An Island Too Far – The Challenge to Reach Madagascar

MAKING LANDFALL

We rolled up the legs on our trousers and jumped into the wild, warm surf as our little speedboat tugged against its anchor in the rising tide. Before us was a mesmerizingly beautiful beach, drawing, it seemed, all things toward itself. As our team waded through the water with baggage and provisions atop our heads, stumbling in the thick, powdery sand, we felt like explorers in a new land. There wasn’t a person in sight, or any sign of a settlement; just a perfect line of unspoiled beachfront stretching to our left and right in a gentle arc of pale yellow sand and jewel blue water. But the illusion of being pioneers was not, we knew, accurate. This island was indeed inhabited, and it had a history. It even had a name: Nosy Mitsio. And, as our survey team was soon to discover, it had a sad story to tell.

Madagascar has 3000 miles of coastline, much of it is like that wondrous beach on the peripheral island of Nosy Mitsio: exotic, beautiful, and sparsely populated. Madagascar is a fascinating place. An island 1000 miles long and 350 miles wide, it sits undisturbed off the southeast edge of the African continent. It is both so large and so diverse that some consider it to be a micro-continent in its own right – home to a truly vast array of plants and animals, many of them found nowhere else on Earth.

Historians believe the island was first settled around the same time Jesus was born. And even though Madagascar is only a couple hundred miles from the African mainland, it was, remarkably, first settled from the east, by seafaring Polynesians who crossed the expanse of the Indian Ocean in outrigger canoes, likely originating from present day Borneo. The descendants of these first settlers are the Merina people, Madagascar’s largest ethnic group, who are concentrated in the highlands and hold most of the positions of authority and influence in the society. Their dialect is the official language of Madagascar’s people, broadly known as the “Malagasy.”

Over time, settlers from the African continent arrived along the western coast, and in the north, Arab traders. The French colonized the island in 1883 and the people of Madagascar eventually broke away and gained full independence in 1960 – becoming a nation.

But in the narrative of Madagascar’s history, which includes colorful stories of pirate ships and sunken treasure, as well as cruel tales from the slave trade, the defining element was perhaps the 103-year Merina monarchy – an epoch that ended with the arrival of the French, but had lasting consequences for Malagasy society and, most notably, the condition of the Church.

As the Merina subjugated other people groups in the early 1800′s, they brought with them their culture and ideas, and even the newly translated Bible. Mainline, denominational churches followed the spread of Merina influence. But for some of the other ethnic peoples, the whole of Merina culture was coldly received. And even though many eventually submitted, they maintained a suspicion and distaste for anything Merina that persists to this day; and unfortunately the Church was thrown in with the rest of it.

Madagascar is officially considered to be 40% Christian, but the number of Evangelical Christians is much smaller. And this remaining percent faces tremendous odds in reaching their own people. To Madagascar’s unreached, the existing Church is foreign. It speaks a foreign dialect. It is an establishment of an untrusted people group. And, perhaps most telling of all, it is seemingly powerless in the face of a dark and crushing undercurrent in Malagasy society, the true religion of the island: Animism.

MAKING VOWS

Tuesday is a taboo day, and the Sakalava people in Nosy Be – another small island off the northwest coast – are not entirely sure why. It is a custom handed down to them from generations ago, from their ancestors. This particular taboo is basically a sabbath, a restriction against doing any traditional work like planting rice or fishing. But it does not apply to the activity of receiving visitors, which was fortunate since our team arrived on a Tuesday. We sat with the elders, and many of the other men, women, and children in the village and asked them what it meant to be Sakalava.

The Sakalava are one of the largest people groups in Madagascar. They are found throughout the entire western plain of the country and on some of the smaller islands, nearly a million strong all together. Their ancestry has closer ties with Africa than Asia, and so they are both visibly and culturally distinct from the Merina.

But one common element across Malagasy culture is that Madagascar is a land of kings and queens; and the Sakalava are especially proud of their heritage. From ancient and unquestioned customs, to the misadventures and heroics of a long line of royals, we learned how the Sakalava kings of old set the stage for everything we saw today. What was surprising to learn however, was how these departed kings and queens still had influence over their people today – in very tangible, and sometimes frightening ways.

