By Bruno and Françoise, Madagascar
Fenomanana canteen
The Fenomanana canteen is now in its sixth year of operating, and it continues to be a great blessing to the bush children attending school. Here are the stories of two of them:
- Flavine is five years old, and she is in preschool. She lives several kilometers away from the school, and her parents are poor farmers. She has three brothers and sisters.
- Annonciat is 12 years old. His parents are also farmers, and they have five children. In order to put food on the table, they spend their entire day working in the fields and barely have time to prepare meals for their children.
New lives in new homes
- Edwige is 67 years old. For years she has been washing clothes all day long. In order to do this, she has to get up at night to get water from the fountain, since there is no water during the day in her neighborhood. She was doing this in order to survive with her three grandsons whom she has been raising since their parents’ death. Her home was a small, dark, and unsanitary space of 2.5 meters by 2 meters. Two of the children slept on the floor. We would have liked to have built a nice little house for her, as we’ve done for others, but we could not find land at an affordable price. However, we were able to rent a clean and well-lit place with a nice bedroom/dining room and a large room for cooking. We also gave her furniture, sheets, blankets, etc. Edwige now has electricity for the first time in her life! We also helped her start a little food-stand business to generate some daily income and enable her to live a less strenuous life.
- A couple of months ago, we completed the building of two houses for Fanja and Marie, both abandoned mothers in their late fifties. We “officially” gave them the keys of their new homes and gave them some basic furniture like new beds and mattresses, cupboards, as well as some food to help them start their new life without having to worry immediately about finding food for their families. They were both very happy and cried when we told them goodbye a little outside the city, in a beautiful landscape of rice paddies away from the noise and pollution. These were our last constructions for this year, given to poor families which will allow them to have a radical new start in life.
- We built twin houses in the rural village of Alakamisy. These houses are designed the same as others we have built these past couple of years. One of the families we built a house for is a young couple with a toddler and another baby on the way. They had previously been living in a tiny room on the second floor of a pigsty, and to access the room they would have to climb up dangerously on a bunch of wobbly bricks in lieu of stairs. The other family was also living in a slum infested with rats.
Food baskets distributed to our neighbors
Not only did we distribute rice, eggs, dry beans, snacks, and soap, but donors also sent us toys for the children and Indian clothes for the ladies. It was real fun for all those present!
If you want to help our mission, you can send us a donation via:
PayPal ID: blouis.corticelli@gmail
Thank you and God bless you!