Miora Mampionona

Animal Tales and Myths of Southern Madagascar Miora Mampionona

"Lies and faribbles that all this! But I am not the one lying, it is the Elders who lied to me, and I am lying to you in turn. It is thus, more or less, that every Malagasy storyteller completes his tale. Then the children laugh, ask for another tale or ask again for a passage they liked more. But it's not only the children: the older ones are not left out, like these young people who went to Mananjary to compete in sports but broke down their dug-out canoe on the Pangalanes Canal: for 24 hours, what did they spend their time on? Competing in fairy tales, each one adding his own to surpass the others. It's a game and a competition. It is a knowledge and also a philosophy of existence. Malagasy storytellers, all over the island, have their philosophy of lan-gage, full of humor, irony and realism. The animal tales collected and read by Sambo Clément and translated into French by his daughter Miora, are a wonderful example of this.