If I told you Madagascar was nothing like the movie would you even believe me? Would you be able to picture anything other than talking zoo animals on a paradise island? I know for an 11 year old mind that asks if I’m going where Madagascar was filmed, obviously not, but for those who really have no reference point other than the cartoon what would we know unless we’ve been or seen pictures? I had no clue going into the country what to expect other than maybe getting to see lemurs, since they actually do exist there and not just in the movie, a nice tourist experience, and maybe a nice beach view with the sharing of the Gospel nicely intertwined in all of those things. SPOILER ALERT!!! I did not experience the beach view or nice tourist experience, but did get to see several lemurs at a park and the Gospel was shared to many Malagasy’s! I remember when I was praying about this trip and trying to decide which route I would go on and how I could ever decide between the 6 routes. I saw Madagascar on route 5 and immediately knew I would be going there. You’d think I would research the real life of the Malagasy’s before this month but let’s be real, I was interested in what the tourist spots looked like for our off days and adventure days and Pinterest certainly doesn’t show the rough parts of any neighborhood.
On the day we arrived we flew in from South Africa and our Malagasy team picked us up in a bus and took us to the compound where our entire squad would spend our month together. We didn’t really get to see what outside life looked like except from the inside of a crammed bus that didn’t give anyone the option to see much without being really annoying. We got settled into our dorm style rooms and went through orientation over the weekend to prepare for the coming week to start ministry. Our ministry for the month was spent at a university doing evangelism with the students on campus every day. The journey to get there was quite rigorous. We walked across a big field to catch a bus every morning around 7 am and would travel around 2 hours to the campus depending on the flow of traffic, which was never in our favor. I know you’re expecting me to share here about what ministry looked like and how awesome it was and that flocks of people came to know the Lord, but that’s not what I plan to do. There were really awesome days of ministry where people came to a relationship with the Lord and people asked very insightful questions that had me studying the word extra hard every night before we went out on the next day, and relationships with the students were built and it was great, but the journey to the campus is what I want to share with you here at this point. I am not telling you these things I’m going to share to portray Madagascar as a horrible place, because it’s certainly not, I’m sharing to paint a very vivid picture of what everyday life looks like for some of the Malagasy’s and what my experience looked like while in Madagascar.
I’ll never forget what our host told us at our orientation. She said we would see the poverty when we left our compound and got into the heart of town but that we would also smell it. I had never thought of poverty as something you could smell. Thinking of poverty as one of the senses never came to mind. I had been to 4 other third world countries at this point and smelled some pretty serious funk but never associated it as a smell of poverty, but those words are absolutely true! As we piled onto a city bus five or six deep in a row of seats meant for two people on each side I knew things this month were going to be very interesting. It wasn’t long before I quickly realized the world going on right outside the bus windows was something I had never experienced before. The streets were bumper to bumper slam full of cars and people trying to make it to their jobs or homes or market or wherever they were heading. Large pieces of meat hung from little stands up and down every street and the workers would swat flies ALL.DAY.LONG. Think about that smell for a moment. Hot meat sitting out all day long waiting for someone to buy it for dinner. Right below those stands and every other part of town snaked greenish/blackish water and sewage every where you looked and people were trekking through it like it was nothing. Every couple of blocks were big open dumpsters, the ones like you’d see in front of a house thats being gutted, overflowing with any and all kind of imaginable trash and inside of those dumpsters were chickens clucking around for food, the occasional dog digging for a leftover bone or anything it could get it’s mouth on, and almost always a child or two or three searching for food for the day. I noticed everyday to ministry that there was a family that always sat near an intersection next to one of these dumpsters. I never could understand how they could stand the smell to sit there everyday. After a few days of seeing them I asked one of our translators why they always sat there and she answered so casually, “Oh, that’s their home.” That’s when the realization hit me that the poverty I was seeing was something I could have never prepared myself for if I had seen it in a picture or read about it in a write up. Everyday looked just like this. Day after day piling into a crammed bus laughing with the Malagasy’s about how big we were, watching what felt like a scene from a movie pass before my eyes, covering my nose and mouth to keep from inhaling all the smog from the cars, seeing the same kids at the bus stop everyday playing with one another and immediately running up to us with a hand out begging for food, and it never got easier. This was the first time I had ever had anyone beg me for food. I’ve had people ask me for money countless times, but seeing a child with their hand out asking for food for the day cut me to the core. Every time I saw them I immediately thought of my three year old nephew, Josh and I couldn’t stand the thought of knowing they probably go days without food. I knew they didn’t have much based on their clothing because every day they wore the same outfit.
