Rano - Rano - Rano Madio

Thursday Nov. 4th, 2010

I had the honor of attending the opening of 5 new water pumps in my commune. The organization Grand Lyon funded the construction of 5 new pumps located in 4 different fokontany.

We went to each fokontany where people were gathered around the new pumps. They all had a sky blue fence around them with empty buckets lined up outside of it - waiting to be filled. Most of the time was spent, as is the Malagasy culture, of introducing everyone who is present and thanking each other. There were a lot of speeches in Malagasy and in French (the Grand Lyon people all spoke French and no Gasy which is typical and the reason people are confused when I don't understand French). Thus I was picking out Malagasy words here and there that I understood, leaving me partially confused, and then totally lost the rest of the time people were using French.

After the speeches the pumps were opened, turned on and the Grand Lyon people, the commune Mayor and the fokontany mayor washed their hands and took a quick drink of the water. Then the village people came in to fill their buckets. At the first pump, the kids from the primary school sang a song while the buckets were being filled. Mostly I caught the word for pump and "Rano - rano - rano madio" which means water - water - water clean. I totally teared up listening to them sing and pulled the "oh, there is something in my eye" eye wipe technique to cover up how big of a sap I am!

The second fokontany did not do anything particularly special for us but as the mayor walked to the pump someone said "what's new?" and he replied not much but "misotro rano Antotohazo" which means drinking Antotohazo (the fokontany) water. He was super happy about it. Then we were clapped into the third fokontany as the kids chanted "Merci". This pump was at the primary school where they had different Eau'Vive bottles filled with dirty water and clean water from the pump. In between the speeches and the hand washing deal there were 6 girls who recited poems they had written about water/the new pump.

By the time we got to the last pump, in the commune, everyone was tired and hungry so there was less enthusiasm... But the commune thanked all the people involved with bringing in the new pumps with hand woven baskets with "Grand Lyon" and the commune's name woven into each side. Accompanied with a box of tea of course!

Good times!