Ambohimirary Journal - In Madagascar, the Living Dance With the Dead
AMBOHIMIRARY, Madagascar — With fanfare befitting a parade, the shrouded remains of 17 bodies were removed from the family crypt, some sprayed with expensive perfume, others splashed with sparkling wine. Five brass bands took turns belting out cheerful melodies, and each emerging corpse was lifted onto the shoulders of its own set of revelers. The celebrators then joyously trotted about, dancing with the bones of the dead.
“It is good to thank the ancestors in person because we owe them everything,” said Rakotonarivo Henri, 52, an out-of-breath farmer who had just set down his dead grandfather and was moving toward the remains of his aunt. “We do not come from mud; we come from these bodies.”
Every society has its own customs regarding the deceased, an interplay between those who are and those who were. In many countries, a visit to the cemetery commonly satisfies an urge to be near a buried loved one. Flowers may be placed on the grave. Words may be whispered.
Here in the central highlands of Madagascar, that practice is taken much further. Ancestors are periodically taken from their tombs, and once the dancing stops and the bundled corpses are put on the ground, family members lovingly run their fingers across the skeletal outline protruding through the shrouds. Bones and dust are moved about in an effort to sustain a human shape. Elders tell children about the importance of those lying before them.
The ritual is called a famadihana (pronounced fa-ma-dee-an), and in this nation, a huge island in the Indian Ocean, millions practice it, often in conjunction with their various religious faiths, though not always with the same understanding of what it means to be dead.
Many Malagasy believe the boundary between life and death is not altogether impermeable, that the spirits of their ancestors can somehow pass back and forth. To them, the famadihana is a time to convey the latest family news to the deceased and ask them for blessings and sagely guidance.
Mr. Rakotonarivo was in the midst of such a meaningful conversation on a recent afternoon. “I am asking them for good health, and of course if they would help me to accumulate wealth, this is good also,” he said.
But others considered such supplications contrary to their Christian beliefs.
“We do not believe we can communicate with the dead, but we do believe the famadihana strengthens our family between the generations,” said Jean Jacques Ratovoherison, 30, a manager for a technology firm.
He was dancing as vigorously as the rest, occasionally breaking free to make a slow pirouette with a handheld video camera. “The bones of our ancestors are valuable to us and must never become lost in the world,” he said.
The small farming village of Ambohimirary is 20 miles west of the nation’s capital, Antananarivo. Its two-story brick houses have no plumbing; the only light is powered by batteries and generators. Corn and beans grow along gentle slopes of deep red soil. Most who live here share a common ancestry.
It was the widow and eight remaining children of Rakotojoelina Jules — dead for 16 years — who decided it was again time to hold a famadihana. They had long been saving money to build their own crypt, a sign that their branch of the family had prospered and risen in prominence.
The new structure was built a short walk from their house and was more ornate than most. A black wrought-iron gate opened onto a tiled entryway that led to the three levels of shelves where the dead were to be placed. Constructing the white-brick crypt cost $7,000, a forbidding sum in one of the world’s poorest countries.
The ceremony was certainly overdue. It usually occurs every five or seven years. In Ambohimirary, the tomb had been sealed since 1998.
But expense was a concern. Each branch of the family ordinarily invites dozens, if not hundreds of people, and tradition calls for guests to be fed fine meals that include meat. Musicians had to be hired. New clothes were needed for the living, additional shrouds for the dead. Then, too, with some corpses being moved to a new crypt, it seemed only right to renovate the old tomb so that the importance of its remaining occupants did not seem diminished.
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