The Kids of Berivotra
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Nirina
(middle) with two friends
outside the village church.
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In a village that I visited in Madagascar, the kids play a game that’s a lot like tag. Whoever is “it” chases the other players, but instead of simply “tagging” another player, that person catches and touches a player on the head.
The village is called Berivotra (bay-REEFT), which means “lots of wind” in Malagasy, the main language of Madagascar. In the hot, dry climate of northwestern Madagascar, the wind blows night and day.
I learned about the lives of kids in Berivotra while I was visiting a camp of scientists who were digging for fossils of dinosaurs and other extinct animals.
Berivotra
is spread out over sandy, grassy hills that have been deeply
cut by erosion. In one area, the houses sit close together.
But the camp was in a part of the village that had hardly
any people. One family’s home was a few hundred yards
away, and we could see one other home on a hillside in the
distance.
The kids of Berivotra loved to play. One of them was eight-year-old
Nirina. She stayed in the camp with her sister Marie, who
cooked the scientists’ meals.
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Dr.
David Krause with Sege Mary, one of about fifty kids
who go the the school and medical clinic that scientists
started in Berivotra.
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Nirina’s job was to watch her sister’s daughter, Liva, and son, Noa. She and Liva liked to sit Noa in a cardboard box, which they called “the little car,” and push it around to give him a ride. They also liked to sing and dance to the music from the scientists’ tape player.
Nirina greeted me the same way each time she saw me. She would shake my hand and say salama (sahlahm), which means “hello” in Malagasy. Every time I said “salama” in reply, a playful smile would cross her face. I never understood why she smiled. I wondered if she thought it was funny that an adult would greet her in such a formal way.
When Nirina was not watching her sister’s children, she had important jobs to do at home. She carried water from the river to the house, a grass-roofed structure built of logs and boards. She also helped her parents raise corn and cassava, a plant with edible roots.
Kids
in Berivotra did many jobs. I saw a boy of Nirina’s
age watching over his family’s three zebus. These
big oxen graze on tough grass that grows in clumps out of
the rocky ground. The boy followed the zebus along the hillside.
When one began to wander, the boy ran in front of it. With
its big, heavy horns, the zebu looked dangerous. But the
boy shouted, waved a stick, and even threw rocks at it.
Eventually, the zebu turned back and joined the others.
The scientists at the camp have been coming to Berivotra for eight years. After the first three years, they used the village church to start a school and later to set up a temporary medical and dental clinic. Since then, life has changed for the village kids. Five years ago they didn’t go to school, and only a few of them had ever been examined by a doctor or dentist.
Nirina enjoyed learning to read Malagasy and to speak and read French. French is an important language in Madagascar because the island was a French colony from 1896 to 1960.
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Nirina's
older sister Marie cooked each of our meals after
building a small fire under the
big pot by her feet. The temporary lean-to
on the left gave a little shade during
the hottest part of the day.
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With the help of a translator, I asked Nirina to tell me about her favorite subject in school. I’ll never forget the way she sat up and said proudly, “Counting!” She then began to count for me in French: “Un, deux, trois . . .”
On Nirina’s first-ever visit to a clinic, one of her teeth had to be pulled because of decay. “The doctor said I am very healthy,” she told me. Her tooth had decayed because she had never been to a dentist, not because she ate too many sugary foods. Candy and other sweet foods are rare in Berivotra, and so are high-fat foods. Unfortunately, the diet is also low in nutrients.
Nirina’s favorite time of day was the evening meal, when she had plain beans on rice. Beans on rice was also our regular evening meal in the scientists’ camp.
There is one special meal that everyone looks forward to every year. On the last night of the digging season, a feast of zebu meat over rice is held. It is the scientists’ way of thanking the villagers for their hospitality.
As far as I could tell, every person in the village came to the feast. In the fading sunlight, we gathered at the site where the school was soon to be built. We ate beside stacks of wood and sun-dried bricks of clay and thought about the future of Berivotra.
A
School Is Born in Madagascar
In 1996, scientists were digging for fossils of extinct
animals near Berivotra. Kids who lived in the village gathered
around to watch. They came every day, and the leader of
the dig team, Dr. David Krause, began to wonder why they
weren’t in school
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kids were happy when the school was built.
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He could not ask them himself. He did not know the Malagasy language, and the kids did not speak English or French. Dr. Krause asked one of the Malagasy scientists on the dig team to translate. Florent Ravoavy, a student from the University of Antananarivo (the capital of Madagascar), asked the kids why they weren’t in school. The answer was, “We don’t have a school.”
“The villagers had been wonderful to us,” Dr. Krause recalled. “They had welcomed us into their village and had even helped with some of the heavy work of moving big rocks that contained fossils.
“Knowing the opportunities that my own kids had back in the States, I thought it was unfair that these wonderful, bright children were not receiving an education as well,” he said.
So Dr. Krause started a school. Using money of his own and from others on his research team, he hired a teacher. For the first few years, classes were held in the village church. (School was in the church when I visited the village.)
In the United States, Dr. Krause started the Madagascar Ankizy Fund. (Ankizy means “children” in Malagasy.) The fund raised enough money to build a new school. Now it is raising more money to build a house for the teacher, to buy the students books and supplies, and to dig a well so that the students will have clean water to drink. The money will also be used to help other villages in Madagascar.
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| Dr.
Kate Reluga examines Sega Mary's
teeth, with help from Dr. Krause.
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As Dr. Krause spent more time each year with the kids of Berivotra, he realized that most of them had never been to a doctor or dentist. At the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he works, Dr. Krause asked for help. Ms. Lynn Keil, a physician’s assistant, and Dr. Kate Reluga, a dentist, volunteered.
When I visited Berivotra, the village church had become a medical and dental clinic for about four weeks. During that time, almost three hundred people of all ages from Berivotra and other villages came to the clinic. For many villagers it was their first chance to be seen by a doctor or dentist.
“I couldn’t imagine coming back here year after year without doing something,” said Dr. Krause. “Building a school and offering a clinic seemed like the perfect solution.”
