all, they got three of them today and then go back on Friday for the other two.  Either the lemur has rabies or he was having a really bad day :(.  Anyway, all of the other missionaries are going to stay away from that park for a while.

     Thursday evening Greg and President Adams went to a meeting at the US Embassy.  They talked about the elections which will take place on Friday, October 25, here.  They don't think there will be any violence, but want everyone to stay away from crowds and be prepared for anything.  Everyone we have talked to think that it should go pretty smoothly.
     Another thing they talked about was that there is bubonic plague here in Antananarivo, and the place where they have found it is in the prison over by Lizy's Art Gallery.  That is exactly where we live!   About 10-12 feet out our back door is a 20 foot high wall that happens to be a common wall with the prison that they are talking about.  They said that it is spread by the fleas on the rats in the prison.  So if we can just keep the rats and fleas inside the prison and not over here, we will be fine.  There are three Senior Missionary apartments right here in our complex, we are all getting our houses and little yards sprayed again this week. 
     We all take our doxycycline every day, it is for malaria but it is also what you would take to keep from getting bubonic plague.  We take ours faithfully every day, even more so now!

We are having a great time here.  New adventures every day!  We love you all!  We also love email!!!

Fun weekend in Antsirabe and Ambustra

   Early Friday afternoon we left Tana to go to Antsirabe with President and Sister Adams for the Zone Conference down there.  We had dinner with Elder and Sister Todd that evening and had a fun time visiting with them.  When we get to see the Todds it is kind of like 'going home' for a little while; it is really fun to have them here with us. [For anyone who doesn't know, Elder and Sister Todd just live 8 houses down the street from us in Provo.]
    Saturday morning all of the missionaries cam to the Todd's house for Zone Conference.  The Todd's have a great house with beautiful flower beds and an awesome garden - complete with gardener.

Some of the missionaries arrived by pusse posse  

 

 

It seems like almost all of the pusse posse drivers in Antsirabe run barefooted no matter if it's hot, cold or raining buckets full of water; while the ones in Antananarivo usually wear flip flops. 
    While they had Zone Conference, Marcellin took Greg and I on south a couple of hours to Ambustra.  Ambustra is known for it's wood carvings.  Marcellin had kind of 'preordered' a nativity and a wooden chest for us.  I was super excited to see them. 

They are both beautiful.  The detail on the nativity is amazing.  The chest has a variety of Malagasy scenes all over it and is really awesome.  After they settled on a price for these, we had to go to the bank to get some more money; we hadn't brought enough cash with us.  Then while we were waiting for them to get everything packaged to bring home, we were looking around the store and found some more good things.  We got some little figurines depicting Malagasy life here; they all have children in them. 

So then we had to make another trip back to the bank for more money.  That was a very happy shop keeper!
   We got back to Antsirabe for the last part of Zone Conference.  What an awesome group of missionaries.  It is wonderful for us to get to be with them so much; they have such a great spirit about them. 

    Sunday morning we went to Sacrament meeting in Antsirabe and then went up to Andranomanelatra to their Sacrament meeting.  This second little branch meets in a house that they use for a church.  There is a room about 10 feet by 20 feet that is the 'chapel', there are also two small rooms across the hall from the chapel that were filled to overflowing; and the hallway as you walk in was packed like sardines.  When we got there, people moved around and they made room for us in the 'chapel' room, they weren't going to not let us sit in there.  There are four rooms upstairs that they use for classrooms and when it rains.  There were 164 people at Sacrament meeting!  What a faithful little branch.
    Two little deacons were passing the sacrament, they had to come back for more water - but they only have two bread trays and two water trays, so only two deacons can pass.  Today, Greg went down to the Distribution Center and got one more bread tray and one more water tray to send down to them.  He only got one each because that is all that there were. 
  You should hear these people sing!  They put their whole heart and soul into it, it gives you goosebumps.  I took some pictures of a few of the people that were there.

    On the way back to Antananarivo, there is one little area that you drive through where there are several people sitting by the side of the road selling rabbits.  As you drive by, they will usually hold them up by the ears to show what they have for sale. 
    I had told Marcellin that I wanted a picture of the rabbits, so when we got to this lady he stopped in the middle of the road so we could take her picture.  When she saw that we were taking pictures, she held up two rabbits.  Then she came over to the car hoping to sell a rabbit.  Since we weren't going to buy a rabbit for dinner, we gave her some cookies for her baby.  She was all smiles after that.  We are going to print the picture and take it down and give it to her next time we go down there.  We've heard that many times the people really never get to see themselves and what they look like.  They usually don't have mirrors in their houses or glass in their windows, and the water in the river is too dirty to see their reflection. 

What an awesome weekend we had!