“Our ancestors were the first to live here,” one old man from the village told us. “We are still doing what they did. They left us three sacred places to go to for healing. We have grown up with this. It is good for us.”

The Malagasy are widely known for their ancestor worship. They believe that the dead are never really departed, and this is especially true of dead royalty. These “spirits” may embody inanimate objects like trees and rocks and lakes to which a person can go and converse with the ancestors. This activity is so closely wed to daily life that it has created a landscape of “sacred sites” all over the island – from prominent natural wonders to small hand-crafted shrines in the center of every village.

The spirits may also embody living people, mediums, whom when possessed will take on the character of the long-dead ancestor and literally interact with the village in real time. But the people caution that they never really know what they will get. When seeking advice from the ancestors, they may instead be ambushed by a fickle, fitful spirit – perhaps a resurrected witch doctor – with ill intent.

At the heart of this type of spirituality is a system of bargaining with intermediaries. For the Sakalava, god is a distant idea, and the idea of a gracious God who intimately cares about them is even farther from their experience. So they must go to the spirits. They bargain with them. They visit the sacred Tamarind tree on the edge of the village, bow before it and place an offering of rum or money in the tangle of its roots. There they make a plea – for something mundane like a new oar for their boat, or for something profound like a child’s life. They make a deal. Make a vow.

“If I get this thing, I will kill a cow here. I will buy fabric and clothe the tree. I will protect this sacred place.”

And it is taboo to not keep a vow. A person may get sick as a result – a kind of retribution from the spirit world. The whole village might even suffer some awful consequence.

One might be tempted to dismiss these traditions as harmless superstition, like throwing salt over one’s shoulder after spilling it. But there is a serious reality beneath the Animism of Madagascar. It is truly spiritual; demonic even.

As our Sakalava host explained, “It is beyond something that you can see.”

But what I could see, in the few moments when our conversations with the Sakalava drew more intimate and inward, was a deep-set uncertainty about life. Amidst the backdrop of a beautiful village in a beautiful setting were a people of downcast eyes. Captive. Bound. Sad.

MAKING A STAND

From the minute we stumbled ashore at Nosy Mitsio and declared it a paradise, we knew that it wasn’t. For the same dark undercurrent we found running through the Sakalava culture was also here. And what at first looked like an uninhabited island, was in fact the cultural birthplace of the Antakarana people – a cousin group to the Sakalava.

The Antakarana have an epic story. They are known as the “people of the rocks” because of the treacherous limestone massif in northern Madagascar to which they fled during the years of the Merina advance. So determined were they to remain separate from the Merina people, they hid in caves for over a year, fought a bloody resistance, and ultimately made a daring escape. Some of the Antakarana stayed behind and accepted the Merina rule, but a group of them, led by the king, secretly maneuvered their tiny canoes through a maze of a mangrove forest and fearlessly burst out into the open sea. They sailed, and they landed here, on this very same J-shaped island where we stood half-wet and awestruck at the tail end of our survey trip.

In their hasty escape, the Antakarana made a dangerous bargain. Before they set out, they summoned the spirits of their ancestors and begged for supernatural protection. And in return, if every single Antakarana made it safely, they vowed to follow the religion of the Arab traders – they and all the Antakarana who followed after them.

The remnant intended to make their last stand on that island. They expected the Merina to continue the pursuit and finish them off. But the Merina never came. So the king chose a special place to honor his vow. In a sandy clearing close to the beach, the people laid down a jumble of large stones – sacred stones from the caves on the mainland – and made an offering of themselves. They became Muslims.

MAKING INROADS

As we traversed the island with Daniel, AIM’s Madagascar Unit Leader, we visited as many of the small villages as could be found. We sat with the sitting King of the Antakarana, in the shadow of those sacred stones which embodied the spirits of past kings, and we were warmly welcomed.

But here, just like among the Sakalava, a spiritual heaviness hung over us. The Antakarana, Muslim in name and half-hearted observances of Islam, were still wholeheartedly Animistic.

