Previous continued....
Quick question, who is reading this? Please post to let me know. Thanks
So, a famadihana is a religious ritual that usually occurs every 3 to 10 years. The one that we attended is special because it is for old Betsilio kings. The red shrouded bones of the king, queen, and descendants are removed from the underground tomb and placed in a viewing area. To enter you need to remove your shoes, but aside for the line for the holy water it is pretty much a free for all. People come to Kirioka (the mountain) every year to collect holy water for sick or dying relatives and to pray for better harvests. This is a dying tradition as Christianity takes a stronger hold of the people and they begin to believe that it is anti-God to pray to their ancestors. Sad.
There are many fady (taboos) that must be adhered to and as we sat in Tsarazaza preparing for the hike we learned about some of them. First, you cannot bring, cook with, or eat garlic while you are up there. I pulled 3 garlic heads out of my bag. heh. Second, you are not allowed to eat pork or a certain kind of zebu (omby in malagasy). I did not have either of these in my bag. We don't know why either of these things are fady, it just is. So, no garlic-very disappointing, but the food still turned out really yummy. I was impressed that Fran's Gasy friends were such good cooks.
The first day we walked around to get oriented. All nine of us vizahas along with Basy, the youngest Gasy friend walked past the tomb, noticing huge jugs, jerry cans, and soda bottles filled with water lining the wall. We noticed that people were lugging these huge bottels up from a water source below. We walked further along the path and I refocused to get a sense of the surroundings. I realized that the view from the top of this mountain was stunning. You could see for miles. The valleys were dotted with small villages with church spires poking out of some of them and surrounded by rice paddies just beginning to green with baby rice. We sat on the edge of a rock and listened to Basy, with Fran translating, tell us some of the stories about the area. It turns out that the bones of the people in the tomb really belong to the soldiers who fought for the king when the mean queen from the north was teasing him. The story runs like a bit of a soap opera and ends with a dead king and a fady for killing a certain kind of omby on the mountain. I'm not sure if I am recalling it correctly, but that is the gist. When we returned to the tomb area people were filing in to have their water blessed. We were able to go in and watch as soon as we took off our shoes. As the line filed around a descendent of the king put a bit of dirt into each bottle of water and the main lady, a large women dressed in red who had previously been bathing in the holy water of the river, shook hands with those who walked by. So, there was LOTS of holy water.
Later that afternoon we tried to watch the sacrificing of an omby, we had missed the chicken, but you could still see the blood that was poured upon a stone near the tomb. We joined the crowds of people circles the sacrificing area and all struggling to see. It was hot and the main descendent, a large women dressed in red, was leading a very long prayer, followed by a song and then it was just too hot and we couldn't really see anything except the crying child being reprimanded by a women standing nearby. Wendy told me that she was telling the boy that the vizaha were going to be angry with him if he didn't stop crying. People often tell their children that the vizaha will steal their souls and take their hearts, remeniscent of colonialism I'm sure. It got to be too hot and we still couldn't see so we left.
Back at the tent Rod taught us how to play yuker (a mid-west card game). How surreal to be sitting in a plastic tent on a mountain top in Madagascar with a bunch of Americans.
That night we went to the "ball". This dance party takes place on the grassy ledge below the tomb. When we arrived, there were lots of people dancing and the music was belting from the enormous speakers. (The music plays for 23.5 hours per day, only stopping between 6 and 6:30 in the morning). We were planning to dance in the outskirts, but as soon as we saw some guys coming towards us we decided to go into the middle as a large group. Amy and I had been warned about the Malagasy way of ignoring people's behavior when they are drunk, so we were prepared for some aggressiveness. As a group we handled ourselves quite well. We tried to dance, but were squished by those wanting to watch us. Some men grabbed at our appendages, wanting to dance with us and getting angry when we refused. One guy with a large round belly and a Lord of the Rings t-shirt was particularly pushy.(There is a good ending to this story, so just keep reading). The PCVs repeatedly spoke in Malagasy trying to explain that we needed space and just wanted to dance. This is how we spent much of that evening, only getting some brief moments of air and some time to dance with fun kids.
Day two afforded us the chance to see some prayers taking place at the tomb. The red shrouded bones that are placed on a small raised area get poured with honey and covered with bits of candy that praying people lick off. A holy man helps people get possessed by the spirit of the ancestors, all while a marching band is playing music in the corner and old ladies are encouraging us to dance. Fun times.
