Antsirabe, Madagascar

 Asher Kaufman, age 18, set out on June 28 for a yearlong trip to help spread the Children's Rosary in Europe and Africa. He spent the months of July, August and the first two weeks in September in France. He arrived in Uganda on September 15. From Uganda he traveled by car to Rwanda on September 28. After a week in Rwanda there was once more a return for more travel in Uganda. On October 11 he arrived in Tanzania and on October 26 traveled to Kenya. Most recently he reached Madagascar on November 7. 

"In the last few days, I have wrapped up my mission at St. Therese of the Child Jesus School. Leading the Rosary with the students of St. Therese was very similar to leading the students at Our Lady of La Salette school in prayer. In both places, though there were varying degrees of familiarity with the Rosary itself, most students were familiar with the Our Father and Hail Mary prayers, which made my work much easier. 

At one point during the time I was commuting to St. Therese’s, I became sick with something like the flu. The symptoms were quite debilitating, such that I was unable to kneel for the whole Rosary, so I began taking a spot at the back of the group of children so that they would not immediately notice that partway through the prayers I had taken a seat. We like to encourage the children to kneel, but it is hard to do so when one oneself decides to sit down. 

On Saturday, after having finished the missions at both the School of Our Lady of La Salette and St. Therese, Fr. Bertrand took me to see a local lake where we might walk around and enjoy the views and the breeze. 

Near the water were some vendors of souvenir items, and I decided to go take a look at what they had to offer. I told myself when walking in that I needed to be disciplined and only buy one souvenir (thinking of my already badly overweight bags). I then proceeded to behave like a classic sucker and buy about five souvenirs in total. The vendors did have decent goods, like creches, nice images to hang on the wall, etc. 

The vendors themselves were very nice but seemed rather desperate for me to come to their stalls. One vendor told me that she had had very little business since the political strife. Another told me that I was her first customer the whole day and that hardly no one comes to her stand. This I found quite hard to believe as, if no one really came, I was pretty sure she would just move to wherever the customers actually were. I figured that next to the lake was as good a place as any and probably a good deal better than most. I must say that the experience of buying goods from the vendors was a very important one for me. Previously, when on trips with my family, I often would have little or no patience for the time when we would stop by the vendors and look at souvenirs to buy. I never really saw the value of such things. However, I think it is part of the process of maturing where one begins to see the value in such cultural goods; whereas before a kindle or a set of headphones might have caught the attention, at this age, I find that a well painted cloth to hang on the wall or a particularly nice-looking bowl does the trick. 

After the vendors, Fr. Bertrand and I went to a different kind of market but one where there was little chance of me getting swept up in the purchases. It was a livestock market. We walked past quite a large number of cows, bulls, pigs, and goats. 

That afternoon, we went in the direction of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd of the Sacred Heart. You might recall that I visited them the week before, and they invited me to come pray the rosary with some children that frequent the formation house on Saturday afternoons, but we already had a program for that day. Thus, I came back after the morning leisure time. 

After some trial and error and turning down a few wrong paths, the deacon and I found the formation house. 

Before I tell how the visit at the formation house was, I just want to take a moment to describe a bit one of the most common and inescapable forms of transport in Antsirabe. Some of you may remember my description of the Antananarivo taxi a few weeks ago.

The most common form of transport in Antsirabe is even more rudimentary; it is called a cyclo-pousse (pronounced (see-cloh-poohs). This is essentially a bicycle where someone rides on the seat and pedals, and where the back wheel would normally be, there are two wheels side by side, and on top of these is a seat for a passenger. Thus, the proprietor rides just in front of the passenger and pedals the bike. The first time I rode one of these to commute to the School of St. Therese, I was a bit uncomfortable watching the man in front of me pedaling hard the whole way. I preferred to rest easy in the knowledge that the work was being done by a mechanical motor. However, this was not as disturbing as what was locally called the pousse-pousse and what is more commonly called a rickshaw. The puspus is just like the cyclopus except there is no front wheel; the whole contraption is pulled by a man who is walking, not bicycling. I never rode a pousse-pousse because they went slower and the men who pulled them were evidently working much harder than the cyclists; they were generally older gentlemen who did not feel comfortable driving the cycles, and they all looked like they were in the throes of an extreme effort when I would pass them on the street; I could not bring myself to hire a pousse-pousse. 

The sisters were happy to see us and apologized because there were only about twenty children who showed up. 

