National parties and great fun!

Do you want to spend some time while in Madagascar? We'll be showing you the great holidays they have through this update!

First of all we need to say that Malagasians celebrate many festivals similar to ours. They have many other days to celebrate we are going to talk about. For Malagasians the soul is immortal, because of this we can now understand one of the most popular parties in Madagascar: Famadihana Festival.

Famadihana Festival:


This festival is celebrated once every six or seven years and there's not a specific date for it. In the celebration people exhume their deceased relatives and they carry their loved beings on top of their head and create a procession back to the village or to a special place where they will continue the ceremony. During this ceremony alive Malagasians share their food, drinks and even dance with the bodies.

Famadihana Festival in Madagascar

Baby related:

Something which would look weird to us is the tradition of burying the umbilical cord of the newborn. Something that they usually do too is cutting a lock of hair off the baby when they are three months old, this lock is mixed with honey and roots and the relatives of the child eat this mixture as an initiation ritual.

Children in Madagascar

Beginning of the year:

They like celebrating it with the same as us, the catholic New Year day, and the Taom-baovao, Malagasian's New Year day, whose date is not determined and changes every year.

Saint Vincent de Paul:

These holidays are based on the universal regret and compassion. During this day you can see all the great local theatre plays from Hira-gashi. You'll also be able to admire the fireworks in the capital.

What to eat in Madagascar?

Mmmmm... I'm in Madagascar and starving, but I don't know where or what to eat, what are the best dishes in Madagascar?

     

            

When we talk about Madagascar we may think about seafood, as it's an island. They have a huge variety of food which bring to us great explosions of flavour to our palate that surprise us and make us enjoy the great culture and GASTRONOMY.

Cuisine in Madagascar is influenced by Arabia, China, France and India. The most common ingredients which give flavour to the dishes are onions, garlic, ginger, mild curry, salt and tomatoes.

They include almost in every single dish the ingredient LAOKA. 

Rice with laoka

There's nothing much to say about SEAFOOD, except that is delicious, because they eat the same kinds of shellfish. They also have great dishes involving meat and rice. Some of the specialities in the country are akoho sy voanio (a chicken dish with coconut), foza sy hena-kisoa (a stir-fried pork, crab and rice dish) and kitoza (long pieces of smoked, fried meat). Here are some pictures so you can have a look:

Akoho sy voanio

Foza sy hena-kisoa

Kitoza

Madagascar politics

Hope you've just had a great week!

We were thinking about what to write on this blog when suddenly, a news report was talking about politics in our country. So, we will be explaining you the Madagascar POLITICAL SYSTEM.

Madagascar is currently defined as what we know as a DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. A democratic republic is a country led by a president, in this case Andry Rajoelina who was chosen in January 2019, who is supposed to take all decisions that will affect the country. 

But, under this same title a lot of SHADY COUNTRIES' POLITICIANS hide from the fact that the country that they are leading is actually a dictatorship. If you surf the Web for long enough, in the case you don't live/have lived or know anyone in Madagascar, you can discover that the base of a democratic country, people's voice and opinion, is being manipulated by vote-buying.

In addition to this, there's proof that Madagascar leaders often being disrespectful with their own constitution by not obeying essential laws. There is more to democracy than elections. 

"True democracy requires the rule of law, a free press, and accountability for elected officials, no matter how powerful they may be. Madagascar has none of the above. But far too often, we allow counterfeit democracies like it to pass as the real thing." -Foreign Policy 

Information Sources:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/21/how-fake-democracies-damage-real-ones-madagascar/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/22/madagascar-first-step-road-democracy

https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/elections-to-test-madagascars-fragile-democracy-17734189

Are Malagasy poor?

Welcome back! How are you feeling?


Can you believe that more than the 70% of the population from Madagascar are living under a critical POVERTY situation. To make easier to understand this information we must say that our country, Spain, has a poverty rate of  26.1%, making it the 7^th  poorest country in the European Union.

When we talk about poverty, we are refering to extreme poverty. The one that makes you starve like you have never had and that makes you have really bad days. If we, in our warm home with the heat on, don't have THAT specific dish or food we desire we could paint our lives like sad or even hard when these people, children and adults, are struggling to have their bread and don't even think about having the AC on, as it's a really hot country, or having the same home as us.

We need to keep in mind that Madagascar has about 26 million inhabitants, while Spain has 47 million.

With our collaboration with the NGO Proide we will be able to help build new schools in the poorest parts of this fantastic country.

To finish our weekly entry, we want to say that we need to appreciate what we currently have and understand that, a day in which  what you wanted hasn't happened, doesn't mean it was a bad day.

Is child exploitation a thing in Madagascar?

We've just read about something we suspected but this last research has confirmed it with some astonishing facts.

When we talk about Madagascar we always think about poverty and misery. We've discovered that Madagascar, as a country, lacks any of the rights we consider as essential and normal like the basic rights for children. Such as: 

Leaving aside the legality of the country, 82% of minors are poor, the country has child exploitation and the child marriages are permitted and legal.

We need to talk about prostitution, about illegal street prostitution, which as any other poor country is very easy to detect in the streets. We can comprare Madagascar to the well-known Thailand for the illegal prostitution.

We really need to focus on this whole topic as it could be what, as we talked in the last update.

Check out our Instagram as we are constantly updating it! See you next time!!!

BIG problem for Madagascar

How are you all?

How have you been doing lately? We've been quite busy as we are searching as much information as we possibly can. I, personally, have found that some really important studies on which we base our daily jobs or life. A research that can actually define how many of your population is healthy or not is the HIV study which our government looks at to see how responsible is Spanish (young) population. This study, to us, may mean how resoponsible our society is but, to a country which its population it's mainly poor could lead to the multiple deaths of people that have AIDS. This would translate into a serious problem for the country's economy system, which could bring the region into a disaster. 

Even with these few studies, we can affirm that in 1993 only 0,9% of people living in Madagascar suffer from HIV. To compare it to something so you get a better vision of this we could say that the current number in Spain is 0,007% according to rtve.es. Keep in mind that we are comparing a "developed" first world country with an "undeveloped" third world country.

Thank you very much for checking out our blog. Make sure to check our Instagram too: @madagascarambassadors.

We've put at your service a PayPal link which would help us really much if you could donate some money so we, next to the entity we are working with (PROIDE), keep building new schools in Madagascar.

And remember, check this website every Monday, as we upload it weekly!!

Graphic daily life

Hey again!

As promised, we are updating our AWESOME blog with some brand new information we just obtained.

The organization which we are currently working with is PROIDE. This entity has provided us with excellent photografies of the streets of Madagascar, we love working with them!!!! 

They are really kind and look after us and our work. These photos show quite well how people lives in Madagascar. Most of the people have humble lives with not a lot of luxury in their lifes. Somehow we should learn about their "poverty" as it would make us a little bit more human and sympathetic to people around us. We think following some aspects of  Madagascar inhabitants' lives would make our day by day waaaaaay BETTER.

Would you like some more updates about our project? Visit our blog weekly.

Here are some photos which they gave us to help you get informed, these are some of our partners building and finishing a school we built:

Welcome to Madgascar

Hey!

We're 5 students from La Salle, a school in Tarragona, Spain. 

We are doing a project called Madagascar Ambassadors.

You may be wondering what this is all about... Well, we will be working with an association called Proide, which improves education around many underdeveloped countries in the world, such as Madagascar.

Our mission is simple: we have to promote Madagascar's REAL situation, and not simply what people know from watching TV. 

We would also like to give you guys information about the country so you can learn tips if ever you were thinking of going there. 

Make sure to come back every week for more updates!