At an offering time we were pushed to the front of the crowd to dance with the lady in red and hoot along with all the dancers. Now they were asking for money and we were surprised at how much people were giving. As non-believers we were not required or expected to make a large donation.
We were going to have chicken for dinner and we needed to kill the chickens. Some of us decided that we wanted to learn how to do this. Now remember that people like to watch everything that we do, brush our teeth, wash our faces, and of course kill chickens, which Basy was going to show us how to do. There were 5 chickens and Andrea, Emily, Mary Louise, Emmi, and I each grabbed one. Wendy came along to watch while Fran went off with the other guys to collect fire wood. (Amy was napping and who knows where Rod was). We find a spot on the rocks and stood to watch Basy kill the first one. --Queezy readers should skip to the next paragraph.-- This requires holding the legs down with one foot and the wings down with the other. You hold the chickens head and saw away at the neck until it starts gushing blood, it is necessary to remove the blood from the body at this point, otherwise it will stay there even after it is dead. The chicken doesn't die yet, so once the blood is drained you keep cutting the neck until you have cut through the spinal cord. Then the chicken flapps uncontrollably for a while before its eyes close and it lies lifeless. I couldn't do it, but the other women tried, Andrea being the most successful, even as a vegetarian. We had a few mishaps, like when someone let the chicken go before it had finished flapping so it spattered blood onto my pants and shoes and I screeched and jumped into a gen d'arm (like a policeman). Oops... We returned somewhat disturbed, but content with the job we had done, to pluck and otherwise prepare the chickens for dinner. I was able to help pluck and later regretted not really learning how to kill a chicken because if I am willing to eat one, I feel like I should be able to kill one. Regardless, everything is a learning experience and I am glad that I participated. Dinner was yum, even though we had to pick through the parts to make sure that we didn't end up with a chicken head on our plate. They are Basy's favorite and the rest of the guys nibbled on the feet and some of the innards as a snack. Nothing goes to waste, except the intestines.
We heard throughout the day that a few gend'arms had arrived, possibly because of the previously difficult night. Also, some of the men passed by to apologize for their behavior and to ask us to return to the ball that evening. We did and it was GREAT. This time when we arrived, instead of everyone stopping to watch us dance, many of them kept dancing and we were able to join in with them. Lord of the Rings seemed to have been given an important role of watching everyone and ensuring our safety. Emily is an awesome dancer and she paored with a guy we named Tyson, like the model, and they took turns choreographing fun dances. I had a great time dancing with some young kids, including a young women who was very impressive in her ability and willingness to be very straightforward with men who were trying to dance with her. I told her that she was awesome! Other kids thought I was hilarious when I joined in their yelling and we all danced really fast for a really long time. The dancing is similar to the twist, but faster and with a slightly different rhthym. It was a really fin night and we were all relieved that the Gasy people seemed to learn a little something about vizaha and how similar we are to them.
I slept well that night and the next day I was able to really appreciate the relaxing time that I had, getting to spend some time with Basy. He is a really interesting young man who is so curious about the world, but who has very limited access to information. I taught him some Thai, shared photos of my family and friends, and let him use my camera. We walked around and took pictures of some of his friends and family and people playing dice on the rocks. I think that we both felt challenged by our obvious difference in economic status. He showed a real sense of kinship with the Cambodian children whom I showed him photos of. I explained that in America I am not rich, but when I come to Madagascar it seems like I am because our money is worth more at this time. He has a kind heart and I hope that he is able to find a way to continue his education and enjoy his life.
We did not stay on the mountain top long enough to see the bones getting returned to the tomb and both days were fairly similar in that people just went to pray whenever they felt like it and nothing else really changed. It was all interesting and I am so glad that we went. I enjoyed meeting caring, thoughtful Americans and it gave me hope for our great country (not that it is the greatest country or anything, but it is a pretty cool place when you think about it). Seeing Malagasy families interacting and people working together to make a small community for a few days. It was all a very special experience.
One thing that was particularly wonderful about our time in Tsarazaza is that we were all contributing to the community. We paid these four men to build us a tent and to cook while we were up there. We ate breakfast at the only hotely (small restaurant) in town. We ordered a dinner from the two women next door, which was ready when we returned from the famadihana. We hired a car to take all of us back to Fandriana where we all went our seperate ways- us to do more travelling and the PCV's to visit each other or head back to their sites. Lots of people in the town earned some respectable cash to supplement their meager earnings, especially since the rice harvest money had run out. Overall it was an amazing time with a good outcome for all involved.
