The Tournaments

It’s high time now that I took a crack at explaining my most time consuming endeavor to date, organizing a summer vacation basketball and soccer tournament for the kids here in Arivonimamo.  I’m an Economic Development Volunteer and our youth sports tournaments are a far cry from ‘economic development’ in any form, except maybe for the lone yogurt vendor who wised up and found a new market selling to our spectators.  Still, there were occasions I felt I was wasting valuable time running around to make this thing happen when instead of focusing on my primary projects.  Yet, as I’ve gotten some distance from the tournaments I’ve come to realize that at the time, it really was the best use of my energies. 

Starting shortly after my early May ‘installation’ in Arivonimamo I began popping around to the different coffee / fried bread stands trying to meet the new neighbors and get the lay of the land.  One of those stands, the one directly across the street from my house, belonged to a guy named Rija, and as it turns out he ended up being one of the most enthusiastic proponents of my community integration.  He has roughly 10 years on me but you’d never know it by the way he acts so we became fast friends.  Aside from taking it upon himself to explain to me all things Malagasy, he also volunteers teaching scout groups and, more importantly, he’s a member of the delegation that helps to coordinate sports for Arivonimamo.  Naturally our conversations drifted towards sports, and some afternoon in mid-June, with the summer vacation fast approaching, I got around to asking what these hoards of students get up to during the summer vacation?  ‘To be honest, nothing,’ was the answer I got.  About half of them return home to their rural communes, having only lived in Arivonimamo during the school year because it’s a major regional education hub.  The other half list around town, and often times that involves drinking and smoking, which both Rija and I concluded was not the most constructive use of their time.  ‘Well, why don’t we organize a tournament for the kids?’ I suggested.  Rija was on board and thus began a series of afternoons spent sitting at his shop, diagramming out exactly what we hoped to accomplish.

After some deliberation we had outlined two separate tournaments to take place in September.  School ends around June and starts back up again in October so the tournaments didn’t span the length of the summer break.  We had to settle for September as it would have been logistically impossible to get anything together before then.  We bracketed the ages that could take part, 14-17, and decided to have a basketball tournament for the girls and a soccer tournament for the guys.  Why we decided to demarcate the genders as such? I have no idea.  To be frank that decision was made very early on by Rija when I still lacked the language capacity to get into the reasoning of it.  Moreover I was pretty transfixed by my goal that this not be my project alone but that this be steered by interested parties in Arivonimamo.  So the reigns were passed on decisions such as that. 

The next big step was getting the space secured and letting the town know what we were up to so the teams could come together.  Up the road a stretch from my house there is a sizable private Catholic high school that serves a substantial portion of the students here in Arivonimamo.   They also happen to have a massive soccer field.  So Rija and I started there, and after three or four successive trips to the head master’s main office, we finally found him in.  He was unequivocally enthusiastic about the venture and offered not only the use of the field but tables, chairs, nets, corner flags, the whole lot.  In our efforts to secure the basketball court we considered using the space in from of city hall but decided the space was often overrun by young hooligans whose shenanigans would likely get in the way of our games.  So we decided upon Johnson high school, slightly further up the road, no more than a hundred yards from the Prosperer office. 

This next part I’m not particularly proud of but I’ll be honest about it because it’s a tale of caution to all those still green volunteers who have yet to cut their teeth on their town.  During tournament prep negotiations with Rija, and this was very early on mind you, he suggested we include some ‘fanomezana’ or awards, for the winning teams, ‘you know, to motivate the kids.’  This was during my ‘sheep’ phase, i.e. I was blindly following and deferring to greater wisdom.  So what did he have in mind?  Well, maybe a trophy, jerseys and a ball for the winning team, and just jerseys and a ball for second place. Ok, sure.  Agreeing to that ended up causing the biggest job induced headache I’ve had to date, but I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time so I went ahead, printed up flyers, notified the important officials and painted the town with posters advertising this new summer vacation tournament.  I also had a chance to get on the radio to tell the town about it and by the time our informational meeting for all the interested parties rolled around we had over 100 kids signed up.

