Everybody
has a hometown. For Americans,
independent and migratory by nature, the word hometown smacks of
antiquity. Not necessarily a place you
are right now, but rather a place you
were.
The American predilection for striking out on one’s own has been aided
and accelerated over the years by transportation networks becoming more
extensive, modes of transport getting quicker and global connectivity making it
so that that even though I may be thousands of miles away mom, I can still ring
you up or shoot you a text as I please.
We don’t
tend to tend to think of a population being transitory as a hallmark of growth
but there does seem to be some correlation between increased movement and
certain vectors of development. Malagasy
people are becoming more mobile. Unfortunately,
as history has proven time and time again, without other fundamental benchmarks
also improving, a country urbanizing and people moving around more could in
fact exacerbate hardship. Such may well
be the case in Madagascar.
For much
of its history, and in large part persisting to present day, Madagascar’s
infrastructure network left large swaths of the country disconnected from the
outside world. The meager patchwork of
paved roadway that exists nowadays scarcely connects the nation’s largest
population centers. For much of the
nation’s history communities across the island were desperately detached from
one another. Because of this families
and communities developed a co-dependency and a fierce attachment that is
characteristic of Malagasy culture. I am
often told of the primacy of family in Madagascar and more specifically how
heart-wrenching it is for an average Malagasy person to be separated from their
family. Looking closely you can even see
this undercurrent manifesting itself physically in the way Malagasy people
interact. Siblings will often walk
around holding hands, friends, both guys and girls will hang on each other’s
arms or shoulders, and the characteristically large Malagasy family will, often
times due to economic necessity as much as culture, cram into a single room or
two for sleeping, with many members packed into each bed. Separated from much
of the outside world Malagasy communities developed unique traditional belief
systems and practices or ‘fomban-drazana’ that remained insulated from any
number of homogenizing forces that could have wiped them out. I’ve gathered a good deal so far but there is
still much more I have to learn before I could accurately write about some of
the traditional beliefs and do them any justice. One particular custom though, just as an
example, that I’ve already touched on is the ‘Famadihana,’ or exhumation, or
‘turning of the bones’ ceremonies that are a large part of Malagasy culture in
the highlands.
This
however, is the starting point of Malagasy culture. This is the condition of life and culture in
the ‘ambani-vohitra,’ or the rural countryside. What I want to stress though is
the effect that urbanization appears to be having as it’s puzzled on top of
this mold, both on the character of the country and the culture of its
people. Madagascar still is one of the
world’s few remaining agrarian or predominantly rural nations. This is undoubtedly sustained in large part
by the abysmal condition of the nation’s roads and transportation
networks. The state is however, ever so
slowly experiencing a major demographic shift as an increasing number of people
move from their rural hometowns towards the larger urban centers. A World Bank study published in 2011 notes
that every year since 2005 more than 200,000 Malagasy have moved their lives
from the countryside to the city and notably the number of large cities (those
with more than 5000 inhabitants) has grown dramatically from 33 in 1960 to 172
in 2007.
So the
question becomes, what happens to a culture that was incubated in the rural
countryside, when it is suddenly thrust into the spotlight by increased
urbanization that accentuates all modes of foreign influence, be it music,
fashion, film, business practices or politics?
To begin with, it starts to relentlessly emulate foreign cultures. As with any broad observation, the
generalization doesn’t hold true for all parties but a striking number of
people in this country, once exposed to a foreign trend, are quick to discard
their past and whole-heartedly adopt the new norm.
I’ve
asked many of my Malagasy friends to explain to me where this obsession with
Western culture came from and why those with money who live in larger cities
bear little resemblance to their fellow Malagasy citizens in the
countryside. I’m told that the most
significant factor is that culturally Madagascar has a crippling inferiority
complex brought on by the nature of French colonization here. Decades of being treated as second-class
citizens in their own country deeply imbedded the notion within Malagasy
culture that they are inept, incompetent, uneducated and uncouth. Even now, when people here discuss the French
colonization and foreigners in general there is often simmering animosity
tinged with a tragic capitulation to cultural envy and self-deprecation. As an average Malagasy is distanced from life
in the rural countryside, they tend to copy all things culturally Western,
absorbed through increased exposure to media in larger cities, while
simultaneously spurning their cultural roots.
