A married couple from France, Antoine and Gilberte Branca, arrived in 1957 and thereafter served in Antananarivo. Gilberte was a graduate of the 24th class of the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead, and later her husband also attended Gilead. After their daughter, Anna, was born in 1961, they stayed right there in their assignment.

Struggling With the Language

In 1961, Laval and Irene Carbonneau, who were in the circuit work in the French-speaking part of Canada, arrived in Madagascar as missionaries. They moved into an apartment on the ground floor of a Malagasy-style house—with a small bedroom, a small dining room, a small kitchen, a small cold-water bathroom, and a small closed-in veranda. “Rats, mice, and cockroaches came free with the house,” recalls Brother Carbonneau. “My wife got to the point where she could recognize one of the rats by his half-bitten tail. Whenever she met him, she would call him ‘Monsieur le Prince’ and ask politely to pass.”

Laval could speak French and his wife was learning it, so they could communicate with the people. But that was not true of Raimo and Veera Kuokkanen, who arrived from Finland at the end of January 1962. It was not difficult to recognize them when they got off the plane. Having left Finland in the cold of winter, they were wearing fur hats and other heavy, warm clothes. Changes would certainly be needed in this tropical heat. Raimo spoke English but not French. Veera spoke neither. Irene Carbonneau used English to teach them French, so Raimo had to translate everything from English into Finnish for his wife. However, as Veera had had all her schooling in Swedish, grammatical points had to be explained in Swedish. Happily, Raimo knew some Swedish too. Sound complicated? It was. But after about two months, the light began to dawn. They began to recognize some words in French. Even after they mastered French, however, they had to learn Malagasy.

A few years later, when his language instructor was no longer available, Brother Kuokkanen found himself interpreting into French for Malcolm Vigo, a visiting zone overseer. Brother Kuokkanen still remembers that when Luke 9:62 was quoted, he did not know the French word for “plow.” When he tried to describe it, the audience opened their eyes wide in amazement because his description did not fit the way plowing is done in Madagascar, where zebu bulls are used. On another occasion when endeavoring to state in French that the brothers in Malawi were holding meetings under a mango tree, he put the whole congregation on the tree. He had to learn to laugh with those who simply could not help laughing.

Another missionary couple, Samuel and Thelma Gilman, arrived from the United States in April 1962. Sam well remembers communication problems he faced. “In order to get established in our new home, we needed a long pipe for use in closets. So Brother Kuokkanen and I went to a corner hardware store to ask for a pipe, six meters [20 feet] long. We used the word from a small dictionary that we carried with us. Imagine the looks on the faces of those in the store when we asked them if they had a pipe—a smoking pipe—six meters long!”