India was once Madagascar’s eastern half.
The ancestors of Madagascar’s emblematic domesticated animal – the zebu – came from South Asia, after the aforementioned “split”.
Every Wednesday morning Ambalavao holds Madagascar’s largest zebu market.
(all photos copyright Doug Spencer, taken on morning of 16 May 2018. Click here to see previous post on Ambalavao’s other, quite different market)
It is almost impossible to overstate the zebu’s significance in Madagascar: as status symbol, as beast of burden and agricultural “machine”, as mode of transport, as food (delicious, when cooked correctly), as the most widely-desired form of material wealth, as quasi-sacred beast with a starring role in almost every religious/social ritual, and as devastator of Madagascar’s natural environment…
Click here to discover more.
Many of the zebu sold in Ambalavao had walked hundreds of kilometres to reach the market.
Once sold, the greater number of them were bound for Tana – more formally Antananarivo – the nation’s capital and metropolis.
Most would be walked to Tana – a month away, on foot.
The greater number of people at the market were cattle-drivers.
One of them showed more evident pleasure than I had ever seen expressed by any other smoker of a “legal” substance. (you will see exactly what I mean if you zoom in on the man wearing the red top)
Sitting apart, wearing more “stylish” headgear – and looking a little harder than everybody else – were the “buyers”.
Pelican Yoga‘s next Madagascan post will feature quite another, hitherto undisclosed (here, at least) aspect of the zebu’s many roles in Madagascar.