Community Development Survey






This week we were blessed to have a great couple come out and do a community development survey among the Mahafaly people. We had prepared them for a hot, desert terrain...but what they experienced was far from that! There was torrential rainfall throughout the trip, turning the "roads" into rivers and their trip into quite an adventure! At one point the truck got stuck and started taking on water. The water crept up about 6 inches at their feet, before they were able to free themselves. By the end of the trip they were wishing they had brought a few paddles to row the truck down the "river".

While we will have to wait a little longer for the official report on the Mahafaly people, we did get to hear a lot of feedback from the trip. The lack of rain has led to four years straight of no harvest, causing the people to live in a state of continual poverty and hunger. The children are malnourished, and lack of medical care is evident. Despite the obvious suffering, the surveyors were surprised to see how happy, welcoming, and giving the people were in the midst of such trials.

We are learning a lot about their agricultural skills and the areas where they can use improvement. We look forward to implementing some new simple methods that could improve their harvest. Please pray for us as we process all we have learned and begin praying through how we can be a part of helping these people thrive both physically and spiritually.

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