Dear all,
I came home for lunch today and when I walked in from the courtyard and looked in the open door of my host parents’ room, I noticed there was a chicken sitting contentedly on the blanket in the center of the bed. I heard my host brother enter the front door behind me and I pointed to the offender and exclaimed, “Misy akoho!” (there’s a chicken!) He didn’t seem the least bit fazed that there was a hen on his parents’ bed, so I asked, “Inona no manoa izy?” [What’s it doing there?] He shrugged and replied, “Manatody“, with a duh! look on his face. I knew “atody” meant egg, so it wasn’t a stretch to figure out the verb “manatody“(to lay an egg).

Living in Madagascar you grow accustomed to seeing things each day that don’t entirely make sense to you. But I just couldn’t understand why my family thought it perfectly normal for their chickens to come in from the courtyard and lay eggs on their beds. Besides the fact that it is unhygenic, it seems to me like a violation of personal space for a nosy chicken to invade your sacred sleeping place. But then I thought about the situation for a moment.

The Malagasy don’t like dogs because they consider them dirty animals–which in this country they mainly are. Because of this, even families such as my host family who feed their dogs well would never allow them to enter the house and would be just horrified to find one lying on their bed! Aren’t dogs just as “dirty” as chickens? I still wouldn’t want a chicken in my bed, but I can be respectful of their tolerance, I thought to myself.

All pleased with myself for approaching the situation with such a culturally relativistic attitude (my Brandeis anthropology professors would be proud), I went upstairs to see what my host sister had cooked for lunch. [houses on the Plateau have two storeys; the upper floor which catches the breeze, is a pleasant place to eat and relax in the warm season…Teresa] Learning that we were having “ravitoto” with “vary mena maina” (pounded manioc leaves with dry Malagasy red rice*), I was all ready to forget the chicken-inside-the-house incident. Then I heard a rustling of feathers, and a strangely familiar cooing sound came out of the cooking area where the family prepares food on two little charcoal braziers. I looked next to the brazier which supported a steaming pot of rice and there, nestled in the warm alcove, was another chicken!

Staring at it in disbelief and disgust (you learn fast to hate chickens here: they sneak into your garden by means unknown and have a field day on your carefully planted vegetables), I pointed to the chicken and said to the cook, my host sister, “Misy akoho!” She nodded. “Fa inona no manoa izy?” (But what’s it doing there?), I asked, trying not to show my disapproval. Her reply: “Manatody.”

To top it off, as I walked down the stairs to my room after lunch, I had to stop midway. There, on the fourth step, lay a single, still-warm egg. It’s beyond me why my host family doesn’t build a chicken coop in the courtyard. Instead our “ladoshy” (the little sort of out-house where you go to take a sponge bath in private) doubles as a chicken coop at night. Go figure!

With love, Rachel

*Often during my stay, my host family would have white, soupy rice (”varisosoa“) three meals a day, whereas most Malagasy families eat soupy rice for breakfast only, so dry rice was a cause for great excitement on my part! [When the Malagasy cook rice over a charcoal fire, the rice in the bottom of the pan gets browned, almost burned; after most of the rice is removed and put in a serving dish, the rice that is left is covered with water and set back on the brazier to boil, making “ranonampango“, or “rice water”. The rice water is drunk at the end of the meal, and the browned or burned rice given to the chickens and dogs! For Rachel it was especially important to have rice water because she couldn’t drink tap water and, except for making tea in the morning, no water was heated (sterilized) during the dayunless dry rice and consequently rice water were made. When soupy rice is cooked, the bottom doesn’t brown so no rice water is made. Teresa]