Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
cultywalkingbutcanrideabicycle.Heearnshislivingmendingcomputersandother
electronic equipment. After the death of his mother the boy became very withdrawn.
His school grades plummeted and he spent every spare moment riding obsessively up
and down their lane on his father's bicycle.
The father has some ancestral land a short distance away that he wants to cultivate
withthehelpoffourofhishandicappedfriends,sohesignedupforoneofCharnette's
training courses. His son noticed his father collecting plastic bags from the rubbish
heap and was intrigued to see him planting seeds in them. A little while later the boy
came home with some empty plastic drinks bottles which he cut in half and cleaned
and then asked his father for help to plant some seeds.
They planted some aubergines, but had to take them to Grandma's once they were
growingwellastheyhavesolittlespaceintheirtinyhouse.Fromthemomenthestar-
tedgrowinghisauberginestheboy'sschoolgradesstartedtoimprove,andhefinished
that academic year third in his class - to the great delight of his father.
I visited them towards the end of the school holidays, but the boy was not at home.
'He's gone to his grandmother's because he was so desperate to see how his auber-
gines are doing,' his father commented with a smile.
I left Toamasina feeling quite uplifted by the ingenuity I had seen. It was heart-
warmingtoseehowjustafewseedsandalotofresourcefulnesswerestartingtoclean
up the face of a town and improve the lives of its inhabitants - sometimes in quite un-
expected ways.
Theresa Haine is the co-ordinator of Money for Madagascar, a charity that has been
funding development work in Madagascar for 25 years. See
Click Here
for details
.