At this point the division of responsibilities started to shift and Rija took the lead on mining his connections to secure referees and draft game schedules.  That was the point at which the other shoe dropped and I realized I hadn’t the faintest idea where I was going to get all the prizes we’d promised.  I’d been bumbling around in a haze trying to get a handle on the pace of life here and figure out my role so much so that I’d stumbled my way right into a pretty nasty predicament.  So I racked my brain and all of a sudden it hit me that Friends of Madagascar, an organization that was briefly mentioned during our training, had jerseys and balls for individuals trying to develop youth sports in communities throughout Madagascar.  Better yet, the previous volunteer whom I replaced here in Arivonimamo now lives in the capital and is responsible for the Friends of Madagascar’s stock room.  After some quick emails back and forth I drafted a formal request and was able to get my hands on jerseys and one soccer ball.  Funny enough, there were supposed to be two soccer balls but one turned out to be a handball when it finally arrived, according to Rija’s expert opinion.  That still left me with two trophies, another soccer ball and two basketballs to procure. 

In Madagascar, any time you interface with the ‘lehibe’ or important figures in town, there’s a specific formula to follow.  Rija sat with me as we drafted formal requests for the Mayor of my town, the head of my district, the head of the entire region, the head of the delegation of sport here in Arivonimamo, and the head of the delegation of sport for the whole region of Itasy.  Funny story about that last one.  I got a hold of her one day by phone and scheduled a time when I could get an hour West via taxi brousse to meet with her and explain my request.  She was remarkably receptive throughout the whole meeting and inside I was celebrating because I was certain I’d sold her on it and would get the money I needed to buy the final prizes.  At the end she looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘I’d love to help you, but the government doesn’t give us any money.  We don’t even have an office…. But I can put my stamp on your other requests to make them seem more official.’ Great.

In the end I have to thank the head of my district who came through to provide trophies, the Mayor of Arivonimamo who got on board by giving us a soccer ball and a French volunteer living in Ampefy who had two basketballs she was willing to part with.  All threads finally tied together the last week of August, just before start of the tournaments so even though it all worked out, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off up until the very last moment.

The other sticking point was our basketball refs.  Turns out, though Rija knew just about everyone who was anyone related to soccer in Arivonimamo, he wasn’t all that well connected when it came to basketball. Fortunately it’s a sport that Americans tend to excel at, myself not included however.  So I put out an all-points bulletin to volunteers in the area and my fellow region mates, Anders, Emma, and Sarah stepped up to the plate and to fill the gap. 

Game time finally arrived.  We had three teams for the basketball tournament, so we decided to do it all in one weekend which was incredibly convenient for my fellow volunteers.  While most volunteers are taller than their characteristically short Malagasy counterparts, I doubt that many experience Gulliver’s travelers syndrome quite as acutely as Andres (I’m making that syndrome up by the way, but you get the point).  He towers well over six feet which puts him a couple heads above your average Malagasy, and he has a deep baritone clarity to his voice that commands authority.  Naturally we stuck him as our center ref.  Games went well, people had fun, we had hoards of spectators and everything looked as if it would go off without a hitch…until we tried to have a guy’s match just for fun before our girls final.  The game devolved quickly into physical fighting despite our refs best efforts and I got my first glimpse of how conflict is often handled in this country.  Players, coaches, fans, everyone rushed onto the court and started arguing, with Rija and a few others stepping in to restore order.  One of the adult coaches even began confiscating the nets he had lent to us as a punishment to the teams until we talked him out of it.  The most surprising part for me was that, even though fights are not uncommon at sporting events in the States, this altercation had a more ominous quality to it.  Discussions quickly disintegrated into a lament about the general mindset of Malagasy people in Arivonimamo whenever some sort of competition is introduced.  This was not my discussion mind you, but a general existential examination of culture played out in a shouting match between the Malagasy participants. 

Things settled down, we shook hands, made up, and began preparing for the final.  All began well and this time we had a great deal of spectators from town piled along the stone wall, eager to watch. By the end of the third period the score was tied and heading into the fourth we were determined to keep the play fair.  We were still gun shy though from earlier in the afternoon, all expecting a flare up of some sort.  Part way through the fourth period one of the girls threw an overly aggressive pick that spun her opponent to the ground, twisting her ankle in the process.  That was the spark our little power keg was begging for and things went south once again.  The team members whose player was injured were so incensed that they decided to forfeit.  I was shocked by the decision.  In the end we awarded the prizes and the four of us volunteers retired to my house to decompress and take stock of what the lack of perseverance and hair trigger tempers we’d just seen might indicate about the culture we were steadily assimilating.

