Fo Madio!

Money for Madagascar – in the beginning.

In her latest despatch, Theresa Haine explains how 20p donations got Gwynfe schoolchildren on TV!

I have been involved with the Money for Madagascar Charity since its founding in 1986 and have been a trustee since 1989. We decided on St David’s Day for our main charity appeal in schools. Children in Wales were asked to contribute 20p to children in Madagascar whose families struggle to make a living in a less fertile part of the world.

The news of this appeal somehow reached the BBC who offered to make a short film to be shown on John Craven’s Newsround. Gwynfe school was chosen and I was asked to teach the children to sing Calon Lân in Malagasy. Calon Lân was introduced and translated into Malagasy by the first Welsh missionaries. It is still sung in churches in parts of Madagascar to this day. I managed to teach the children one verse and the chorus in Malagasy. Fo Madio!

The big day arrived and the children looked wonderful in their Welsh costumes. We had had some unseasonable snow and the mountains around were stunningly beautiful. My friend brought a bucketful of daffodils from Swansea, enough for every child to have one, and when the film crew finally arrived we all walked down to the beautiful old chapel from where one of the first missionaries had been commissioned to go to Madagascar.

The children were squeezed up on to the steps of the pulpit and we had to sing the hymn no fewer than sixteen times before the film crew were satisfied! One little five-year-old gave a great yawn and one of the film crew asked me if it was their lunchtime. “It’s an hour past their lunchtime” I replied, and that was the end of a very exciting morning. We got all of 2¼ minutes on John Craven’s Newsround but it was an occasion that I shall never forget.

I keep voluminous diaries on my visits to Madagascar (it makes writing reports on return much easier) but can’t find the one which marks my first visit as a Money for Madagascar trustee. I think it was probably the one dated 1992 which has plenty of stories of adventures concerning rusty bridges, sliding and slipping (and often swearing!) on the muddy paths and falling in one of the many rivers that we had to wade across in the forest. Those tales will have to wait until next time.