1 week Ago
The hand-dug, earthen tomb appeared to me like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. Human remains, both bones and dust, were transferred from this tomb to a large, above-ground concrete tomb during a famadihana on Aug.17.
Vanessa Paolella photo Do you ever have those moments where you wonder, “How did I get here?” It’s a thought that hits me relatively often these days. But an experience two weeks ago brought me to a whole new level of disbelief. It was the Saturday before last when my host sister, Fanja, took me to a party a few villages away.
But this wasn’t just any kind of party — it was a famadihana, a funerary tradition unique to the Malagasy. In some ethnic groups, including the dominant Merina tribe, famadihana is held to celebrate rewrapping family members’ remains with fresh cloth every five to seven years. This is done both to honor the deceased and help their bodies decay faster.
They believe that the spirit of the dead remains with the living and cannot pass on to the next life until their body is fully decomposed. Thus, famadihana is often translated to the “turning of the bones” in English. If you google “famadihana,” this is more or less the explanation you’ll find.
But the tradition has a different purpose in my community. Here, a famadihana is held any time human remains are transferred from one tomb to another. To my understanding, the purpose of the celebration isn’t to help bodies decompose faster like it is with other ethnic groups, but to celebrate the completion of a new, higher quality tomb.
Such was the case for the famadihana that Fanja and I attended recently. When we got to the event just before noon, the party was in full swing. Hundreds of people were hanging out, dancing, drinking alcohol, and selling snacks.
For parties like this, all are welcome to attend whether invited or not. Drawn by a crowd of onlookers, I soon found the original tomb. It looked to me like something straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, although far simpler.
Camera out, I started snapping photos. But after one of the community leaders noticed me, I found myself being ushered down the descending dirt pathway, thorough an opening about the size of a car door window, and into the tomb itself. The opening to the small hand-dug earthen tomb was roughly the size of a car door window.
When not in use, the entrance to the tomb is blocked by a rock and the hand-dug path to the tomb is filled in with dirt. Vanessa Paolella photo So there I was, crouched in this tiny hand-dug tomb 10 feet below ground marveling at the skulls of two mostly decomposed bodies and two men cheerily drinking moonshine just a couple of feet away. That’s when I really asked myself, “How did I get here?” Looking back, I can’t help but think Sun Journal staff writer Mark LaFlamme, who leans into these kind of things, would have fit right in.
Not only was the family willing to let me — a complete outsider — see the remains of their loved ones, they were even happy to let me to take photos. Wild, right? From what I gathered, the corpses I saw were from a man and woman who had died the year previous. Later, I learned that the tomb also contained remains of many more people, remains old enough to have already turned to dust.
Soon, they were all to be moved to a new, above-ground concrete tomb close by. A family member told me it had taken them a year to build the new tomb, which cost a hefty 7 million ariary. That’s enough money to purchase three to four cows here, not including the one they slaughtered and shared with family after the famadihana was finished.
A couple of the people at the party joked to me that hosting famadihanas is a waste of money. But tradition is tradition, and families are expected to uphold it despite the debilitating cost. However, there are some families here who don’t practice famadihana because they believe it’s at odds with their Christian faith.
In my region of Madagascar, tombs are everywhere. Unlike our practice of burying people in one, centralized cemetery, tombs here are scattered across the landscape. And as a foreigner, I’m sure I don’t even spot half of them.
Pathways to the simple below-ground tombs like the one I visited are re-dug every time a new body is interred or remains are moved. Otherwise, the entrance and path to the tomb is buried and marked only by a mound of dirt or gravel. The earthen tomb was only big enough to fit a few crouching people.
When I was ushered inside, I was amused to find a couple of men drinking moonshine just a few feet away from human remains in celebration of the event. Vanessa Paolella photo It was perhaps 30 minutes after I had climbed out of the earthen tomb when the transfer began. Family members, dancing to popular Malagasy music with grass mats, approached the earthen tomb and wrapped the first set of remains in cloth.
With the deceased held above their heads, they began moving toward the new tomb, still dancing. There, they circled the new tomb seven times with the deceased. No one could quite explain to me why the number seven was important, only that they always circle the tomb seven times.
When they finished, they placed the remains on the ground near the tomb and went to retrieve the next set. In total, they did this five times. But, as Fanja explained to me, that doesn’t mean there were remains from only five people in the tomb.
Likely, remains from multiple people were carried together, both because it was impossible to distinguish them in their decayed state and because the family must pay the commune money for each transfer. Combining remains together is the economical option. While funerals here are just as solemn as our own in the United States, famadihanas are more like a giant block party.