As for soccer, we had thirteen games total.  Actually fourteen if you count the one we had to reschedule halfway through because it disintegrated into a brawl.  Yet, despite the single flare up, all the soccer games actually went remarkably smoothly.  The most heartening aspect of the whole thing was that older organized soccer teams here in Arivonimamo took younger players under their wings by helping organize teams.  There are already semi-established clubs for guys over the age of 18 in my town, but my goal was to create something for the younger crowd.  I figured it would be loose conglomerates of friends that would scrape themselves into teams, but to my surprise the older clubs let the younger kids use their jerseys; players even came along to help coach their little protégés.  Malagasy people have often told me that their national soccer team is rotten but I can say with confidence that this next generation of talent looks pretty good.  So there may be brighter days ahead on the world sporting stage.  When the final game arrived at the end of September, Arivonimamo was gearing up to get back into school, so the timing worked out nearly perfectly.  We had close to 300 people watching that final day, I got to give my little speech to all the players, I awarded the trophies and treated the refs to a cake bought from Rija’s fund-raiser to support the Boy Scouts in Madagascar. 

I know bit off far more than I was able to chew that early on in my service, but for all the ups and downs, and stops and starts of the whole thing, it was the trial and error that taught me how to work and live in Madagascar.  Not to mention it seriously helped my image in the community.  I learned more about the power-brokers in my area, how to get things done, and kids have been coming up to me non-stop ever since asking when the next time might be that I could put together another tournament.  Even more encouraging, I’ve had adults coming out of the woodwork who tell me they feel inspired and want to help in the development of youth sports for our community.  I’ll have another couple of these things going in the future without a doubt.  The one thing that worries me a bit is the fatalism and angst that I saw boiling beneath the surface of this culture whenever a fight erupted in one of the games.  The startling propensity to auto-attribute minor altercations to a fundamental flaw in Malagasy mindset was both startling and alarming to observe.  Disagreements, when they did emerge, degenerated and spiraled out of control with a ferocity you don’t see in your average sport related fight state-side.  It was hard to get a straight answer when I analyzed the confrontations after the fact with Malagasy friends because they were all so self-deprecating.  If what I’m told is true, and there really is a cultural inclination towards fatalism, risk-aversion, and a general dearth of trust that impedes compromise and perseverance, then that seems like something I should try to work on.  Especially since those attitudes inherently suppress economic development. I figure if I can get these kids playing team sports and adhering to the rules, then that’s as good a way to teach a life lesson as any.

Until next time, Veloma

Famahadiana

Being a Peace Corps Volunteer in the highlands of Madagascar it was a given that I would eventually be invited to witness a Famadihana, which is the Malagasy custom of exhumation.  Volunteers living in the highlands are far more likely to receive such an invitation as Famadihana is primarily a custom observed in the highlands region.  I’ve been told that as you move East towards the coast, the practice begins to drop off, close to the Betsileo/Merina ethnic and linguistic divide, near my friend James’s site in Moramanga.  Yet, volunteers from other regions however aren’t bereft of opportunities to experience one.  As Madagascar has modernized, however haltingly, its people have become increasingly migratory and ethnic groups have intermixed.  Due to the strong family connections that still persist here in Madagascar, a Malagasy disposed to work away from the place of birth will, upon his or her death, return to the town of the ancestors and be laid to rest in the family tomb. What this means for my volunteer friends in the deep-south, or the beach dwellers up north is that quite likely they could meet a man or woman from the highlands who will inevitably be observing a Famadihana during the volunteer’s two years of service.  It’s certainly lucky for them too that the opportunity still exists because though it is predominately a highlands custom, it’s a part of the culture here that absolutely cannot be missed.