This is
not to say that a Malagasy person in an urban center wouldn’t attend a
Famadihana. As I said before, everyone
has a hometown and in Madagascar that means that those in the new generation of
city-dwellers often have a rural town to come back to where they can go through
the motions of their ‘fomban-drazana.’
According to a friend of mine it is just that however, going through the
motions, for many of those who have migrated and made their home in the
city. I was told that much of the depth
and spirituality that used to accompany the noteworthy cultural events has
dissipated, becoming more an opportunity for family and friends to gather
together and re-unite and less a reverent homage to a traditional system of
worship. If anything many of the more
significant Malagasy cultural events have adopted Christian rhetoric, as
Christianity has been, and continues to be a formidable countervailing force to
the fomban-drazana.
It is
not as if this shift is happening unbeknownst to the Malagasy people. If pressed on the subject it’s apparent that
they are acutely aware that urbanization is both a prominent phenomenon in
Malagasy society and moreover that it’s having a tangible impact on the
culture. I spoke with my friend Jean
Claude about the matter to get the opinion of someone who grew up and continues
to live in the ambani-vohitra. I was
first curious if my suspicions about the cultural rift between the countryside
and the city were correct. ‘Yes,
absolutely,’ he said. I wanted to know if he thought those in the city
regretted the disconnection from traditional Malagasy beliefs. He didn’t think
so. And how do those who still live in
the ambani-vohitra feel about the impact urbanization and its effects are
having on Malagasy culture as a whole?
He told me that he felt that traditions were slowly eroding and slipping
away. It worried him.
Shortly
after speaking with Jean Claude I had a very enlightening conversation with
another good friend who now lives in the capital city. While he elucidated for
me many of the factors that have catalyzed urbanization here and the numerous
consequences now manifesting across the country, it was his answer to the
question about the traditional beliefs that struck me most. When I pressed him to elaborate on the new
urban population’s impressions of those in the ambani-vohitra who still hold
traditional beliefs, he very diplomatically responded that though there is a
segment of the city population which looks down upon those who hold onto the
fomban-drazana, he feels strongly that each person is entitled to their own
opinions and beliefs. Though he is a product of an urban environment, he
explained to me, he feels that those in the ambani-vohitra are free to believe
as they please and there is no judgment passed on his part. This is a very positive mindset indeed, but
what’s worth noting is the subtle detachment implied in the way the answer was
framed and how reflective it is of the dichotomous society that urbanization
has produced. Rather than lament the
loss of a set of cultural values he associates as his own, or deeply connected
to his culture, my friend rather approached the issue by intimating that those
who hold traditional beliefs should be afforded equality, much the way any
enlightened individual might approach a
different background or ethnicity.
More
than my day to day conversations, what really triggered my thinking on the
nature of urbanization here in Madagascar was my recent trip to the Morondava
area. Following my Mid-Service Conference
I headed West with 9 volunteers from my training group. It was week-long vacation that included a three
day trip down the Tsiribihina River in dugout canoes, hiking in the Tsiny,
Madagascar’s spiney limestone canyons, and a trip down the avenue of
baobabs. Our tour operator brought along
a family member under the guise that she was our cook, not that we minded, she
was great to have around, but I’m convinced she was just along for the
ride. She was a city girl, living in one
of the larger, more developed urban cities, Antsirabe, roughly 3 hours south of
the capital. Her mannerisms, her
clothes, her general disposition all lent the feeling that though she was
Malagasy she could have easily been cut from any Western culture. She was with us throughout the trip which
included stops in a number of ambani-vohitra towns along the rivers-edge. We would hitch our canoes along the edge of
an embankment that held a small collection of huts with walls made of sticks
and palm frond roofs. We would be
swarmed by half naked children who would stare wide-eyed as they tried to
puzzle our blazingly white skin into an existence that had never stretched
beyond that shoreline. My favorite
moment came when one of the children asked, because we were speaking Malagasy,
if we were Antandroy, a Malagasy tribe based in the Southern regions of the
island. Right there and then it was
perfectly encapsulated. A perfect
picture in that moment of the cultural gulf that exists in Madagascar with the
two disparate ends of the spectrum coming into contact. I wish I could know what they thought of each
other.
Until
next time,
Veloma
