Malagasy Media--A Quick Post

There are, I've been told, no movie theatres in Madagascar. Peoples' exposure to movies comes from home-run theatres; in my town, there's a family that runs movies off a generator on a small TV. Unfortunately too late for me, but I get to see their advertisements for shows, which generally run along the lines of: "Fists of Steel Action 100%!!" There is one TV station here--MTV. I'm rarely exposed to it, but I did once spend an enjoyable half hour watching a French cartoon.

American pop music is known somewhat here (“(Your Love is) Wicked” and “If I Were a Boy” are big now), but less than I thought it would be. And NO ONE knows who the Beatles are. The truly loved American imports are reggae (OK, not so American I guess!) and country (“She's Gone Country” and “Kiss This” often play on the radio, and I've heard a number of Shania Twain ringtones). But the number one Western music import is Michael Jackson. I think I may have mentioned this already, but in case you didn't know, the world is obsessed with MJ. When I first got here, Malagasy radio news was reporting that Michael Jackson wasn't, in fact, dead, and I was asked for a month afterward to confirm this miraculous news.

The visual media culture in Madagascar is centered around Malagasy music videos. Restaurants, houses, even some of the nicer taxi brousses show music videos on a running loop. And as there are only one or two dozen really popular songs, they get familiar pretty quickly. If you want to look up some Gasy tunes, Wawa, Lola, and Viavy Chile are all pretty popular.



One of the most popular songs isn't Gasy at all—Shakira's “Waka Waka” World Cup song is sung daily here and, I suspect, all over Africa. Incomprehensible but way catchy.

Canine Cruelty

Not a happy post, sorry! An unintentional continuation of the last post's topic...

One of the other volunteer's dog was recently killed by a neighborhood teen. This lead to several disconcerting discussions with other Gasies about 'why the Americans didn't like this'. The Malagasy attitude toward dogs is, frankly, vile. Dogs are widely fady (taboo), and while Malagasies tend to live and let live with most other animals (and will even courteously swerve their cars to avoid hitting always-valued cows), dogs are pretty universally hated. Normally quiet Gasies will start screaming is a dog enters their yard, and kids learn pretty early that dogs are OK to hit. I suppose this stems in part from the high incidence of rabies in the country, but it's still inexcuseable.

I snapped at a teen for throwing rocks at a dog while he was sitting on my porch: “Well I'm Antimoro,” he responded, naming a Southern tribe, “dogs are fady to me.” “Well I'm American,” I responded, “and this is my yard, and it's fady to throw rocks at dogs in my yard.” A slight shake of his head in response to this new wave of weirdness from the foreigner. I went off at another guy who was slashing at a tied dog with a stick while I was getting well water, and a neighbor told him to stop making me upset. So he took the dog behind the house and I had to follow him and explain in mangled and angry Malagasy that no, it's not that I just didn't want to see it, I didn't want him to do it, either. And last week one of the neighbor dogs turned up with a nasty gash in his shoulder and one of the kids told me someone had hit it with a machete. “Why!?!” A shrug in response.

This is definitely one of the harder cultural aspects to deal with, a callous indifference to canine suffering. Trying to explain Americans' attitudes towards dogs is difficult. “Dogs are our best friends”--Malagasy wrinkles nose in disgust as a response. “My dog sleeps in my bed at home!”--a shake of the head. “It's illegal to hurt dogs in the U.S. Some people go to jail”--raised eyebrows. “You know, you could even go to jail or have to pay money if you don't feed your dog enough”--widening eyes and a snort of disbelief. There's no way to deal with this besides educating and trying not to get too mad at people. And never bringing my dog to Madagascar, of course.

3 Dead Bodies and a New School

I thought last Thursday was going to be a lazy day, but it ended up being more like an anthropologists dream day--and I say that as someone with an Anthro degree, I am a culture nerd. :) I had laid my wet laundry out on the grass to dry in the sun and was just sitting down to study some French when one of the teens I know came by to tell me there was a no at the market. A what? A no. Eventually I figured out that she was talking about an aye-aye, known locally as eh-heh; the same as the word for no. (A lot of Malagasy words have multiple meanings.) The aye-aye is a strange animal, even for Madagascar: a lemur that looks like a cross between a raccoon and ET and has its own branch on the lemur family tree. It's famous for its extra-long middle finger, which allows it to dig for insects in trees and fill the same ecological niche that woodpeckers do in the US.

Before I got too excited, she added that it was a dead aye-aye. In part because they look so strange, the aye-aye is subject to superstition, and one of the forest towns had considered it a bad omen to see it near the village. Thay killed it and strung it up on a bamboo tripod at the crossroads to ward off bad luck. Apologies for the disturbing image, but here you go:

I had a (fairly civil) argument with the mayor about how no, they are not dangerous, and no, they do not attack people.

On a less gruesome note (since I didn't actually see this body), I got a very kind invitation to accompany a family to a ansaharana (sp?)--the local version of the famous Malagasy tradition of a bones-turning ceremony. It differs from the tradition in other parts of Madagascar (and as the explanations people were giving me were in Gasy, I'm not sure I have it all right), but basically, if a relative dies away from the ancestral village and the family cannot afford to ship the body back, they'll bury the person for 3-5 years, save up money, then dig up the bones, transport them back to the home village, and have a celebration. Most of it is family-only--days of sleepless singing and dancing--but on the last day the community visits for a big feast and speeches, which is what I was invited to. People were seated by town for the communal lunch, so through lunch women were yelling things like, "Tsaratanana! Karibo Sakafo!"--"People from NiceTown! Come eat!" After the speeches, I was invited to look in the family room, where all the furniture had been cleared out except for a small draped box/coffin on a table. It was surrounded by exhausted women sitting on floor mats.

Saturday was a different celebration altogether. A nearby town was celebrating the completion of 3 new school buildings, courtesy of the Japanese government and Aide et Action. After a lot of waiting, I got hustled up to a makeshift dais with a bunch of other VIPs (again, still don't think I belong in this category, but there you go). I was in the second row, but after the back of my chair fell through one of the plank gaps, they decided that was much too dangerous for me and made me change places with the vice-mayor and sit in the front row. The better to be stared at by over 500 people, joy. I did, however, get an amusing view of the kids, who spent the music breaks between speeches dancing like crazy in front of the loudspeakers. At least until it started raining--then the VIPs were talking to an empty field as the crowd retreated to the eaves of the newly completed school buildings. We watched the mayor cut the ribbon to one of the new buildings, then went in to admire the new facilities--basic concrete and wood, but sturdy. Two of the town leaders wrote a phrase on the blackboard in Gasy and French, and invited me to write the translation in English: School, the Gateway to Development. I should mention that these and other schools in the commune are all elementary or middle-school level; there isn't a high school in the commune (Am. equivalent of county).

On the way out, we passed the head and hooves of a bull that had been killed for the celebration. There you go, dead body number 3. I believe we ate him for lunch. (Locally-sourced food, anyone?)

This isn't a picture from the school opening, but from an environmental celebration I attended near Andapa awhile ago--I just though you might like a more cheerful image to end on than the dead bodies...:D