Painting of Andrianampoinimerina (c) wikipedia
Woke up this morning and checked my twitter account trying to find out some interesting news about the crisis happening in Madagascar , I found some updates greeting malagasy people for a “happy new year”. In fact, I already saw some people on TV announcing that march 26th and 27th will be for celebrating Malagasy’s new year, which happens on the “tsinan’ny alahamady”.- alahamady stands for one of the malagasy month. As I am not well aware of those customs, I’ve searched for more readings about it and found out that :
- this event is happening for two days- long – as it was done during Ranavalona II’s reign
- This year’s celebration will be held at Ambohitrabiby, 20 km from Antananarivo (Madagascar’s capital). Note that Ambohitrabiby is one of the twelve hills of Imerina where former king Andrianampinimerina use to have a wife in each.
- This is the second’s year’s celebration initiated by the “Trano Koltoraly Malagasy” whereby the celebration will tour the twelve hills, last year’s celebration was done in Alasora.
Part of the ceremony include a “nofon-kena mitam-pihavanana” (the meat that unites “” ) whereby a zebu’s meat will be shared among each other as a sign for keeping the “fihavanana”- one of the core values of Malagasy society.
As part of the initiative to get back Malagasy culture, it seems as though that this concept of “taom-baovao malagasy” (malagasy’s new year) is not a commonly admitted one between every organisation that tries to restore it. As Madagascar tribune rightly point it out, this year’s prediction by two people who the stars (“mpandinika ny kintana”) came to the same conclusion that march 26th around 7PM will be the right date. In previous years, it happened although that different star-studiers came up with different date for the malagasy new year.
Well, at least, people agree to the fact that Malagasy has a different new year that the january 1st and that it happens during the Alahamady month. Now there’s a long road to discover other things about Malagasy culture and customs, and this blog is all about that “discover Madagascar”.
you surely have more to share, or have a reaction about it, feel free to ract by leaving comments, discussing this topic in the comment section below
© 2009, Madafan.com: Discover Madagascar. This post was originally posted/or syndicated from http://www.madafan.com