Rather than fear the sight of their family members’ remains, people rejoice. They believe that their relatives’ spirits are still with them and that the best way to honor them is to celebrate. This was made even more clear to me when, during the second transfer, a man popped open a beer bottle, spraying both the dancing family members and the remains themselves.
Fanja and I left not long after. The weather was cold, and Fanja was worried about her 6-month-old baby. Personally, having seen my fill, I was excited to escape the stares and harassment from the many, many drunk people at the party, which had been going on since the night before.
Fanja told me a cow would be slaughtered after the party was finished, and the meat would be shared among extended family in exchange for some money. At another famadihana I saw briefly during my training near the capital, a cow and two pigs were slaughtered, cooked and served with rice to the hundreds of attendees. I can’t imagine trying to cook food for more than 10 people, let alone a whole community! People carry and dance with the remains of their deceased relatives while circling the new tomb at a famadihana on Aug.
17. Popular Malagasy music was playing from speakers powered by solar panels. The remains can be seen covered by a striped cloth.
Vanessa Paolella photo Later in the week, while eating dinner with my host family, I started asking Fanja and her husband questions about famadihana. That’s when I learned about a small cultural gem I won’t soon forget. They told me that once the bodies are placed in the new tomb, it’s a tradition for women to try and steal the grass mats from the family members as they exit.
The superstition goes that if you sleep with one under your pillow, you’ll soon become pregnant. Even a piece of one of the grass mats will do! I couldn’t stop laughing when I heard this. Even as I write this, I’m chuckling.
Sleeping with a grass mat that was once used to help transport human remains seems like the farthest thing from a pregnancy charm to me. But who am I to judge? You may also be interested to know that plague – yes, the same one that decimated Europe in the 14th century – is endemic to Madagascar. Since 1990, the country has recorded hundreds of cases every year, according to the World Health Organization.
If caught early, the disease is treatable with antibiotics. Some scientists believe that famadihana is a source of transmission for plague. The bacteria that causes the disease can survive on corpses and be transferred to those who come in contact.
Although the Malagasy government has issued rulings forbidding families from holding famadihanas for people who died from plague, some families do it anyway. While famadihana may seem to be a crazy (and perhaps nightmare-inducing) tradition to us Americans, for people here, it’s just as normal as birthday parties, baby showers and summer festivals are to us. It’s so ingrained in the culture that one woman at the market even asked me if we practiced it in the United States.
Of course I told her that we don’t. But wouldn’t it be cool if we did? My host father’s daughter, Tahiry, stands inside the new concrete tomb where the human remains were transferred during the famadihana on Aug. 17.
The tomb had three small windows, with space for remains below each one. Vanessa Paolella photo A reader asked: What kinds of animals do you encounter in your region of Madagascar? — Patrick Paolella, Scotch Plains, N.J.
Oddly enough, I don’t encounter as many animals as I thought I would. I didn’t quite realize before coming here that even though Madagascar is a huge biodiversity hot spot, most of those animals are quite small. At night, I often have tree frogs and cockroaches crawling around my home.
Sometimes I even see tiny scorpions, which are promptly shooed out of my house. Beyond the livestock, dogs and cats outside, I sometimes see chameleons, lizards and rats. My favorite find is probably a rainbow-colored locust I see every now and then.
Have a question? Send it to [email protected] or by snail mail to the Sun Journal at 64 Lisbon St.
, Suite 201, Lewiston, ME 04240. On a personal note: I’ve been over the moon these last few weeks. Thanks to the help of family, friends and readers, we were able to raise over $6,000 for my community’s scholarship program with Anjiro Initiative.
That’s enough to support all 88 families, or 118 children, who signed up for the program, with a surplus of roughly $2,5000. That’s huge. The extra money will likely be saved and used next year to start a scholarship program at another school (or schools!) near me.
We still have 10 more schools left to go! On another note, I recently started running again. I’m slowly trying to work my way up to longer distances so I can explore more of the mountains and villages near me. Even better, both of the dogs have been coming with me.
Chrissy sprints everywhere with seemingly endless energy, and Nihoha trots in the back, falls behind, sprints to catch up, and then repeats the cycle. I think she’s a little lazy. Vanessa Paolella is a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar, as well as a former award-winning staff writer for the Sun Journal and a Bates College graduate.
The views expressed in this column are hers alone and do not reflect the views of the U.S. government, the Peace Corps, or the Madagascar government.
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