21 May – To the Coast (Tuléar)

Tomb with Funerary Posts
and Zebu  Horns

Into every trip, a day of transportation must fall, and this was one.

My little hotel was empty except for me, so I had the whole restaurant to myself for my favorite meal.  It’s an interesting little assembly of bungalows.  It began life as some tents and a restaurant set up for the total eclipse that occurred here in 2001, and since the owner managed to keep getting clients, he upgraded (a little) and set up buildings that were more permanent.  The rooms are a far cry from comfortable, but there’s a modicum of garden, a pool, and some quiet just outside town.

Tomb Painting of Gemstone Mining

After breakfast, we started south, watching the massifs decline into flat savannah dotted with palms.  Then I started seeing the famous sapphire boom towns.  After all I’d read about them, it was still surprising to see the effect that the discovery of commercial gemstones has had on this area.  After going through the first-established and primary center for sapphires, Ilakaka, we went through several other gem-rush towns until we got to the edge of the rush area, where there was a small village that was only just beginning to see the interest of miners.  Whew, do these look like rough places.  There are terrible sanitation conditions and very rudimentary constructions right beside enormous, concrete gem showrooms.  It’s a cliché, but it’s true – the region looks like the Old West in the 21^st century.  I didn’t stop to buy any saffs, though, because I would probably have ended up paying gemstone prices of purple glass.

The ride to Tuléar was flat, boring, hot and monotonous, but there were a lot of interesting tombs.  Tomb tradition here is linked to small tribal groups, and each group uses different iconography and has different traditions. 

I checked out a few of the tombs and was really impressed.  They usually consist of a walled enclosure into which the deceased’s bones are put (second burial).  The enclosure is then filled with stones and commemorative posts related to deceased’s life or likes are put in the rock along with the horns of however many zebu were sacrificed for the funeral.  Some groups used to sacrifice all the deceased’s zebu, but that’s eroding and people now use wooden statues to indicate the number.  Or write the number on the tomb wall.  The point is for the deceased to have prestige.  And most of the enclosures are for families, so there are multiple people buried there.

I also found paintings on the tomb walls, and god knows what they mean.  I saw images of old guys sitting around listening to a radio or reading, and others of younger guys panning for gem stones.  There were also portraits of women, one with a girl dancing.  Those I understand.

But then there are the ones of ninjas, vamps, and satyrs carrying wounded women.  And there’s an image from Titanic on one tomb.  Perhaps these were things a deceased liked in their life….

After a couple of those stops, we got on in to Tuléar,  a small, worn out, rundown little place, but with a certain grungy charm.  It reminds me a lot of other hot little port cities I’ve seen…..people moving around sorta slow, limited civic resources to keep things up, people generally smiling and standing around talking.  Oh….and there’s more music here than anyplace else I’ve been – reggae and afropop.

Really like the hotel here.  Chez Alain is in most of the guidebooks, but I wasn’t sure about the internet service…and I wanted access to internet to start posting blogs.  It has it!  And it has a good-sized collection of bungalows that are comfortable, a huge restaurant with additional outdoor seating, a performance area and a well-maintained garden full of palms, cacti, aloe, bougainvillea, and various variegated plants.  It’s quiet, cool, comfortable….an unbelievable contrast to what’s happening right outside.

Though it was hot, I settled in for a bowl of soup, knowing it would be freshly made, and some Cantonese rice.  Maybe because of the heat, I didn’t have much appetite for meat.  I do like the soups here, too….always fresh and served in double the quantity we get at home.  Soup and rice are a hearty meal here. 

Didn’t tarry over lunch though; hurried right to take a nap. 

Solof never sleeps, so he was alert and waiting when I woke up.  I had been unimpressed by the carving in Tana (slick, polished, predictable tourist stuff) and shut out of shops in Ambositra because of the council meeting.  Since the tombs I saw on the way had certainly showed an active local woodcarving tradition, I was excited to see what might be available in town.

I wasn’t totally disappointed, either.  There wasn’t a lot, but a place in back of the shops with their shells, tin sconces and naughty little erotic statues, I found a lady with some stuff that looked real.  Her tourist stuff was $100-$200, but crude stuff in the back was a small fraction of that; so little, in fact, that I bought a couple figuring that, if I couldn’t get them on a plane, I wouldn’t be out any money.  Based on what I’d seen in museums and online, these were authentic and, therefore, wouldn’t have much tourist appeal since we don’t bury our dead in stone-filled enclosures and put these posts on them.

I wish I had longer here so I could track down whoever did the funerary posts for the tombs I’d seen coming in.  I enjoyed planning them for some of my friends – me between an Eiffel Tower and a Taj Mahal, Pete and Nancy as blonde white soccer players (lots of wives on the funerary markers), Lou with a white panel truck marked “PLD” – I had it all planned out.  But I didn’t have time to track an artisan down.  Next trip…so start planning your funerary post order now!

I got back to the hotel to the bad/good news that there was a band (Saturday night) and a big shindig; bad because I really wanted to sleep and knew that wasn’t happening, good because I got to hear some local stuff without seeking out some sleazy club where I’d be fending off the ladies all night.  Sure enough, a sextet showed up dressed in tight white pants and green/red/yellow shirts.  I’d expected afropop dance music, but it was R&B (with some godawful, flat vocals), reggae and afropop.  The group just jammed out on the afropop with a ton of intensity and improv, and I don’t understand why they didn’t just stay with it.  There was clearly lots more audience interaction with that rhythmic dance music.  But everyone had a great time when the band wasn’t trying covers of “Endless Love.”