One afternoon we set out to climb the highest hill on Nosy Mitsio, and from it we could see nothing but ocean in every direction. It was a picture of utter isolation. Standing there I thought about how an island was something like a human heart separated from its Creator.

“It’s like they’ve gone too far,” Daniel said, in a moment of introspection.

The Antakarana made such an effort to isolate themselves: From the Merina culture, from the mainland peoples, from the world. And it’s like they’ve gone too far, and God cannot be found anymore.

But as Daniel looked out over the island, he imagined the ministry teams that would one day come to this place: TIMO teams that would travel to Madagascar’s distant shores, brave the ocean journey, be tossed and sea-sprayed and awestruck, to make that same beachhead we made – but to stay.

There is no church here. And there can never be a Merina church here. But will there ever be an Antakarana church? Will they ever be free from the dark spiritism of their past?

As I sat and watched Daniel draw maps on scraps of paper and think aloud the possibilities and strategies, I knew the answer was yes. Because there’s no such thing as an island too far – not for TIMO, and certainly not for God.

“The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.” —Isaiah 61:1

(What’s TIMO?)

Being born on New Year’s Day, I’ve been blessed with a lifetime of great birthday parties. But here in Kenya, there’s not much to mark the countdown and arrival like I had known in my youth in urban New Jersey. No glitzy light-encrusted million dollar “ball”. No exuberant crowds. No rockin’ party with Dick Clark in Times Square. Not even fireworks. The flow of time in Africa, measured by the motion of the planets or the calendars of western civilization, passes rather uneventfully in comparison – quietly, as in a manner more natural to the created order it seems. Not unnoticed, but relatively unsung.

We often lose track of not only days, but whole months and seasons out here. Except for Jesus’ birth and resurrection, we pretty much skip all the holidays too. But not birthdays, and in recent years we’ve tried harder to make them special. Amelia’s 13th last month was the single biggest party we’ve ever thrown. And January 1st, my 40th, was beautifully memorable – especially for me.

Renee baked my favorite cake – German chocolate – and we invited over a few of our favorite people (kids and all) for an all-night, sleep-over, camping-in-the-backyard, New Year’s Eve celebration. We shared food and games and joined hands in the living room to watch the countdown, without fanfare, on a computer synchronized to our time zone and an atomic clock somewhere far away. The kids shouted out the last twenty seconds. Renee leaned over and kissed me. We lit candles and ate birthday cake at 12:15 am. And soon thereafter, the youth retreated to their tents and the grown-ups to warmer accommodation throughout the house. Ted and I set alarms for 4:30am and made a pact to drag ourselves from bed and to the telescope if indeed the skies were clear.

And there at the given hour we stood, calibrating the scope to track that singular bright point in the eastern sky, whispering about what a great way this was to begin the new year. As we took turns at the eyepiece and each, in turn, breathed sober words of wonderment, I thought about what we were seeing: Another world in a moment in time. The effect was altogether humbling, as if I were the smallest of creatures who, while holding all the scientific equipment, had mistakenly assumed that he was the observer and not the observed.

Funny how your place in this world seems tenuous when you consider the place of the world in a grander setting. And how time seems as massive and unstoppable as the motion of a Gas Giant when you dare to hold a moment of it.

And the moment we held brought to mind the words of the Psalmist, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

The context of the passage is our human mortality; but that, in the context of God’s glory emblazoned across our days, like a comet in the night sky.

There in the early morning hours of my 14,610th day, I felt older than I had ever felt before. Sure, mid-life and half-sleep will have that effect, but this was different. This was age with wisdom, and perhaps more than I deserved. Wisdom is, after all, a matter of perspective – understanding and insight in not just what we see, but in how we see it. In my view from the backyard that morning, I could count my days – backwards, and in some inexplicable way, forwards – and I could count God’s unmerited favor all throughout. I could see myself a wiser man, and judging from the friends I shared the day with, a richer one too.

