Below, is a brief description of the Malagasy people. It was provided to us by Nate Dominy, and therefore represents a scholar’s perspective of the local people.

Keira: Is there a strong ingroup-outgrouping that would make [the Malagasy people] feel more okay with just giving strangers this bad luck?

Nate: I don’t know. I don’t know well enough to know. I didn’t get to know people that well. They’re farmer-pastoralists. They herd cow, and they grow crops. So …Yeah, I don’t think so. There might be dialect differences, but everyone speaks the same language. There is a single language for Madagascar. So, people should be pretty well mixed. I don’t think there’s that kind of dynamic.

Keira: Yeah. And do people normally stay in the same village their whole life? Or will they move around Madagascar? Go to different villages? Disperse?

Nate: Well, the classic problem that’s happening is, it’s just happening in a lot of places, is because you inherit the land of your parents. And that gets divided between the kids. The more kids you have, the smaller and smaller the parcels. And so the youngest kids are taking their chances in the city. So you’re seeing many people leave and go to the city.

And then, in times of famine, the US in particular or Europe too, will bring in things like corn. And that needs to be boiled. And so you cut down trees. For fuel. To burn, to boil the water. To heat the thing. Now once you remove the trees … Then you have other problems still. The kinds of aid that are given in these situations are contributing to the problem. So, what’s happening now is a disintegration of that traditional pattern. A lot of people moving to the city. So Antananarivo, which is the capital city of Madagascar, it’s population is surging.

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