Madagascar

Of all things it was the boardgame Risk that gave me a fascination with Madagascar—it was one of the largest islands on the board, and tucked down in that corner it seemed, like Australia, an out of the way place. (Safe for amassing armies, but, after all, not very strategic on the board… I never won many Risk games.) It is, in fact, one of the largest islands in the world—if we’re not counting Australia (apparently a lot of people don’t, instead citing it as a continent) then it only lags behind Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo. Even better, 5 perfect of the world’s animal and plant species call Madagascar home—and the vast majority of these are endemic to Madagascar. Wow!

On 26 June, 1960 Madagascar gained its independence from France. Prior to French colonisation, it is believed that Madagascar was populated sometime between 200 and 500 CE— with seafarers most likely arriving from Borneo or the southern Celebes (one of the lesser-known-by-name island groups of Indonesia.) Around the same time, Bantu groups arrived, crossing the Mozambique channel. Hot on the heels of this, Muslims set up trading posts in the 7th century.

The Portuguese named the island Sāo Lourenço—they were the first Europeans to spot it nad set up trade from the sixteenth century. In the mid-seventeenth century, France got in on the action—initially setting up ports on the islands that are now Reunion and Mauritius (formerly Bourbon and Ile-de-France), and by the late 17th century they succeeded in their goal of establishing trading posts on Madagascar.

Better than all this, though (well, not better per se, but more exciting for anyone who grew up on Robert Louis Stevenson) is the fact that pirates loved to hang out in Madagascar in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Imperialism became the order of the day in the late nineteenth century—in 1883 France invaded Madagascar and in 1890 the country became a French protectorate. (I have to admit, I always find the term “protectorate” problematic…) War continued with inhabitant until 1896—in a statistic that is a nice inversion of Europeans bringing diseases to the Americas, 20 French soldiers died fighting, and 6000 died of Malaria.

Following World War II, the independence movement really fired up—there was a (rather bloody) nationalist uprising in 1947. It took nearly a decade before the journey toward independence started to move forward peacefully—first the Malagasy Republic was proclaimed an autonomous state in 1958, a new constitution was adopted in 1959, and full independence followed in 1960.

The early days of independence saw a quick change of government (the first president only lasted two months) and the following leader resigned after fifteen years—his successor was assassinated after just six days in office. In 1975 President Ratsiraka came to power, limiting political opposition and press freedom. There’ve been few changes of government since the 1990s (including a return of Ratsiraka after the impeachment of the man who beat him in 1992). When Marc Ravalomanana took power in 2001, Ratsiraka supported cut transport routes in the country, causing political crisis. When this was over (Ratsiraka is now in exile) the new President began a number of reform projects.


Today’s poem is by Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo, and comes from his work Presque-songes. It’s from the Penguin Book of Modern African Verse.

Cactus
(from Presque-songes)

That multitude of moulded hands
holding out flowers to the azure sky
that multitude of fingerless hands
unshaken by the wind
they say that a hidden source
wells from their untainted palms
they say that this inner source
refreshes thousands of cattle
and numberless tribes, wandering tribes
in the frontiers of the South.

Fingerless hands, springing from a source,
Moulded hands, crowning the sky.

Here, when the flanks of the City were still as green
as moonbeams glancing from the forests,
when they still left bare the hils of Iarive
crouching like bulls upthrust,
it was upon rocks too steep even for goats
that they hid, to protect their sources,
these lepers sprouting flowers.

Enter the cave from which they came
if you seek the origin of the sickness which ravages them—
origin more shrouded than the evening
and further than the dawn—
but you will know no more than I.
The blood of the earth, the sweat of the stone,
and the sperm of the wind,
which flow together in these palms
have melted their fingers
and replaced them with golden flowers.

—Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo
from Penguin Book of Modern African Verse