When we left Tsarazaza and eventually said goodbye to all the PCVs we were on our own again. We returned to Tana and met up with Boaz again. The next day we set off to another park where we got to go out on a free night walk to see chameleons. In the morning we walked to the park, met our tour guide Patrice and set out to see some other very cool lemurs called indri that are well known for their interesting calls. We found lots of birds, our guide had a particular interest in ornothology, and eventually happened upon the indri. They are described as children in panda suits because they are the biggest lemurs in Madagascar and they really do look a lot like pandas. They are the only lemurs without tails. We hitchhiked back to Tana with a nice guy in a nice car who is an entomologist and his wife is his boss. Go ladies!
We stayed with the Servas family again, had a nice time, spent some time wandering around Tana, eating yummy food and seeing the city.
We flew out on Tuesday. Our flight arrived in Jo'burg at 5:45. We decided that we wanted to try to get to Cape Town to meet Tammy and Kelly a day early. We had booked a flight for the next morning, but we thought we woudl try. We rushed to the domestic terminal, up the four escalators to the ticket desk. We were sent to the sales desk where we bribed the women behind the desk with chocolate. She got us on the flight. We checked in and dropped our bags with the ticket guys, whom we cheered up with chocolate too. We rushed to the gate where they chuckled at our out-of-breathness and told us we didn't have to run anymore. We were sooooo excited that we had made the flight that we could hardly contain ourselves for the next two hours. Upon arrival I asked where the international terminal was and we prepared to run there after collecting our baggage. Cart, one bag, "What are you doing here?!" Tammy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hugs... Kelly!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They had flown from Jo'burg on the flight that was 15 minutes after ours.
Now we are happily together in Cape Town and I am going to go join them as they should be back from hiking Table Mountain and we can all go have dinner. We are heading to Namibia on Sunday, but plan to make a few stops in South Africa before crossing the border on Tuesday. I will try to write again at some point. But no promises and I probably will only be able to write once or twice in Namibia, so you all can just read these REALLY long blogs several times over the next few weeks. All the best.
Smiles, Nabia
So, a famadihana is a religious ritual that usually occurs every 3 to 10 years. The one that we attended is special because it is for old Betsilio kings. The red shrouded bones of the king, queen, and descendants are removed from the underground tomb and placed in a viewing area. To enter you need to remove your shoes, but aside for the line for the holy water it is pretty much a free for all. People come to Kirioka (the mountain) every year to collect holy water for sick or dying relatives and to pray for better harvests. This is a dying tradition as Christianity takes a stronger hold of the people and they begin to believe that it is anti-God to pray to their ancestors. Sad.
There are many fady (taboos) that must be adhered to and as we sat in Tsarazaza preparing for the hike we learned about some of them. First, you cannot bring, cook with, or eat garlic while you are up there. I pulled 3 garlic heads out of my bag. heh. Second, you are not allowed to eat pork or a certain kind of zebu (omby in malagasy). I did not have either of these in my bag. We don't know why either of these things are fady, it just is. So, no garlic-very disappointing, but the food still turned out really yummy. I was impressed that Fran's Gasy friends were such good cooks.
The first day we walked around to get oriented. All nine of us vizahas along with Basy, the youngest Gasy friend walked past the tomb, noticing huge jugs, jerry cans, and soda bottles filled with water lining the wall. We noticed that people were lugging these huge bottels up from a water source below. We walked further along the path and I refocused to get a sense of the surroundings. I realized that the view from the top of this mountain was stunning. You could see for miles. The valleys were dotted with small villages with church spires poking out of some of them and surrounded by rice paddies just beginning to green with baby rice. We sat on the edge of a rock and listened to Basy, with Fran translating, tell us some of the stories about the area. It turns out that the bones of the people in the tomb really belong to the soldiers who fought for the king when the mean queen from the north was teasing him. The story runs like a bit of a soap opera and ends with a dead king and a fady for killing a certain kind of omby on the mountain. I'm not sure if I am recalling it correctly, but that is the gist. When we returned to the tomb area people were filing in to have their water blessed. We were able to go in and watch as soon as we took off our shoes. As the line filed around a descendent of the king put a bit of dirt into each bottle of water and the main lady, a large women dressed in red who had previously been bathing in the holy water of the river, shook hands with those who walked by. So, there was LOTS of holy water.
