Walking to school on the road full of muddy omby  (Malagasy word for cow) ruts with the sun breaking over the mountain tops.  Sylvio carries his daughter Fiononantsoa on his shoulders to school every weekday, about a mile walk into the village of Betafo.  Either Sylvio or one of his older daughters goes to fetch her later in the afternoon.  I took this road into Betafo several times during my time living with Sylvio and his family.  It was always filled with people carrying sacks of rice or other things on their heads, people pushing bikes, small boys from six to twelve years old with rope whips herding omby down to the river for water, and pairs of omby pulling old wooden carts.  One day a cart that was way overloaded got stuck in the mud and the omby pulling it were not strong enough to pull it out.  I went to its aid and got everyone lifting and pushing on the wallowed cart but it was to no avail.  It wasn't until another farmer pulling his cart came along and switched out his two larger cows with the ones that were stuck, that we were finally able to free the heavy cart.  Everyone was very amused to see a vasah (white-person) such as I down in the mud pushing with all my might to free the cart.  I felt pretty proud when we finally got it free.  I think there is the idea in rural areas of Madagascar that vasah (non-Malagasy people, specifically white people) never do any physical labor and are all just rich bankers or something.  I definitely feel like a target here in Madagascar, a feeling I don't particularly like.  My independent study project on life in rural Madagascar was incredible and very much eye-opening.  We are so wealthy in the states compared to everyone here, where they get only the marginal leftovers of our over-consuming and materialistic consumer culture in the west, and it is hard to know exactly how to interpret it all.  Maybe wealth doesn't really matter, as long as you are healthy and in a loving community, but these people work extremely hard just to have enough food to eat and can barely afford to send their kids to mediocre schools, or pay for new clothes, or buy medicine when they get sick.  There needs to be a redistribution of wealth in the world so that these people can have the same opportunities that we have in the west.  I hope to have the honor of improving their situation for the rest of my life.