I’ll start by providing just a bit of background on the practice to offer a bit of context before I get my particular experience.  The word Famadihana comes from the Malagasy verb, ‘mamadika’ and is most aptly described as the Malagasy tradition and ceremony of turning the bones of one’s ancestors. Tombs are large cubic structures situated into the hill side or on top of a ridge with many generations of an individual family entombed in a single structure. As I’ve gathered, tombs are often situated close to other tombs in specifically designated areas with the link between the owning families being that they often come from within the same fokonolona, a term given to the communal association of individuals, primarily delineated geographically.  I’ve been informed that traditionally a Famadihana occurs once every 5-7 years but the timing isn’t strictly bracketed as such and can vary, one of the biggest constraints on frequency being cash on hand.  When the time has come to observe Famadihana new burial shrouds must be procured, an appropriate number of pigs must be readied for the slaughtering, a tent must be constructed and a band of practiced ‘hira-gasy’ musicians (traditional Malagasy music) must be prepped to bust their chops providing a soundtrack for the occasion.  Once the necessary preparations are completed, family, friends, co-workers and the occasional Peace Corps Volunteer are all invited to take part in a two to three day party, which culminates in the application of new burial cloths for all of those previously laid to rest in the particular tomb.  At this point I’ve observed one full Famadihana and part of another and noticed some variation. During my first experience all families converged simultaneously on an outcropping of tombs, proceeding to exhume the bodies and re-wrap the cloths then and there. On a separate occasion I had lunch with a fokonolona that was performing a Famadihana and the custom was slightly altered.  It appeared as if rather than doing the whole process in one fell swoop at the tomb, the family had previously exhumed the bodies, taken them back to the cluster of houses and placed them on tables near the entrance of the dining hall.  I’m sure I’ll have plenty of chances in the future to get a handle on the most common practice is for observing Famadihana but it seems as if it can differ substantially.

Thus far the only complete Famadihana that I’ve been able to experience from start to finish was thanks to the guard at my office and good friend of mine, Mr. Ranary.  The first day’s events were primarily marked by the slaughtering of the pigs and general preparations.  When the time comes once every 5-7 years, responsibility for the celebrations fall to the most senior and direct descents of those entombed.  In this case Mr. Ranary’s sister and brother-in-law carried that torch, which permitted me a glimpse into some of the pre-party goings on.  It also was the case that due to a cultural crossroads that many Malagasy people find themselves in, which I’ll discuss later, Mr. Ranary had to tell his wife that he was taking me to ‘do a report’ as opposed to visiting a Famadihaha, before he could get permission.  In order to keep up the pretense it was also mandatory that I shoot video of the preparations.  So for those who would like to see it I have some very interesting film.  There were small outcroppings of butchers dotting the hillside just upwind of the cluster of houses where the Famahadiana festivities were to take place.  All told there must have been six or seven pigs with teams of three or four men hacking away at carcasses with remarkable speed and precision while Mr. Ranary and I dodged in and out, doing our reporter song and dance.  Mr. Ranary fielding questions while I shot video. Much the same as the wedding in Ambohitrambo, large speakers and a sound system had been carted in over a god-awful road at what I can only imagine to be a sizable personal expense for the organizers.  The evening mealtime arrived and the contingent of family and helpers that attended the pre-party festivities gathered on benches in an open air, tarpaulin enclosed configuration.  I, on the other hand, was ushered upstairs to eat with the important men of the ceremony.  This time I believe the undo elevation of my status was brought about by my gender and association with Mr. Ranary more so than my skin tone, as is so often the case here.  Sequestered in a small room upstairs I positioned myself against the back wall, filling out the circle of men in attendance.  Women began to bring in a few plates containing sizable, darkened hunks of meat, along with a formidable quantity of rice.  I was fairly certain that the meat I was about to try wasn’t any part of a pig that I would be used to eating but I decided to give it a shot first and ask later.  Turns out it was lung.

