Madagascar: paradise in peril
19.05.12
All of it, I say. Everything about your country is interesting to me. He
points to the humped cattle with long dewlaps and lyre-shaped horns grazing
by the roadside and pulling wooden carts. These are the ubiquitous
Madagascar zebu, brought here long ago by African herdsmen and now numbering
in the tens of millions. 'We use them for milk, meat and work, but they are
also like a bank account everyone can see,' Diary says. 'The more zebu you
have, the more wealth and status. To get married you must pay many zebus to
your bride's family.'
In my country, we have a different system, I say. The man gets his bride for
nothing, but he must pay her if there is a divorce.
'He pays after the marriage is over?' Diary says incredulously. 'But then he
gets nothing for his money. I like our system better.'
The landscape is a patchwork of rice paddies and terraced hillsides, denuded
of the magnificent forests that once grew here. The air is hazy and tastes
of smoke from the fires on the horizon, where traditional slash-and-burn
agriculture is consuming yet more forests. In the villages, women wear pink
floppy hats, children run in rags, and lorry drivers devour huge bowls of
rice and zebu meat at roadside eateries. 'A good Malagasy will eat a kilo of
rice a day, more than the Chinese,' Diary says. 'We eat rice for breakfast,
lunch and dinner, and drink rice water with our meals.'
Source: Telegraph.co.uk