I told them it was no worry, and to be honest, I was very happy to have the chance to pray with such a small group of children. Sometimes when people want me to come to their parishes or schools, they think they must have a whole stadium full of children to make it worth my time, but this is not the case. Oftentimes, with small groups of children, the connection as a group is tighter, and everyone feels themselves a more essential part of the “team,” so to speak. Our group at home in Connecticut often has only a handful of children, and we know them all by name, have seen many of them grow up, and personally know the effects that participation has had on each of them. 

The children come from the surrounding area to play games and have fun with the sisters on Saturday afternoons. We went into a small building nearby to pray. The group prayed in Malagasy as the children were more comfortable that way than in French. Afterward, we played a game where we looked for leaves from as many different kinds of plants as possible to see who would get the greatest diversity. I was far from the winner. One of the sisters, who seemed to have a remarkable knowledge of the native plants, gathered an almost unbelievable variety in the few minutes we had of foraging. 

That evening, I prepared my affairs for the next day when I left to go to the parish of St. Peter’s in Ambano. There is a La Salette parish in there that Fr. Bertrand had arranged I could visit. I was warmly welcomed by Fr. Theo. Ambano is a short distance outside Antsirabe, and it is “en brousse,” as they say here. That is just a very Malagasy way of saying it is a bit rural. Indeed, as we picked our way gingerly over the profound divets and rock-studded mounds that characterized the road to Ambano, I felt almost like the car was moving as much vertically as horizontally. It was bumpy almost beyond belief, with the road so disfigured due to the seasonal rains. 

At Ambano, we visited a parish outstation where Fr. Theo celebrated Mass and baptized several infants. Then we went to the main parish of St. Peter’s where I gave a short talk on the Rosary and we prayed all together. 

I spent the rest of the evening visiting with Sister Lanto, who runs the school next door to the parish. We walked through some ricefields and bean plantings to a farm not far away where some brothers work.

They showed me the prodigious amount of pigs there (they have about 130) and cows. There were also two dogs that barked angrily at us from a long distance away when we walked by the first time and then would not even bother to get up and look at us when we walked up to the house; some very interesting guard dog tactics. 

The next day, Sister Lanto divided up the students into four groups to come to the church and pray a Rosary with me. 

It turned out to be a rather pleasant morning; I learned a bit the art of evolving the short talk I gave for each iteration of students so that I was not giving the same talk to the high schoolers that I gave to the kindergarteners. 

After lunch there at the parish, Fr. Theo drove me back into town. We stopped again at the lake where I had seen the vendors, but this time we just walked along the water and then sat down next to the shore. It was a nice, quiet way to conclude the visit. 

The next day, Tuesday, I took the bus again to head back to Antananarivo; my work in Antsirabe had come to an end. 

Before I conclude the story of my stay in Antsirabe, I just want to say that it was such an enjoyable time there with the community of La Salette that I really was quite sorry to see it come to an end. Fr. Bertrand and Deacon Fidelis (whom I had seen in La Salette in July) along with all the priests and brothers who were there were so welcoming at the Provincial House, and Fr. Gerard and the brothers were equally so at the Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette. Everyone made me feel at home, did what they could to facilitate my work, and continued to thank me for what I was doing. I feel so blessed to have been given the opportunity to visit this wonderful community in Antsirabe."

To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE

The Journey in Madagascar Continues

 Asher Kaufman, age 18, set out on June 28 for a yearlong trip to help spread the Children's Rosary in Europe and Africa. He spent the months of July, August and the first two weeks in September in France. He arrived in Uganda on September 15. From Uganda he traveled by car to Rwanda on September 28. After a week in Rwanda there was once more a return for more travel in Uganda. On October 11 he arrived in Tanzania and on October 26 traveled to Kenya. Most recently he reached Madagascar on November 7. 

Asher grew up helping the Children's Rosary and participating in it. He now is helping to spread the Children's Rosary to more parishes and schools. He is also discerning a vocation to the priesthood and has applied to the seminary through the Archdiocese of Hartford. Please keep both his trip and his vocation in your prayers. He has been sharing dispatches from the trip.  

"At the school of Our Lady of La Salette that I mentioned in my last post, Fr. Faly (the school head and a La Salette priest) was so kind as to grant me the use of of all the Religion classes for the school for a few days. In this way, by visiting the various classes during their religion class slots, I was able to visit nearly all of the classes and pray the Rosary with them. As of this writing (on Wednesday, November 19), I still have two classes to visit on Friday afternoon.

