Boeuf Madagaskara

I lived on the southernmost tip of 'The Red Island' -- Madagascar -- where I taught English to the Malagasy. Fort Dauphin was a dusty, run-down little town, whose roads had not been repaired since the French left in the 1950s. In spite of their poverty, the Malagasy I met had energetic spirits. They loved parties, and they particularly loved entertaining the vazah, the Malagasy word for 'stranger.'

I seldom left the harbor town of Fort Dauphin. When I was not teaching at the high school, I taught at the Canadian Mining Company, run by Malagasy professionals eager to polish their English for annual meetings with the Canadian owners. Fridays, I went bumping through the rainforest on the big old taxi brousse to the hospital to help the medical staff with their English.

Tourists, Peace Corps volunteers and members of NGOs frequently stopped by my house on the hill when arriving in Fort Dauphin. One evening, on his way to the local hotel, a Peace Corps volunteer named Greg Gable walked up on my verandah, which was overhung with wild orchids and jasmine, much like an old Southern plantation. Smelling the French jasmine, Greg said he understood why I never went traveling but he wanted to invite me to his village just outside Ambovombe in western Madagascar.

I had in fact once been there to a teachers' meeting. It had been market day for the Malagasy cowboys who herded the huge hump-backed zebu into a small square, raising so much dust we had to duck into a local bar until it was over. While in the bar sipping a Malagasy 'Three Horse Beer,' I watched the cattle market and the frenzied cowboys with their whips and guns, and felt as though I had been transported to a Western set in the 1800s. I wasn't eager to visit that part of the country again.

I told Greg that as much as I'd like to go to the celebration for the opening of the school he'd built, I had no transportation. But I think he knew I was trying to get out of going through Ambovombe.

"Don't worry, cutie," he said. His face was streaked with dirt and sweat, his shirt caked with red earth from biking over the roads. "This is not a date I'm suggesting. I need a lovely vazah in the front row to make my school opening official. The principal from Fort Dauphin lycée (French public secondary school) and two of his English teachers are going in his truck. I told him you might ride along."

Greg had a reputation for playing nasty practical jokes, but he seemed sincere. And though he was not a person I'd ever date, I did want his party to be a success.

The morning of the celebration for his new school, we set off as soon as the sun rose. I wore a clean dress because Malagasy women rarely wear slacks or jeans. I sat between the teachers in the broad front seat of the principal's truck. We bounced and swerved over the broken rutted roads for over three hours without stopping. The two teachers wore beautiful white dresses with printed lambas tied around their waists, the colorful tablecloth-sized wraps worn by both Malagasy men and women. But they smelled very bad from lack of deodorant and toothpaste.

I had grown used to their acrid smell; what is more, I had grown to love these teachers for their courage in the school, which had no books, paper or even screens on the windows. They were paid the equivalent of $10 a week and most lived in shabby rented rooms, going home to their families on the weekend. Lanto and Nuorina sang as we bounced along, songs about cows, cyclones, moonlight and untrustworthy lovers. In the middle of harmonizing to a love song sometimes they burst out laughing. We were still laughing when we got to the site. Greg's school was a beautiful two-room building made of adobe from the red clay nearby. Three big plane trees (similar in appearance to sycamores), which were planted years ago by the French, shaded the schoolyard.

All of the villagers, dressed in their best lambas and brimless hand-woven hats, were milling about, setting a few cracked wooden chairs in a row facing the new school. Lanto and Nuorina led me to the chairs, where they insisted I must sit in the center flanked on one side by the lycée principal and the village chief, and on the other, by the oldest man in the village and the representative from the Ministry of Education, who had flown down from the capital for the occasion. Greg, too, had a seat in the front.

"I think you'll like lunch," Greg said with a twinkle. "They have a special feast planned in your honor."

I knew Greg was teasing: it was not I but the man from the Ministry who was the highest-ranking official at the celebration. I didn't mention that in my pocket I carried three tomatoes and two shallots in case there was only steamed manioc root for lunch.

After typically overlong speeches by the man from the Ministry of Education and the village chief, two men appeared from behind the school dragging an unwilling zebu, omby in Malagasy, directly in front of my chair. The oldest man in the village rose and broke off a flowering branch from a shrub beside the school. He waved the flowered branch over the omby's back, speaking softly to the animal, patting his back, then stroking him with the branch.

Distracted, the omby did not see one of the strong young men who grabbed it by the back legs and flipped it over on the ground. Simultaneously, the second young man straddled its neck, then pulled back its head. With a long knife, the man swiftly slashed its throat. The animal convulsed until the man opened its neck wide at the gash so a fountain of blood poured out and the beast was dead. I sat still as a stone in my chair. I willed myself not to faint. Then several men from the village stepped forward to open up the omby's side, peel back its skin and begin cutting off the steaming meat from its exposed ribs.

As the principal whispered to me that the rib meat was tenderest, one of the young men came rushing toward me with his hands full of bloody meat. He thrust the dripping still-warm meat into my hands. I accepted with as much poise as I could muster, wondering if Greg Gable knew all along this would happen. I rose and bowed to the crowd of villagers who applauded and chanted something about the gracious vazah, me. I sped around to the back of the school, hoping to get rid of the meat. Nourina and Lanto caught up to me, linked arms with me and led me to the cooking fires.

The village women, crouched on their haunches in front of the open fires, smiled in greeting. They had sharpened sticks with which they skewered my raw bleeding meat. Someone passed me a rag to wipe my hands. I was shaking all over -- whether from rage at Greg or shock at seeing an omby killed and gutted in front of my eyes, I wasn't sure. I remembered the tomatoes and shallots in my pockets. The women removed the skewers from the fire with their bare hands and calmly slid my vegetables onto the sticks.

While the meat was cooking, the man from the Ministry of Education wanted to take a photo of Greg and me in my bloodstained dress. Greg put his arm around me but I gave him a sharp jab in the ribs with my elbow, my privilege as 'guest of honor.' When I felt tears coming, to avoid giving Greg Gable the satisfaction of seeing me cry, I walked over to the cooking fires.

I was given a large tin basin mounded with rice, atop which sat my zebu meat and veggies en brochette. Nourina and Lanto shared my meat with their own basins of rice. Nourina gave me a bottle of Coca Cola. We sat under the plane trees. The zebu had been cooked to perfection: blackened to a crisp on the outside, while the inside was not raw, but succulent and juicy, tender and delicately flavored by the shallots and tomatoes. No barbecue sauce, no seasonings of any kind were added to the most exquisite beef I'd ever eaten. I asked my friends what the oldest man in the village said when he whispered to the omby in his last minutes.

Nourina translated in her best English: "The old one said, 'We are grateful that you came to the celebration; we are sorry to have to take your life. You are a noble animal. And thanks a lot for the nice lunch.'"


Dr. Jacquelyn Brooks served as a Teachers’ Supervisor in the Peace Corps in Madagascar from 1997 – 1999. She has retired from teaching and is writing a novel. She lives overlooking the harbor in Gloucester, MA where she claims to be a recluse except when entertaining her very large family.