"The Aye-Aye and I"

[fiefoe]

Things one wouldn't learn from "Madagascar" the movie:

• a king whose name, believe it or not, was Andrianampoinimerina, which made lockjaw among his subjects almost inevitable. ...a variety of kings and queens with names as long as comets' tails
• a host of powdered spices, like the palette of some Malagasy Titian or Rembrandt, raw umber, rose madder, greens, blues, smouldering reds, and yellows as delicate as a crocus bud,
• Nearby was a bowl of skinned and cooked zebu lips, transparent, gelatinous, quivering like dirty frogspawn, with the occasional hair attached.
• So the (Welsh) missionaries, licking their lips, must have approached with zeal the job of making a whole language one gigantic tintinnabulation,
• When Madagascar was a French colony, the school system was based on education in France, so Malagasy children were being taught about Renard the fox, rabbits, hares and other creatures not found in Malagasy forests, whereas tenrecs, lemurs, chameleons and tortoises were ignored.
• It is a curious and unfortunate thing that the Chinese road-builders taught the Malagasy to eat snakes, a culinary peculiarity they had not indulged in before.
  
• The Malagasy on the whole seem to have a robust and cheerful attitude towards death. Many of the Malagasy tribes believe in exhuming from their tombs the bones of their ancestors, giving them -- as it were - a good party and then re-burying them with all solemnity.
  

Author Gerald Durrell is British, and it's easy to tell by the names he drops: Bulldog Drummond, Ilkley Moor, Peter Scott ('He is also remembered for giving the scientific name of Nessiteras rhombopteryx to the Loch Ness Monster.').