Kayaking down the mangrove river near Ambatomikopaka, at a point when the emerald water goes cloudy with light and the black snakes of mangrove roots tangle the banks, the sound of the surf dissolves. Here on a river island where the wild ducks fly, we glide past the tombs of ancestors. Malagasy cemeteries are in spots like these – on small islands, up mountains – sublime and sequestered reserves of nature.
An elder of the village, Sonibe, is with us, and tells us his mother is buried there. Yesterday, a saboraha – a huge party to celebrate the exhumation of a relative – reverberated across the cape with a banging sound system. Three zebu were slaughtered and about a thousand people partied until dawn.
In this part of Madagascar , if you can afford it, you exhume your loved ones years after their burial, and host a party for their bones. You catch them up on what’s been happening, then place them in an above-ground crypt. The digging up and reinterring of remains is the work of women if it’s a female corpse, and men if it’s a man.
It’s good for my 12-year-old daughter to hear how other cultures deal with death, how they turn grief into a party and what they expect from their ancestors, whose souls accompany the family until their physical remains disintegrate. To reach this wild northeastern peninsula you take a charter from the Madagascan capital, Antananarivo, to Maroantsetra, where zebu are ushered off the landing strip. Masoala Forest Lodge, where we have .
