Ambatolampy

Ambatolampy, whose name comes from vatolampy, a great rock, grew up in Imerina, the highland country of the Merina, whose rulers unified the plateau at the end of the eighteenth century from the royal hills to the north. Villages here farmed irrigated rice in the valleys and grazed the slopes of the Ankaratra, and the place was one of many market settlements on the routes running south from the royal capital.

Its modern shape dates from French rule. After the conquest of 1895 the colonial administration made Ambatolampy a district centre and drove the road that became the RN7 through it, connecting Antananarivo with Antsirabe and the far south; the railway between Antananarivo and Antsirabe gave the town a station on the line. The cool climate suited plantation forestry, and the hillsides west of the town were planted with pine and eucalyptus, while a forest station of several thousand hectares was established in the Ankaratra foothills at Manjakatompo.

The industry that made the town's name came later and from below. The first aluminium pots are said to have come out of a local workshop in 1951, cast in laterite moulds by a method borrowed from the old foundries Jean Laborde had run at Mantasoa, and the metal came from scrap — engine blocks, building materials, old cookware — melted down again. The trade grew through the second half of the twentieth century into dozens of family foundries, and Ambatolampy became the place the whole island buys its cooking pots. Road traffic on the RN7 does the rest: travellers between the capital and the south stop here, and the town lives on that passing trade as much as on its fields.

The town is Merina in language and custom, and the observances of the plateau shape the year: kabary, the formal oratory of proverbs delivered at weddings and funerals; hira gasy troupes who perform long programmes of song, dance and moral argument at village gatherings; and the famadihana in the dry season, when families open the tomb, rewrap their ancestors in fresh silk lamba and dance with them before reburial. The tombs themselves, built of stone and concrete, stand among the paddies and are more solid than many houses.

Craft is the local pride. The foundry trade is passed down within families, and the moulders, pourers and finishers each have their part in work that is done with very simple equipment and a great deal of skill. Along with pots, the workshops turn out ladles, pans and ornaments, and other households make wrought iron, baskets and embroidery for the roadside stalls.

Protestant and Catholic churches, an inheritance of nineteenth-century missions, fill on Sundays, and choirs are a serious matter. Fady, the taboos that differ from village to village, govern small things — which days to work, where not to walk — and are explained to visitors who ask. The manner of the town is quiet and formal; open argument in public is avoided, and business is done slowly.

Ambatolampy has roughly 30,000 people in the town itself, with many more in the farming communes around it. Houses of red brick with tiled or tin roofs and wooden balconies climb the slopes above the RN7, and rice terraces run right up to the edge of the built-up area. It is a district capital, with the offices, schools, clinic and market that go with the role.

Three things pay for the town: the foundries and their trade in cooking pots, farming — rice in the valleys, potatoes, carrots, beans and dairy on the higher ground, sold north to the capital — and the road. Lorries, taxi-brousse minibuses and tourist vehicles on the RN7 stop for fuel, food and pots, and a whole economy of stalls, canteens and repair yards has grown along the verge. Forestry in the hills adds a little more.

The day starts cold and early, with the market busy from first light and the foundry fires lit soon after. Midday is bright; by dusk the road traffic thins and the town is dark and quiet. The concerns are those of the plateau — the price of rice, power cuts, thin soil and erosion on the deforested slopes, and the charcoal burning that supplies the foundries and kitchens but eats into what forest is left.

The food is highland Malagasy and unfussy. Rice is the meal, with a laoka alongside: romazava, the broth of beef and leafy greens with the mouth-numbing herb anamalao; ravitoto sy henakisoa, pounded cassava leaves cooked with pork; voanjobory, Bambara groundnuts stewed with meat; or beans and smoked fish in plainer households. Sakay, the fierce chilli paste, sits on the table, and ranovola, the smoky water boiled in the burnt rice pan, is drunk with the meal.

The cold uplands supply what the coasts cannot: potatoes, carrots, leeks, cabbage and tomatoes, along with milk, yoghurt and cheese from the dairy farms around the town.

Roadside eating is the town's speciality, since so much of its trade is with people passing through. Mofo gasy, small sweetened rice-flour cakes, are cooked in charcoal moulds before dawn; kitoza, strips of zebu smoked over a fire, goes with the morning rice porridge; and through the day stalls sell masikita skewers, sambos and slices of koba, the log of ground peanuts, sugar and rice flour steamed in banana leaf. Three Horses Beer from Antsirabe is the usual drink, and home-distilled toaka gasy belongs to family ceremonies.