Madagascar: Paper making and Anja Community Reserve

This morning we headed to a wildlife reserve, but before going there, it had been arranged for us to visit a local paper factory.

Papermaking is a traditional craft of the Antemoro ethnic group who hail from southeast Madagascar. It has largely died out but there remains a small factory in Ambalavao which is still making handmade paper. Originally the Antemoro came from Arabs, who brought the knowledge of paper production and the Koran across the ocean. The Sorabe (from Arabic sora for writing and Madagascan be for great) is the most famous work of writing written on the Antaimoro. It contains the first transcription of the Malagasy language.

The manufacturing process is labour-intensive. The paper needs wild mulberry trees and Madagascan avoha. Part of the bark is supplied from southeast Madagascar, but most of it now comes from the area between Ambalavao and Fianarantsoa. The bark, cut into strips, is boiled for a good six hours until it becomes a brownish, greasy fibre mass. The workers now select black fibres and dirt crumbs by hand so that the paper is as clean as possible later on. The boiled fibres are then beaten rhythmically flat by hand with heavy wooden beaters until only a pulpy mass is left on the table. The workers form half a kilo of brown lumps from the porridge, which are easy to store and transport. The lumps do not, therefore, have to be processed immediately but can sometimes remain lying around for a few days.

Production continues with specially built wooden frames on which large rectangular scoop sieves covered with thin linen cloths rest. Water is let into the frame by dissolving the bark lumps. The mash must now be distributed as evenly as possible in the water on the sheets to obtain a uniformly thick paper everywhere. If the worker is satisfied with the distribution of the mash, she leaves the water off the rack. What remains is a wet, thin layer of mash on the linen cloth. With a metal form and a spatula, the different pieces of paper are now separated from each other – so they do not have to be cut later and they keep the typical, somewhat irregular edge. For decorative papers such as bookmarks, picture frames or albums, time-consuming detailed work now begins: Freshly picked, shiny flowers and leaves are placed individually, piece by piece, on the wet paper. Finally, the papers are placed on the large racks in the sun to dry them. After one or two days, the finished small works of art can be carefully removed from the linen.

After watching the process, we were then taken to the shop to see the final products where the paper could be bought, or you could buy craft items made from the paper. Everything was beautiful but we had no way of transporting these back safely.