The next morning, Mr. Ranary and I returned to the scene around 10 in the morning with a few hours to kill before the group was scheduled to make a pilgrimage towards the tomb site.  A hundred yards or so outside of the small cluster of houses where the tent had stood, there was a large open field bounded on one edge by people selling an assortment of Malagasy snacks, mostly fried bread and sugar cane discs, with plenty of beer and rum on hand as well.  Across the way people were perched on a ridge, peering down at a group of maybe twelve ‘hira-gasy’ musicians who were taking a short respite on a log.  Typically bands of hira-gasy musicians are practiced groups of individuals originating from the same fokon-tany (the smallest political unit here in Madagascar, more or less the same as a neighborhood).  Invariably the groups consist of at least one fiddle player, a few accordion players, a fleet of guys playing the recorder, a snare drummer or two, and one guy triumphantly thumping away on a bass drum.  As far as I can tell, some variety has wormed its way into hira-gasy over the past few decades but it appears as if true hira-gasy is best described as a loose jam that ping-pongs back and forth between three chords.  The thing is though, it’s pretty intoxicating if you let yourself get into it. Mr. Ranary and I hiked up towards the log where the musicians were taking their break, followed by a hoard of bewildered spectators trying to make sense of the random white boy crashing their festivities.  In keeping with our reporter story, Mr. Ranary, along with the other big-wigs of Famahadiana, whom at this point adopted me into their clique, insisted that the players strike back up so we could shoot some film.  At this point my camera was handed off to Mr. Ranary which allowed him to capture my first Malagasy dance class.  While the band ticked away, a few of my new friends began to teach me the dance moves that most often accompany hira-gasy.  The videos are pretty embarrassing but I’ll show them off when I’m back home if anyone’s interested.  I’ve already showed it to some of my co-workers here in Arivonimamo who just about died laughing. 

I lost track of how long we danced for.  At one point we took a quick rice break, observing our particular groups designated eating period since other Famadihana participants had arrived necessitating that we all be fed in shifts.  Around two in the afternoon the final partakers had trickled in and we all began to converge on the main tent.  With all parties gathered together, the lead organizer of the Famadihana, the most senior and directly related individual, stepped up to say a few words.  After profusely apologizing for the presumption that he should be allowed to bore us with a speech (Malagasy people quite literally say something to that affect at the outset of every speech), he continued to thank all those in attendance and express his gratitude for all of those who came to help observe the tradition.  A hat was produced by the older man’s son and people approached in staggered groupings to contribute a small bit money while the hira-gasy musicians drummed away.  As soon as that was finished, a Malagasy flag was hoisted up on a large bamboo pole and the entire company set off on foot towards the tomb. 

The timing must have been set in advance because as we made our way towards the tombs, four large stone structures set into the top of a small crest in the rolling hills, our group swelled until we numbered close to five hundred.  Upon arrival ox-carts had been circled up along the hillside and vendors of booze and fried Malagasy snacks were stationed there prepped for our arrival.  The first order of business was a speech by the president of the commune, given from his perch atop one of the tombs.  I honestly cannot say whether or not he began with the customary Malagasy words of contrition because aside from being thoroughly overwhelmed by the experience, I was simultaneously doing my best to keep an eye on this shifty looking drunk fellow who was clearly not amused by the ‘vazah’ in attendance.  Shortly after the speech was completed groups of men, stationed at the separate tombs representing the various families, began to simultaneously dig at the dirt packed over the entrance of each respective tomb.  Once the entrance had been breached, an assemblage of family members would file into the tomb, select the body of a loved one, cradle it in a tan woven mat and extract it from the tomb.   As I’d mentioned before, there were roughly five hundred people in attendance, representing numerous families, in different tombs, all of which held a fairly sizable number of deceased relatives.  This meant that right down in the thick of it where bodies were being extracted left and right it was fairly hectic, with bodies being more or less crowd-surfed along a sea of people in order to procure a calm patch of land to crouch down and properly re-wrap the cloths.  Curious as I was, I decided to follow my friends right into the heart of it all (I didn’t go into the tombs because I believe that would have been sacrilege).  In the midst of it all, being buffeted on all sides by people in the process exhuming ancestors, I was accidentally bumped twice by dead bodies while they were being carted towards a quiet patch of ground.  I quickly extricated myself from the thongs and climbed to a higher vantage point where I could observe the replacement of the burial shrouds.  Once a safe spot was found, the group of people would crouch down, cradling the body on their thighs and begin to sprinkle perfume on the corpse. Still cushioning the body in the tannish mat, the family would begin to wrap the new shrouds around the body, finally cutting strips from the excess cloth to be used a ties to fasten down the new fabric.  The name of the deceased individual was written in marker on the new shroud before the body is once again laid to rest in the tomb. 

