Boeuf Madagaskara

Jacquelyn Z. Brooks

The food we eat…put before us perhaps more graphically than might be expected!

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 with no repairs to the roads since the French left in the 1950s. In spite of their poverty, the Malagasy were happy, loved parties and entertaining the vazah, their word for stranger.

I seldom left the harbor town of Fort Dauphin. One evening, on his way to the local hotel, a PCV named Greg walked onto my verandah, which was overhung with lovely 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 once been there to a teachers’ meeting. It had been market day for the Malagasy cowboys who herded the huge hump-backed zebu, raising so much dust we had to duck into a local bar. The whole time I was in the bar sipping a Malagasy Three Horse Beer, I watched the frenzied cowboys with their whips and guns as if transported to a Western movie. I wasn’t eager to visit that part of the country again.

I told Greg that, much as I’d like to go to the celebration for the opening of the school he’d built, I had no transportation. He knew I was trying to get out of it.

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

The morning of the celebration, we set off as the sun rose. I wore a clean dress because Malagasy women never wear slacks or jeans. We bounced and swerved over broken rutted roads for over three hours. The two teachers next to me were dressed beautifully in white dresses with printed lambas tied around their waists, 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 schools that had no books, paper or even screens on the windows. They were paid the equivalent of ten dollars a week and most lived in shabby rented rooms, going home to their families on weekends. Lanto and Nuorina sang as we bounced along, songs about cows, cyclones, moonlight, and untrustworthy lovers.

Greg’s school was a beautiful two-room building made of adobe from the red clay nearby. Three big plane trees planted years ago by the French shaded the schoolyard. All of the villagers 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 insisted I must sit in the center, flanked on one side by the lycee principal and the village chief and, on the other, by the oldest man in the village and the representative from the Ministry of Education. 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.”

Greg was teasing. The man from the Ministry would be the highest-ranking official. 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 overlong speeches by the man from the Ministry and the village chief, two men appeared from behind the school dragging an unwilling zebu, called 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. He waved it 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 the omby’s neck, pulling back its head. In one swift motion the man slashed its throat. The animal convulsed as a fountain of blood poured out. I sat still as a stone in my chair, willing myself not to faint. Several men stepped forward to open up the omby’s side, peel back its skin and begin cutting off the steaming meat from its exposed ribs.

The principal whispered that the rib meat was the most tender; one of the young men came rushing toward me with his hands full of it. He thrust the dripping still-warm meat into my hands. I accepted with as much poise as I could muster. I rose and bowed to the crowd who applauded and chanted something about the “gracious vazah,” me. I hoped to find someone or some place I could get rid of the meat, but Nuorina and Lanto 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 skewered my raw, bleeding meat. Someone passed 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, 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.

The man from the Ministry wanted to take a photo of Greg and me in my blood-stained dress. Greg put his arm around me, but I gave him a sharp jab, my privilege as “guest of honor.” Not to give Greg the satisfaction of seeing me cry, I walked over to the cooking fires.

I was given a large tin basin full with rice atop which sat my zebu-meat and veggies en brochette. Nuorina and Lanto shared my meat with their own basins of rice. The zebu had been cooked to perfection: blackened to a crisp on the outside, the inside not raw but succulent and juicy, delicately flavored by the shallots and tomatoes. No barbecue sauce, no seasonings of any kind were added.

I asked what the old man had said when he whispered to the omby in its last minutes. Nuorina 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 Z. Brooks served as a Teachers’ Supervisor in the Peace Corps in Madagascar from 1997–99. She has retired from teaching and is writing a novel. She lives overlooking the harbor in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she claims to be a recluse except when entertaining her very large family.