Apis Dorsata, also called the giant rock bee, is the biggest social bee known today. Their nest are mainly built in exposed places far of the ground, on tree limbs and under cliff overhangs. In the Nilgiri’s mountains, where Irula and Kurumba tribes live, Apis Dorsata produce a very rare bitter honey. Apis Dorsata are also known for their aggressiveness, beekeepers have never managed to domesticate them. With the support of: Irfoss, Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty, Bioversity International, Keystone Foundation.
The history of Death in the western world is the story of a long and gradual separation between the humankind and its biggest fear. It is the story of several attempts, one after the other, to remove the very idea of the death from the everyday life of the living, from their language, from their thoughts. The British anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer said that death has become “pornographic” to us, an obscene content from which children must be kept safe. The first and the main western taboo. The western obsession about the death has been seen as an universal feature across both time and space: “Men fear death”, and that has always been considered a fact. Trying to find an exception to this rule, our story will take place between two poles apart worlds, from Italy to the far end of the austral Africa in Madagascar. We are going to tell of a world mirroring to ours,in which the death is not frightening, funerals are the biggest parties, and where the living and the dead speak, laugh and dance all together. When Désiré Maigrot (the first Italian Consul in Madagascar since 1878) died, his tombstone was engraved with the following words:“Une belle vie, une belle mort”.
Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar, is home to one of the largest dumpsites of the African continent, operative since the 60’s. The dumpsite, which now covers over 45 acres and is still expanding, receives between 350 and 550 tons of new waste each day. Fire burns endlessly in the midst of the garbage hills, that can reach up to 15 mt in height. The unnatural landscape is constantly imbued with a toxic fog. Around 3000 people live and work here, collecting plastic, metals, bones and coal. Many of them moved to the capital to seek their fortune.The dumpsite is scattered with small tombs, marking the bodies of fetuses and unwanted newborns. Residents of the capital commonly refer to this place as “Ralalitra”: the city of flies.
In Madagascar la morte è vissuta come un semplice passaggio della vita umana, come l’adolescenza o la vecchiaia: da morti certe qualità si perdono e non ci si muove più, altre – come la fame, la sete o la curiosità restano intatte. Gli antenati (Razana) acquistano inoltre nuove capacità divine, come la possibilità di intervenire positivamente o negativamente nella quotidianità dei viventi o, addirittura, di possederli ed agire direttamente attraverso il loro corpo grazie alla manifestazione più diretta dei defunti, il Tromba (lo spirito).