Isolated from everything and everyone, the Zafimaniry remain the guarantors of the last ancestral traditions brought two millennia ago from faraway Indonesia by the first settlers of Madagascar.
Their way of life and their perseverance have been recognized by UNESCO, which has declared them Oral Heritage of Humanity.
At dawn, the lights of dawn struggle to be seen amidst the morning mist. The muffled crowing of a few daring roosters can be heard and silhouettes of women in colorful lambas can be glimpsed. Children begin to run around the narrow streets of Faliarivo village as old men wrapped in blankets wave to each other from the windows of wooden huts. Smoke is escaping from all the half-open windows and the sun is slowly beginning to beat the fog. But it all began long before, at the gates of Zafimaniry Country.
At 50 kilometers southeast of the Betsileo town of Ambositra, begins the Zafimaniry Country, consisting of 52 villages scattered in a whimsical way between valleys, mountains and jungle. We travel 12 kilometers of asphalt on the RN7 heading south until we reach the Betsileo village of Ivato Centre, from where the dirt road will take us to the village of Amblandingana, at the gates of the Zafimaniry Country and starting and finishing point of most trekking that cross these villages and mountains, refuge of the last animists.
Marc and Brigitte are strangers but endearing. They left their native France one day, more than 10 years ago, determined to travel around the world to find that lost corner where they could build an impossible house, and stay there forever. But their journey began and ended in these mountains. They arrived in Madagascar, went down to Ambositra, heard about the Zafimaniry and visited the region. They liked some land on some hills, surrounded by rice fields and protected by a forest of ecucalyptus.
They bought them, not knowing very well what they would do with them. Later they met other crazy people like them, other wanderers in search of impossible homes who assured them that they were going to bring tourists to these forgotten places all over the world. And among
crazy people they understood each other, they joined dreams, they joined ambitions and each one, in their own way, fulfilled their part of the deal. Thus was born the Ecolodge Sous Le Soleil de Mada, and thus was created little by little the legend of the Zafimaniry country.
Early in the morning we leave Ambalandingana, and drive 10 kilometers on the plain until we reach the capital of the Zafimaniry, the village of Antoetra. From here, mountain trails lead us into the heart of this animist ethnic group. After 4 kilometers of slides, we arrive at the village of Ifasina, first contact with the indolent Zafimaniry. The village consists of a hundred wooden houses with palm roofs, in the depths of a narrow valley, surrounded by small crops of wild rice, corn and sweet potatoes. The Zafimaniry are not cattle breeders, nor farmers, the conditions in which they live and the capricious orography of their isolated region have turned them into cabinetmakers, wood craftsmen capable of creating the most beautiful handicrafts of the Southern Hemisphere.
The Zafimaniry are governed by natural criteria, their animism is based on respect for the forces of nature and respect for the ancestors, true divinities of the Zafimaniry spiritual universe.
In each village there is a village chief, a respected elder who is consulted on all individual or collective actions. The village chief of Faliarivo is a man in his eighties, with calloused hands, a bearded beard, pronounced cheekbones and deep-set eyes. He scrutinizes me for a few minutes before inviting me to sit with him in his smoky hut.
The Zafimaniry story began more than two thousand years ago, when various communities migrated from the Indonesian islands and after a hundred years of travels and stopovers, they reached the Malagasy coasts. The ethnic group that resulted from these migrations and interbreeding became known as Betsileo. A small part of this ethnic group settled in the mountains, while the most numerous group occupied the fertile valleys of the Highlands, between the present cities of Ambositra and Ambalavao. But with the arrival of Christianity in Madagascar, things began to change. The Betsileo of the valleys quickly converted to the new religion and tried to forcibly convert their “cousins” in the mountains. They took refuge even deeper into the massifs, among inaccessible cliffs and impossible tracks. It was there that the legend tells that the “liberator” Maniry told his people: “you are the last pure men, and you must live like your ancestors; resist, the way of our people is tradition”. Thus began the wars with the other Betsileo, also with the powerful merina of Antananarivo, by then already unifiers of almost the whole island, and so it was that the descendants of Maniry, became a forgotten tribe, lost between valleys and mountains, guarantors of the last traditions brought from across the seas. A tribe still today not recognized as such by the rest of the Malagasy. Many even ignore their existence. Others still consider them as split betsileo.
But the Zafimaniry are much more than that, although to meet them, you have to walk, you have to cross jungles, forests and mountains, you have to give up comfort for a few days, you have to adapt in body and mind and above all, you have to earn their respect and trust to gain access to their mysteries. Their natural and animistic universe revolves around secrets that have been well kept for generations. The Zafimaniry do not usually mix with other ethnic groups, they speak a dialect of Malagasy somewhat different from their Betsileo neighbors and above all, they respect the beliefs that the other Malagasy people were losing or mixing with the new imported religions, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam…
But the Zafimaniry do not complain, they do not expect anything from progress, nor do they want any help nor do they want to be helped. They simply wish to live quietly in their mountains, as their ancestors have always done. Despite this, they are a welcoming and hospitable people, a proud ethnic group, with simple customs, where the present and the future cannot be conceived without the past. The reference is always their history, tradition and tradition. The oral tradition, the instructions given by the ancestors to the elderly village chiefs who are able to communicate with the voices of the ancestors in a curious ceremony that is repeated constantly and daily in every village.e communicate with the voices of the ancestors in a curious ceremony that is repeated constantly and daily in all the villages. From Faliarivo, good hikers can easily reach Tetezandrouta and Sakaivo, crossing landscapes of terraced rice fields and sacred hills. In the distance, hidden among jungle valleys are the villages of Kidodo (feared by almost all the Zafi Maniry because of a dark history of sorcery), Maharivo, Votohamandry, Ambohinarivo, Ambatolampe (where the best cabinetmakers are located), Amboihitombo…
Thus up to 52 redoubts of the past, living temples of the oral tradition of a surreal island where cultures are in continuous movement and where things, however much they seem to change, in the end, never change.
We arrived back in Antoetra after several days of trekking through the Zafimaniry Mountains, tired, dusty, anxious to find refuge again in the ecolodge of Ambalandingana, but with the unrepeatable feeling of having made a journey through time within the reach of very few travelers.
Sources: IndigoBe Magazine. © All rights reserved
For more information about our trekking in Zafimaniry Country click here.
