Glimpses of Tsararano
Updated: Sep 28
As we sat around the table, smoke from the cooking fire drifted lazily through the room. It carried a strangely sweet smell, perhaps from the type of wood burning in the fire, perhaps from the water bubbling out of the rice pot into the flames below.
Through the open doorway, I could see into the kitchen. Years of smoke had blackened the walls around the hearth. The fire cast a soft glow on walls and on the inspector’s wife as she quietly tended to the fire. A few small children sat next to her, whispering softly and watching the fire crackle as they warmed their hands.
In the dining area, white sheets had been carefully hung along the walls, covering the smoke-darkened wood and giving the room a simple beauty. At the end of the table, Fr. Gabriel and the inspector were deep in conversation. A thick ribbon of smoke drifted past us, stinging my eyes for a moment as a man appeared in the doorway.
“Kabary?” the inspector asked, looking up.
“Tsy’isy kabary,” the man replied softly. No news. He sat quietly at the table next to the inspector.
The conversation carried on. Every now and then, a chicken wandered through the room, apparently unconcerned that it hadn’t been invited to dinner. I listened for a while, but soon I was again watching the smoke drift lazily past us. My thoughts began to wander with it, back over the roads we had traveled. Back through the villages and faces of the previous few days.
***
The taxi from Antananarivo to Mandritsara took 30 hours. Road was pretty smooth. Even slept a bit. Rolled in before dinner. “You ready to go into the bush tomorrow?” Fr. Gabriel asked me when I arrived. “You can stay here and rest if you want.”
***
4 or 5 hours on the motorcycle the next day. Don’t really count the hours anymore. I rode with Gabriel. The second motorcycle carried a new teacher for the secondary school they are building.
Arrived at Ambohimarina in the afternoon. Picturesque village. Situated in a little valley. There’s a large dusty road going through the center of the village. Tried to say hi to some children. They looked absolutely petrified and ran as fast as they could in the other direction.
Continued on to Tsararano, good water. The village is completely surrounded by a forest.
***
After dinner we celebrated Mass. Slept in the sacristy. Not much space, but seemed relatively clean. A bed was set up for each of us.
***
Early the next morning, we walked the twenty minutes back to Ambohimarina. On a small hill overlooking the village, the people had built a chapel that resembled the village houses. It had a corrugated iron roof and walls made of small wooden sticks. The village catechist was waiting in front of the chapel. As we began to walk up the hill, he took a large conch shell, brought it to his lips, and blew three times.
The people from the village slowly began to ascend the hill and take their places in the chapel. As we entered the chapel, the wooden floor bounced beneath our feet with each step. Once everyone had arrived, the catechist led the people in reciting a number of prayers. I was able to recognize some of them: the Creed, the Angelus, the Ten Commandments, and a number of others. The Mass was simple but beautiful, though I was still tired from the previous three days of travel.
***
After Mass, met with a number of the village notables. Sat and talked. A lot.
***
By late morning, we finally left the talking behind and stepped back outside. Children were playing on the dusty road, while adults went about their daily chores. Near the center of the village stood a simple meeting place: a corrugated iron roof resting on timber posts, open on every side. Beneath it, wooden benches had been arranged in a rough circle. I stood near it waiting for whatever activity was next. More talking? Maybe lunch?
As I stood waiting, a young boy hobbled out of his house and made his way toward the meeting place. He was missing one leg and walked with wooden crutches that were much too small for him. His remaining leg was turned so far around beneath him that his foot was nearly pointing backwards. He stopped beneath the shelter, leaned on his crutches, and watched the people talking. I watched him watching them. I wondered what had happened. I felt a deep tenderness for him. And sorrow.
As I was thinking about him, Fr. Gabriel walked over to him and crouched down beside him. He looked him in the eyes and began to talk to him. The boy smiled, and dare I say, beamed, as Fr. Gabriel gently touched his crutches and his hands. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but after a moment, Fr. Gabriel took the boy’s leg and gently turned it so that his foot faced forward. Then he gave him a reassuring pat on the back.
Later, Fr. Gabriel told me that when they first came to the village, the boy had been crawling on the ground. He had been covered in sores from jigger fleas, which can enter skin that is in contact with the ground. Normally, people get them on their feet. But because he couldn’t walk and had been left by the village to crawl on the ground, he was covered in festering lesions. Fr. Gabriel and Fr. Christophe had taken him to a hospital, where he spent a year in rehabilitation, learning to walk using crutches and his one leg.
***
Had akoho’rony, chicken soup and rice, for lunch with the village notables.
***
Toured the school with several of the village notables and the new teacher. A couple of simple rooms with dirt floors.
***
That evening it started to rain. Fr. Gabriel said it would be hard to get back to Mandritsara on the motorcycle because the roads would be so muddy. As we were walking to dinner, he said, “Oh yeah, when the rain comes, there are these little parasy, little larvae, little worms that get into your feet. They’re super annoying.” I asked him if he was serious. He was. “If you get one”, he explained, “someone has to take it out with a needle. Otherwise, it festers and lays eggs.” I nodded in understanding, but thought to myself, “Um, so now you tell me?” I was wearing sandals...and so was he! For the rest of the walk, I tried not to let my feet touch the ground for too long. Hot lava! Hot lava! Maybe that would keep the jiggers out.
***
The next morning I put my shoes on.
That afternoon we met with the people of the village under the meeting shelter. A few chairs had been set out for Fr. Gabriel and me, the new teacher, the village chief, and several catechists. The older men sat on benches to one side. Younger men stood behind them or leaned against a nearby house. On the other side, the women sat together on the ground or on small stools nearly touching the ground. Children watched from outside of the meeting place. As usual, I didn’t understand much.
