How has a colonial family stayed there up to the present day, forty years after Madagascars independence?
I’m not giving away too much of the plot if I say the turning point of the story was Jean de Heaulme’s imprisonment by Madagascar’s socialist government. They wanted him to agree that his plantation could be nationalized. He stuck it out for five months in Fort Dauphin prison, in the town where he had practically been king. His wife lined up with all the other prisoners’ wives at the prison gate three times a day to bring their men some food. Finally his foremen came in from Berenty to argue with the police, to try to free their boss. Jean was very tempted to encourage the Tandroy to rise in revolt, as they had done a few years earlier. The police were actually scared of even fifteen Tandroy hanging about in the main town square. They finally decided that Jean was the only person who could calm things down. They marched him up from the prison, a guard with a Kalashnikov on either side. “Go home and take care of Berenty,” he told his men. “I promise I shall return.” “Very well,” they sa