Once I returned home to Arivonimamo and had some time to process the entire event I kept coming back to Mr. Ranary’s insistence that we maintain the report/journalist façade, so I began to ask around to my neighbors in order to better understand what I’d been missing.  As it turns out, the advent of Christianity here in Madagascar ushered in a minor existential crisis for many Malagasy who were forced with grapple with a Christian prohibition of exhumation which stood in direct opposition to a centuries of traditional ancestor worship.  Many of my neighbors were quick to tell me, ‘raha mivavaka ny olona dia tsy mamadika intsony,’ which means, if the person prays (the implicit assumption here being Christian prayer), then they don’t observe Famahadiana anymore.  Yet by and large people here are Christian with a vengeance, so how is it that everyone and their mother seems to be doing Famadihana this time of year?  The answer I get for the most part is, ‘well…. It depends on the person.’  So as I’ve gathered Madagascar is caught in a crossroads right now.  A clash of civilizations brought on by the arrival and dissemination of Christian philosophy which so many Malagasy took to which throws into question a seminal cultural practice.  The family of Mr. Ranary is a perfect microcosm of the situation playing out on a larger scale throughout Madagascar.  While his family is Christian and his wife in particular now abhors exhumation, Mr. Ranary wants desperately to hold onto a custom that is one of the most defining expressions of Malagasy culture. 

And so goes the story of my first Famahadiana.

Until next time, Veloma 

A Malagasy Wedding

A few weekends back I had the good fortune being invited to wedding.  As I’m often told by people here in Arivonimamo there is trifecta of events crucial to grasping Malagasy culture that I MUST see.  First:. A Wedding (fahanam-badiana).  Second:. A Famadihana.  And Third: A Circumcision (didim-poitra).  I would take issue with this list because I’ve experienced first-hand that Malagasy people spare no expense for a funeral and while ‘celebrate’ might not be the correct word to describe the proceedings, the all-night song and dance fest that commences upon the death of a love one is something to behold.  Regardless I’ve now checked a wedding of the list of Malagasy must-sees prepared by my neighbors and I’ve been invited to a Didim-poitra as well during which I’m told the grandfather of the so honored child will be eating the foreskin of the little guy served on a banana leaf.  I’ve already had a few Famadihana offers that have conflicted with my work schedule but I’m sure I’ll be participating in one soon enough which will be something to write home about in no uncertain terms.

I have to thank Jean Claude, the president of the fruit drying cooperative that I’ve been working with, for inviting me.  He’s become one of my best friends and an indispensable ally here.  He’s been patient when I stumble through Malagasy, he’s remarkably hard-working and as far as I can tell has no ulterior motives subverting our friendship, which is nice.  As the only Vazah here it’s imperative that I keep on my guard against fickle friends.  It’s entirely understandable in a country as poor as Madagascar that there would be those who would seek to improve their station by leeching onto the ‘rich-foreigner’ in hopes of a hand-out.  This is by no means the norm here in Madagascar but it is something that I need to be wary of and subsequently it makes me cherish all the more those relationships based on mutual respect and genuine friendship.  I’ll write more about his story in the future because I have a lot to say on the matter and we have some very exciting projects on the horizon.

So the day began with Jean Claude arriving at my house at 9 am, Saturday morning.  We lazed around waiting for the rented taxi-brousse to pass by my house.  I’d been assured emphatically the day before that they would be passing my house by 8:30.  By 10 am, Jean Claude, long since fed-up with the fotona-gasy situation, suggested that we seek out the brousse ourselves, and after tracking them down we set out on the road towards Ambohitrambo, the rural town where Jean Claude’s cooperative is based and where the wedding was being held.  I was dressed to the nines as best I could scratch together from my arsenal of peace corps attire but was overwhelmingly trumped by Jean Claude’s old business partner (an older gentlemen who used to buy his pineapples), in a sharp grey suit with a brown fedora that sat slightly askew.  His appearance gave him the aura of an Italian mobster with a Malagasy complexion and an infectious good humor.  The road to Ambohitrambo is still little more than a carved stretch of red dirt ruts made passable by virtue of continued use alone.  The government has allegedly begun a project to reconstruct the road but we’ll see how far the reach extends.  The road to Ambohitrambo is actually fairly indicative of one of the largest problems this country faces.  A crumbling infrastructure.  Though Arivonimamo is only 48 km from the capital city, and Ambohitrambo another 14 km outside of Arivonimamo, our taxi-brousse was halted no less than 5 times by impassable road conditions as we traveled from fokon-tany to fokon-tany for the wedding ceremonies. 