In each of these visits, I have been able to not just pray the Rosary with the children but help them to come to appreciate it more and see its importance. This is work that was less necessary when I was in Kenya or Tanzania because most of the children there already saw the importance of praying the Rosary. However, here in Madagascar, the children are not as accustomed to praying the Rosary themselves. 

In each class I went to, I would talk for a short while on the Rosary, the children would write their intentions. and then we would knell down together and pray it, with the children leading the prayers.

It was very nice, staying at the La Salette shrine a short walk from the school and being able to walk down the dirt lane to the classes every day. The place is surrounded by pine trees and very quiet.

On Friday, evening, Fr. Bertrand came to pick me up to bring me to the house where he stays because I would be visiting a parish and school that were closer to him than to where I was staying at the time. The parish and school are both named St. Therese of the Child Jesus, and there are right in downtown. 

But first, on Saturday morning, I went with Fr. Bertrand to visit some nuns called the Good Shepherd sisters. He went to their house to celebrate Mass. Their order helps women in bad economic situations to care for their children, and they even operate orphanages. As it happened, they have a group of children that comes to their community every Saturday for prayer and catechesis, and they invited me to come and pray the Rosary with them next Saturday. I was very happy to accept their invitation because I really have much respect for the kind of mission they are undertaking. It is not easy work, and yet the sisters take it on with joy and zeal. 

That afternoon, I went to address the students in the catechesis program at the parish of St. Therese of the Child Jesus. As I arrived at the parish and prepared to enter the church where the children were gathered, I realized I had not given much thought to what I would actually say. I had been so preoccupied with the events of the morning that I neglected to think of what I would say. 

As we walked up to the church, I asked the priest how long he wanted me to speak for, thinking he would say about fifteen to twenty minutes or so. "Oh about an hour and a half should be fine," he told me. 

"Do the children have any other program for catechesis today besides me if I take less than that time?" I asked. "No," he said. "They've just come to hear you today, and then they'll go home."

Upon proceeding into the Church, I saw the pews packed with children all the way to the back; hundreds of young faces looked expectantly in my direction, and my eyes fell on a table that had been placed in front of the altar with two chairs and a microphone. At that moment, those chairs and the microphone looked as imposing as if I was walking up to a podium in front of a stadium of 40,000 people. 

I realized I would need to surrender what I would say to God and just trust that He would bring the best out of this. I don't remember much of what I ended up saying, except that it consisted of the importance of a developed prayer life, of the intercession of the Virgin Mary (the priest had asked me to speak on this), and thus the importance of the Rosary. 

When I had talked long enough that the children were beginning to get restless, I decided it was time to start the Rosary. As we knelt down and various groups came up to lead the decades, I heard the hundreds of throats behind me eagerly reciting the prayers and saw the kneeling figures as well. I was very grateful at that moment for how the event had turned out. Everyone seemed happy to see the children pray in this way, and it only remained to coordinate the proper time to have them meet on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, I had not neglected the school next door either. Earlier that day, I had gone to meet with the sister in charge of the school (for the school was run by the La Salette sisters). Since I had Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday open of the next week, as well as Friday morning, she invited me to come and lead the Rosary as I had done at Our Lady of La Salette School. 

This is what I have been doing, visiting many classes and leading the Rosary. I am glad to see the students' reactions as well as those of the teachers and facilitators. Knowing myself why I find the Rosary important, I have been gratified to share this with others and see them come to the same conclusion.

One other providential occurrence was that recently I was able to meet the bishop of Ihosy, Bishop Fulgence Razakarivony. Ihosy is a city to the south of where I am. My mother had met this bishop in Rome in 2022 during the World Meeting of Families. He happened to be passing through Antsirabe on his way to Ihosy from Antananarivo. He was happy to see me and interested in the Children's Rosary, which hopefully we will collaborate on further."

To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE

Arrival in Madagascar

        
 Asher Kaufman, age 18, set out on June 28 for a yearlong trip to help spread the Children's Rosary in Europe and Africa. He spent the months of July, August and the first two weeks in September in France. He arrived in Uganda on September 15. From Uganda he traveled by car to Rwanda on September 28. After a week in Rwanda there was once more a return for more travel in Uganda. On October 11 he arrived in Tanzania and on October 26 traveled to Kenya. Asher grew up helping the Children's Rosary and participating in it. He now is helping to spread the Children's Rosary to more parishes and schools. He is also discerning a vocation to the priesthood and has applied to the seminary through the Archdiocese of Hartford. Please keep both his trip and his vocation in your prayers. He has been sharing dispatches from the trip.  

