Rova Ambohimanga

In early January I joined a group of college students from Lafayette college on a day trip to Rova Ambohimanga. Why are there a bunch of American college students in Madagascar in January? Well it’s because there is a program at Lycée Andohalo, a high school not far from my house, called the Lafayette Initiative for Malagasy Education, or LIME for short. LIME is a program that seeks to improve the English skills of aspiring Malagasy students and prepare them for the necessary exams when applying to American colleges and scholarship programs. The LIME program gathers up 10-12 Lafayette students every year and sends them over to Madagascar for a week and half long intensive training program with the LIME students on the best strategies and what to expect when they take exams like the SAT and TOEFL or writing personal statements and filling out college applications. The LIME mentors (the college students) are typically prepared for giving the lessons but are not always ready to teach students whose English is not as good as they suspect.

That’s where I come in, sort of. Last year the LIME mentors came in May. So this is the second group of random college students who, now in Madagascar, encounter this weird dude who has a strange connection with the Malagasy students and happens to know a lot about teaching English as a native English-speaker in Madagascar (me). In fact, the head of the LIME program always invites me despite the fact that I’m old news for the students at this point.

Anyways, I usually give the LIME mentors some pointers after their first session doesn’t go as planned and then I occasionally join them on different outings. But that’s enough of that. I want to talk about the Rova Ambohimanga.

If you can somehow recall from well over a year ago, I’ve already visited a rova. A rova is a “palace” of the ancient kings of Madagascar. Palace in contrast to our standards is a pretty loose term here. Most of the rovas are just a collection of little buildings on top of a mountain. Essentially, the way Madagascar was ruled before the process of “unification” was that some guy built his house on top of a mountain and built a small wall around it. It is extremely difficult to scale a mountain and then attack a little collection of huts surrounded by a rock wall on the top of said mountain, especially when you’re limited to stone weapons and pointed sticks. Needless to say, this is how the Malagasy kings governed the land. Well, that’s at least how they did it here in the highlands.

At some point in the island’s history, there was one guy with this amazing vision to control all of Madagascar. This guy was named Adrianampoinimerina and he had the idea of “unifying” the island and its tribes into a single power. This was pretty progressive thinking when you put into perspective that such ideas are pretty European. Besides that, Madagascar is a big island with a lot of people, many of whom did not like the idea of being “unified” with the Merina tribe calling the shots, kind of like how it is today. So, Adrianampoinimerina decided to start small by solidifying himself as unquestionable ruler of the immediate area of the land around what is now the capital, Antananrivo. Wikipedia words it as such, “Adrianampoinimerina. . . successfully reunited the fragmented Merina kingdom through a combination of diplomacy, strategic political marriages, and successful military campaigns against rival princes.”

This doesn’t include the fact that his uncle tried to assassinate him multiple times, or the fact that a previous king wanted to divide his kingdom amongst his four sons. However, that king’s council advised him instead to have four roosters locked in a room with different colored ribbons each representing a son. The rooster who survived would designate the son to receive the kingdom in its entirety. This was to avoid the inevitable fighting between brothers. The king said no, and divided the kingdom anyways. Upon his death, the brothers fought each other. This is Wikipedia's "fragmented Merina kingdom".

But back to Adrianampoinimerina. He went around the 12 surrounding hills and married the daughters of each of their kings; thereby, making him the de facto ruler of the area. This is that Wikipedia "strategic political marriages". Despite having 12 or more wives, Andrianampoinimerina had one wife he liked the most who was dubbed the vady be. I like this name because when you translate it to English, it means “big wife”. And that’s just funny.

Jokes aside, Adrianampoinimerina was not a guy to mess with. Rova Ambohimanga was his place of residence. But he knew that Rova Antanarivo, today’s famous Queen’s Palace, was a true seat of power, and the king there did not acknowledge his rule. Thus, Adrianampoinimerina surrounded the hill and, instead of charging up the hill in what would surely be a bloodbath, he burned the rice fields around the mountain peak and starved them out. Wikipedia's "successful military campaigns against rival princes.”

Once in control of the kingdom and after replanting all the rice fields he roasted, Adrianampoinimerina moved into the recently starved out palace and turned Rova Ambohimanga into a vacation residence, which it remained until the colonial period. Adrianampoinimerina wasn’t super successful “unifying” Madagascar after that. In fact, his kingdom was pretty darn small. It wouldn’t be until his son Radama I took the throne that Adrianampoinimerina’s vision of a single Malagasy kingdom would come close to actualization. Even so, Radama would only succeed in doing this with the help of British and French guns, which he purchased with slaves captured from the tribes he was “unifying” as a single Malagasy people. Because nothing says "we are one Malagasy people" quite like enslaving your own people to conquer your own people.

Politically divisive topics aside, Rova Ambohimanga was pretty neat. There’s a courtyard where peasants could come to offer gifts, usually the heads of zebu (beef cows). The original “palace” is still there, which is pretty much a large, single-room hut. The palace as a very tall bunk bed with a very thin ladder where the king would sleep because it was safer. There are walls. There are cannons, some purchased from England and French and others fabricated in Jean Laborde’s foundry in Mantasoa. There’s even a Victorian style house with the appropriate furniture when Queen Ranavalona I, who despite being an outward xenophobe and bloodthirsty maniac who persecuted Christians, had a council and cabinet packed full of foreigners and Christians. It’s said she even had an ongoing affair with Jean Laborde but planned to assassinate him. Absolutely whack.

Other than that, there’s not much to the rova. The original walls are still standing, a few hundred years old, which makes them a UNESCO heritage site. They’re made of zebu manure, mud, straw, and eggshells. And during the reign of the kings, each peasant was expected to bring a certain amount of these materials as a form of tax. But anyways, please enjoy the photos I took of this little palace.

As always, know that you are in my prayers each morning. All I ask is that you do the same for me.

May God be praised.