Vignt-six

Picture is of me sitting on a gastank to so it will work down in Lopary last month

June 26th is Madagascar’s big national holiday. Although the holiday commemorates Madagascar’s independence from the French colonial oppressor, fifty years later the Malagasy continue to refer to their national holiday using French numeration. In spite of the confusing its designation, Vingt-six is quite the party.
On the evening before the holiday, the festivities got started with a sumptuous meal with Rodrigue’s family. There was fried tuna tails, select chicken organs (intestines, gizzard, etc), cubed pork fat, and some cooked leaves. All this was served with a side of heavily coagulated chicken blood over a bed of rice. I helped myself to a heaping portion of the leaves and took my helping of chicken blood home and fed it to my cat.
After dinner everyone descends on Ranomafana for the Children’s Lantern procession. Little kids dressed up in their finest meander all through town with paper lanterns for about a half hour before everyone consolidates on the market square. Then there is a monster dance party. This dance party was like nothing I had ever experienced. The entire village turned out and the entire mass of people was breaking-it-down. Old malagasy grandmas, moms with infants strapped to their backs, the odd French tourist, swarms of five to ten year olds. It was truly impressive. Have you ever seen an elderly Malagasy man try to break-dance? Because I have. After four hours of seriously intense partying, with the marketplace still packed with people, I biked back home and put myself to bed. I woke up at 4:30 to the sound of music still blaring in town 1500 meters away. At 8 when I finally woke up, there was still a party going on in town.
The music stopped around 9 so that the speeches could get started. The entire village had by now reassembled into a droopy eyed mass. For the next 4 hours various Malagasy dignitaries talked themselves hoarse into the microphone about how wonderful everything was while the indifferent populace napped, played marbles, or carried on their own conversations. The speeches were followed by one of the strangest parades I have yet witnessed. Essentially the entire town participated in the parade leaving very few spectators. All the schoolchildren went first followed by the local hotel employees, soccer teams, Park Guides, power company maintenance people, karate club, the list goes on. My friend told me if I wrote PEACE CORPS on a large piece of cardboard that I too could be in the parade. I passed.
The procession soon turned into a disorganized hoard when things got a little backed up near the mayor’s box and the operation was abandon. Then we broke for lunch. Rodrigue had killed another chicken that morning so we ate it over rice (no blood this time) and I brought a bunch of bones home for my cat to munch on. Exausted by all the day’s festivities I retired to my bed for a short power nap. I was awoken a few moments later to one of my cat’s chicken legs disappearing into a rat hole in my wall. After an ill-fated attempt at tug of war with the offending rodent the bone was lost forever into the labyrinth of the rat fortress.
Determined no to let the setback in the Great Rat War ruin my holiday I returned to Ranomafana at 2 to find another dance party already in full swing. This party continued on all afternoon as the kids got increasingly rowdy and the adults got increasingly drunk. Besides the chicken blood, getting pass-out-in-the-dirt drunk was the other Malagasy tradition that I did not partake in. Almost everyone was drinking more than their fair share of moonshine, even the sweet old lady who I buy eggs from was wandering about screaming incoherently in the street. When night fell there was second rendition of the Children’s lantern parade thing and the dance party was shifted to the community center. Replacing the dance party in the market was the large screen projector which piped in the Ghana-USA match much to the amusement of all assembled. So passed a big happy Vingt-six.