It's Snowing in Mada

It’s Snowing in Mada.

As you likely know, each Monday here in Fianar I teach at Semafi. Semafi is a school for deaf children across town from me. I wake up early each Monday, hop on the bus to the bottom of the hill, stop for a quick street food breakfast on the way, and then walk the rest of the way to the school. By the time I get there, I am usually sweaty, tired and ready for a nap (an hour long walk up hill almost the whole way will do that to a person). I love hanging out with the students at Semafi, but it often takes me some time in the morning to get into the groove of teaching crafts. This past Monday was a different story. I arrived, I listened to the Bible story during the quick worship service, sang and signed the Malagasy National Anthem while some students raised the flag, then I was almost jumping up and down with excitement to get started. First, I had to find scissors, but that was only a minor obstacle. Armed with 800 pages of white printer paper and a couple pair of scissors, I was ready. We were going to bring January into these classrooms. I wrote, “le neige” on the board, showed the students a few examples, and they got cutting. At first, they didn’t really understand. But, after cutting random shapes and unfolding the first snowflake, they were almost as excited as me. As they each cut lots and lots of snowflakes, I hung the snowflakes on the wall around the foam butterflies that were already hanging. As if I needed to get more excitement going, I grabbed my camera to take a picture of the “snowstorm in Madagascar.”

 

I made sure to bring my example snowflakes home with me to add more decoration in my house. So, now of course it’s snowing in my house as well. If there’s snow where you are, I hope you are enjoying the cold and spending lots of time curled under blankets with apple cider reading a book next to a window where you can see the wonderful white stuff outside. Here, in the heat, I will sweat, drink cold juice, and spend lots of time outside for all of you.