When Marlton resident Karen Cohen set out to volunteer in South Africa in August 2023, Madagascar had never been part of the plan. She had booked a three-week trip and googled, “How to volunteer in Africa?” in the wake of her father’s passing last year.
“I said to my friend, ‘I want to go to Madagascar’ and that’s when I said, ‘Just book it and surprise me,'” said Cohen, who had just retired in June 2023 from working 16 years at the Jewish Community Center.
When Cohen arrived, she found herself the sole attendee in the Mandrare River Camp and paired with Theo Zafison, a tour guide with a heart to help the local people. The camp takes people through the Sacred Spiny Forest and pass by the Antandroy Tribe enroute to see wildlife, and while many pass through, Cohen was one of the few who stopped to learn more about the tribe and their conditions. The tribe has a population of around 1,000 people with 43 villages around it, according to Zafison, with only two to four villages having wells within their villages and the rest struggling to get clean water to drink.
“Where we stay at the camp, we are very close to the Mandrare River,” Zafison said. “We are about 10 minutes from the river, so we pump the water and store it in water tanks and distribute it to the tents of the guests.” He noted that there is a very deep well built there that doesn’t go dry. But life is different for the locals, who are lacking the proximity and storage capacity and resources to get water easily and regularly.
“We, the guides, know this is a very serious problem,” said Zafison. “The water scarcity, how poor the people are, how difficult it is to find water. They’ve lived with this problem for a long time, but we couldn’t get any funding.”
Zafison explained that though the Mandrare River Camp is fairly close to the river, where the tribe lives is farther in the Spiny Forest which is very, very dry. The villagers use their ox cart to travel three hours to go to the river, which is also drying, because the last rain they’ve had was in February.
“The people, they dig like half a meter deep and find water because the water table is still very dry,” Zafison explained.
Where he lives, around three-hours away, it rains year-round, so they do not face the same water crisis that the tribe does.
In terms of the tribe’s housing, Zafison explained they live in very small wooden houses in poor condition, with no metal roof, no mattress, tables or chairs and that most of the time, the people are living outside their homes and mainly use their house to sleep in at night.
Local villagers in Madagascar use the water pump and well installed by Philawell earlier this year.
Karen Cohen delivered 300 pairs of flipflops to the Antandroy tribe during her second trip in December 2023.
The tribe also received school supplies, legoes and other toys during her trips.
Earlier this year, Philawell built two rain-reliant wells with water pumps for the villagers in the Antandroy Tribe.
Since visiting Madagascar, Cohen has been on a mission to improve the living conditions of the people living near this river. To do this, she founded the nonprofit “Philawell” with Zafison as her manager to continue to make improvements to the area. She has returned to Madagascar three more times in the past year and has self-funded and delivered 300 pairs of flipflops during her second trip and had two rain-reliant wells installed to increase the amount of water they would be able to store and have access to when it rains during her third trip. When full, the wells can provide clean water for the villagers for around two to three months.
“The problem is, ‘rain sustainable’, now there’s a really bad drought, the worst it’s ever been. They have to go back to the river which means you’re now taking hours out of your time to go to this one river that’s limited on water and it’s not even clean.”
Prior to the wells being put in, they would collect rain in buckets.
During her most recent trip in August 2024, she distributed dresses for the cause “Drive By Surprise” to deliver items that were donated from local organizations, family and friends.
Her most current project is funding a water truck that can deliver water from the river to the villagers more easily until the rain returns, which is expected to be in late September or October, though Zafison noted that sometimes even in October and November, there isn’t rain.
“I learned that water is extremely precious for this earth, and I’m learning without water, you can’t have crops,” Cohen said. “You can’t have a school with healthy children, or a healthy teacher. Honestly, water is life. It is that precious.”
To learn more about how to support upcoming projects, visit https://philawell.org.