Well, we’ve been back at it for a couple of months now. Coming home to Nairobi was not much of an adjustment after the short furlough, but in some ways, we feel like new missionaries again. As you know, we returned to work with AIM’s media team full time. And I must admit that it has been a little odd for me to be here and not be taking to the skies – especially after so many years of it. Last week marked 14 years since the day we arrived as real newbies in Africa. It seems like such a long time ago. We’ve been coaching a new family through their arrival this month and caught ourselves more than once reminiscing about the “good ol days” in Nairobi when the traffic was light, people were friendlier, and the potholed streets were, well, the same. We’ve got a lot of memories here – most of them good ones. And for me, most of them involve the rumble of an airplane engine and the wild adventure of my flying days. There is, undoubtedly, a part of me that misses it.

But now, I wake up nearly every day with some part of my back aching, and the thought of being called in for a flight easily gets my stomach aching. I often still think about the accidents that upended our team and left us dazed for the last couple of years. In my interactions with AIM AIR teammates who have picked up where I left off, I’m keenly aware that God called me away from that life for a reason, even if it’s only for a season.

So we arrived in September to a very familiar city, and a home that feels like home, but to a very different life. I’m part of a much smaller team now – there’s only 5 or 6 of us at the media office – and I’ve put away my technical interests for a while in order to pursue creative ones. The writing and video production and such is not really foreign to me, but it is novel to wake up on Monday morning and realize that this is “the thing I do.” What makes it special, of course, is the reason we do it. I am feeling very much at home working with AIM’s storytellers, and I’m still very much enthralled with AIM’s stories. I’m loving my new job.

Our team has just wrapped up a big project that I can’t, unfortunately, share with you in this newsletter. The short film we created is very public, but we can’t be connected to it for security reasons. Even so, we’re watching from the sidelines and are amazed to see God using that effort. If you’re sufficiently curious from my obscure teaser above, just send me an email and I’ll gladly send you the link – I just can’t publish it here.

Another project that’s more typical for us is the recent media we captured for AIM’s ministry in Madagascar. I traveled there in late September for 12 days – shooting a couple of videos, writing an article, and getting some great photography. What an adventure! I’ve got a travelog here on our website if you haven’t read it yet, and AIM will have an article in their December magazine. The videos take a little longer, but I’ll link them to our website when they’re done.

Our family is well. Renee is fresh into a new homeschool year with the kids, but this could be Ameia’s last. She’s slated to go to AIM’s boarding school next year for 8th grade, eager to get more involved in music and drama and the social life of a big school. You might recall that she tried boarding school in 6th grade but wasn’t quite ready at the time. She’s matured a lot since then, and we’re all agreeable to trying again. Zach is begging to go as well, but he’s going to have to wait. Its a little much to ask a mom to let go of both of them at the same time. (Truth is, I might have the harder time letting go.) Renee’s also working part time at the missionary counselling center, which shares a piece a property with our housing compound – so it’s a short walk for her, and she’s only there a couple afternoons a week. It’s a good little addition to her life.

It’s Thanksgiving day today. It might not look like it from where I’m sitting – a large Acacia tree fills my view out our office window, glowing in the tropical sun. But from the smells and sounds in our home, I can tell something’s up. Amelia has been baking pies all day, and Renee is making the stuffing and rolls. We’re heading off to the home of a friend, to celebrate with friends. For missionaries, we are all each other’s extended families.

It’s also a great day to be thankful. Thankful to God, who has led us and kept us and blessed us – we seldom forget that living here. And thankful for many of you, who in some ways, are the instruments of that blessing.

Happy Thanksgiving.

With love from Africa,
The Delorenzos

If you want to receive all our newsletters (we don’t always post them to the blog) you can subscribe to our eNewsltter mailing list here. They’re prettier than blog posts too.

(I recently returned from a 12-day trip to Madagascar with our media crew. View Photos for this Travelog here.)

Madagascar is sometimes called the “Eighth Continent” for its unique diversity of people, plants, and animals. Indeed, it was the most “out of Africa” I have felt in Africa. We landed in the capital city, Antananarivo, and immediately saw a difference. Much of highland Madagascar is populated by a people who have closer ties to east Asia than to the African continent. Rice fields, bustling streets and rickshaw traffic, all amidst a backdrop of old French colonial influence.

