Madagascar's forest people
The Zafimaniry: the forest people without any trees
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The Zafimaniry: forest people without any trees
Dear NE-One
In a village where walls are thin and much of life is lived outside them, the topography of sound makes a gentle introduction to its peoples’ way of life. Regardless of the time of day – so long as the sun has risen – the echoes around the terraced village of Sakaivo in Central Madagascar’s highlands are likely to be the same. Undulating laughter as children run and play; the jagged cheeps of a chick that’s lost its mum; troughs of quiet as an elder sister soothes a crying baby; the sharp, steep squawk of a chicken shooed out from inside a house; and, always, the dull, rolling thud-thud-thud-thud as a woman somewhere pounds a heavy pole into a wooden mortar of rice.
Busy day? Listen to this post, instead of reading it:
On the western side of Sakaivo, when the hillside is already deep in the afternoon’s shadow, there comes another sound: a stark tap-tap-tap-tap as Mr Rapemevaro, a village elder, hits his handmade mallet against an old chisel.
Mr Rapemevaro is an elderly man with a grey stubbled chin and dark hazel eyes; he wears no shoes, and dons a Stetson-style hat that is the staple of so many Malagasy men’s attire. He, like everyone in his village, is Zafimaniry, a small ethnic group so revered for their carpentry expertise that their woodcrafting knowledge is inscribed on Unesco’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage – and it’s the reason travellers like me walk for days to explore the picturesque villages of the Zafimaniry region.
I sit with Mr Rapemevaro outside his home; me on the low wooden stool he’s offered and he on the ledge that extends from beneath his house. It’s typical of the Zafimaniry style: a pitched roof with walls constructed from vertical wood panels, and the door and window shutters carved with an intricate series of geometric patterns. Traditionally Zafimaniry homes are built without nails, a technique that some villagers say represents an important characteristic of their people: they support each other not with enforcement, but with love.
All Zafimaniry men can work with wood, Mr Rapemevaro says proudly. It’s a skill always learned as a boy and while they used to make everything from honey pots to granaries to flint fire-starter cases from wood, nowadays most men use their skills only to build their houses.
The village elder tap-tap-taps his chisel around another curve pencilled onto a long piece of wood. Eucalyptus, he says – but it isn’t his first choice. It’s not as strong as the types of rosewood he used years ago, when they used up to 20 different trees to construct one house, but the old forests are gone and now some eucalyptus grows nearby. It’s all he can access these days.
There are 18 ethnic groups in Madagascar – all descendants of early Bantu and Austronesian settlers – and the Zafimaniry (population: 10,000), who are considered a sub-tribe of the Betsileo ethnic group, live between the ancestral land of the Betsileo and the Tanala. They are said to be forest people but, as with so much of Madagascar, the forests have been decimated. An exploding population and widescale slash-and-burn agriculture are largely to blame, scientists say, and landsat images have shown that in the last half of the last century 40% of Madagascar’s forests were lost. From 2000 until 2020 a further 25% was destroyed.
I saw only a light scattering of woodland in the three days I walked in the area. With my partner, a guide and two porters (who carry food and water), I’d set off from Antoetra, a small market town considered to be the gateway to the remote Zafimaniry region. For kilometre after fascinating kilometre we’d walked the often-eroded paths that traverse the hills of Madagascar’s Central Highlands. Our surroundings changed with almost every corner turned; we’d be on a ridge with views of the hills stretching beneath us, then minutes later tucked into a wide valley where fynbos-like vegetation lined the path, or we’d find ourselves perched atop a granite boulder, with a ragged horizon of distant blue peaks. Around the villages, hillsides had been whittled into terraces for the slash-and-burn crops of rice, sweet potatoes and beans that sustain the people who live there.
There are around 100 villages out here, and foot paths provide the Zafimaniry’s only means of access with the outside world. All villages have at least one church (some Catholic, some Protestant); a few have small schools and the occasional village will have a basic clinic – although most people rely on traditional plant medicine to treat illness.
Theirs has always been an isolated life, one where necessity has fuelled creativity. While Zafimaniry men cut and carved the objects and implements needed to survive, women would weave beautifully patterned sleeping mats and satroka bory, the snug-fitting round hats the Betsileo wear.
“Our people are happy,” Mr Rapemevaro tells me. “Times have become hard for us; some men have moved to Antoetra and beyond, where they craft souvenirs and furniture, but our people are happy. We always have been.”
All through our conversation Mr Rapemevaro has been adding curves to the eucalyptus log. My guide tells me there is meaning in the patterns the Zafimaniry use: a circle of curves represents family unity, a four-point star is a wish for a good life… he repeats what I’ve read on Unesco’s website. Mr Rapemevaro, however, reinforces what I read in an academic journal: these shapes carry no meaning, he says, we just use these patterns because we like them.
I thank Mr Rapemevaro for his time, and buy a wooden potholder that he’s carved. Echoing out from the centre, around an eight-pointed star, is a web of curved lines that is so characteristic of Zafimaniry carving. Unesco will tell you the star represents sincerity, honesty and family ties… but I’d like to take Mr Repemevaro’s approach and say that I chose this particular one simply because I liked it. And because the echoed lines will always remind me of the happy sounds that resonated that afternoon around Sakaivo.
Until next time
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