Central Highlands of Madagascar, March 15, 2016
Richard Samuel does not fit the stereotype of the African traditional healer. By that, I mean a wizened old man in a loin cloth with straggly hair, squatting in a mud hut, brewing up a noxious potion from unidentified plants and animal bones, and muttering incomprehensible spells. Or a younger wild-eyed man with excessive body paint, dressed in animal skins and feathers, leaping around the village to exorcise evil spirits—in other words, an apocalyptic vision of what Morris dancing might look like if it also involved the ritual sacrifice of live chickens.
No loin cloth or animal skins for Richard. Because it’s the weekend, he is neatly dressed in jeans, a new white T-shirt (promoting the activities of an NGO) and hat. During the week, it’s a jacket, pants and shirt; because he’s an academic, a tie is not required. A lecturer in sociology at the University of Antananarivo, Madagascar’s largest and most prestigious institution, he has a background in economics and development studies. He has worked in social policy and programming for the ministries of Economy and Population, and as a regional administrator. The shelves of his university office contain the usual assortment of books and papers. No chicken bones or jars of dried plants in sight. Surely, if he is healing anything, it’s the gaping wound in the literature review or the fractured logic of the research question.
“I have the power to heal burns on the body,” he told me as he edged his slightly battered Nissan extended cab pickup through the chaotic traffic of Antananarivo, weaving around hand carts hauling furniture, metal fencing and sacks of charcoal, the cream-colored swarm of Citroen 2CV and Renault 4L taxis and the huge potholes. “I am from the district of Arivonimamo and a descendant of a former king (roi). I have inherited, along with all the members of my extended family, the power to cure burns.”
The word “king” needs to be taken with a pinch of salt (or maybe a traditional remedy). In the highlands of Madagascar, where the Merina (descendants of the original settlers from what today is Indonesia) are the dominant ethnic group, for centuries local lords ruled the villages and their rice fields from fortified hilltop positions. My colleague, the Madagascar scholar Luke Freeman, more accurately describes them as kinglets; there’s no good French translation so I guess they are all kings. As I noted in a previous travelogue (if you say something well, it’s definitely worth repeating) 18th century Madagascar was rather like medieval Europe, albeit with better weather.
However we define “roi,” Richard’s ancestors were local nobility, possessing not only political and military power and material wealth, measured by the size of their domain and the number of zebu in the herd, but also by their moral authority and healing power. French colonization took away the ability of kinglets to raise armed bands of retainers. Land disputes are now settled in court or by traditional social contracts called dina, not with spears and muskets. In this fertile rice-growing region west of Antananarivo, farmland has been continually sub-divided among children, leaving many families with barely enough land to survive. For the descendants of noble families, healing powers remain—along with the respect due to linage—their main claim to moral authority.
And it is, as Richard explained, usually a matter of “noblesse oblige.” No traditional healer, full or part-time, hangs out a shingle like modern doctors and dentists do in Madagascar towns. People in the community simply know which family has the power to cure this or that ailment. Sometimes money is exchanged, but Richard says it’s more common to receive a gift—a bag of rice or cooking oil. For the poorest, traditional healers offer a sliding scale and instalment payments, Medicaid without bureaucracy or means tests. Richard says that when he is called on to rub burns, he does not expect payment. It is a gift from the ancestors, and he must use it to benefit those less fortunate in life than himself.
Richard represents in many ways the conflict, both also the conflux, of the traditional and the modern in Madagascar. He lives in Antananarivo (Tana) and works at the university, yet his ties to his home, Arivonimamo, a market town in an agricultural area, remain unbreakable; he returns as often as he can. He adopts social science methods in his teaching and research, yet believes in the power and obligations of traditional healing. He works with development agencies on strategies for economic and social development yet he knows when the rice is ready to harvest, the corn to pick.
We drove west from Tana along Route Nationale (RN) 1. The two-lane hughway winds lazily through the highlands on its way to the savannah of the coastal plain and the fishing town of Manitrano; the truck traffic is relatively light, and most is between the agricultural market towns and Tana, not long distance. This is also weekend getaway country; at weekends, Tana residents escape the noise and bustle to Lake Itasy where they can walk on the beach and eat at fish restaurants.
An hour and about 50 km outside Tana, we pulled off the road into the red dirt driveway of the house Richard and his wife Tina are having built as their retirement home. Like residential construction projects anywhere in the world, this one has been going on longer than Richard and Tina expected, but they seemed stoical about the delays. While Tina talked to one of the workers about decorative tile, Richard, his brother Lala and I walked outside. The view from the ridge to the south was magnificent. Tina has started a terraced garden; I wished Stephanie had been with me to identify some of the young plants and vegetables (that’s not my strong suit in English, and certainly not in French). Back up to the house and less than 50 meters to the west, we walked into the family cemetery—half a dozen above-ground large stone or concrete tombs. Two zebu wandered among the tombs, grazing contentedly on the long grass. I thought to myself that when Richard or Tina dies, they won’t have too far to go. I noticed one freshly dug grave. “A cousin,” Richard told me. “We will move him into the tomb at the proper time. You can’t just open up a tomb.”
