The Aye-Aye and I by Gerald Durrell

Author:Gerald Durrell [Durrell, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141971292
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Crystal Country and Beyond

We left early the next morning and, although it seemed impossible, the road got worse. Flurries of huge stones sent us sliding into the very potholes we tried to avoid. The rain had given the mud the consistency of red dough and embedded and hidden in this slippery surface were sudden surprise packets of rock. My hips and back were now so painful that I began to wish I had taken Lee’s advice and flown up to our destination instead of undertaking this bone-shattering ride. However, the sun was shining and the sky was blue and everything steamed gently.

We saw surprisingly few birds but plenty of other fauna.

A pair of ring-tailed mongooses with chocolate-brown faces and a swaggering walk prudently let our caravan pass before crossing the road slowly and nonchalantly, gazing with interest at us from golden eyes, their tails held upright, stiff as exclamation marks. Once, a boa crossed the road in front of us, making his way sinuously through the mud in a series of slow loops. Reaching the other side, he paused for a rest – although he must have been aware of our presence – before slithering up the bank and disappearing, his body gleaming as if freshly oiled. On the whole, I reflected, all the mammals and reptiles in Madagascar were so tame that they were easy targets for a well-aimed machete or the attention of even the most inadequate of marksmen.

After we had passed one village, tucked away in the folds of the hills and almost invisible, we overtook a group of its inhabitants walking along the road, carrying something. As we got nearer, we could see that the group consisted of men and youths, all wearing the straw ‘trilbies’ so favoured by many of the Malagasy. In their midst were four men carrying a rough stretcher on which lay the corpse of an old man, partly covered by a lamba. The funeral cortege seemed very merry, chatting away volubly, smoking cigarettes, waving to us as we passed, while the elderly corpse bounced and jiggled on the stretcher as if he were still alive.

The Malagasy on the whole seem to have a robust and cheerful attitude towards death. Many of the Malagasy tribes believe in exhuming from their tombs the bones of their ancestors, giving them – as it were – a good party and then reburying them with all solemnity. It is said (with how much truth I could not discover) that in Madagascar there are taxi signs which read:

‘City, 7,000 francs

Marriages, funerals and exhumations, price negotiable’

The reburial ceremony is called a famadihana and sometimes takes place when a corpse is brought from distant parts to be incarcerated in the ancestral tomb when it also provides a chance to bring out the already-buried corpses to treat them (washing the bones, for example) and wrap them up again in a fresh silken shroud. This ritual may also be performed at the ‘opening’ ceremony of a new tomb, when bodies are brought to it from temporary burial sites.

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