Love and Money, Wives and Mistresses^[8]

Tsarabe ny manambady: “Marriage is wonderful.”

As outlined in chapter 4, marriage ceremonies are infrequent and relationships more generally are extremely fragile in Ambanja. By the time most adults have reached their forties, they have been involved in a series of unions, each of which has lasted only a few years. The tenuousness of relationships today is reflected in the fact that many tromba mediums and other spiritual practitioners do a lucrative traffic in love medicines (ody fitia) for both men and women, who hope either to hold onto a wandering partner, to cause harm to a rival, or to charm a potential mate.

Any man with money in his pocket—be he married or single—is a target for seduction. In precolonial times, polygyny was a sign of success and power for Sakalava men (particularly if they were royalty). More recently this has changed in response to the effects of colonialism. The French colonial period was marked by the transition from a subsistence economy to one characterized by wage labor, with status being measured by possessions and monetary wealth. The co-wife has slowly been replaced by the mistress, who today is ironically referred to as the deuxième bureau (lit. “second office”). This name conjures up images of excessive work, referring to the fact that a man has to work harder if he has a mistress. From a wife’s point of view, it is also a reference to sabotage,^[9] since the mistress is viewed as an enemy to the stability of the man’s marriage and household. This new term has become popular within the last decade. Previously the term used was bodofotsy (“bedcover” or “blanket”), since a man’s mistress (like his blanket) is someone he takes with him when he goes traveling (en tourné).^[10]

Women who have children and who are involved in tenuous unions are particularly vulnerable economically. A woman who relies on a man for income to support her and her children may suffer greatly if she does not have another way in which to generate an income—a job, a small business, or the ownership of land. Although neighbors often help one another with short-term child care or cooperate in economic ventures, a premium is still placed on kinship. Thus, if a woman is a migrant without extended kin living in the area, her problems become even more severe. Fostering is still a common pattern throughout Madagascar (see, for example, Kottak 1980: 185 on the Betsileo, and Bloch 1971: 9 on the Merina). A common pattern in other parts of Sakalava territory is that children of divorced parents typically go to live with their fathers (Feeley-Harnik 1991b: 218).^[11] In Ambanja, however, an additional pattern has emerged: the female-headed household. Children are often left under the care of the maternal grandmother (as in the case of Mama Rose, above), while the mother lives elsewhere, working to support not only herself and her children, but her aging mother as well.

Love and money are very important themes in Ambanja society and are subjects that appear with great frequency in the form of popular sayings. These are often printed on the colorful lambahoany cloths that local women wear as body and head wraps and include such phrases as:

“I [may] love you [a man addressing his mistress] but I’m not exchanging the-one-in-the house,” that is, the legitimate wife (Tiako anao fa tsy atakaloko ny an-trano);

“I love my spouse” (Tiako vady);

“The big spouse [real wife as opposed to mistress] is the best” (Vadibe tsara);

“I’m so happy to see you, my Darling!” ’ (Falyfaly mahita anao Cheri ê!); and

“Can’t buy me love” [lit. “You don’t need money to have my love”] (Tsy mila vola ny fitiavako anao).

I know of only two crimes that inspire public outrage and mob violence against the perpetrator in Ambanja society: taking property from someone, or sleeping with another person’s partner. With the cry of either mpangalatra! (“thief!”) or vamba! (“adulterer!”), neighbors within earshot will drop what they are doing and come running. If they should catch the guilty party or parties, the mob will beat them with their fists or with broomsticks or other hard objects.^[12]

Tromba mediums and their rangahy report that a majority of their clients come seeking love medicines (ody fitia), of which there are two kinds: that used by men to charm women (ody manan̂gy) and that used by women to charm men (ody lehilahy). The first tromba consultation I witnessed early in my fieldwork involved a male client who sought to charm his wife, who had become the deuxième bureau of a richer man. This ceremony was the client’s second consultation. He had chosen to speak with Djao Kondry since this spirit is a young playboy who is knowledgeable about women, love, and romance. After recounting his problem to Djao Kondry, the client unrolled a cloth in which he had a packet of cigarettes, which he gave to the spirit as a gift. Then he withdrew a bottle of honey, some cologne, a packet of medicinal powder, and three bundles of dried leaves. The tromba poured honey and cologne on the powder and herbs, and, after saying a series of prayers, he instructed the man to put a bit in his wife’s food, her bath water, and in their bed. Then she would not be able to resist him, and she would stop going to see her lover.

Migrants who are far from home are especially vulnerable when involved in tenuous unions, as the following case illustrates.

The Story of Lalao

Lalao is a thirty-five-year-old Merina woman who came to Ambanja with her husband, Christôphe (who is Betsileo), approximately eight months ago. Previously they had been living in Nosy Be, where they met. Lalao did not work. Christôphe was an engineer at one of the enterprises and was transferred to Ambanja from the headquarters at Nosy Be. Christôphe has three children(ages five, ten and fifteen) by a former marriage. His first wife was Sakalava; about four years ago she died. Lalao, who had previously been his mistress, then moved into Christôphe’s house and assumed the role as the youngest child’s mother (she is addressed by her neighbor’s by the teknonym “Maman’i’Hervé” or “Mother of Hervé”), having claimed this role during the recent circumcision of this child. Until the night of this story many women in the neighborhood had no idea Lalao was not the biological mother of all three children.

One night when I was visiting with a Betsileo neighbor named Vero, Lalao appeared at the door, sobbing uncontrollably. She told us that her husband had beaten her and that she was afraid to go back to her house. She wanted to go home to her mother in Antananarivo, but she did not have any money of her own, since her husband was in charge of household finances. Vero was at a loss what to do—she did not know this woman well and, like Lalao, she did not have free access to household funds. She decided to go across the road to Isabelle’s house and ask for assistance, since Isabelle worked with Christôphe and thus knew the family better than she.

