THE INTERIOR
The interior arrangements of a Hova house are very simple and are (or perhaps it would be more correct to say were) almost always the same.
Let us, following Malagasy politeness, call out before we enter, “Haody, haody?” equivalent to, “May we come in?” And while we wait a minute or two, during which the mistress of the house is reaching down a clean mat for us to sit down on, we notice that the threshold is raised a foot or more above the ground on either side, sometimes more, so that a stone is placed as a step inside and out. Entering the house in response to the hospitable welcome, “Màndrosòa, Tòmpoko é,” “Walk forward, sir” (or madam), we step over the raised threshold. In some parts of Imèrina a kind of closet, looking more like a large oven than anything else, is made of clay at the south-east corner, opposite the door, and here, as in an Irish cabin, the pig finds a place at night, and above it the fowls roost. Near the door the large wooden mortar or laona for pounding rice generally stands, and near it are the fanòto or pestle, a long round piece of wood, and the sahàfa or large shallow wooden dish in which the rice is winnowed from husk removed by pounding. At about the middle of the eastern side of the house are placed two or three globular sìny or water-pots, the mouths covered with a small basket to keep out the dust. Farther on, but near the west side, is the fàtana or hearth, a small enclosure about three feet square. In this are fixed five stones, on which the rice-cooking pots are arranged over the fire. And over this is sometimes fixed a light framework upon which the cooking-pots are placed when not in use. There is no chimney, the smoke finding its way out through windows or door or slowly through the rush or grass thatch, and so the house is generally black and sooty above, long strings of cobweb and soot hanging down from the roof. Such appendages were considered as marks of long residence and honour, and so the phrase, mainty molàly, lit. “black from soot,” is a very honourable appellation, and is applied to things ancient, such as the first Christian hymns; and missionaries who have been a long time resident in the island are given this name as a mark of respect.
The north-east corner of the house is the sacred portion of it, and is called zòro firaràzana—i.e. the corner where the ràry or war-chant was sung and where any religious act connected with the former idolatry was performed, and in which the sàmpy or household charm was kept in a basket suspended from the wall. In this corner also is the fixed bedstead, which, especially in royal houses, was often raised up some height above the ground and reached by a notched post serving as a ladder, and sometimes screened with mats or coarse cloth. West of this, close to the north roof-post, is the place of honour, avàra-pàtana, “north of the hearth,” where guests are invited to sit down, a clean mat being spread as a seat, just as a chair is handed in European houses.
FURNITURE
There is little furniture in a purely native house; a few rolls of mats, half-a-dozen spoons in a small but long basket fixed to the wall, some large round baskets with covers, and perhaps a tin box containing làmbas for Sunday and special occasions; a few common dishes of native pottery, and perhaps two or three of European make; a horn or a tin zìnga, for drinking water; a spade or two—these with the rice mortar and pounder and winnower already mentioned—the water-pots, and the implements for spinning and weaving, constitute about the whole household goods in the dwellings of the poorer classes. The earthen floor is covered with coarse mats, and sometimes the walls are lined with finer mats; in the roof an attic is often formed for a part of or the whole length of the house and is reached by a rude ladder. The floor of this upper chamber is frequently covered over with a layer of earth and is used as a cooking-place, with much advantage to the lower part of the house, which is thus kept comparatively free from smoke and soot.
It must be understood the foregoing description applies to the original style of native house, as unaffected by modern innovations. In the capital and the more important places, as well as in many villages, numbers of brick houses, with upper storeys and three or four or more rooms, have been built of late years; and hundreds of six-roomed houses, with verandahs carried on brick pillars, have also been erected, following a model introduced about the year 1870 by the late Rev. J. Pearse. This struck the fancy of the well-to-do people, and similar ones have been built all over the central provinces.
NEST OF BLACK WASP
Few people who have lived in Madagascar can have failed to notice a small longish lump of light coloured clay stuck under the eaves of the house, or on the side of a window, or, in fact, in any sheltered place; and if we take the trouble to break off a piece, we find that this lump of clay contains a number of cells, all filled with caterpillars or spiders in a numbed and semi-lifeless condition. The maker of these cells is a black wasp about an inch long, with russet wings, and as one sits in the verandah of one’s house one may often hear a shrill buzz somewhere up in the rafters, and there the little worker is busy bringing in pellets of clay with which she builds up the walls of the cell. (When I lived at Ambòhimànga, one of these wasps made a nest with several cells in my study, as the window was generally open to the air.) Presently she is off again for another load to the banks of a little stream where she has her brick-field. Kneading the red earth with her mandibles, she quickly forms it into a pellet of clay, about the size of a pea, which she dexterously picks up and flies away back to the verandah. This pellet is placed on the layer already laid, carefully smoothed and “bonded in” with the previous structure, until a cell is completed. Observations made by a careful student of animal and insect life show that about twenty-six journeys finish one cell, and that on a fine day it takes about forty-five minutes to complete it. This is only one out of many cells, however, placed on the top of each other.