Shots of people, events, nature from around Madagascar(PAGE FOUR)

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"This below in the 5 shots is a Malagasy funeral. He is kept first for several days at home. Relatives and friends and all those who knew him come and pay their respect and bring with them a gift, usually a bag of rice(10-20kilos), chops of fresh meat, chicken, geese etc. In the first shot you see here the deceased is being carried away to be buried. He passes over all those who knew him, this is to show their respect to him. You see at first those kneeling below made a mistake and had their backs turned toward the deceased which is an insult. Then someone yelled at them from inside the house on the left to turn around. You see that in the second picture, now they are facing the deceased passing above them. Then the deceased is taken to be buried in a small decorated room with blue patterns on the top. All Malagasy tombs seems to be like that one you see in these shots. Just before they take him in they dance and laugh with him and chant for close to an hour. This is what the gathered group in front of the tomb in the last picture are doing. Then every few years the dead or ancestors are brought out of their tombs and people carry them up high and do a particular dance with them. This last a couple of days then the dead are brought back into their tombs. This gets repeated every 3 or 4 years and seems to be very important to the Malagasy people."

Patrick Zakhm

Photograph

"Fruit stands as you get closer to Tamatave, around 9 hours from Tana by car. Most of these green and yellow fruits you see here can only be found there. There's cola fruit, cows heart fruit, jant fruit(the big yellow mellon size on the ground ones)these fruits actually hangs from the tree beleive it or not, there are carousol fruits also here and several other strange looking ones."

Patrick Zakhm

Photograph

Coconuts , the pictures below is self explanatory. A hole is made by the guy on the right. Then the lady on the left suck the coconut water out. Then the inside is opened and eaten. The inside in these coconuts is usually still in a jelly form and has not matured yet. With a piece of the skin from the coconut a spoon gets made to scoop that jelly coconut out as you can see in the shot.

Photograph

Most of the shots below are from Tamatave beaches and foulpointe beach. Tamatave is around 9 hours from Tana.

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This is the symbol of Madagascar below called Ravinala. The three has leaves that look a bit like coconut tree leaves. And the Ravinala tree does not bear any fruits.