Our assignment was elsewhere however, and on day two we flew to a large island off the far northwest corner of the country called Nosy Be. Here we encountered lemurs and chameleons, and were mesmerized by the sweet smell of ylang ylang, a flower grown en mass in orchards of twisted trees all over the island, then distilled and exported as a fragrance.

Nosy Be is home to the Sakalava people. They are some of Africa’s least-reached peoples, and a group among whom AIM hopes to begin new ministries. We journeyed here to learn more about them: their culture, their hearts, and to generate some media that will help build up the mission teams who will one day serve here, as well as build the prayer support for those ministries.

We spent our time with one particular, peaceful little Sakalava village – a village which was essentially a large extended family sharing the work of cultivating rice, fishing, harvesting ylang ylang, raising kids, and everything else a simple life entails. But even though the people were friendly and the setting beautiful, we found there was a dark side to the Sakalava culture. It was, like most of Madagascar, deeply animistic.

Every village had sacred places of one kind or another. Trees wrapped in royal cloth, rocks set apart, tombs enshrined. Offerings of rum and money and hopes and dreams lying at the foot of so many inanimate objects throughout the island. Central to Animism is the belief that the spirits of dead ancestors still live on. They may posses objects and even other people, and they have real influence in the world. These spirits must be petitioned, appeased, and even feared.

For the Sakalava, these spirits shadow their lives – lives of simple joys and common struggles for the most part, but also lives mercilessly bound to a fickle and fearful spiritual realm. As disheartening at this was to see, we learned that things were much the same, or even worse, for the Sakalava’s neighboring people group, the Antakarana.

And so, the second half of our trip had us traveling in a zig-zag fashion to capture their story. We journeyed back to the mainland via speedboat taxi, and then via mini-bus to the seedy town of Ambelobe to meet the Antakarana king. From there we set out to see the royal tombs and sacred caves – key sites in the epic story of the Antakarana people.

As the legend goes, sometime around 1820 they found themselves on the run from the conquering Merina people. They were forced further and further northward, over a mountain ridge of sharp limestone cliffs and then into a massive and elaborate cave system where they hid. A remnant of the Antakarana survived in the caves for over a year before the king decided to make a daring escape. One night, they fled to the coast, took to handmade dugout canoes, and paddled into the sea.

They landed on a tiny island, a place where they expected to make their last stand against the Merina, but the Merina never came. And so the people settled the island, and Nosy Mitsio became the cultural birthplace of the Antakarana.

We also took to the ocean, but in a well-supplied speedboat, and blasted over open water for a couple hours to land on Mitsio ourselves. What we found was a paradise – beautiful beaches and tiny villages. The island is home to about 2,000 Antakarana who are cut off from the world in many ways.

They live a life of self-sustenance: fishing and farming and raising cattle to support their families. There is a small school on the island and children walk an idyllic couple kilometers from their homes to the schoolhouse each morning. They have some development needs, as would be expected in such a place. There’s a need for better fresh-water management, and a health clinic. But the most glaring need is again a spiritual one.

There is not a single church within reach of the Antakarana. They are nominally Muslim in identity, but their hearts belong to the ancestors. Like the Sakalava, they are hopelessly animistic.

On a sandy clearing near the compound of the resident king we found a haphazard arrangement of rocks, like a little Zen garden, but without the peaceful feeling. These are very sacred stones to the Antakarana. They allegedly came from the caves with the remnant Antakarana almost 200 years ago. And today, they are said to embody the spirits of past kings.

The people here still display the defiant character of their ancestors. But that proud defiance which once saved them from a conquering tribe, now manifests itself in a community suspicious toward outside influence, and bound by a dark spirituality.

And yet, by the end of our stay, after we traversed the island with our cameras and strange culture, and as we sat and listened and learned, they were beginning to warm up to us. It was easy to imagine missionaries coming here. And even a church. That would take the epic tale of the Antakarana and weave a beautiful redemptive thread right through it. And that would be quite a story.

