Reality Check

I've just has this in an email, relaying a Zoom conversation with Christians in Madagascar. 

The diocesan economic development coordinator Ialy has recently returned from a trip to his village in the far south of the island. Good time? Patsy asked. No, Ialy said. His aunt had been used to monthly visits from his cousins, who live 75 km away in a village which is even more remote than hers. Last month they didn’t turn up; nor this month. So she decided to go and see what was happening. She travelled the 75km by ox cart, which is the usual means of transport, and arrived to find that the entire family, parents and three children, had died three days earlier from starvation. They hadn’t been able to come to town to sell their charcoal because the oxen were too weak; they themselves had been too weak to walk. So they hadn’t been able to ask for help.

 One story, one family. But that story is being repeated all over the far south of Madagascar, which falls within this huge, young diocese. They are trying to get rice and beans to the area to keep people alive.