TRAVEL Madagascar
In a village where walls are thin and much of life is lived outside them, the topography of sound makes a gentle introduction to its peoples’ way of life. Regardless of the time of day - so long as the sun has risen - the echoes around the terraced village of Sakaivo in Central Madagascar's Highlands are likely to be the same. Undulating laughter as children run and play; the jagged cheeps of a chick that's lost its mum; troughs of quiet as an elder sister soothes a crying baby; the sharp, steep squawk of a chicken shooed from inside a house; and, always, the dull, rolling thud-thudthud-thud as a woman somewhere pounds a heavy pole into a wooden mortar of rice.
On the western side of Sakaivo, when the hillside is already deep in the afternoon's shadow, there comes another sound: a stark tap-tap-tap-tap as Mr Rapemevaro, a village elder, hits his handmade mallet against an old chisel, Mr RapemevaroI sit with Mr Rapemevaro outside his home; me on the low wooden stool he's offered and he on the ledge that extends from beneath his house. It's typical of the Zafimaniry style: a single-pitch roof with walls constructed from vertical wood panels, and the door and window shutters carved with an intricate series of geometric patterns. Traditionally, Zafimaniry homes are built without nails, a technique that some villagers say represents an important characteristic of their people: they support each other not with enforcement, but with love.
