A Heart for Madagascar: Pain au Chocolat & Jackfruit, Karaoke & Hip Hop, Preaching the Good News

What do all of these have in common? Love. All of these are acts of love that have occurred the past few days and I wanted to share them with you.

Food is a common bond that all people share. We all need it to survive. Even though food is mainly for nourishment, we all do enjoy food that tastes good. Malagasy women are wonderful cooks. You know someone is a good cook when they can just throw a bunch of unmeasured ingredients together and create a masterpiece. This is a talent I’m still chasing after. Our friends, Fonja (owner of Om Snack) and Hary (Mika’s wife), on the other hand have mastered this art quite beautifully.

Friday

The girls ventured out to learn the art of cooking without measurements. Our first stop: Om Snack. We’ve all been dying to learn how to make sambosas, fried wontons with ground beef and scallions. We begged Fonja to show us how to make them. She came out with pre-made sheets of dough, which of course she made [ahead of time] and ground beef and scallions. She started folding the dough sheets into a cup and then filled them with the ground beef mixture and then she glued the edges with a flour-water mixture. We all gave it a try. Not as easy as it looks. Fonja took one look at our uneven, half-filled, torn sambosas and laughed. Though, I have to say mine turned out pretty well. However, in the end all that really matters is that it tastes good. They turned out very delicious.

After we had filled our bellies with delciousness, Fonja asked if we wanted to make croissants and pain au chocolat. ARE YOU SERIOUS?! How could we turn down such an offer? Fonja started pulling out different ingredients and started throwing them together in a bowl. The end result: a beautiful, large slab of dough. Next comes the fun part: folding in the ginormous slab of butter. I’ve never seen a bigger chunk of butter in my life. Fonja started getting tired, so I jumped in and helped roll out the dough. It was a lot of dough to roll out. Then Fonja cut the dough into triangles and neatly rolled them into croissants. With the left over dough, she made pain au chocolat. She cut the dough into squares and added chocolat and folded it up.

Waiting for these delectable treats was difficult, that is, until Fonja showed us how to make strawberry juice. Waiting wasn’t so bad anymore with a glass of fresh strawberry juice in hand.

30 minutes later, we had fresh croissants and pain au chocolat of course with café au lait, which Fonja’s is the best in town. It’s always a good time with Fonja and the kitchen staff. We all laugh pretty much the whole time. Dannielle and Paige helped the kitchen staff out and put on aprons and served some of the guests.

Fonja has the most giving heart. She gave up a portion of her day to show us how to make sambosas, strawberry juice, and croissants. We offered to pay for all the food and she said no.

After stuffing ourselves, we went on to stuff ourselves some more at Mika’s house. Hary, Mika’s wife was going to show us how to cook jackfruit. Mondy and Bondella joined us too.

Jackfruit is a massive fruit that looks like dragon skin. When it’s ripe, it’s very sweet, but to cook it, you want jackfruit that isn’t ripe. To peel the fruit, it’s important to oil your hands because it’s super sticky. We all chipped in and peeled the jackfruit with our greased up hands. Then we stuck the jackfruit in a pot of water and let it boil. Then we added in some curry, tomatoes and onions. It tasted like potatoes with a zing. There really is no other way to describe the taste of it.

To top it off, we sang karaoke. The lineup included Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Destiny’s Child, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Julio Iglesias, and Malagasy gospel. The Malagasy love to sing. And they are really good at karaoke. They harmonize and sing on key. There was a concert going on in Mika’s house that afternoon. Good times, good times.

Saturday

Paige, Matt, and I headed to Le Kameleon, our friend Leticia’s restaurant, for her hip-hop dance class. Leticia is a former dancer and she loves to teach dance in her spare time. The class is held every Saturday. Last week, her dance troupe performed a routine at Le Kameleon. They typically learn a routine and then perform it. This week we worked on a new routine. Her plan is to have a dance battle at Le Kameleon and have two groups dance the same routine together and battle it out. Everyone will then vote with applause for the best group. We are dancing to “Run The World (Girls) by Beyoncé. We are hoping that we will be able to perform before we leave. It would be such an awesome experience. Leticia is a great role model for the youth of Manakara. She truly inspires them to seek out their talents. Every weekend, she invites musicians, singers, and poets to perform at her restaurant.

Sunday

Today, the girls were invited to speak at the Rema church. We found out the night before that we were speaking in church. We all decided to share the Creation to Christ story. We would each take 2 parts to share and Mika would translate for us.

In all honesty, I wasn’t too thrilled about going. The service was going to be 3 hours long and it’s sooooo hot. When we got to the church, everyone was so friendly. They had four seats set up for us in the very front. The church was really nice and had a keyboard and drum set. We learned that on top of our presentation, we had to give an additional speech. That made me feel a bit anxious. But all that anxiousness disappeared once we started worshipping. Then, I felt really guilty; guilty for not being thrilled about going. Worship was so awesome. Everyone was singing and dancing, lifting their voices up unto the Lord. After worship, it was our turn to speak. First, we introduced ourselves using both our English and Malagasy names.

Here are our Malagasy names:

Laura :: Meva

Dannielle :: Rasoa

Tiffany :: Mirina

Paige :: Valisoa

Then we started the Creation to Christ presentation. The presentation was frequently interrupted with “Amens” and “Hallelujahs.” During the presentation I looked around the room everyone was listening intently and lots of people were taking notes. After the presentation, we each shared encouraging verses and words of encouragement. They prayed for us and then presented us with the love offering they had collected earlier in the service. The love offering was the third offering they took too. Woah! Talk about humbling. They have so very little, yet they gave. And they gave the money to us. Y’all, I can’t even.

This reminded me of the story of the poor widow’s offering in Luke 21:1-4.

“Just then he looked up and saw the rich people dropping offerings in the collection plate. Then he saw a poor widow put in two pennies. He said, ‘The plain truth is that this widow has given by far the largest offering today. All these others made offerings that they’ll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all!”

Every single member of the church came up to us after the service and shook our hands. They thanked us and praised Jesus. The Holy Spirit was moving in that service this afternoon and we could all feel Him. It’s so hard to express in words, but it was wonderful. God is good.

Please be praying for Fonja. She is now our sister in Christ! Praise the Lord!

Pray for Leticia as she continues her outreach with the youth. And pray for us girls as we continue our relationship with her.

P.S. shout out to Dannielle for taking some of the photos in this blog post.