Faux Cap
Some hovels bent after the passing of cyclone winds tack the way towards the beach. The junctions of the footpaths indicate that we are arriving. Some girls leave us with smiles. We aske for lodging and for beer and become immediately guests of Marie Zela.
Neverending comings and goings of women carrying bundles on their heads. Only the midday makes thay they put themselves in the shadows and under the shelters. Soon the flow recovers its cadence. Trained to carry the load on the head, they cannot, according to the social standards, to drive a carriage. Designated to obey they cannot make zebus to obey. So subordinated to the masculine will they can only have with certain autonomy what they are allowed by their own forces. The really big market is not for them. Their appearance so widely admired, their straight backs and their heads held high - essential to carry the load on the head - have their compensation in the complications at the time of giving birth, to carry out the successive pregnancies, without which the community recognition to them is being refused.
Indispensable but ignored visit for all those trying to lodge in a western type hotel (solar panels, running water, priced accordingly), neighbor to our, to the drinkwater wells, where the locals supply themselves. We see each morning women carrying big buckets of water. They march past in row, meander towards the top of the tank, what is a water supply means for the whites. The price is high not as the payment of about thirty euros per night but as per the sequels that are left by this practice in a community where the only way of survival for women passes through the acceptance of their irrelevance.
The sand is intermingled with pieces of eggs of aepyornis, the footpaths that appear from the village side, bordered by baobabs and sisal, at once seem a dense and insurmountable mystery, immersed in another similar jam of the vegetation. Habitat of the fat turtles that, bathed in the sand, pass slowly crossing the footpath, the monumental Antandroy graves and, farther south, overcoming the immense panorama of the impenetrable scrubs, the more and more declining blue line of the Indian Ocean. We try to avoid to cross the puddles that were left by the last rain; the almost blessed water for animals that, if they show up here, are saved, and for humans who in their desperation drink it also.
The school in Faux Cap
