Magnosying

Written July 18, 2012

Manambaro

    “Éric, do you already know how to magnosy?” Brigitte asked.

    I was buying a coffee and some breakfast cakes at her stand by the road, about to leave for Fort Dauphin for the weekend.

    “Of course, it’s not that hard,” I replied cockily.

    At least, I imagined it wouldn’t be that hard.  I hadn’t actually done any yet.

    Magnosy is the Malagasy verb for tilling a rice paddy by driving a team of zebu through it. Their hooves churn up the mud, stamping old rice stalks down and aerating the ground for new ones.  One can also do it by hand with a hoe, but it takes about five times longer.

    Someone must have heard my overheard my boast; when I got back to Manambaro, one of the farmers, Gilbert, came to my house to ask for my help.  We agreed on seven on Tuesday, but I couldn’t work long because I had to be at the CSB at eight for my weekly health talk.

    So I woke up early on Tuesday and went to find Gilbert at his field near the main road.  People were already beginning to filter in for the Tuesday market; they must have started walking before dawn to make the four miles from Karamena.  The air was chilly, but still pleasant enough.  Gilbert and another guy in yellow shorts were already working with a herd of ten zebu.

    I left my jacket, shirt, and boots on the bank and climbed down into the mud.  Several of the market-goers stopped.

    “What’s that vazaha doing?  Is he going to magnosy?”

    Yes, I am.  Got my cow-beatin’ stick, my ragged fieldwork shorts, and a hat to keep my head warm.      Completely barefoot.  Time to out-peasant alla you peasants.

    The object of magnosying is to get the cows to stay together, and to keep them moving, round and round the field, all morning.  At first I kept a distance from the cows, whacking them with my stick to get them to move.  But then I realized, they’re just cows.  Sure, they got hooves and sharp horns, but they’re so stupid and docile, you can pretty much bully them any way you want.

    Gilbert and Yellow Shorts weren’t afraid in the least.  They’d shove any cow who stopped with all their strength, yanking their tails forward too.  Mud was splashing everywhere.  Yellow Shorts was more intense about the work, more likely to tackle a cow bodily and wrestle it forward.  Several times I actually saw him bite the zebu on their humps, gnawing like a leopard.  Human teeth can’t pierce cowhide, though.

    As a side note, in western Madagascar they actually practice zebu-wrestling as a sport.  You can drive the cow wherever you want, but can you pin it to the ground?

    After a while I started shoving ‘em too.  Much more satisfying than smackin’ ‘em with a stick.

“Ya!  Git!”

    And the Malagasy, “Huh!  Heyeh!  Hujuh!”

    And once Yellow Shorts leaned down close to one and roared, “HO’EZAAA??”  (“WHERE YOU GOIN’??”)

    We must have walked two miles in half an hour through that mud.  Sure gives your thighs a workout.

    At 7:50 I took my leave.  And I had a plan.  You see, I haven’t been satisfied with the number of women at the CSB who actually pay attention to my Tuesday health talks.  I thought I might affect a change in this trend, with some help from the Saul Alinsky playbook.

    Back during my senior year of high school I read Saul Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals.  I thought I might be able to get my classmates to start caring that President Bush was... well, emulating Warren Harding more than FDR.  That plan did not go so well.  

    But one of the few things I remember from the book was, Don’t be afraid to use unorthodox methods for community organizing. To think outside the box, in more modern terms.  As an example, Alinsky wrote about how he met with a hundred or so Latino leaders in Chicago at a banquet.  He teased them for serving overly traditional dishes, that no one actually eats outside of such ceremonies.  The community leaders took it well, pleasantly surprised at this insight into their culture.  Alinsky admitted he’d taken a risk with this tactic.

    They haven’t been listening to me dressed nicely.  What happens if I show up shirtless, barefoot, and covered in mud?

    But first I had to get to the CSB.  So I had to walk through the now-crowded marketplace.

    “It’s the vazaha who was magnosying!”

    “Éric, were you magnosying?”

    “Éric, I saw you out there, you magnosy well!”

    Yeah, y’all go on and be amazed.

    Dorée, the midwife at the CSB, was shocked at my appearance, but Dr. Jean-Claude just chuckled.  He saw exactly what I was trying to do.

    I talked about family planning, using pictures to illustrate the concept that having a child every single year is bad for the mother’s health and also for the family’s financial standing.  Too many mouths to feed equals not enough money.  Not enough money means not sending kids to school, which virtually guarantees that the cycle of poverty will continue unto the next generation.

    At the end of the presentation, though, nothing felt different.  Same number of women who listened, same number who stared off into space.  Nobody asked questions.

    Well, at least I didn’t have a negative impact.

    This outcome suggests that the women of this area don’t care about appearances at all.  Even covered in mud, I’m still an outsider delivering a wildly new message in clumsy Gasy.

    But the thing I’ve learned about Peace Corps is that if you spend too much time worrying about whether you’re making a difference, that anxiety will just drag you down.  Better to make sure you have fun in the process of it all.

    And chasing those cows was fun.