Beachcomber Magazine 03

A t a time when the tribes in the highlands came down to track down the coastal peoples and carry off the youngest members to turn them into slaves, the endangered children would hide in pirogues and the adults would whisper to them: “ Vezo lakana! ” (Row!). From this instruction to save themselves came the name of the Malagasy ethnic group of fishermen that still live alongside the Mozambique Channel on a 300-km-long coastal strip in the south-west of the island between Belo-sur-Mer and the south of Tuléar. The Vezos (pronounced Vez), the only one of the eighteen ethnic groups in Madagascar to live solely from the sea, have never had to defend their territory as no one would dream of attempting to claim such sterile and inhospitable land consisting of sand, rock and man- groves. But along the coastline, the lagoons, coral reefs and the vast ocean offered an abundance of seafood. The fishermen and their families would travel large distances in their pirogues on huge fishing expeditions interspersed with periods in camps on the shore. Other Malagasy living inland saw them as vagabonds. A FREE AND UNITED PEOPLE As a nomadic fishing people with modest needs, their only wealth is their freedom and sense of community. They form circles with their pirogues to trap the fish. Together they set up a bivouac on a beach, far removed from anywhere, with the immense sky as their roof. The women, who are not traditionally Kept afloat by a single outrigger, carved out of a farafatse, a tree with lightweight fibres that according to tradition a Vezo fisherman must fell himself, the pirogue (latana) can be anything from two to eight metres long. While awaiting the return of the pirogues to the temporary camp, the fish are being de-scaled. The women protect their faces from sunburn by applying a kaolin and tamarind mask. Équilibrée par un seul balancier, taillée dans un farafatse, arbre aux fibres légères que le pêcheur vézo doit, selon la tradition, abattre lui-même, la pirogue (latana) peut mesurer de deux à huit mètres de long. En attendant le retour des pirogues au bivouac éphémère, on écaille les poissons. Les femmes protègent leur visage de la brûlure du soleil en appliquant un masque à base de kaolin et de tamarin. MADAGASCAR THE ART OF DISCOVERY 58