The Makay has been inhabited for a long period, this is proven by the cave paintings which have been found there, the oldest of them date to the 8th century.
The first people who made permanent settlement in the Makay Massif were the Sakalava, which were chased by the Merinas of the highlands and not long after the nomadic Bara herders came to settle in the Makay as well with their first permanent villages being built in the fifties near the massif. The Makay Massif itself doesn’t have permanent inhabitants, these are found around the mountains and make up some 5,000 to 6,000 villagers spread over some sixty villages with the Bara being the dominant ethnic group.
So, the majority of the people living in the Makay Region are the Bara, which are semi-nomadic pastoralists. Their territory is between the Mangoky River, the Midongy forest and the Beroroha and Sakaraha villages. Their language is Bara, a Malagasy dialect and spoken by approximately 600,000 people. They are of Bantu origin and came from Africa to the plateaus of the south in Madagascar. They are known for raising zebus, which is seen as a symbol of wealth and travel and live with their cattle. The zebu is omnipresent in their way of life and their heads can even be found on the entrance of their tombs.
An interesting tradition is the zebu theft, which a young Bara is supposed to do to show his courage and to court women, making himself attractive for marriage. Ringa is a form of wrestling which is also famous in this area. The Bara also have their own traditional music and dances, especially the Papango – king of birds – dance is famous. In this dance, a man suspended on a pole imitates a flying bird.
Almost all of the people in the Makay are cattle breeders and some of them do some farming on the side. The zebu is the main symbol of wealth for the Bara and is seen as a great investment and better than saving money. The bigger your herd, the wealthier and more powerful you are. The social aspect of owning a lot of zebus is sometimes even more important than the economic aspect and zebus are sacrificed during cultural practices in which it is desired to sacrifice a large number of animals.
As said before, stealing a zebu is an important ritual in which a young man wants to court a woman. This doesn’t always mean zebu theft is always linked to this ritual as people also do this in a commercial way. The herders go far away into forests and other places to let their zebu graze freely, find food and water to hide themselves from thieves. This causes a lot of damage to the environment as they often set fire to the bush so they can move their herds around more easily. They set up temporary camps and then set fire to certain areas to more easily pick up certain roots, collect honey etc. After the fire, the zebus eat the shoots and seedlings and prevent the forest from regenerating. This also leads to habitat loss of the local animals, like lemurs and fossas.
Besides cattle herding, some people in the Makay also farm. They grow cassava, sweet potatoes, rice, onions and others. Especially rice farming is the most important and planting is mostly done by women, who will also do most of the harvesting, which is from March to June and from November to January. A lot of people live (temporarily) near their rice fields.
In the Makay people are either christian (mostly catholic) or animist, or sometimes even a combination of the two. In the animist tradition, marriage is not that important, but funeral ceremonies and ancestor worship is. They believe that the dead can communicate with the gods and help the villagers this way. Each ceremony zebus are sacrificed. An important ceremony is Bilo, in which a divine healer gets rid of a spirit possessing a patient.
There are several fady (prohibitions). Some are only for certain families, but others are for the whole ethnie, such as it being forbidden to raise or eat goats.
In the villages we find a mix of colonial and local architecture. In the north of the Makay region we can find traditional multi-storey houses, but not in the south. The traditional houses are made by weaving branches and covering them with dried earth. The roofs are made from reeds, but sheet metal is also used more and more.
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