miles west of Tana, RN1 seems to hesitate and divides into two branches. They are reunited 60 miles further west at Tsiroanomandidy on the edge of the highland plateau. That’s where RN1 and the blacktop end, still more than 125 miles short of the coast and what should be its terminus, the fishing port of Manitrano. The fizzling out of RN1 is symptomatic of Madagascar’s infrastructure problems; without better road or rail connections, or electricity-generating capacity, economic development will always be hampered. For those traveling on from Tsiroanomandidy to the coast, the dirt road descends from the highlands to the savannah grassland, and then to the coastal plain. It’s a bone-rattling fifteen-hour trip by 4x4 or high-riding vehicle. In the dry season, the trip by taxi-brousse (bush taxi) costs 70,000 ariary ($23); in the monsoon season, it’s 100,000 ($32). The people of Manitrano call it “the devil’s route.”
MAP 3.1 Madagascar (map by Belén Marco Crespo)
The highland region west of Tana is called Imerina, literally the homeland of the Merina. RN1 winds gently up and down the low hills, skirting fields of corn, rice paddies, and secondary-growth stands of pine and eucalyptus; along the roadside, billboards feature images of politicians planting trees and declaring their commitment to environmental conservation. Brick kilns dot the fields; with most wood used for charcoal, homes are built from rough mud bricks fired from the red-clay soil of the region. The towns are agricultural and commercial centers, selling farm implements, seeds, and supplies and shipping produce to the capital.
Richard, Tina, and I stopped at the roadside to eat fresh corn, grilled in cocottes over charcoal fires. “This is an agricultural region, but the farmers are not self-sufficient,” said Richard. By tradition, land is divided among sons, so over generations farm plots have become smaller. The national average for a family farm, Richard said, is half a hectare—about half the size of a football or rugby field. “You can’t survive on that, and the population continues to grow. That’s why the people go to Tana every day to do petit commerce, selling farm produce, secondhand clothes or cheap consumer items.”
We stopped for lunch in Arivonimamo, the town of a thousand drunken soldiers, and visited Richard’s family home and the Catholic lycée where he studied. The first armed rebellion against the French occurred here in late 1895, soon after Tana surrendered, and the queen signed a treaty establishing a French protectorate. Some regarded the Merina monarch and political leaders as traitors for abandoning the religion and traditions of the ancestors, converting to Christianity, adopting Western ways, and accepting defeat and occupation. A force of two thousand men seized Arivonimamo and murdered the Merina governor, two Quaker missionaries, and their child. The force planned to regroup in Tana on market day, with arms concealed in their clothes, to attack the royal palace, the French residency, and the European quarter, but the plot misfired, and French troops were sent to Arivonimamo to quell the uprising. Insurrections broke out in other parts of the island in 1896 before the French were able to assert control.
FIGURE 3.2 Cooking corn in cocottes on charcoal grills at roadside on RN 1, west of Antananarivo
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