Towards the end of the meeting, Fr. Gabriel leaned over and explained what they were discussing. The school needed a floor. The Church would help pay for the cement, but they were deciding which men would make the one- or two-day walk to Mandritsara and return carrying the sacks of cement on their backs and shoulders. They found ten volunteers.
***
A sudden squawk from the doorway of the inspector’s house startled me. One of the chickens had wandered into the dining room again. The inspector’s daughter quickly shooed it outside.
At the table, the conversation continued around me. I caught a word here and there, but mostly I listened to the voices and watched the smoke pass through the room. I thought again of those ten men. A day or two on foot to Mandritsara. Then the same road back, this time with sacks of cement on their shoulders. All for a floor in a school. But it was their school. A school for their children. A cross for those they love.
Here, the cross is a part of everyday life. I thought of Christ struggling up Calvary, the weight of the wood crushing his back and shoulders. He knew these men. He knew their wives and their children. He loved them. Were they in his thoughts as he carried the Cross? Did he think of them carrying crosses of their own along these little roads in the mountains of Madagascar?
Another thick ribbon of smoke drifted past me, and my thoughts again began to wander with it.
***
On Saturday evening, we walked to the inspector’s house, as usual, for dinner. Along the way, we stopped at a small house. Inside, a blind man was sitting on his bed. Hanging in front of him were several plastic sacks filled with different things: candy, lighters, washing soap, and other simple household goods. Fr. Gabriel explained that he had been blind for many years and that this was his shop. We talked for a bit. I didn’t really know what to say, but I introduced myself.
Then I asked if I could buy a lighter and some washing powder. You can always use a good lighter, and I’ve always got dirty clothes. He felt each of the hanging plastic sacks to find the one with the lighters and then the washing powder. I handed him some bills, and he thanked me for my purchase.
***
That night, Christians from many nearby villages came to their monthly all-night prayer vigil. The first woman to arrive had walked two hours through the rain, carrying her baby on her back. She sat outside the chapel waiting for us to open the doors.
The Christians sang and prayed throughout the night. At around 11pm, thermoses of coffee came out. The singing continued, and at 3am, Fr. Gabriel finally told everyone to go to bed so they wouldn’t be exhausted for Mass the next morning.
***
Sunday morning. Man, I was tired. In the sacristy, Fr. Gabriel found a dead, rotting rat under his mattress, right below where he had put his head all night, every night. I decided not to check under mine.
For breakfast, the inspector’s wife served us rice and a side dish. Inside my head, I prayed that she’d offer us coffee. We reached the end of the meal, and still no coffee. Suddenly, just as I was losing hope, she reappeared with a big thermos. The Easter Alleluia started going off inside my head as I tried to sit and wait as calmly and nonchalantly as possible for the coffee to be poured.
They grow the coffee here. Then they roast it. Then they grind it by hand. They mix it with sugar from the sugar cane they also grow in the village. It’s a huge amount of work, but they were offering us, quite literally, one of the finest luxuries they had to offer.
Soon my head was swimming in caffeinated bliss. "Would it be greedy to ask for another cup? I’m so tired, and Fr. Gabriel asked me to preach and preside at Mass today. No, I can’t ask for another cup," I told myself.
The inspector offered me another cup. This time, it was the Hallelujah Chorus that started playing inside my head.
Thirty minutes later, the inspector stepped outside and blew the conch shell. It was time for Mass.
***
“Andrew.” Back at the inspector’s house, Fr. Gabriel’s voice brought me back to the conversation. “Maybe you’d like to say a few words?”
It was our last night in Tsararano. Time for our goodbyes. It’s customary for each of us to give a brief kabary, a discourse. I thanked our gracious hosts as best I could for the days we had spent together. They had been just glimpses into their lives, into the life of the village and of a growing Christian community.
The Christian community here had begun twenty years earlier, when the inspector and his brother, disillusioned with the local religion, decided that they wanted to become Catholic. There were no Catholics in the area. So they walked two days to Mandritsara, and asked the priest to begin a mission in Tsararano.
It would be three years before a priest was finally able to come. Twenty years later, a small but growing Christian community remains here, hidden among the forests of the high mountains of Madagascar.
***
The next morning, my priest collar had disappeared. All we can figure is that the rats took it during the night.
We decided to give it a go on the muddy roads home. The village sent two men and another motorcycle to go with us, to help push the motorcycles when they got stuck on the muddy hills.
***
One week later, sitting in the taxi leaving Mandritsara, my thoughts kept returning to Tsararano, good water, to these little glimpses into the lives of the people there. After months of language study, those few days had felt like a long drink of cool water after a long walk in the desert. A chance to celebrate Mass for the people, to preach, to sit in people’s homes and share their meals, to encounter their joys and their suffering. A chance, however brief, simply to be a priest among them. A chance to walk alongside a brother priest.
Of course, at that moment, I was also thinking about the growing boil on my foot. Each hour it got a little bigger. I sent Fr. Gabriel a photo and asked him if I had a parasy. “Oui, c’est ça ! Yeah, that’s it!” he replied. “Ask a nice person to take it out with a needle.”
A few hours later, the taxi broke down. We all climbed out and settled into the shade of the trees. We talked. We relaxed. We ate some bananas. I asked if anyone had a needle and showed them my parasy. We all laughed. A woman had a safety pin. We sterilized it with the lighter I had bought from the blind man.
A couple of hours later, we were back on the road. Maybe we’ll arrive tomorrow. Maybe the next day. I don’t count the hours anymore.
Miara-dalana. Together on the way.
Taxi ride from Mandritsara, taking out the parasy, and a photo in front of the chapel at Tsararano
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