The Soavinandriana hospital in 1898. Failing to perform rituals honoring the dead before burial causes great pain and discontent. Family members and relatives resort to "fraud to respect traditions." Historian Faranirina V. Esoavelomandroso cites the example of peasants' reactions in the Ambatolampy region in her study titled "From Plague as Disease to Plague as Politics - Interpretation of the Plague Endemic Phenomenon in the Central Highlands (1921-1926)," published in the historical journal "Omaly sy anio" or "Yesterday and Today" No. 11, January-June 1980.
This occurred in 1933. According to Major Medical Officer Arlo, peasants in their village observed a severe epizootic among rats, followed by cases of bubonic plague. They decided to abandon their homes and take refuge in huts "until the arrival of the cool season marking the end of the epidemic period." According to the study's author, their attitude is symptomatic. They do not inform the administration, nor do they request any official aid, which would be unreliable due to remoteness. "Ultimately, they attempt to escape sanitary control, knowing that plague is ravaging their area." Thus, an entire network of complicity develops, adds the historian, "to avoid implementing hygiene measures concerning the burial of persons dead or presumed dead from plague." Malagasy people do not always report contagious diseases despite the obligation inscribed in texts on the Fokonolona.
Moreover, European medical personnel complain about the population's attitude which, either through deliberately false or incomplete information, or by refusing all information, does not cooperate with plague prevention and "manifests passive resistance toward the fanjakana." In some flagrant cases, the responsibility of certain Malagasy doctors is directly questioned. Their sanitary service chiefs assert that some issue death certificates without having seen patients. Others fail to diagnose plague despite symptoms, including the presence of buboes, which should leave no doubt. "The administration punishes these professional faults through professional suspension for varying periods."
But flight is the most common practice for the population: on one hand, to escape administrative complications and sanitary regulations, and on the other, to avoid feeling responsible for a burial not conforming to tradition. "When plague is suspected, people deliberately empty the house where the deceased lived and the caregiver declares themselves the sole relative to spare family members a stay in the lazaret." As a result, relatives and neighbors who had contact with the plague victim flee, risking disease dissemination. The historian also notes that when families do not flee the administration, some hope to "pay dearly for a favorable diagnosis" to obtain permission to bury according to ancestral rites. They then classify doctors as "plague makers" because they are not accommodating or as "non-plague makers" because they are compliant.
Finally, the study's author remarks that while in modern Europe, clandestine burials are an opportunity to "dispose of" a plague victim by burying them elsewhere to avoid contamination, or to bury an allegedly murdered person in place of a supposed plague victim, "in Imerina, they have an entirely different meaning." Malagasy people take the risk of clandestinely burying their relatives who died of plague to avoid incurring the blame of ancestors. The return to "tanindrazana" of their parents' mortal remains remains their essential concern. The administration, informed of these clandestine burials, walls up these family tombs to prevent their reopening within too brief a period.
With the complicity of the fokonolona or "mpiadidy" (notable), families of plague victims, warned in time of their relative's cause of death, hasten to perform the burial themselves in the special cemetery outside all control. Conscious of the real danger and problems that burial in the ancestral vault would raise, they nevertheless want to avoid anonymous hasty burial by demonstrating family cohesion before death. "Once ultimate honor is rendered to the deceased and conscience is eased by having fulfilled duty, it is flight to avoid exposure to official reprisals."
Pela Ravalitera