Walking the Dead, famadihana

Blog Famadihana 1/14/2021

Ever heard of a famadihana? I learned about it from a young woman in Mauritius years ago. She invited me on All Souls Day, November 1, to go to her relatives’ graves. It wasn’t the type of invitation I expected, nor it wasn’t the type of invitation I would decline. It meant a lot to her, so I was happy to go. I wasn’t sure what to expect, although she made a point of telling me she was Catholic.

When we went to the cemetery in the late afternoon, she brought flowers and bowls of food for her deceased relatives. She also brought a broom. I brought curiosity and respect for her respect. Although she was Creole and would have been more comfortable speaking the local patois, she spoke English to me as she swept debris away from the gravestones and reminisced about the relative buried below. I learned of her grandmother’s kindness, her cousin’s premature death, and a few family secrets she knew would be safe with me since I was a foreigner unknown to her family, one unable to speak their language.

This experience was a precursor to my interest a few weeks later when I visited Madagascar, another Indian Ocean island, some seven hundred miles west of Mauritius and two hundred and fifty miles from South Africa. More related to Indonesia than Africa, the population practices a tradition called famadihana, one that crossed the Indian Ocean. The ceremony, also called Walking the Dead or Turning the Bones, brings great honor to the family who can afford it.

The titles alone piqued my interest. To conduct this ritual is the dream of many. Why? I wondered. The local Malagasy people, although Christian, equally split between Catholic and Protestant, revere their ancestors as the link between the physical world and the spiritual. To honor them in this way ensures blessings for the family and wise guidance from beyond. Unfortunately, the ceremony requires money.

The host family exhumes the ancestor from the tomb, parades the relative’s remains around the village, describes new houses, births, crops, and current life to include the ancestor in their daily lives, so the ancestor will guard and bless them from beyond the grave, a good omen for the family’s future success.

The ritual, conducted between August and October every year, includes hosting a feast for friends and family who attend, dressed in their most colorful clothes. Feeding forty or so people costs a lot. But first, the ritual starts when they meet in the early morning at the tomb of the deceased. The procession sings and dances while waving the silk material, and often the Malagasy flag. The crowd watches as the family exhumes the ancestor and wraps the remains in a white fabric cinched by a grass woven mat to secure it. After the parade, a village leader and an elder of the deceased’s family give speeches and wishes farewell to the relative. The dancing and music resume but stop when the ancestor is wrapped in the new silk shroud and lowered into the tomb where the ancestor will live in peace forever. Since silk is expensive, not everyone can amass the money, not even after years, to honor a relative in this way.

The Malagasy people consider the dead messengers of God, who can influence the lives of the living by connecting them to the spirit world. This ceremony is primarily observed by the Malagasy tribe, who live in the middle of the island. The walking the dead ceremony, the famadihana, brings great honor to the living family and the deceased.

Exit Visa, the second book in the trilogy The Legend of the Cup, which I am working on currently, involves a famadihana ceremony in Madagascar. But what it reveals goes beyond the family ceremony. Askara Timlen, assigned to write an article about the famadihana, becomes entangled in a local family’s secret heritage, something they and two priests desire to hide from the world.