We bypassed the central fokon-tany of Ambohitrambo and proceeded to a smaller cluster of houses where the pre-wedding party was taking place.  As I am told, an average Malagasy wedding is a two day affair, with events held within the fokon-tany of one family, eating, drinking, dancing and speeches (not all that different from the States), with the next family hosting a party the following day.  I missed the first day/night of festivities but we showed up just in time for the afternoon meal.  A giant tent was constructed in the central courtyard of the fokon-tany which, since it took place in a very rural commune, was only a cluster of red-mud/brick houses as I mentioned before.  Long, but thin stalks of tree trunk constituted the frame of the tent over which tarpaulin was pulled taut.  Inside pairs of knee-high parallel benches were stretched in rows throughout the interior, and the supports of the tent rimmed with banana leaves.  By the time I showed up people were already eating in shifts in order to accommodate the throngs of people in attendance.  Out back Jean Claude showed me the industrial cooking operation that had been cobbled together with impressive efficiency for the event.  A large pit out back was lined with colossal rice cooking pots with the done rice being carted off in gunny sacks and ladled into rows of waiting dishes inside the tent.  The loka (side dish) was pig meat, so I was able to see my first pig gutted, fileted, diced into pieces, boiled formidable pots similar to the rice cookers, dumped into buckets and dished out by a group of kitchen help. 

Following the afternoon meal we all gathered in the courtyard around the bride, groom, their immediate family and a full set of household furnishings provided as a wedding gift.  A massive array of speakers was hauled out for the event and I can only assume that they must have consumed 90% of the electric current pumping to the commune during the event.  For all the trouble they must have been to drag out and set up, they certainly got their fair share of use.  A round of speeches was given before we assembled all important parties and set out in a fleet of roughly 6 or 7 taxi-brousses for the final leg of the proceedings. 

This was the point at which our caravan was impeded by the desperate condition of the Malagasy road system.  We had to dig various members of our assembly out of ruts 5 times, give or take, and by the time we reached our final destination it was eight at night and had been dark for some while.  During a traditional Malagasy wedding these days, in order to formalize the marriage, the bride and groom must have a short ceremony within the bureau of the groom’s fokon-tany during which they formally register their marriage.  This formality is followed by a ceremony in a church, or at least, that’s the most common venue here in the highlands as the overwhelming majority of residents are Christian.  The most amusing thing that I noted from this particular phase of the events was that for some reason, I suppose to save on time and space, the commune had decided to have one priest preside over two weddings at the same time.  Killing two birds with one stone I suppose, but the thing that struck me was that the two couples barely seemed to acknowledge each other. 

They must have been fairly well acquainted however because as soon as the ceremony ended the entire congregation was shuffled to a corner of this particular fokon-tany (by this time I really had no idea where I was), where a courtyarded had been ringed with a tarp structure similar to before, this time with no roof but with the same horizontal bench arrangement stacked up on the hillside.  Jean Claude, our new friend Patrick, and I slunk off to the back of the tent to await our rice and pig fat loka because at this point I was thoroughly over being starred at and ‘vazahed.’  I honestly don’t harbor any animosity towards the term most of the time because I’m well aware of its weight and implications, both the historical roots and the fact that exclaiming ‘vazah’ is often nothing more than a visceral reaction many younger children have to a very rare sight.  By this time at night though I just wanted to blend into the crowd, eat my pig slop and get some sleep.  Instead, funny enough, I was plucked from the crowd and ushered up towards the head table where the two sets of newly-weds sat.  It was a very well intentioned, and polite gesture, which I acknowledged as such but it was none-the-less baffling.  I assume that the commune, judging the fact I was white to connote some great degree of importance, didn’t know what to do other than to honor me by plopping me down in front of the bride and groom pairs, always and forever the center of attention.  Luckily Jean Claude and Patrick were with me and I seriously cannot overstate how good it felt to have someone I could turn to help make light of the situation.  Of all the lessons that could be taken from that experience I think far and away the most important thing to note, as always, is that Malagasy people are unparalleled in their hospitality and put a premium on respecting guests. 

And so goes the story of my first Malagasy wedding.  It still stands out in my mind as one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had yet and thank you again to Jean Claude and his family for doing me the honor of allowing me to tag along. 

Until next time, Veloma