Our first day coming to this bus stop there was a little boy who kept hiding back behind the busses when they stopped and he and I kept making eye contact and he would smile and disappear. Before we left I remembered I had an apple leftover from lunch that I stashed in my purse, so I grabbed it and held out the apple to show him I was offering it to him. He walked around our entire group and snuck up behind me so not to draw attention to himself and took the apple. I watched as he went to the wall and sat down. He spent a couple minutes studying the apple, looking up at me to smile, and then back down at the apple. Everyday after this I would save half of my sandwich from lunch and search for him at the bus stop in hopes of giving him the sandwich. I always knew how to pick him out in a crowd because of his tan skin and the same red tattered shirt and blue shorts that almost fell off of him that he wore everyday. My teammates knew how much I loved this kid so they would always be on the lookout with me and get super excited with me when we would see him. I never understood his name when he would tell me, but his sweet face is forever etched in my heart. It was always so hard for me to wrap my head around how they could have such big smiles on their faces when they had absolutely nothing. There were days when children would follow my teammates and I blocks down the street begging and would be so excited when we would give up half of our drinks or share our chips with them. I’ll never forget a mother was following us wanting us to give her food and money, but it wasn’t the mom that had her hand out begging, it was the small child on her back who was probably about two years old. These children grow up knowing that they must hold their hand out to receive the things they need. They don’t know how to make a living and there’s no programs in place to help them get jobs to survive. There were so many things that we experienced and learned during our time in Madagascar that shook me to the core. We learned that a restaurant we had been going to on our off days turned into a brothel at night, the witch doctors would use body parts from children for medicine, children would die because the mothers had no clue how to care for an infant, homes were considered a piece of cement next to an overflowing dumpster, spiritual heaviness and attacks was through the roof, but the hunger for Jesus was more overwhelming than any of the things I experienced. People wanted to know more about the Lord and they wanted to know how to reach the source.
There was a day walking back to our compound when I noticed a big charter bus coming through the city filled with foreigners. I saw a small girl jogging alongside the bus screaming to get the attention of the people inside the bus. I don’t actually know what she was saying but based on how she was hitting the side of the bus to get the travelers attention and her holding her hands out clued me in as to what was going on. I watched as the bus sped up and she took off in a sprint chasing the bus and screaming because the answer to her hunger and money needs sat on the inside. It would only take her chasing the bus to get all that she needed. She knew that was the source to her problems. She knew if she could sprint hard enough and fast enough that she would be successful. I stood there choking back tears seeing her desperation knowing there was nothing that bus full of foreigners could do or that I could do to make life easier for her even for just a moment. Those needs would only be gratifying for a day or two and then it’s the same vicious cycle again and again. She needed the one true source of eternal life. She needed the Father to answer her needs. I’ve replayed this image over and over in my mind since this day thinking how this painted a picture so relevant to what our relationship should look like with the Father. We should be sprinting after Him with every ounce of strength and desperation we have in us, screaming as loud as we can to the Father to help us. He is the source! I may not be able to help every child I see reaching out a hand for food or money. I won’t be able to give shelter to every homeless person I see sleeping on the street. I likely can’t do much for most people I come into contact with, but I am able to be a vessel of change in these people’s eternity. I am in control of the actions I take with those people and how they see Jesus in my actions and words. I may not have the rest of my life to pour into these people, but I do have a few moments to help change their eternity and introduce them to the source of abundant life. So, why and how often am I wasting those moments? Hebrews 13:1-2 says, “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” We can’t change the world, but we can change the course of some people’s world by taking a few moments to show the love of the Father.
I walked away from Madagascar changed forever. I didn’t realize that until I started writing this blog or even until Vietnam, but it pulled on some really heavy heart strings. It has now taken me about a week to write this blog since typing out the first sentence, and even before ever writing the first sentence it’s taken two months to process all of the thoughts down into words for you guys to read and take you out of your comfort zone for a few moments. I didn’t realize it until writing the blog how much I turned off my emotions and put up emotional blocks while being in Madagascar so I could function while I was there. I’m not saying that’s healthy by any stretch of the imagination, but once I started processing through everything I experienced to share with you all I was a ball of emotions. I had to walk away from this blog three times because I couldn’t see through the tears. I’m not sure that I’ll ever go back to Madagascar in my life, but that little island off the coast of Africa and the sweet people I met in the month I was there put a huge dent in my heart and because of that, I’ll never be the same.
