Zebu

I decided tonight to add some of my zebu photos. Zebu are African oxen used in Madagascar to pull ox carts. They're also used for their meat, it tastes like a very rich beef. Their horns are used to make kitchen utensils ~ I brought Andy some home ~ and ornaments. I bought a bird made of Zebu horn ~like the one in the photos below ~ and a small dish. We went to watch this man first heat the horn and knock the bone out of the centre before heating it again and shaping it, then dyeing it with natural dyes. It was very clever, an old art dating back many years.


Zebu are also used to measure a mans wealth. When a man wants to get married he must go to his future father in law with a zebu, not any old zebu ~ this one must be stolen! It's supposed to prove he's a man. He gets thrown into prison for stealing a zebu then a while later the brides' father goes to bail him out. Having been in prison makes him some kind of better man! My mum used to tell me to keep away from anyone who'd been to prison! There are a lot of taboos in Madagascar like the one concerning eggs. You aren't allowed to hand an egg to somebody.... as if you would! Lol! If you buy an egg, yes you can buy them singly, the assistant has to put them on the counter for you to pick up. They also have a thing called turning of the bones. Families are buried in tombs; after three years or so they invite all the relatives over and bring the bones of the deceased out of the tomb. They take them around to the town to 'show' the deceased how the place has changed since their death then they're rewrapped in a new shroud and buried again. The old shroud is regarded as a fertility symbol. Brides sometimes lay on them in bed to ensure they conceive, I read that some brides actually eat a small part of the shroud to ensure conception! A big party ensues, this costs around 2,000 euros, which is £1,600 or nearly $3,000! Not so many people do this now because of the high costs, I'm surprised that anybody could afford to do it when I saw the poverty there. I digress........


I loved seeing the ox carts coming along the road, it's a sight we don't see now


At one point in our journey John, our Madagascan guide,told us that being in the middle of the countryside we'd see a lot more zebu soon. Lo and behold, round the next corner were a herd of them in the road! Same again round the next couple of corners

I liked the way this group kept on the right side of the road, I didn't know zebu had traffic sense!

I thought they were magnificent looking creatures. So often you see scrawny looking cattle in poor countries but these were obviously well looked after. The males have a hump on their shoulders as seen in the photo below.

I hope you liked seeing the zebu, I'll be back soon to carry on with the tour in the rain forest. We were lucky enough to see the rarest lemur in the world ~ the Greater Bamboo lemur. It's extrememly rare and in great danger of extinction.

Thanks to Donna for the tag tonight. When I copied and pasted the URL from Photobucket into the Blogger uploader I got 47 frog tags! Lol! I had to delete them one by one, hence the large gap at the bottom of this entry!