StapleMadagascar
Vary sy Laoka
Rice with an accompaniment, which is how Malagasy people describe a meal. Madagascar eats more rice per head than almost anywhere on earth, three times a day.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
Betsimisaraka
Madagascar's second largest people, of the rainforest east coast, whose name means the many who do not separate, assembled into a confederation around 1710 by the son of an English pirate and a Malagasy noblewoman.
Identity
Population: Estimated 1.5 to 2 million
Location: The eastern coastal strip from Antalaha to Mananjary, centred on Toamasina, Madagascar's main port
Language: Malagasy, in the northern and southern Betsimisaraka dialects
Language family: Austronesian → Malayo-Polynesian → Malagasy
Traditional governance: Village fokonolona assemblies and lineage elders (tangalamena); the eighteenth-century confederation dissolved under Merina conquest and French rule.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Northern Betsimisaraka
From Antalaha to Toamasina, historically the confederation's core.
Southern Betsimisaraka
Toward Mananjary, with dialect and custom differences.
Zana-Malata
Descendants of pirates and Malagasy women, from whom the confederation's founder came.
Culture
Clothing: Lamba wraps and cotton; the white lamba for famadihana and funerary occasions; working dress for the vanilla and clove harvests.
Food: Rice with cassava, breadfruit and the coast's fruit; fish and eel; the region grows most of the world's vanilla, which its farmers do not eat.
Ceremonies: Tromba possession ceremonies; the tsaboraha, a great funerary and ancestral feast with cattle sacrifice; circumcision celebrations; the vanilla harvest, which now governs the year.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth negotiated between families; strong ancestral obligation in the choice; the tangalamena lineage elder presides.
Initiation rites: Circumcision with public celebration; instruction in ancestral obligation and the fady prohibitions particular to one's lineage and place.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Madagascar, at national rather than community level — 9 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
National dishMadagascar
Romazava
Beef broth with brèdes mafana, a leaf that numbs and tingles the mouth. Madagascar's national dish, once reserved for royalty, and unlike anything else in the region.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
National dishMadagascar
Akoho sy Voanio
also Chicken in coconut
Chicken braised in coconut milk with ginger and tomato, the coastal Malagasy counterpart to the highland romazava, and the dish most often cooked for guests.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Street foodMadagascar
Mofo Gasy
Sweet rice-flour cakes cooked in a dimpled iron pan over charcoal, sold at dawn from street carts and eaten with coffee on the way to work.
Serves Makes 16 · 2 hours
Street foodMadagascar
Koba Ravina
also Koba, Peanut rice cake
Ground peanuts, rice flour and sugar wrapped in banana leaf and steamed for hours into a dense sweet log, cut into slices and sold on every Malagasy roadside.
Serves 10 · 5 hours
Festival & feastMadagascar
Ravitoto sy Henakisoa
Pounded cassava leaves cooked with pork and coconut milk, made for family Sundays and celebrations. Pounding the leaves by hand is the whole difference between good and indifferent.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes
Regional specialityMadagascar
Lasary
A sharp salad of tomato, onion and green mango dressed with lime and ginger, served alongside every rich dish. The Malagasy answer to a plate that needs cutting through.
Serves 6 · 20 minutes
Regional specialityMadagascar
Sakay
also Malagasy chilli paste
A fiery paste of bird's eye chilli, ginger and garlic in oil, kept on every Malagasy table and added by the teaspoon to everything.
Serves Makes about 250ml · 20 minutes
Drink & sweetMadagascar
Ranovola
also Ranon'ampango
Water boiled in the pot with the toasted rice crust left in the bottom, producing a smoky drink served with every meal. Nothing is wasted and nothing else is needed.
Serves 4 · 10 minutes
Stories & Oral Literature
The Pirate's SonHistorical account
Ratsimilaho, born around 1694 to Tom Tew, an English pirate, and a Malagasy noblewoman, united the fractious clans of the east coast into a confederation around 1710 and named them Betsimisaraka: the many who do not separate. He ruled until 1750. The east coast had been a pirate haven for decades, and Madagascar's second largest ethnic group was in part an invention of that world.
The Vanilla CoastEconomic account
The SAVA region produces the majority of the world's vanilla, hand-pollinated flower by flower because the Mexican bee that does it naturally does not live here. Prices have swung between fifty and six hundred dollars a kilogram within a few years, bringing theft, armed guarding of vines and vigilante killings, and leaving farmers no more secure at the top of the market than at the bottom.
Proverbs
“Ny fanahy no maha-olona.”
“It is the spirit that makes a person.”
The Malagasy statement of what a human being is.
“The many who do not separate.”
The name Ratsimilaho gave the confederation, and its programme.
“The flower is opened by hand or not at all.”
Vanilla pollination, and the labour behind the price.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Zanahary as creator, distant from affairs; the razana, the ancestors, as the effective authority over the living; fady prohibitions attached to places, days, foods and lineages.
Beliefs: Ancestral religion centred on the razana; tromba possession by named spirits, strong on this coast; fady observed in great local variety; Christianity widespread and generally held alongside.
Ancestors: The razana govern land, marriage and conduct; the tsaboraha feast and, in some communities, the reburial traditions are the principal occasions of contact with them.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Zanahary
The creator, remote from daily affairs
Razana
The ancestors, consulted and obeyed, and the centre of Malagasy religious life
Tromba spirits
Powers who possess mediums and speak, particularly associated with the east coast
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of raised houses on stilts, walled and roofed in ravinala traveller's palm, which is the region's signature material and grows nowhere better.
Building techniques: Ravinala palm construction: split trunks for walls, plaited leaves for roofing, the whole house built from one plant; raising on posts against damp and cyclone flooding.
Village layout: Villages along the coast road or the lagoon with tombs sited apart on higher ground, and vanilla and clove plots in the forest behind.
Artifacts
Ravinala palm houses
Architecture
Stilt dwellings built entirely from the traveller's palm.
Pangalanes canal
Infrastructure
A 650-kilometre chain of lagoons and cuts along the east coast, linked under French rule.
Vanilla curing racks
Livelihood
Equipment of the crop that supplies most of the world's supply.
Île Sainte-Marie pirate cemetery
Heritage site
Burial ground of the pirate community from which the confederation's founder came.
Historical Timeline
1690s–1720s
Île Sainte-Marie and the east coast serve as an Indian Ocean pirate haven.
c. 1710
Ratsimilaho unites the east coast clans into the Betsimisaraka confederation.
1750–1820s
The confederation fragments after his death; Merina expansion reaches the coast.
1896–1960
French colonisation; Toamasina becomes the island's principal port and the Pangalanes canal is linked.
2017–present
Vanilla prices swing violently; cyclones strike the coast with increasing force.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Britannica: BetsimisarakaEncyclopaedia Britannica
Premium & scholarly sources