Thursday 15 November 2012

Names


12th November

This evening we reached Ranomafana. The five-day rain has stopped for the time being and the local power cut, which in turn put paid to the water supply, ended just as we arrived. These I take to be good omens for our stay. Tomorrow we make our first foray into the forest, where I hope we will have even greater success than we did on our last tour. This evening, miraculously, I have time to read the pages of notes I scribbled while in the forest with my two wonderful guides in Kirindy earlier in the week.

My guides were Nambina, a young man of twenty from near Antananarivo who had come to Kirindy to learn to be a professional guide with a view to a career in tourism, and Doliste, a man in his forties from the nearest village who had lived all his life in the forest. Nambina belongs to the Merina culture of the highlands. Doliste identifies himself as Tetsaka but broadly belongs to the Sakalava culture of the west; he has had very little school education, and speaks little French (why should he?) but he knows the chip of every bird, the quiver of every leaf and the chirp of each insect. He also breaks readily into a big smile, especially when it occurs to a scrawny westerner to act out the foraging behaviour of a buttonquail.

I like language, I like wildlife and I like people; so wherever I go I jot local names for animals and plants. The following list, for many reasons, doubtless contains numerous errors. I speak no Malagasy, one of my guides and I had no language in common, and the other was a newcomer from another culture. Some of the names I cite below may be wrong, others may be locally inappropriate, still others may apply in only a small area of west Madagascar and, let’s face it, I may have got the wrong end of the stick. Nonetheless, here are some names I was given for plants and animals which my guides and I saw (or in some cases heard) together in the forest.


Malagasy or regional dialect name
English or scientific name
fitatsy
magpie robin
tsararako
broad-billed roller
fony
baobab (in this case Adansonia rubrostipa)
reniala
baobab
fihiaky
harrier hawk
ray lovy
drongo
toloho
coucal
reo reo (meaning: two two)
cuckoo roller (an onomatopoeic rendition of its song)
sianga, voromanga
souimanga sunbird (the latter name may also be used colloquially to mean a pretty girl)
komitsy
jery
fandra
Pandanus screw palm (known in Mantadia as vakona)
katsatsa bato
Karsten’s plated lizard
gidro
lemur (in this case red-fronted brown)
tsidy, tsitsidy
mouse lemur (in this case grey mouse lemur)
tsidy kely
Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur (literally: little mouse lemur)
totokafa
lesser cuckoo (an onomatopoeic rendition of its song)
kitsalitsaly
big-eyed grass snake Mimophis mahfalensis
bibilava
snake
lejakely
Coquerel’s coua
lambo
bush pig
kasasaky
skink (in this case Trachylepis elegans)
faroratsy
spider
dangalia
lizard
akora
snail
boenga
red-tailed sportive lemur
katikatiky
common newtonia (an onomatopoeic rendition of its song)
draky
Sakalava weaver
trango draky
weaver nest or colony (literally: the weaver’s house)
soloko
crested coua
siotsy
vasa parrot
akibo
buttonquail
aboaly
termite
sakorova
bulbul
balangetroky
paradise flycatcher
malamasafoy
Delonix decaryi tree
kangamoriky
firebug
bora
cicada
bitapoky
vanga
vitsiky
ant
lavaky vitsiky
ant hole
domohy
turtle dove
bobaky
buzzard
kololiky
butterfly
androngy hazo
iguanid lizard
hazo
tree
bia
caterpillar
tsiba
Coquerel’s giant dwarf lemur
kely be hohy
fat-tailed dwarf lemur (local Kirindy name)
vahinamalona
wild vanilla (Vanilla madagascariensis)
tsyanihimposa
Xanthoxylum decaryi tree (literally, on account of its spikes: fosa can’t climb tree)
kina kina (Sakalava people of west Madagascar), dondozy (Merina people of highlands around Tana)
bat
vontaka
Pachypodium elephant’s foot plant
kily (Sakalava), vomadilo (Merina)
tamarind tree


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