The proper time is the famadihana, literally the “turning of the bones,” when extended families gather to open the tombs and exhume the corpses. For many Malagasy, death is the passage between life on earth and life beyond which is permanent. The famidihana is the opportunity to communicate with the ancestors, to seek their blessing for health and wealth. The corpses are placed on straw mats and lifted up by the crowd; the band cranks up the beat (maybe a Malagasy reggae number), and the corpses are danced around the graveyard. Then they are re-wrapped in white silk lamba, and held by family members who pray silently. The corpses are lifted up and danced around once more before being reinterred and the tomb sealed with mud.
The famidhana is a joyous occasion, but an expensive one. A huge feast is prepared; this is one of the few occasions when a zebu is killed for meat. There are the costs of the silk lambas, the fee for the band, the bottles of homemade rum. Family members are expected to contribute what they can, handing over an envelope of cash to the host. But the event can still cost $1,500-$2,000, more than many families earn in a year.
There is no set interval between the famadihana, although many say that once in seven years is common. “It depends on a family decision, and financial means,” said Richard. Lala was suggesting it was time, and maybe they could do it in September. “We need to consult everyone in the family,” said Richard. By then, he hoped, the house would be finished so everyone could stay overnight. There would be music and dancing and, yes, karaoke.
The practice of famidihana has been criticized. A Washington Post article attempted to link it to the spread of bubonic plague in Madagascar, although the connection seemed weak; in a country where over 75% of the population live on less than $2 a day, many people in both urban and rural areas live in unsanitary conditions which provide fertile breeding grounds for rats and fleas. Attempting to ban a strongly established cultural practice because it may result in a few cases diverts attention away from the real structural problems of poverty and lack of infrastructure. The government could achieve more by picking up the trash and enforcing sanitary regulations than by banning famadihana, a move that would be greeted with widespread resistance.
From the family tombs, we drove to the town of Arivonimamo, where Richard was born. We visited his family home, up a rocky path from the main road. A relative and his family now live in the simple three-room house built from red-clay bricks, coated with mud, with rough pine logs supporting the metal roof. Although I wasn’t expecting a Malagasy Downton Abbey, it didn’t look much like the home of a noble family to me. But in rural society, it is linage, not material wealth that defines nobility. Richard is one of seven children, and the only one to go on to university and a professional career. His brother, Lala, is a subsistence farmer.
After World War II, Richard’s father, a barber, had joined the political party campaigning for independence from France. The French government refused to discuss a peaceful transition. In 1947, a revolt broke out in eastern Madagascar, with rebels attacking French commercial interests, including plantations and mines. The revolt spread to other regions. In Arivonimamo, a rebel unit including the elder Samuel fled to the hills in the south of the district ahead of advancing Senegalese troops, brought in by the French to bolster its forces. The group was captured, but Samuel and a few others escaped while being transported back to Arivonimamo on trucks. Richard took me to meet a 90-year-old man who recalled seeing the Senegalese troops bring in the other captives to the town, and locking them up. A few months later, after the fighting was over, the elder Samuel returned and, through family connections, was able to stay out of prison.
He was luckier than most rebels. The suppression of the 1947 rebellion is regarded by historians as one of the most brutal of the colonial period. There were few French casualties because most of the fighting was done by Senegalese—an example of one colonial people being used to suppress another. Psychological tactics were employed—rape, torture and the burning or razing of whole villages, with their inhabitants fleeing into the jungle. Rebel prisoners were herded into railroad cars at Tana; at Moramanga, on the line to the coast east of Tana, the doors were opened and the prisoners machine-gunned.
The struggle against the French, which eventually ended with independence in 1960, shaped Richard’s politics and passions. He was educated at a Catholic lycee in Arivonimamo, then went on to the University of Antananarivo, working at night in a gargotte (a small roadside restaurant) to support himself. In 1975, a military coup brought Didier Ratsiraka to power. He broke relations with France, and aligned Madagascar with the Soviet Union. Political parties were suppressed, the state took control of all major enterprises, and Russian was introduced to the secondary school curriculum; the best students went on to study in Moscow and Leningrad. North Koreans built Ratsiraka a new concrete presidential palace outside the city. However, life for most Malagasy did not improve.
“The state controlled everything, all the wealth,” said Richard. “The only jobs were with the government, and you needed connections.” The French colonists had been replaced by a new group of home-grown oppressors. Richard joined the Proletarian Party, and took part in the student anti-government protests that broke out throughout the 1970s. “We were reading Che Guevara, and running around at night, plastering posters on walls and fleeing from the police,” he recalled. Since then, Richard has both worked in government and participated in almost every anti-government protest. Like his dual roles as college professor and traditional healer, he sees no contradiction between his political positions. He simply wants to see his country drag itself out of poverty and dependency.