Later that afternoon we tried to watch the sacrificing of an omby, we had missed the chicken, but you could still see the blood that was poured upon a stone near the tomb. We joined the crowds of people circles the sacrificing area and all struggling to see. It was hot and the main descendent, a large women dressed in red, was leading a very long prayer, followed by a song and then it was just too hot and we couldn't really see anything except the crying child being reprimanded by a women standing nearby. Wendy told me that she was telling the boy that the vizaha were going to be angry with him if he didn't stop crying. People often tell their children that the vizaha will steal their souls and take their hearts, remeniscent of colonialism I'm sure. It got to be too hot and we still couldn't see so we left.
Back at the tent Rod taught us how to play yuker (a mid-west card game). How surreal to be sitting in a plastic tent on a mountain top in Madagascar with a bunch of Americans.
That night we went to the "ball". This dance party takes place on the grassy ledge below the tomb. When we arrived, there were lots of people dancing and the music was belting from the enormous speakers. (The music plays for 23.5 hours per day, only stopping between 6 and 6:30 in the morning). We were planning to dance in the outskirts, but as soon as we saw some guys coming towards us we decided to go into the middle as a large group. Amy and I had been warned about the Malagasy way of ignoring people's behavior when they are drunk, so we were prepared for some aggressiveness. As a group we handled ourselves quite well. We tried to dance, but were squished by those wanting to watch us. Some men grabbed at our appendages, wanting to dance with us and getting angry when we refused. One guy with a large round belly and a Lord of the Rings t-shirt was particularly pushy.(There is a good ending to this story, so just keep reading). The PCVs repeatedly spoke in Malagasy trying to explain that we needed space and just wanted to dance. This is how we spent much of that evening, only getting some brief moments of air and some time to dance with fun kids.
Day two afforded us the chance to see some prayers taking place at the tomb. The red shrouded bones that are placed on a small raised area get poured with honey and covered with bits of candy that praying people lick off. A holy man helps people get possessed by the spirit of the ancestors, all while a marching band is playing music in the corner and old ladies are encouraging us to dance. Fun times.
At an offering time we were pushed to the front of the crowd to dance with the lady in red and hoot along with all the dancers. Now they were asking for money and we were surprised at how much people were giving. As non-believers we were not required or expected to make a large donation.
We were going to have chicken for dinner and we needed to kill the chickens. Some of us decided that we wanted to learn how to do this. Now remember that people like to watch everything that we do, brush our teeth, wash our faces, and of course kill chickens, which Basy was going to show us how to do. There were 5 chickens and Andrea, Emily, Mary Louise, Emmi, and I each grabbed one. Wendy came along to watch while Fran went off with the other guys to collect fire wood. (Amy was napping and who knows where Rod was). We find a spot on the rocks and stood to watch Basy kill the first one. --Queezy readers should skip to the next paragraph.-- This requires holding the legs down with one foot and the wings down with the other. You hold the chickens head and saw away at the neck until it starts gushing blood, it is necessary to remove the blood from the body at this point, otherwise it will stay there even after it is dead. The chicken doesn't die yet, so once the blood is drained you keep cutting the neck until you have cut through the spinal cord. Then the chicken flapps uncontrollably for a while before its eyes close and it lies lifeless. I couldn't do it, but the other women tried, Andrea being the most successful, even as a vegetarian. We had a few mishaps, like when someone let the chicken go before it had finished flapping so it spattered blood onto my pants and shoes and I screeched and jumped into a gen d'arm (like a policeman). Oops... We returned somewhat disturbed, but content with the job we had done, to pluck and otherwise prepare the chickens for dinner. I was able to help pluck and later regretted not really learning how to kill a chicken because if I am willing to eat one, I feel like I should be able to kill one. Regardless, everything is a learning experience and I am glad that I participated. Dinner was yum, even though we had to pick through the parts to make sure that we didn't end up with a chicken head on our plate. They are Basy's favorite and the rest of the guys nibbled on the feet and some of the innards as a snack. Nothing goes to waste, except the intestines.
