Vingt-Six

Vingt-six (26 in French) is Malagasy Independence Day. It is June 26 and quite possibly the most important Malagasy holiday. I am told this and New Year are the big ones. And it’s not just a one day celebration but it generally gets extended over several days. This year vingt-six was on Sunday. The celebration in my village started around midnight-2 AM Saturday morning when I was awoken by the sounds of pigs being slaughtered and dogs barking. The big thing here is to eat pork on holidays, there have been signs out since I got to site over a month ago announcing that people will be selling “Henan-dambo matavy” (literally: fat pig meat) on June 25. Saturday morning I left to go running around 5:45AM and already a lot of people were out picking up their pork to begin cooking and celebrating.

There was also a soccer tournament which ran from about Thursday through Monday. The big finals were on vingt-six, with tons of fans, speakers blasting Malagasy music, and lots of vendors selling snacks. People here all buy new clothes to wear on vingt-six, so everyone was dressed in their best new clothes. Especially with kids, they tend to buy outfits that go together and twins wear the same thing.

On vingt-six, there is a small parade with all the students from the school and the fikambana vehivavy (women’s groups) in town. My town has 8 fikambanana vehivavy. After the parade, they raise the Malagasy flag and play the anthem, then the women’s groups each perform a “soma,” which means they sing and dance. They dug 2 holes in the ground and placed planks over them to accommodate the dancers who do a lot of stomping. It’s actually pretty ingenious, it allowed everyone to be able to hear the stomping loud and clear. One of the women’s groups adopted me and taught me their soma, dressed me up and had me perform with them front and center. I have definitely had a lesson in getting over any self-conciousness here because everyone is always watching what I do. But the soma was a lot of fun and the people in my village really enjoyed that I participated. Plus it’s my job to learn the culture. On Monday I played soccer with the women. They had a game of the women who haven’t yet had kids versus the women with kids; my team (no kids) won. We got a prize of 10,000 ariary and all went out for sodas after the game. I have definitely missed playing team sports so it was a lot of fun to play.

The other tradition that about half the people participate in is drinking “betsa”—alcohol from sugar cane. Apparently part of the reason the holiday lasts so long is that they make huge vats of betsa and drink it all. There is also music and dancing in the night and sometimes films. I can’t really elaborate much on these events as I don’t go out at night and so can’t participate.

A funny part of this holiday has been explaining that American independence day is on July 4. People are actually surprised that we don’t celebrate vingt-six and our independence day is not the same as theirs, which I have to admit I find a bit amusing each time they ask.