The children of Madagascar / by Herbert F. Standing.

  • Herbert Standing
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The children of Madagascar / by Herbert F. Standing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    86/182 (page 84)
    I have been telling you chiefly about the school-children in Imerina ; but it is not only among these that the work of teaching and enlightenment is going on. The Betsileo in the south, the Antsihanaka in the north, the Betsimisaraka in the east, and even the Sakalava in the far west, are all coming more or less under the influence of mission work. The children in the Betsileo province are, as a rule, more dull and unpromising-looking than the Hovas ; but it is wonderful how they will brighten up when brought for a time under the influence of the missionary, as you will see from the following account, which Mr. Fred. Brockway has kindly sent me of his work in North Betsileo. He says : ' The Betsileo children are, as a rule, small and thin (perhaps through scarcity of food), and there is nothing about them to suggest strength, either of body or mind. Pity is very frequently awakened by the poor, miserable-looking condition of many of the school-children. Some boys will come to school with nothing but a very slight girdle and a dirty piece of coarse hemp cloth hardly enough to cover more than their shoulders. The missionaries would gladly help in cases of real poverty, but it is very difficult to discover the actual state of the matter, as the parents, either from greed or from fear of being thought to have money, will not give their children decent clothes. They seldom wash what clothes they have, in spite of abundance of water. Neither do they bathe, or very seldom; so that the closeness of a class of twenty to fifty of them is next to unbearable.' Mr. Brockway says that on receiving a new set of boarders about two years ago, most of them were very poor and dull-looking boys, and with a very minute amount of energy in them. ' They preferred sitting about or wandering up to the market to anything else, and it needed a stern order to get them to play a game of rounders or cricket. But under the school influence the change was certainly remarkable. A bright, intellectual look took the place of the former dull appearance, so that they seemed almost to be different persons. It used to be very difficult to get them to wash their clothes or bathe