Drainage Project

    This morning Greg had to go over to the drainage project to check on the stones they were delivering and to pay for them.  He talked me into going with him.  Wow, what an experience! 
    The project is only about a mile or so from where we live, but it was about three worlds away.  There are several levels of life and living that go on here - there is what you see when you drive down the street, and then there are several 'layers' once you get back into the neighborhoods behind the typical every day scenes. 


    We parked the car on the street by the Fukatony office and then the Fukatony president took us 'back into' the project site.  We went down several different little alleys until we came to a main thoroughfare that was about two and a half feet  wide, some of it was stone paved and some was hard packed dirt.  There were little stalls where they were selling some of everything along this walkway, and it wound in between buildings here and there.  Part the way the pathway has a building on one side and then a wooden railing on the other, it looks and feels like you are walking the old city wall in Jerusalem.  Everything here is either uphill or downhill, I don't think there is much that is a flat, level surface.  Over the railing and a bout 20 feet down is someone's little patch of yard with their laundry hanging out to dry.  As you walk along, all of a sudden you will see a head coming up above the surface of the walkway, out of a two foot wide space between two buildings.  When you look, there is a trail with steps cut in the earth and it is a main walkway that lots of people use. 
  Once we got past most of the buildings, there were some really steep concrete stairs that went down, then switchbacked and went down some more.  After that it was mostly a walk across a dirt area that was part garbage dump, storm drainage, and kids play area.  Along with lots of dogs and chickens. 
    When we got over to the project site we could see that quite a bit of work had been done.  They had moved all of the pipe sections into place and connected them and there were several guys hauling bags of dirt up the slope to pack around the pipe.  They are going to put a good layer of dirt over the pipe and then make steps out of some of the stones that were delivered today.  This was a main thoroughfare for these people in this neighborhood when it is the dry season and they want to get it usable again as soon as they can.  It looks like that when it rains it becomes a 'rip roaring' water slide. 

This is the pipe from the top side

 The view from the bottom.  On the left at the end of the pipe is a 'public' bathroom.

    They are trying to get this project done before the rainy season starts.    By the sound of things tonight, the rainy season is starting.  This is the third night in a row that we have had some pretty good rain.  Everyone says that it starts raining for a little while every day in November and December, and then it really rains in January and February!  Tonight we are getting pretty good rain by Utah standards.  It will be interesting to see what happens in January and February.
   They don't have enough money to buy as much pipe as they need to completely enclose the drainage, so they are planning to line the trench with the large stones and take it on down the hill to a fairly deep drainage ditch.  There are some houses not far downhill from the end of the pipe that will get flooded for sure if they don't get the stone lined drainage ditch deep enough.  Today when we were there, there was a woman outside the door of the house doing her laundry.  It just amazes me how clean they can get their laundry with just a couple buckets of water.  They have to haul whatever water they use, so they use it sparingly. 

Dad was taking a picture of me so that the people wouldn't think we were just taking pictures of them.

This is the house that could get flooded if they don't get the channel  at the end of the pipe deep enough. 























The local Ward in this area is providing a lot of the labor for this project through Mormon Helping Hands.  Some of the missionaries went over this afternoon and hauled rocks for a while. 

The Mormon Helping Hands that were there when we were.  Bishop Roger is just behind Patrick, who is kneeling; then the Stake Patriarch is just behind behind him.  Elder and Sister Shupe and a couple from the Ward were also there.

    

Ensign Articles

    We just received the October Ensign and on page 69 is the story of Bishop Roger's family's conversion to the gospel.  Bishop Roger is Bishop of the Ward the meets right after ours in our building.  They are an amazing family.
    Greg has been working on a storm drain project not far from our house this last week.  He has had several meetings with Bishop Roger and the Fukotany President for that area this last week.  He will be write about this project and send pictures soon.   
    Sedi, the young man in the middle of the picture, and his wife had their first baby last month.  Sedi is a clerk in the Manikabahiny Stake in charge of processing visas for local missionaries going out to serve.  Liz, from the area office in South Africa, came over last month for several days to train the mission staff, Frede and I, and the two Stake Clerks here in Antananarivo, Sedi and Ernest, with regard to visas.  We all went out to dinner one evening and Liz and I were giving Sedi a hard time about how he will now need to change diapers half of the time.  We're not sure we convinced him.
    In the September 10 Church News there is an article about the Church in Madagascar, down in Monandona.  This is down by where the Todd's are serving, near  Antsirabe.  Monandona is the town where Colton Babb is curently serving.  It was written by a missionary who went home just before be got here.  
    Pretty amazing to have two articles about Madagascar recently, when it wasn't even really on our radar until the first of May!
    This is an amazing place and the people are wonderful!