          After saying goodbye to Fr. Cleophus, I continued on my way to the airport. Upon arriving and walking up to the terminal entrance, I found myself in a line of people standing parallel to the front windows of the building; we were told to put our bags on the ground in front of us, and then a soldier went by with a dog that sniffed each bag. This was preliminary to the first security check which one goes through before even checking in for the flight.

           When I went to check in, I was as usual worried about whether my checked luggage would be overweight because of the rosaries and other materials I was transporting. With the 23 kg limit in mind, I placed the first bag on the scale. 26.9 kilograms. The lady behind the desk began that I would need to move some things out of that bag to lighten it, but I already feared the worst for the other bag as well. My fear was well-founded. The next bag rang in at 24 kg. With a look somewhere between unbelief and consternation, the agent asked me to place my carry-on bag (which was supposed to weigh around 7 to 8 kg) on the scale. 12 kilograms, read out the machine pitilessly. Both of us were nearly on the point of laughter at the absurd situation. Kindly, the agent told me that she would accept the 24 kg bag without a fee but would need me to move some things into the heaviest bag from the carry-on bag so that I only needed to pay for one overweight bag. This I did, glad to escape from a worse eventuality.

            My flight was scheduled for very late in the day, falling unsatisfactorily between an evening flight and an overnight flight, too long for the former and too short for the latter. I touched down in Madagascar at around 2:25 a.m.

            I should say a few words about this country in which I currently find myself as it has some rather interesting history.

            The Malagasy (for so the inhabitants of this island are called) can be ethnically traced to a mixture of Bantu peoples (that is, those that inhabit Sub-saharan Africa) and Southeast Asian peoples. The present-day Malagasy are descended from both, making for a unique background. The island was colonized alternately by the French and the British in the nineteenth century, and in fact many of the first missionaries here were British Protestants. The queen ruling here in the mid-nineteenth century was not at all friendly to Christians, feeling threated by their new religion and increasing influence. She launched a full-scale persecution of Christians on the island. Her son, however, turned out to be a practicing Roman Catholic himself, having been influenced by some French missionaries when young. By the time his mother found out, it was too late to do other than punish those responsible for her son’s conversion, but her son himself she left living. Thus, upon her death a few years later, the island became open to further spread of Christianity. The British and French both continued their separate efforts for a few decades, but in the 1890s, the French launched a full-scale invasion, and the British, who would have supported the Malagasy resistance, agreed to hold back because of a three-way deal with France and Germany that gave them control over Zanzibar. Hence, present-day Madagascar is Francophone and mostly Catholic. It has retained, like many Francophone African countries, close economic ties to France. This dynamic leads to a rather complicated relationship between the two countries. On the one hand, France does provide aid for the island, but on the other hand, many people resent the feeling that their economic development has been stunted by France having too favorable a control over their goods.

        Thankfully, upon my arrival, the process of applying for and getting a 30-day visitor’s visa was painless, and since there was no other flight, the single baggage carousel posed no problem or delay. Further, the hotel near the airport that I had booked for the few hours left of the night had sent a shuttle for me and another passenger, so there was no headache of ordering and waiting for a rideshare driver.

        The hotel turned out quite comfortable and well-furnished. As soon as I walked in the door, a bellhop and the driver moved to help me with my bags. I warned the bellhop (who was reaching for the heaviest one) that he should be careful due to the weight; despite my warning, he immediately lifted it over his head with no hesitation. Upon hearing that I would be staying up two flights of stairs, the bellhop and driver both grimaced and laughed but would not let me carry the bags myself.

        The next day, I was so tired due to the loss of sleep that I even missed the breakfast service at the hotel, which was until 10:00am.

        Ernest, one of the Malagasy seminarians that I met at La Salette, came to pick me up at the hotel to take me to the community’s seminary not far away in Antananarivo. Ernest is now a deacon and will soon be a priest. He is a very nice man, open and friendly. He was someone I remember well from La Salette, so it was a pleasant surprise when he was the one who came to pick me up.

        I was to spend two nights at the seminary before heading off to the superior’s house in Antsirabe, about five hours south of Antananarivo.

        The seminary turned out to be a very nice complex with views of the city and a library filled with old theology books of just the sort I found very interesting.