This furlough, our family took a detour through stunning western Wyoming. We camped for 5 days in Yellowstone park – just long enough to get a taste of this wonderful place, and to know that I’ll need to return one day with a backcountry pack and an open agenda.

You can view the photos in a gallery or slideshow here.

Renee and I have had many a long talk, and some tears, about these things. Where and what is home? Will we ever feel like we’ve arrived there? Is it OK to feel homesick while at the same time you’re certain God has called you to a place far from home? What will it look like when God calls us to another place?

I’m not sure I have the answers to those questions, but God did give me some insights over the course of our travels this furlough. We have had the unique joy of visiting many, many great people along the way. Long-time friends, family, and even some new faces. We’ve stayed in their homes, shared meals, and listened to their stories. The stories are so different, but a common thread of faith runs through them. Rich or poor, young and looking forward or old and looking back, comfortably settled or barely holding on, the people we have sat with and laughed with and prayed with are all, in some way, still searching for that place that is home – much like we are. It comes out in various ways – in irrational and extravagant generosity, in the longing we so often express to see God’s purposes borne out in our lives, in the difficult circumstances that remind us how relationships are infinitely more valuable than our job or our house or our plans. We all have those moments when we remember that this world is not all that we were made for, and that the securing of it is not what we, when our hearts are in step with God’s heart, are about.

I think our culture is selling us a lie. In Genesis 3 we learn how mankind was expelled from the Garden, and sometimes it seems as if we are trying to get back in on our own terms. We are told that we can essentially rebuild Eden right around us – with so many comforts and securities and thus eternal happiness. And if we somehow can’t achieve this on our own, our government can do it for us. It is an empty promise, and deep down we know it. What made Eden a paradise was not the place, but the Person. Adam and Eve walked with God – literally walked with him in a selfless, loving, unshakable friendship of the sort you might see in an old married couple walking hand-in-hand in the park.

While we were visiting down south this furlough, we spent a lot of time with the church where Renee and I met and were married. I spoke there on a Sunday and a Wednesday and we were, as always, showered with ridiculous amounts of love and support. One evening before VBS got started, Renee and I were standing in the fellowship hall in pretty much the same spot where we stood receiving guests at our wedding reception 16 years ago. We had taken a step back to watch everyone chatting and eating. We just stood there quietly, leaning against each other slightly, looking still very much in love. An elderly man stood up from one of the tables and walked over to us, grabbed Renee’s hand and began to talk. He told us how he and his wife used to sit a couple rows behind us in church many years ago when we were dating and how they used to smile as Renee and I inched closer and closer to each other over the length of a sermon. He went on to tell us that his wife passed away just a couple years back and how much he missed her. They were married nearly 60 years. And in his eyes, slightly wet with tears, I could see him looking past this world – looking homeward.

A home is a good thing, one of the mercies of God given to us in the blessings of a house, a community, a family, and all the accompanying joys. And for Renee and I, there is sometimes a small sense of loss that we have perhaps missed out on some of these things because of the path God has taken us on. But I am reminded that when we are truly looking homeward, we are not looking at a lifestyle or a physical structure or a place on earth. We are looking at our heavenly Father. None of us are ever so close to home as when we are walking with Him.

As we pack our lives into boxes again, board that plane and land in Africa again, jump back into ministry again, pray for us to keep in step with God – no matter what comes our way.

“Trust is our gift back to God, and He finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for the love of it.”

“Unwavering trust is such a rare and priceless treasure because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic.”

“At the age of 68, after a truly ragged journey, that I would call a journey of sin and mercy, I am abosolutely convinced that it means more to Jesus to say ‘I trust you’, than to say ‘I love you’.”

— Brennan Manning

(I pulled these quotes from a talk Manning gave many years ago – one I have probably listened to twenty times already. I was recently giving a short talk to a church college group and these words came to mind as I pieced together the mission report. As I thought about some of the stories of our life and ministry, the theme of trust, unwavering trust, kept surfacing. I was especially challenged by that last quote above. It makes me wonder what life would look like if I could so easily and consistently say to God “I trust you”, and then live as if I did.)