R&R

When I came back from a visit to Dadyn’i Jo’s hut late this afternoon, I found Maman’i Mesido from nextdoor pounding her own manioc leaves. I asked her what she was cooking with them (usually people try to make the rice-accompaniment with some kind of fat or protein, often coconut milk or small minnows and tiny shrimp), and she said it would just be the leaves. I went into the house, grabbed a ginger root, two small onions and some garlic cloves, and brought them over to her to flavor the ravinbazaha.

Quite often I’ll ask people in passing, as they often do me, what their ro is to be this evening. I get the reply, “ah, tsis’sy ro, niany� (nothing to go with the rice today). What they really mean is they have only greens, nothing yummy worth mentioning. Here, where you can always go out and collect wild greens or send children off with wicker baskets to wade in the river and catch minnows and crayfish when you need it, most families are able to provide for themselves. This way families can live on less than a dollar a day, as long as their rice stores last.

The usual gang of children crowded around the small oil lamp on my kitchen table this evening, faces illuminated in the flame’s orange glow, the rest of their forms dissolving into the darkness. Among them was the Riche, Richeal, Richard, and Nivo, sibling group.

I turned at one point to Riche to ask if he could take me to collect ravinbazaha (manioc leaves) tomorrow morning to pound and cook with an Indian spice packet I bought when last in Tana. Riche looked at me and said that he had to think about where we could get them, because ravinbazaha was sasatra (scarce) now. I thought this strange, having noticed all the women I passed in the village today on their way home from the mountainside, had baskets balanced on their heads, piled high with ravinbazaha for the evening’s ro.

I noticed today as I watched Riche playing with baby Dodon’i Julio, how his beautiful dark face had suddenly become mottled with light blotches of a kind of minor fungal skin infection that discolors the chocolate skin of many villagers in my region. I’ve read that malnourished people are most susceptible to it. I’ve only observed the blotchy skin-tone so far in older students and adults. It eventually goes away and people have learned to live with it, but it’s a bane to the vainer young women in the village.

As I heated up my dinner (half of what I cooked at lunchtime) I asked Riche what their ro was today. He bowed his head and said, embarrassed, “tsis’sy ro zahay, niany� (we have none, today). I looked at him reprimandingly, assuming he was exaggerating, and said he shouldn’t be silly. I then asked again what their rice-accompaniment was going to be. He shook his head and said, “Marina, Rachelle. Tsis’sy ro niany. Vary, fo.� (“It’s true Rachel. We’re just eating rice tonight.�) I told him he knew better than that, that I had told his mother if they wanted to be healthy the family had to eat things with vitamins and fat and protein, besides rice. He didn’t answer. Instead, Riche pulled out 100AR (5¢) from his pocket and said he was supposed to buy ananambo (mirangue tree leaves) to cook, but that he couldn’t find any for sale after he finished school.

I asked who was cooking that night and he told me he was, and that the rice was already done. Riche is a 13 year old boy who sacrifices everything to care for his 3 younger siblings. He is one of the most selfless people I will ever know, dividing everything he is given into a share for each little brother and sister, then pocketing it for later distribution. Since the day I first met the machete-yielding, scrawny little boy, he impressed me with wisdom far beyond his years.

When I asked why his mother wasn’t cooking, he said she was gone off to a village far away to try and sell used clothes. Knowing his father had been away for the last two months, mining quartz deep in the forest, I asked where his older (but less responsible) brother was. I was told that he had left this afternoon to try and find day work several villages away.

The four children, ranging in age from 13 to 2 ½ years, had been on their own for the last three days. I looked at Riche incredulously and asked if what he was saying could really be true, then noticed my dinner getting hot on the stove. When I stood up to turn down the flame, Riche got up and announced to his siblings that it was time to go home and made for the door. He knows I expect kids to head on home as soon as I’m done cooking, because I can’t make enough to share with everyone, and can’t bare to have so many eyes watching me eat entire platefuls of what they see as ro with no rice.

I told Riche to wait and removed the pan from the stove, grabbed a metal plate, and transferred the contents (spaghetti with my monthly ration of ground beef from Maroantsetra, tomatoes and green peppers) onto it. Riche usually objects to taking food I offer him, insisting that I need it, and that if I share with everyone I won’t have enough. I often have to coax him into accepting things. Tonight he watched me pour my dinner onto the plate and hand it to him to take home. He was quiet for a long time, then mumbled “misaotra, Rachelle e� before walking out the door, little brother Richeal following at his heels. That silence said everything. He needed the food that much, not just for his supper, but for Nivo, Richard and Richeal.

Maman’i Riche is not from Voloina, she has no education and no apparent skills, apart from childbearing. She’s from Mandritsara, far away on the other side of the forest corridor, and has no inherited land to farm, so must buy rice to feed the family. Her husband has been spending months off surface mining far away, but earns money from the rich Asian quartz buyers only when he manages to uncover valuable inclusion-free rocks. It’s a matter of chance and not skill, and sometimes he returns home empty handed.

Times like this are so hard. I love this family. I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer. I’m supposed to think up ways to help in cases like this. I should be figuring out a sustainable income generating opportunity for the family. Teach a skill, search for an income generating opportunity. But in this case, I’m at a loss.

If I hadn’t asked Riche what was for dinner at his house, I would never have known that the kids were alone and had nothing but rice to eat. My supper portion will feed four tonight. Spaghetti on rice.

I’ll go boil some water and make up a packet of TJs miso soup…