              The next morning, on Sunday, I went to the 6:00 a.m. Mass at the parish next door, where Ernest was serving as deacon. One difference I have noticed here in Africa from the Masses back home in North America is that on Sundays the earliest Masses are the longest. The 6:00 a.m. Sunday Mass (which does not even exist back home) here is around two hours long, whereas the 10:00 a.m. Mass is about an hour long. Back home, the early Mass lasts around forty or forty-five minutes, while the 10:00 or 11:00 a.m. Mass is the longest.

              The Mass had very nice music, though I of course did not understand a word that was spoken since the Mass was celebrated in Malagasy. Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Rite of the Mass being what it is, I had little trouble in following what was happening.

            Afterwards, I had breakfast and, after finishing some work, went for a walk around the city up to the Universite Catholique de Madagascar with another of the seminarians. It struck me just how much Madagascar reminded me of France as I walked through the streets. The roads are narrow and often paved with cobblestones. Further, the cars are often of French make, with a plenitude of Peugeots, Renaults, and Citroens. This was quite different from Uganda or Kenya, where the roads were wide and most of the cars were Japanese.

              The city was hilly, making for some very nice pictures of the multicolored houses stacked up on the slope. Another thing that occurred to me as noteworthy, though the same was true in Kenya, Tanzania, or Uganda, is that rural and city life collide here in ways I never see in the U.S. For instance, here, it is not so strange to find someone raising copious amounts of chickens in coops not far from downtown. To stumble across a goat or cow walking through the streets is far from unthinkable as well. For me, it seems like a collision of worlds, whereas here it is hardly noticed.

              On Monday, after Mass, Ernest escorted me down to the bus station in a local Antananarivo taxi. Being in this taxi was an experience all on its own. To begin with, on the exterior, the car looked like the kind of taxi one might have hailed in Manhattan back in 1995. It must have been at least twenty-five years old and looked every bit as careworn as that. On the interior, it had no seatbelts in the back seats, and the leather coverings on the doors, formerly gray, were now a deep brown from contact with many years of passengers. The seams of this leather covering were splitting badly, and on the ceiling, the plastic was worn away down to the foam underneath in one place. The dashboard looked like someone had taken it apart and replaced it with just a few basic buttons. On the driver’s side, the mirror was messily cracked and partly missing. On the other side, there was no mirror. Finally, the doors proved to be nearly impossible to open such that I finally gave up and just let the driver open mine for me, to which Ernest joked that the driver was an “expert” whose “specialty” was in getting the doors open.

              Upon emerging from this remarkable little vehicle, I found myself at a bus stand with buses lined up to load passengers, each one roughly the size of a Ford Transit vehicle.

              Upon seeing my bags, the bus operators decided to load them onto the roof rack and strap them down with a tarpaulin. Hardly had they finished this task (no easy one, when one remembers the weight of my bags), when they realized I wished to descend before the normal bus stop to be nearer to the La Salette house where I would be picked up.

              “They’re taking down the bags,” one of the passengers remarked to me as we stood there, but right after this unsettling bit of information was conveyed, the conductor began calling names to board the bus, and I got on. The result was that I spent the five-hour ride wondering on and off whether my bags had really been re-loaded or taken down and then forgotten in the departure process. I had been warned to take care of my safety when riding these vehicles, and I could not help but envision my bags still sitting at the bus stand in Antananarivo while I sped far away to Antsirabe.

              When we finally reached Antsirabe and I got out to meet Fr. Bertrand, the La Salette superior here in Madagascar, the driver opened the back of the van, and, to my relief, there were my bags.

              Fr. Bertrand is a very cordial man, very unassuming down-to-earth. In speaking to him, one would not know that he is the nationwide superior of the La Salette community in Madagascar. Instead, he instantly made me feel at ease and welcome and drove me to the community where I now have been staying for a few days.

              It is a bit outside of town in a quiet, secluded place full of pine trees and shaded paths. There is here Fr. Gerard, in charge of the church, two religious brothers studying at the nearby seminary, and other visiting clergy now and again. There is a church where we have Mass every day at 4:00 p.m., followed by the Rosary, Divine Mercy Chaplet, and Evening prayer, all of which occur in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

              Furthermore, there is a school run by the La Salette order down the street, and it is here that I have been invited to start a Children’s Rosary group. I have been going down for a couple of days now, and each time, I meet with a few classes, and I help them to hold their first meeting and become familiar with the prayers. I am glad to have this opportunity to be with this school for such a prolonged period of time because this way I feel confident that they will really become a strong group.

To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE