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Rakotonanahary is the name of the guy on the pic above. His job is to repair pots, buckets, or any items made with steel or aluminium. And during rainy seasons, he also repairs umbrellas.
He is married and have two children who are both at school. He lives in Alarobia – 3 or 4 kilometers from where I met him. And every day for more than 10 years now, he is leaving home early in the morning, with his tools, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood – doing sometimes more than 10 kilometers a day – trying to find pots to repair.
On the video below, he is repairing a cup with a hole for 200 Ariary. “If I am lucky, I find 10 customers a day or even more”, Rakotonanahary said “but sometimes, only 4″.
He has learnt this job from his elder brother and they both fixed the tools he is using now by themselves. “Uh…. [smile]… I never thought of doing something else… I’ll keep this job”. This is how he answered when I wanted to know if he liked his job.
I am not good at Basket Ball and I’m not sure I know much about the game, the rules, the techniques and stuff. My friend Tahina who’s found of this game has already talked about this championship and some good Malagasy performers. Though I was there.
I was there watching the Malagasy performers… yelling to death when they scored… missing some mistakes 
but I was there like these other Malagasy people queuing at the gate for supporting our team.
Malagasy people are not really used to go out on workdays. And it was quite amazing to see the crowd lining up at the entrance gate of Palais des Sports Mahamasina to watch the game at 6.00 on a Tuesday evening.
What Diana and I could hear touched our heart. In fact, we were going to follow the match between Senegal and Madagascar. Everyone already knew the performance of this Vice-champion of Africa team. - and the winner for this Afrobasket Women 2009. Everyone already anticipated our failure. Though the stadium was amazingly full that evening and this dynamic public was there to encourage the Malagasy team, an attitude I feel proud of.
One day, Tahina and I proposed “Climate change” as a discussion topic for our club. We were so astonished (or shouldn’t we???) that all the members felt reluctant so we could guess that they were not interested in it. I believe that a lot of people around the world behave like these members when it is to talk about “Climate change”.
I have registered to this Blog Action Day (BAD) because first of all, I feel concerned about it, and also it is so great to see the numerous blogs which are taking part in posting articles about “Climate change” – BAD’s topic of this year. This makes me feel NOT ALONE 
Since this morning, I have deeply thought about what I will post this evening. And on my way home, I saw this big truck which smokes. I took out my camera and came nearer the driver and asked if I could take a pic. The big guy hesitated as I explained that it was for my blog. He could guess that I will talk about environment so he said “Make sure you don’t put me and the number of the truck in.” So I took the pic and showed it to him. Then I asked a “silly” question: Why he didn’t want to appear in the pic. He laughed and said: “I know that this smoke is bad but this truck is my money resources so I have to do with it… Anyway, I’m not the only one [shy smile]“
I lived that guy cuz I started to cough with the smoke. I went home and I have noticed that my neighbour is using charcoal. And bingo! here is our topic. Most of Malagasy homes (I am tempted to say 90%) use charcoal. Why? Because this is cheaper and you can buy it at any time in small quantity. Though if you use gas you have to pay it once. Don’t even think of electricity!!! But where does the charcoal come from??? Peasants in countrysides cut trees of forests to make the charcoal. Though none of them thought about re-planting trees. They prefer to move on to the nearby forests and so on. We, who are aware of the environment, know what goes with this act: no rain, endemic fauna and flora disapear, heat, erosion…
I think that the main problem here in Madagascar is that people are so busy to search for what they are going to eat today. We then become selfish and just think of ourselves. We forget our neighbours and our future generation.
One day, I really wanted to watch a documentary movie about “Why have we waited until it is too late to save our planet?”; yet, many believe that they still have time to think about the problems of climate change tomorrow or even later. People are not aware at all. Though, here in Madagascar, we should now be in hot and rainy season. I remember, when I was a kid, in october like this it rained almost every day… but this october 2009, till today, we only had 5 or 6 rainy days. Some may feel happy cuz they won’t need to buy and bring umbrella; peasants are not cuz of their farming.
I hope that the Bloggers’Action of today will wake up millions… billions of people… governments… poor countries… rich countries… and then, we will altogether rescue the Earth. What I can and already do now is planting my own trees
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