The dream is a reality ...

... That's how Jakob Adolf, the country director of Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) Madagascar described seeing River Rover 501, one of HoverAid's hovercraft operating on the Mangoky river, an immense but shallow river in the remote dry southern region of Madagascar.The hovercraft was used during the autumn to enable development workers from the aid organisation PSI to distribute mosquito nets and water treatment packs. At the same time they undertook an education programme concerning HIV in 18 villages along over 100 kilometres of the river which they would otherwise not have been able to access.

As PSI commented:

"There is just no education here...they don't know what malaria is, just that their kids are dying"

The Mangoky is a beautiful but unpredictable river. It is wide and shallow, strewn with sand bars and dead trees washed down from the high plateau, and where it is deep enough for a dug out canoe to float, it is too swift for paddling so arduous punting is the only option.

The roads in the region are simple dirt tracks, and due to the deforestation and the light soils, erosion is a significant problem. Travel to anywhere other than along the route to the main town of Beroroha, even in a good four wheel drive vehicle, is out of the question.

HoverAid and MAF established a base camp at a mid point on the river near Beroroha and whilst the MAF team revived an airstrip which hadn’t been used for 30 years, HoverAid’s team of Peter and Jantine van Buuren, Peter Gunner, and Andy Mayo made sorties totalling over 500 km per week , transporting PSI development workers to remote villages. The level of need in the area is acute, with few villages having access to schools, poor understanding of diseases such as Malaria and HIV, and high levels of malnutrition, particularly amongst the young.