My name is Lias and I have lived in Madagascar since I was four. We have power outages every day. This means that we have no light, electricity, internet or even water. I live with my family here in Madagascar. My father is a helicopter pilot and a mechanic for two helicopters. He works for Helimission.
I play in a football club that costs us about 15 Swiss francs ($16.58 USD) a month. I have an older sister and a younger brother. My older sister is 12 and my little brother is 7. We also have two dogs. When I was 4 years old, I went to school, but there aren’t any really good schools here in Madagascar. That’s why we home school.
Madagascar is the world’s fifth poorest country. My father is always going on missions. He is often on 5-day missions, where they preach the good news. There are lots of ancestral spirits there. My father has lots of work to do.
As I already mentioned before, Madagascar is very poor, but Madagascar also has very beautiful landscapes. For example, there are snow white beaches and much more. We were once on an island next to Madagascar. This island also belongs to Madagascar and is called Saint-Marie. There are whales there. We went out on a boat and could see whales! They jumped into the air in front of us. Or there are also baobabs; those are huge trees. You can see the most beautiful sunsets there.
There are hundreds or perhaps even thousands of villages here. It is usually very warm with a clear blue sky, and very little rain. But there are no high mountains. The highest one is around 8650 feet tall (2636 m). On the other hand, nature is incredibly beautiful, for example the rain forest.
We would like to stay here for another three years, but for that, we would need teachers, because my mom works a lot at home. And if we can’t find any teachers, we would have to go back to Switzerland.
Many people here don’t even have two meals a day. Many of them do not have enough water and their huts are very tiny. Some don’t even have a little house of any kind and have to sleep on the street, with a piece of cardboard as a mattress. That is why the African mercy ship is coming in February 2024. We will even be able to visit it and probably even go on board. A very poor but very beautiful country.
See you!
Lias, 10 years old
