Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Attractive though the ring-tails are, no lemur can compete with the
Verreaux's sifaka
for soft-toy cuddliness, with its creamy white fur, brown cap, and black face. The species
here is
Propithecus verreauxi
and there are about 300 of them in the reserve. Unlike the
ring-tails, they rarely come down to the ground, but when they do the length of their legs
in comparison with their short arms necessitates a comical form of locomotion: they stand
upright and jump with their feet together like competitors in a sack race. The best places to
see them do this are on the trail to the left at the river and across the road by the aeroplane
hangar near the restaurant and museum. The young are born in July.
The
red-frontedbrownlemurs
(
Eulemur rufus
) were introduced from the west and are
now well established and almost as tame as the ring-tails. These are the only sexually di-
morphic lemurs in Berenty - in other words you can tell the males from the females by
their colour: males have a fluffy orange cap while females have greyish heads and bodies
that are a more chestnut brown than males'. Both sexes have long, black noses and white
'eyebrows'.
THE TOMB OF RANONDA
Hilary Bradt
When I first started leading trips to Madagascar in the 1980s we always visited Ber-
enty. It was one reliable success in an island of mishaps. So once a year I would make
the drive from Taolagnaro and stop at a tiny settlement beside the road to see the
Tomb of Ranonda. The village was a scattering of huts, like every other village along
that road except for one thing: the collection of wooden carvings commemorating the
dead.Unliketheirmorefamousneighbours,theMahafaly,theAntanosypeoplerarely
use figurative carvings or paintings in their memorials. They prefer to mark the burial
place with a cluster of concrete cenotaphs. So this was a rarity, but what set it apart
from any other tomb I've seen was the exquisite craftsmanship. We even know the
sculptor's name: Fiasia. Ranonda herself was evidently a religious young woman -
she holds a bible and a cross - but much livelier is the man losing a leg to a crocodile
and an expertly carved boatload of people, their expressions tranquil except for the
helmsman who poles his overloaded canoe to its end: the vessel sank and all on board
weredrowned.Hisfaceshowssomeanxietyashelooksround,perhapsattheoncom-
ing waves.
The boat-people were the most famous but my favourite was a group of three zebu.
These animals, destined to be sacrificed to the ancestors, are usually portrayed in a
stylised form with an exaggeratedly large hump. So it was with the two bulls but
among them was a cow and her calf. Here the sculptor has moved away from sym-
bolism and used his chisels with real affection for his subject. Like all southerners, he
would have lived with cattle all his life, and his knowledge is revealed in the way the
