Thirty years in Madagascar

by Thomas T. Matthews

‘No,’ I replied again, ‘sixpence per thousand’; but I added: ‘How foolish all this is on your part; you keep on haggling, first saying four shillings per thousand, then two shillings and sixpence, and now one shilling and sixpence. Now, as I don’t wish to be hard on you, and I want this haggling brought to an end, and the work begun, if you come down one sixpence I will go up one.’

‘That’s it, sir,’ they said, and so we struck a bargain for one shilling a thousand.

I expected to have to pay tenpence or one shilling a thousand—although, if I could have held out, I might have got them for my first offer—but if I had offered one shilling I might have had to go up to one shilling and sixpence. As it is only during the dry season that bricks can be made and houses built, I had to raise my offer to get them to set to work.

But perhaps some good sensitive soul may be thinking, ‘The interests of the Society are all very well, but what about the interests of the poor natives?’ Well, my friend, you may with confidence leave the interests of the natives in the hands of their best friends, the missionaries, as few of them are likely to take a mean advantage of their charge. But even if they were, with few exceptions, most natives I have met with may be left to look after their own interests; they are quite equal to that. But to show I was taking no mean advantage of my people I may state that, up to the time of our settlement at Fìhàonana and for long after, a porter had to carry eighty pounds of salt from Andrìba to Fìhàonana—a three days’ journey—for threepence! My brick-makers, by working morning and forenoon, could easily make two shillings a week.

They could live and keep a wife and family on sixpence a week in those happy days. Rice in the husk, in the harvest season—when most people who had not large rice-fields of their own laid in a stock of rice for the year—could be bought for a penny a measure in Vònizòngo, and two measures would serve a fairly large family for a week. Since 1896 rice has never been under one shilling a measure. It has been as high even as three shillings in some parts. Starvation was formerly almost unknown in Madagascar. The men who made my bricks had very few expenses except for food; for their tailor’s, draper’s, hatter’s, shoemaker’s and upholsterer’s bills were very light!

The master bricklayer failed us. He sent some professed bricklayers in his place, but if they were bricklayers they were surely the poorest who ever laid bricks. They were either ignorant of the use of the plumb-rule, or were too lazy, or in too great a hurry to get the walls rushed up to use it, with the result that they built the walls off the plumb. In my anxiety to overtake the work I foolishly kept on all my classes and district duties. I ought to have stood beside these men and seen every brick laid; but I regarded this as a sheer waste of time, with so much teaching, preaching, and other mission work to be done. Those who gave up all their district work for months, while their houses were being built, acted wisely. The result was that I would often return home, after an exhausting day, to find that the walls had been run up several inches off the plumb.

To have our bedrooms as far from the ground as possible, for health’s sake, the manse was built double-storied, as is most desirable in a malarious district. It was the first two-storied house built in that part of the island, and as its walls rose they caused much talk among the people. At last Razàka came to ask me if I quite understood what I was doing. There had never been such a high house built there, and the people were afraid it might fall or be blown down by the frequent hurricanes. I assured him that I quite understood what I was about, and that there was no fear of the house falling or being blown down. It stood all the hurricanes we had, some of them very severe, and might have lasted for another thirty years, but for its being burnt down in 1897.

On the coasts of Madagascar, and for about half or two-thirds of the way up to Antanànarìvo, the native huts are built of a framework of poles and bamboo, filled in with bulrushes, and roofed with the leaves of the so-called ‘traveller’s tree,’ a kind of palm. In Central Madagascar the huts are built of layers of mud, one layer being allowed to dry before the next is laid on. The houses are built of sun-dried brick. In many cases now—especially in the capital—the outside walls are of burnt, and the inside of sun-dried brick. The roofs were thatched with flags from the swamps, or with rank grass from the moors or the stream sides. All houses in the capital have now to be tiled for fear of fire. We built our house of sun-dried brick. There is no frost in Madagascar, so well-built houses, with verandah round, if the roof is kept in repair and the outside walls are replastered from time to time, will stand for fifty years.

We plastered the walls of our houses outside and in with mud, mixed with a substance remotely related to ‘attar of roses’! Then we covered them with cheap wall-paper, glazed the windows, and so made nice, comfortable, homelike houses. By far the nicest, most convenient, and most comfortable house we ever had in Madagascar was the manse built at Fìhàonana, which cost only £250, and £40 of that even went for carriage of material. It was found fault with in later years by a young, up-to-date missionary because it was not aesthetic enough! In those days we did not trouble ourselves about aesthetics, we thought more of health and convenience. The idea of a missionary set down among a heathen people concerning himself about aesthetics is quite refreshing, almost as refreshing as the remark of the man who said district itinerating could never be properly done until there were railways, and so gave up attempting to do it!

All government work—and much for members of the government and upper officers—was formerly done in Madagascar by a kind of feudal service called fànompòana. As it was often very severe, it was heartily hated, and was generally got through as quickly as possible. Thus a tendency to scamp work became almost second nature with most workmen, unless strictly watched, even when working for wages. I got some carpenters who were most unsatisfactory. Not only was their work scamped, but wood and tools disappeared. I resolved to catch them red-handed before bringing a charge against them. One day I suddenly appeared on the scene, when they had no suspicion that I was in the neighbourhood, and found them hanging the room doors. They had made the screw-holes for fixing the hinges, with a gimlet so large that they could push the screws in with their thumbs! These doors, made of hard and heavy wood, must have proved awkward for any one on whom they might fall.