The South - Madagascar - page 407

cow'sheadisturnedasshelickshersucklingcalf.Theyoungsterrespondsbyflicking
itstailacrosshermuzzle.Toweringabovethemwastheirprotector-awoodenherds-
man.
For seven years I stopped my bus-load of tourists and showed them the carvings.
The first year the children were too shy to approach us but peeped, bright-eyed, from
the dark doorways of their huts. As years passed they became bolder. Tourists didn't
linger, and no-one thought of giving anything back to the village whose beautiful me-
morial provided so much pleasure. And these children were starving. Literally. I'm
haunted by a photo I took of a sombre little girl with matted reddish hair, about six
years old, carrying her little brother whose distended stomach and stick-like limbs
show the classic signs of malnutrition. I used to fantasise about somehow persuading
an NGO to set up a health clinic here, funded from income generated by tourists visit-
ing the tomb. But I did nothing.
In 1989 I stopped as usual and led my group to the tomb. Where the carved cattle
used to stand under the watchful eye of their guard, only the herdsman remained. The
cow and her calf, and the two bulls, had been ripped away leaving only the jagged re-
mainsoftheirwoodedplinth.Intheirplacewasarowoffreshzebuskulls,theirhorns
sprouting fungi as they decomposed in the humid air. A tourist stole it' explained our
driver. The skulls were from the cattle slaughtered by this impoverished village to
calm the ancestors' rage at this desecration.
Buses no longer stop at the village. There's no point. The tomb is surrounded by a
highfenceofsharpenedstakes.Totakeaphotograph,touristsmustpay€5.'Notworth
it', they mutter after peering though the fence with binoculars. Not worth it, I agree.
The carvings have deteriorated, the wood has darkened and split, and lichen blotches
theformerlysmoothfeaturesoftheboat-people.Somewhere,inaprivatecollectionof
'primitiveart',thecowstilllickshercalf.Theirwoodretainsitsoriginalgreysmooth-
ness, denied its destiny to grow old and return to the earth. And I ache for that village
and its loss. Which is worse: its loss of trust or the loss of something that was not art
but the tangible soul of an ancestor?
Berenty is the perfect place to observe one of the unique aspects of lemur behaviour: fe-
maledominance.Ring-tailandsifakamalesarealwayssubmissivetofemales,whilebrown
lemurs are much less so. Alison Jolly, who has written so absorbingly about Berenty in her
book Lords and Lemurs (see Click Here ) says 'I have seen a male brown lemur at Berenty
throw a female out of a tree, which scandalised me as a ring-tail watcher. Female dom-
inance is very odd among primates and other mammals. Of around 400 primate species,
only the lemurs tend toward female dominance as a group. No monkeys or apes show the
full-time chivalry of many lemur males. I call it chivalry rather than wimpishness, because