A funeral, a party, and a 90 mile stroll

September 23^rd, 2011

So last week I went on an adventure. My counterpart left on a business trip and I can’t yet travel into the field on my own, so I had a week to focus on my language skills. One of our farmers invited me to attend an exhumation ceremony, the Malagasy tradition of celebrating a loved one’s life five to seven years after death. Family members are buried in the ground after death, but five years later, the exhumation process involves digging up the bones of the family member, removing and wrapping the bones in beautiful fabric, and ultimately laying the person to rest in an above-ground tomb. There is a two-day long party to follow that usually involves eating at least one or two cows and consuming a copious amount of alcohol.

The location of the ceremony was 90 miles south of Maroantsetra on a road that is notorious for being the worst in Madagascar, and also the most beautiful. We decided to walk it.

At 4:00 in the morning, a group of three Malagasy men showed up at my back door and we set off down the road with backpacks on our backs and sandals on our feet (the only appropriate and useful form of footwear in NE Madagascar). The “road” is undeniably gorgeous, hugging the coast the whole way and defining the intersection between the foothills of the rainforest and the endless white sandy beachfront and brilliant blue ocean. The road/trail is also relatively flat, intermittently detouring inland to pass through a village and then promptly returning to the coast.

On that first day, we walked 39 miles. 39 miles, by the way, is really freaking far and it is also 17 more miles than I have ever walked in one day. We ate lunch at little restaurant or “hotely” along the way and finally stopped at 6:30 PM to ask a school teacher if we could sleep in the school for the night. The teacher handed us over to a friend who made dinner for us and allowed us to take over some of their floor space. My legs were exhausted and my feet were sore, but I was happy and also selfishly relieved to find out that two of the Malagasy men I was with (who walk long distances everyday) were in worse shape than I was.

Day two was another 30 mile walk, ending at the house of another school teacher.  There, we stopped in for a day to rest and visit with a family friend of our group. Mananara is a sweet little coastal town with delicious bread and lots of ship yards where people are building big wooden boats (essentially with only wood and bare hands for tools). There are also lots of signs that read “Mividy vato ato, lafo be” (Buy rocks here, very expensive).  If I was a true pirate, I would happily call it home.

The next day, we finished our walk out into the countryside and arrived in a tiny little village to meet up with my friend’s wife and her nine siblings who were hosting the exhumation ceremony. By the end of the day, 40 people had arrived and I was beginning to wonder where they were going to put everyone, but I should never doubt the capacity of the Malagasy to find space for people. By the time the ceremony started on Thursday, there were 380 people filling every available inch of floor space in the whole town. Most people slept on the floor on woven mats. I was lucky enough to share a single bed with three other women.

There is no such thing as plastic plates for an occasion like this so the whole group of us ate on huge, beautiful leaves from a tree called a “ravinala” or “leaves of the forest”. We also made spoons and bowls out of the leaves. And we made rice, of course. Pounds and pounds of rice. We had at least 9 big pots (about half the height of my body) cooking rice all day long. The group also ate two full grown cattle; one on Friday, and one on Saturday. All and all, it was an amazing production.

The ceremony itself was “miresaka” (busy/happening/festival-ish).  All 380 of us walked to the grave site on Friday to participate in the ceremony and exhume the bones. Many people asked me to take pictures (which I was a bit uncomfortable with at first), but I took a few of the process. After spending 5 years in the ground, there is nothing left but bones and old clothes, but the bones are carefully extracted and placed in a clean, white cloth. The cloth is then wrapped in many layers of colorful fabric and the family members place small amounts of money in the layers of fabric. The bones are then taken into an above-ground tomb where they are laid to rest.

Then the real party begins along with the singing and dancing and drinking and general jolly-making. I, unfortunately/ fortunately had to go home. The party was really fun, but 380 drunken people who are not used to having a foreigner around was eventually tiring. By the time the 140^th person tried to hand me a metal spoon while shouting at me in French and trying to serve the side dish for me (followed by shock and surprise when they finally noticed that I was fully capable of feeding myself just like everyone else over the age of 1), I had to find a lot of excuses to go down to the river for a quick break.  By the time Saturday arrived, I felt happy and lucky to have been invited to such a special ceremony… and also very ready to go home.

380 people cross the rice paddies...