FIGURE 3.3 On the market at Arivonimamo—manioc, a staple in the Malagasy diet
A few miles beyond Arivonimamo, we pulled off into the red dirt driveway of the new family home. Like all residential construction projects, this one had been going on longer than Richard and Tina expected, but they seemed stoic about the delays. Richard’s brother, wearing a yellow-and-green Brazil football T-shirt, was sitting on a stone wall waiting to greet us.
FIGURE 3.4 Lala and Richard Samuel at new family home near Arivonimamo. Go Brazil!
Richard introduced us. “His name is Relax,” he joked, then corrected himself. “Lala.”
I wondered for a moment if the Richard of the city and university was envious of his brother’s simple, unhurried lifestyle as a subsistence farmer. Their parents had seven children. Three brothers had died, leaving Richard, Lala, and two sisters. Richard was the only child to go to high school and university. The others remained in the Arivonimamo area.
Richard, Lala, and I walked outside to the terraced garden with sweeping views from the ridge to the south. Tina had planted manioc, coffee, and lychees, as well as herbs; a patch of ground had been excavated for a fish pond. From the garden, it was just a few steps to the family cemetery—half a dozen above-ground stone and concrete tombs. Two zebu wandered among the tombs, grazing on the long grass. I thought to myself that when Richard and Tina die, they won’t have too far to go.
I pointed to one grave dug in the earth and decorated with flowers. “In 2014, we lost an elder brother,” said Richard. “And soon after we buried him, a cousin died. We will move them into the tomb at the proper time. You can’t just open up a tomb when someone dies.”
For the Merina, the proper time is the famadihana, literally the “turning of the bones,” a three-day celebration when extended families gather to open the tombs, exhume the corpses, and rewrap them in silk shrouds (lamba). For many Malagasy, death is the passage between life on earth, which is ephemeral, and life beyond, which is eternal. The ancestors’ spirits, writes Madagascar historian Sir Mervyn Brown, “watch over every aspect of daily life. . . . The concept of the ancestors as a collective entity embodying traditional wisdom reinforces the unity and continuity of the family.”3 In life and death, family ties are unbroken. Richard quoted a Malagasy proverb: “When you are alive, you live together under the same roof. When you die, you live together in the same tomb.”
The famadihana is the opportunity to communicate with the ancestors, to seek their blessing for health and wealth. “You pray to be successful in business and to have many zebu,” said Richard. The standard ethnographic view of the ceremony, writes anthropologist David Graeber, is “that the living wish to give honor to the dead, and that by doing so they receive their tsodrano or blessing—a blessing that will ensure their continued health, prosperity and fertility.” However, in attending seven famadihana in the Arivonimamo district, Graeber found a darker side to the practice—a fear of ancestral violence. This is linked to what the Malagasy call fady (taboos). There are fady on plants that should not be grown or eaten, on stealing from members of one’s clan, on selling ancestral land to outsiders, on intermarrying with lower castes, particularly the descendants of slaves. When Graeber asked people what would happen if famadihana was not performed, the answers were unequivocal: their children would die, their health would fail, or the family would fall deeper into poverty. When asked about “the origins of the dark, murderous specters that disturbed children’s sleep or otherwise plagued the living, most people immediately suggested they were ancestors whose descendants ‘no longer took care of them.’” Memory of the ancestors, writes Graeber, is double-edged—they are both celebrated and feared.
FIGURE 3.5 Richard Samuel and brother Lala at family tombs
The famadihana has a set ritual and sequence of events. It begins with a procession to the tomb led by an astrologer, usually accompanied by men carrying photographs of the most important ancestors and followed by neighbors, guests, and women carrying straw mats. After uncovering the stone door to the tomb, the men descend the steps with candles or lamps and carry out the bodies, rolled in the mats, in order of seniority, calling their names as they emerge. The crowd shouts for joy, and the band cranks up the beat as the men dance the corpses around the tomb. Placed on the laps of the women, the corpses are sprinkled with rum and honey, then rewrapped in new white silk lamba, and held by family members who pray silently. The music picks up again and mixed groups of men and women dance the corpses around the tomb one more time. The mood, writes Graeber, is one of “delirious abandon,” with the corpses “twisted and crunched about a great deal before finally being returned to their places inside.” As the crowd begins to drift away, the tomb is sealed with earth. Later, the astrologer and a few assistants return to perform a fanidy, symbolically locking the tomb by burying magical objects around the doorway. If done correctly, writes Graeber, a fanidy should ensure that “the ghosts of those within would remain there, unable to emerge again and trouble the living.”4
The famidhana is a joyous occasion, but an expensive one. A huge feast is prepared, one of the few occasions when a zebu is killed for meat. There are the costs of the silk lambas, the band, the bottles of homemade rum. Family members are expected to contribute what they can, handing over an envelope of cash to the host. The event can cost from $1,500 to $2,000, more than many families earn in a year. “It is usually held in winter after the harvest when families have the means,” said Richard. Winter is also the dry season; for public health reasons, the government has banned the exhumation of bodies during the monsoon months.
There is no set interval between the famadihana, although some say that once in seven years is common. “It depends on a family decision, and financial means,” said Richard. Lala was suggesting it was time, and maybe they could do it in September. “We need to consult everyone in the family,” Richard replied. By then, he hoped, the house would be finished so everyone could stay overnight.
The practice of famadihana has been criticized. A Washington Post article attempted to link it to the spread of bubonic plague in Madagascar, although the connection seemed weak;5 in a country where over 75 percent of the population live on less than $2 a day, many people live in unsanitary conditions that provide fertile breeding grounds for rats and fleas. Attempting to ban a strongly established cultural practice because it may result in a few cases of plague diverts attention from the structural problems of poverty, sanitation, and lack of infrastructure. The government could achieve more by picking up the trash and enforcing sanitary regulations than by banning famadihana.
Richard did not forget Lala’s request. The family agreed to hold the two-day famadihana in mid-September. I was sorry I could not attend, but Richard posted photos to my Facebook page.
Paris with Rice Paddies
Most travelers arrive in Madagascar at Tana’s Ivato international airport, about eight miles from the city center. There are daily flights from Paris, Johannesburg, Nairobi, and Maputo (Mozambique); connections to Indian Ocean destinations—Mauritius, Réunion, the Comoros, and Seychelles; and weekly flights to more offbeat destinations such as Bangkok and Istanbul. The Bangkok passengers include gem dealers with illegal shipments of rough sapphires sewn into their underwear or in bottles labeled as vitamin tablets. Others travel to buy electronics and upscale consumer goods for resale to middle-class customers. Until the domestic market grows enough to make it viable to use air freight, business owners will continue to make shopping trips, stuffing cheap luggage with designer-label clothes, iPhones, and cosmetics.
Domestic flights are on Air Madagascar. Or “Air Maybe,” as one passenger described it. “Sometimes they fly, sometimes they don’t,” she said. “You can never be sure.” The airline seems to suffer from the same disease as the government