Madagascar

Three times last week I made mofo anana, a kind of vegetable fritters from Madagascar. First I made them for my cooking group where the rule is that we only make something we have never made before. Then I made them for Allan, replacing the onions with grated carrots (carrots almost always work as a replacement for onions if you can’t eat onions). Then I made them for a combined family dinner between my family and Sheryll's family. Each time the entire batch was gobbled up with complements, and it's a big batch! They can be eaten by themselves, but I served them with condiments I picked up from the Sri Lankan market (more about that when we get to Sri Lanka). Here is the recipe. It's worth making! If you don’t have sambar powder, replace it with equal parts coriander and cumin with a little turmeric and chili powder. https://www.spicingyourlife.com/mofo-anana-malagasy-mofo-sakay/

Additional recipes online for many more meals from Madagascar are here https://www.yummly.com/recipes/madagascar and if you want to see the food prepared by Malagasy professionals in the food’s natural setting, the Madagascar episode of Parts Unknown is perfect for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7KXpU0Cy1Q

Beyond the Rice Fields by Naivo was the first book from Madagascar translated into English. It surprised me when it came out in the fall of 2017 because I would have thought that there were others. After all, Project Gutenberg has an early travel writer visiting and reporting on Madagascar in The Last Travels of Ida Pfeiffer at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60474 and they have novelist R.M. Ballantyne getting the animals and plants wrong, but maybe some elements of the story right in The Fugitives: The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar (even if it challenges us to wonder if the queen is an unhinged despot or protecting her country from colonialism): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23263. Since 2017, a second book, Return to the Enchanted Island by Johary Ravaloson, has also been translated into English.

Words without Borders has quite a bit from Madagascar. I picked out an interview with Naivo, because I enjoyed Beyond the Rice Fields, https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/the-city-and-the-writer-in-antananarivo-madagascar-with-naivo-nathalie-hand and a poem by Flavien Ranaivo https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/a-poem-from-madagascar

An Opera from the Indian Ocean on Kanopy shows the context and the countryside (a plus for me since I struggle with straight opera). Kanopy also has Baobobs: Between Land and Sea as well as some environmental documentaries.

Hulu has something a little unusual about Madagascar, Hamilton's Pharmacopeia season 1 episode 5 “Fish N' Trips” about the Dream Fish. Hulu also has Naked and Afraid: “Damned in Africa” but I decided to skip that one. No judgment on the Naked and Afraid fans!

Contemporary dancer Ariry Andriamoratsiresy offers a Malagasy twist on African dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TGKBuAzBbk

I went looking for lemur videos and liked this documentary about the land: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoBDyEPCmTc

If you are looking for entertainment for small children, I like the preschool series GeoKids better than the many spinoffs of the DreamWorks movie Madagascar (check Netflix for those). The puppet Uncle Balzac is a chameleon from Madagascar and this episode has a segment on those chameleons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F2UiXpOcvE

I would love to go to Madagascar and visit each of these places: https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-madagascar/#more-19440. I look forward to that time when we can travel broadly again. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace and health to flourish in Madagascar and throughout the world.

Photo Credit: Graphic Node: https://unsplash.com/photos/yPSbirjJWzs