We heard throughout the day that a few gend'arms had arrived, possibly because of the previously difficult night. Also, some of the men passed by to apologize for their behavior and to ask us to return to the ball that evening. We did and it was GREAT. This time when we arrived, instead of everyone stopping to watch us dance, many of them kept dancing and we were able to join in with them. Lord of the Rings seemed to have been given an important role of watching everyone and ensuring our safety. Emily is an awesome dancer and she paored with a guy we named Tyson, like the model, and they took turns choreographing fun dances. I had a great time dancing with some young kids, including a young women who was very impressive in her ability and willingness to be very straightforward with men who were trying to dance with her. I told her that she was awesome! Other kids thought I was hilarious when I joined in their yelling and we all danced really fast for a really long time. The dancing is similar to the twist, but faster and with a slightly different rhthym. It was a really fin night and we were all relieved that the Gasy people seemed to learn a little something about vizaha and how similar we are to them.
I slept well that night and the next day I was able to really appreciate the relaxing time that I had, getting to spend some time with Basy. He is a really interesting young man who is so curious about the world, but who has very limited access to information. I taught him some Thai, shared photos of my family and friends, and let him use my camera. We walked around and took pictures of some of his friends and family and people playing dice on the rocks. I think that we both felt challenged by our obvious difference in economic status. He showed a real sense of kinship with the Cambodian children whom I showed him photos of. I explained that in America I am not rich, but when I come to Madagascar it seems like I am because our money is worth more at this time. He has a kind heart and I hope that he is able to find a way to continue his education and enjoy his life.
We did not stay on the mountain top long enough to see the bones getting returned to the tomb and both days were fairly similar in that people just went to pray whenever they felt like it and nothing else really changed. It was all interesting and I am so glad that we went. I enjoyed meeting caring, thoughtful Americans and it gave me hope for our great country (not that it is the greatest country or anything, but it is a pretty cool place when you think about it). Seeing Malagasy families interacting and people working together to make a small community for a few days. It was all a very special experience.
One thing that was particularly wonderful about our time in Tsarazaza is that we were all contributing to the community. We paid these four men to build us a tent and to cook while we were up there. We ate breakfast at the only hotely (small restaurant) in town. We ordered a dinner from the two women next door, which was ready when we returned from the famadihana. We hired a car to take all of us back to Fandriana where we all went our seperate ways- us to do more travelling and the PCV's to visit each other or head back to their sites. Lots of people in the town earned some respectable cash to supplement their meager earnings, especially since the rice harvest money had run out. Overall it was an amazing time with a good outcome for all involved.
When we left Tsarazaza and eventually said goodbye to all the PCVs we were on our own again. We returned to Tana and met up with Boaz again. The next day we set off to another park where we got to go out on a free night walk to see chameleons. In the morning we walked to the park, met our tour guide Patrice and set out to see some other very cool lemurs called indri that are well known for their interesting calls. We found lots of birds, our guide had a particular interest in ornothology, and eventually happened upon the indri. They are described as children in panda suits because they are the biggest lemurs in Madagascar and they really do look a lot like pandas. They are the only lemurs without tails. We hitchhiked back to Tana with a nice guy in a nice car who is an entomologist and his wife is his boss. Go ladies!
We stayed with the Servas family again, had a nice time, spent some time wandering around Tana, eating yummy food and seeing the city.
We flew out on Tuesday. Our flight arrived in Jo'burg at 5:45. We decided that we wanted to try to get to Cape Town to meet Tammy and Kelly a day early. We had booked a flight for the next morning, but we thought we woudl try. We rushed to the domestic terminal, up the four escalators to the ticket desk. We were sent to the sales desk where we bribed the women behind the desk with chocolate. She got us on the flight. We checked in and dropped our bags with the ticket guys, whom we cheered up with chocolate too. We rushed to the gate where they chuckled at our out-of-breathness and told us we didn't have to run anymore. We were sooooo excited that we had made the flight that we could hardly contain ourselves for the next two hours. Upon arrival I asked where the international terminal was and we prepared to run there after collecting our baggage. Cart, one bag, "What are you doing here?!" Tammy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hugs... Kelly!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They had flown from Jo'burg on the flight that was 15 minutes after ours.
Now we are happily together in Cape Town and I am going to go join them as they should be back from hiking Table Mountain and we can all go have dinner. We are heading to Namibia on Sunday, but plan to make a few stops in South Africa before crossing the border on Tuesday. I will try to write again at some point. But no promises and I probably will only be able to write once or twice in Namibia, so you all can just read these REALLY long blogs several times over the next few weeks. All the best.
Smiles, Nabia