We assembled at Isabelle’s house and listened to Lalao tell her story in more detail. She had learned that Christôphe now had a mistress here in Ambanja. This new mistress was an older Sakalava woman(ten years his senior). Lalao said that she had consulted a tromba medium last week, asking the spirit to give her two kinds of love medicine: one she put in her bath water (fankamamy oditra, lit. “makes the skin sweet”) so that her husband would want her again. The spirit also gave her her some herbs to sprinkle in their bed, but they did not seem to have had any effect. Since her husband’s mistress was well known in the neighborhood as a tromba medium, Lalao was certain that the mistress had used more powerful medicine to make Christôphe come home and beat her instead.

When Lalao spoke of her economic dependence on her husband and his violent behavior, the other two women(and, ultimately, I, too) began to cry. We looked over her possessions and decided that she should keep her sewing machine, so that she would have a means of support. Isabelle and I then gave her some money in exchange for some of her kitchenware. Vero did the same, taking money from her husband’s till, thus giving Lalao a large proportion of their household savings (close to half a month’s worth of her husband’s wages). Isabelle then went to find Lalao’s uncle (FaBr) to ask for assistance, but he threw her out of his house. Isabelle then appealed to Christôphe, who gave her enough money for Lalao’s transportation back to Antananarivo. Lalao cried late into the night and at one point tried to poison herself by attempting to drink kerosene. Later, when she had calmed down, she fell asleep for a few hours at Vero’s house. This was done against Vero’s husband’s wishes, for he was already furious that his wife had given her so much money. Lalao left the next morning in a transport bound for the capital.

The seriousness of Lalao’s situation was evident in the other women’s reponses. Among Malagasy, in times of crisis—such as sickness or death—self-composure is essential. Except for very close female kin, one never cries at these times. I myself was scolded severely on two occasions for crying, once during an interaction with an angry spirit and the other while attending a child’s funeral. This episode involving Lalao was the first (and only) time I ever saw anyone cry, aside from a mother grieving over a child’s death. The women present not only felt great sorrow for Lalao, but they were also graphically reminded of problems they themselves had suffered. As Vero put it, “I am so sad [mampalahelo] because she is a woman and I am a woman.” Isabelle herself had suffered greatly several years ago when she learned that her husband had a mistress. This she deduced one day when she discovered that their cassette player was missing. At first she assumed that a thief had taken it, but later she realized that her husband had sold it to buy gifts for another woman. Her husband is Sakalava royalty (ampanjaka) from Ambanja, while she is Antakarana (and a commoner) from the north, and so she feels powerless to control his actions.

The following day Vero explained that she, too, had left her husband temporarily following the birth of their youngest child. An important institution associated with marriage in the high plateaux, among Merina and Betsileo, is misintaka: when a woman is unhappy with her husband she may leave him and go home to her parents. There she stays and is watched over by them. When this happens it is regarded as a separation but not a divorce (misao-bady). If the husband wants his wife to return he must approach her parents, bearing expensive gifts. The comparable institution among Sakalava is called miombiky, in which payments are made in cattle (omby). Whereas marriage ceremonies (and misintaka) occur frequently in the high plateaux, as one Sakalava informant put it, “only savage Sakalava living in the bush practice miombiky anymore.”

Although Lalao and her husband are from the highlands, both were migrants who lived far from parents and other kin. In addition, their behavior reflects an adaptation of Sakalava customs, rather than any strict adherence to Merina or Betsileo ones. Where there is no marriage ceremony, as is true for the majority of unions in Ambanja today, there is no reparation for temporary separation. According to Merina and Betsileo custom, if a couple lives far from home, the husband, who usually controls the household finances, is obligated to give his wife money to return to her parents, if she so desires. Thus, the other women viewed Christôphe’s reluctance to help Lalao as a serious breach of custom. When they pressured him, he relented and gave Isabelle some money for Lalao’s carfare home. Lalao, like many women who are unemployed (typically they are married to professional men), relied on her husband for economic support. Since, as a migrant, she was unable to find kin nearby who would help her, she turned to her female neighbors, all of whom were migrants.

Neighbor’s attitudes toward Lalao changed after she had left town:

At first, these women, and others living around her house, refused to associate with Christôphe, and they stopped buying yogurt from his brother (dairy products are hard to come by and are greatly coveted in Ambanja). Two days after Lalao left, her husband’s mistress moved into the house, enabling Christôphe to return to work, since she stayed at home to care for his youngest child. Soon neighborhood opinion changed in favor of Christôphe. A week later Vero’s husband returned from a trip to Antananarivo and told how Lalao had appeared at his parents’ house after her own parents had thrown her out on the street. He went to speak to Christôphe to learn his side of the story and was told that although Lalao appeared very upset, in fact she was the one to blame. She had squandered all of his money, insisting that it be used to buy her beautiful dresses instead of food for the children. Two months later Lalao returned to Ambanja, and tried to form a reconciliation with her husband, but he threw her out under the watchful (and approving) eye of his neighbors. She left town that afternoon.

In all of these stories, involving Mama Rose, Doné, Fatima, and Lalao, tromba mediums provide clients with a means for confronting and articulating problems they encounter in the everyday world. Through this indigenous Sakalava institution, troubled individuals appeal to the power and knowledge of local ancestors in order to make sense of and control their lives in times of chaos. It is through tromba that the living are able to cure life’s ills and uncertainties. These include sickness and death, work and success, and love and romance. Although clients usually specify these particular categories as they define their needs, the case studies provided here illustrate that these categories often overlap. As the following chapter illustrates, children, too, must cope with these and related problems.