An island at the crossroads

By Hal Noss, freelance photojournalist

Rickshaws, or “pousse-pousse in French”, wait for passengers in Antananarivo, Madagascar. Photo: UBS/Haldor Noss (MAD01T-2/1)

ANTSIRABE, Madagascar — Located off the east coast of Africa, Madagascar is an island where African cultures encounter Asian, where Islam and Christianity meet traditional religions, and where democracy converges with the influences of French colonialism and communism.
Each presence has left its mark: the proportion of the population professing Christianity is roughly 50 per cent - a little more than that adhering to traditional beliefs. Among the remainder, Muslims make up two per cent.

In the streets meanwhile, quaint-looking old Russian vehicles - now somewhat difficult to repair - jostle with French 2CVs, rickshaws and trucks bearing Chinese letters embossed on their bonnets.

Madagascar’s documented political history began with different groups struggling for control of the island. As it became a nation, it absorbed the mixture of Asian and African cultures into a single Malagasy people with a single Malagasy language. It is not without significance that ‘firenena’, the Malagasy word for nation, is derived from the word ‘rene’ meaning ‘mother’.

In the early part of the nineteenth century, Britain supplied King Radama I with military aid, and the London Missionary Society gained many Christian converts, started schools and began the written documentation of the Merina language which, until then, had existed only in oral form.
Radama’s wife succeeded him on the throne, however, and, suspicious of foreigners, in 1835 she declared Christianity illegal and actively discouraged foreign trade.

Nowadays, of course, Madagascar enjoys freedom of religion, and the vision of the Malagasy Bible Society is to see the island covered with the knowledge of Christ through the Scriptures.