Read or listen to Antoine Rabendrina’s full oral history. Original interview in Malagasy. An English translation is also available.
I’m proud of being helped by God even though I came from a poor family who lived in the countryside. Because of His blessing, I became a teacher at a private university. I will soon defend my doctoral thesis. We were twelve hundred students during our freshman year. Now, we are only four graduate students to finish our PhD study…. There are indeed so many differences between Malagasy and Mormon cultures. Because the LDS church was born in the United States, it is obvious if Mormon culture has been Americanized. But, God’s love hasn’t changed. Malagasy culture advocates love and solidarity.
Even though the church doesn’t allow members to admit the dead body of another member in the church for a last good bye, we still keep doing it because it’s in Malagasy culture to share empathy with those who are in mourning. Even our Mormon faith can’t stop that. The “Famadihana” also is an important part of the Malagasy culture. [Famadihana is a funerary tradition in Madagascar that involves exhuming dead relatives, rewrapping them, and dancing with their corpses]. It doesn’t matter what your religion is, every Malagasy person practices it. But sometimes during the Famadihana some people drink alcohol or pray to the dead in order to get something in return. I don’t agree with that.