Children of Madagascar

Well it seems as though installing our internet is going to take longer than expected, so I'm stealing the neighbor's for the time being (sh...).

Here are some pictures of children in Madagascar. As soon as they see a camera, they rush over to get their picture taken. They love too peer at the digital camera to see the picture afterwards.
I have so many pictures of Malagasy children. Half the population in Madagascar is 17 years or younger, and when you travel through the country, you can tell! There are children everywhere, and children having children... So many suffer from malnutrition (notably, a lack of iodine in the plateaux), which is incredible considering that litteraly anything will grow in Madagascar's fertile soil. They mothers don't know any better; all they eat is manioc and rice, accompanied with a bit of zebu from time to time.



This was a picture taken right out of Antanarivo, the capital. You can see women washing their bright-coloured clothing in streams and rivers everyday, but sunday in particular (correct me if I'm wrong here)





We had the honour of being invited to visit a traditional Malagasy house. There were so many children in there that they were in the process of building a second one to fit everyone in the family.




This village survived by selling cisale crafts to toursits (they also cultivated rice and manioc, of course). Cisale is the tread the you find in palm tree leaves. They weaved it into solid ropes for zebu, baskets... I met two girls there: one was 14 and nursing her firstborn, the other was 17 and pregant with her second.



Children are expected to take care of their siblings (one of the girls had two of them strapped on her back at the same time!). I would see children that could not be older than five tottering around with newborns. The girl on the left (Chelena) is 12 years old, the one of the right (Marie) is 11. Children always look alot younger than expected; it's a vestige of malnutrition.



These girls came from Fianarantsoa; they had a pretty pat deal. They'd approach tourists, ask for a picture, then give out their addresses (pre-written on pieces of french paper!) and ask that the picture be sent to them. It's all a scam of course: they establish a correspondance and proceed to ask for money (or so I was told). Still, they also had post cards to sell us-- I prefer resourcefulness over begging any day!

PS: Thank you Steve and family for posting on my guestmap! It's so terribly barren at the moment :)