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Ethnobotany
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Executive summary Introduction:The role of the Ombiasa is significant in the human use of forest resources, especially for treatment of common complaints. Their role is less central in a changing social setting, although people in forest dwelling hamlets rely upon their knowledge more than those living in the village because they do not have such easy access to the hospital. Knowledge accumulated from repeated excursions conducted with two Ombiasa indicated the range of medical treatments that are commonly used. Local villagers consider plant remedies to be effective but not as permanent as the more expensive hospital treatments. Investigation of how lemurs are perceived to compete for the plants used for medicines by the Ombiasa and other resources needed by villagers was assessed. As pests, the animals are considered a considerable threat during famines, but out of the extensive database compiled, there was only a small overlap in specific plants used by both humans and lemurs. There was no understanding that lemurs are reliant upon species that they did not use.
The Antandroy depend on forest resources for food, medicines, tools and building materials. The dynamics of the natural resource management by the tribe has changed with respect to certain resources, having become more sedentary agriculturalists since the time of colonisation and more dependent upon introduced crop species than on less productive forest resources. The dependence of the Ombiasa on the plants for their medicinal and spiritual properties is a changing theme, with their expertise being superseded by trained medical doctors. With changed relations to their environment, both the human understanding of the forest and forest use by the lemurs has been affected.Aims:By documenting the current understandings of two Ombiasa, gauging the socio-economic pressures on the forest and recording the interface between human and lemur forest resource use we were able to assess the changes to the use of the environment. By documenting the reported medical properties of forest plants, a database of current knowledge has been built in order to conserve traditional knowledge that has become increasingly threatened by the changes occurring within the society.
The purpose of our investigation was to produce a preliminary database of plants used by Ombiasa for treatment of illness and those used more widely by society in their everyday lives. A local perception of the role that the Ombiasa play in a changing social environment is reported in the Anthropological section and indicates how integrated ethnobotanical knowledge is within the community. An initial impression of which plants the lemurs are perceived to use also provides a basis for comparison with which ones the y were observed to use.
Methods:
Participatory Rural Appraisal [Kapila & Lyon 1994] was used to grasp an empowered vision of forest use by locals in general. One of the two Ombiasa, Manihira, had lived in the village of Ifotaka all his life and was locally respected for h is extensive knowledge and application of the forest plants. He was accompanied on a series of excursions into the forest between July and September 1999. He gave information on how each plant could be used, as and when he came across them. A botanist f rom PBZT (Parc Botanique et Zoologique de Tsimbazaza), Mavu, would then identify the plants and explain their use, preparation and abundance. The second Ombiasa, Fanahisoa, had been brought up in Ifotaka, but had learnt his knowledge of plants during years spent trading zebu between regions. Semi-structured and open-ended interviews were used to gain an insight into which plants he would prescribe for various ailments and what he said other resources were used for.
The overlap of human forest-resource use and lemur forest-resource use was assessed by asking both Ombiasa, separately, to identify which plants they had knowledge of the lemurs ever using. A group of local men, who were said to be very knowledgeable about the forest, were also asked to provide the same information.
Results:
Discussion: Because the two main informants were given different briefs, their transfer of knowledge was affected by different variables. Manihira realised that our main interest was in non-spiritual uses of the plants, whilst Fanihisoa was keen to move open-ended interviews into discussions about his powers of harnessing the spirit world through the plants. Manahira was unprepared to divulge his knowledge of the spiritual world. Although he was renowned in the region for his power, he refused to admit his strengths. Uses were assigned by the two "Ombiasa" for 149 different plants with a total of over 300 human uses. Only twenty of these were mentioned by both men, eighteen of which were considered to have the same function. This represents a proportion of agreement of 0.12. This measure of overlap might not be a fair assessment of reliability since information was collected from each Ombiasa in a different way. Also, a low proportion of agreement is explained by the fact that the two men did not share th eir knowledge with each other since this would devalue their own skills. Their remedies were perceived to be effective and reliable by local informants, although they did tend to mention a preference for longer lasting hospital treatment if it could be a fforded. A shift towards a preference for non-traditional remedies was reflected by the difficulty Manahira had with remembering certain plant uses, saying that he had not used them for many years. Despite this, he was still considered as " one of the big Ombiasa" whose abilities gave him a prominent position within society.
The majority of the plant uses mentioned by both were used within the community for construction purposes or as food, but medical properties were largely unshared. The exception to this was Argemana mexicana which is used by both Ombiasa for "undiagnosed illnesses". It seems fair to assume that the range of plants used for different problems reflects the ailments that are most often suffered by the community, and so stomach problems and common side effects from pregnancy seem common. Problems like acne have no assigned remedy because it never poses a problem to the community. Comparing the remedies told by the Ombiasa with those of published material, eight of the plants that had been assigned Scientific names were found to have uses reported in Ravi-Matsoa's "Plantes medicinales Malgaches}". Only one of these had exactly the same use,Combretum coccinea , used to remove specks in the eye. Compared against Pierre Boiteau and Lucile Allorge-Boiteau's "Plantes medicinales de Madagascar" , seven of the plants in the database that had been assigned Scientific names had been mentioned in the book. Vanilla madagascarensis is noted by both for its potency as an aphrodisiac.
The database of which plants are used by lemurs provides an indication of what perceptions the locals have of their activities. It also provides a useful insight into how much competition humans perceive them to have for specific species. Despite being Fady to kill, there is little respect for the lemurs, and poor interest in what they are eating was reflected by the fact that the informants made no distinction over which lemur species use which plants, but presume them both to use the same ones. They are despised by farmers in the forest because they are crop pests, and they care very little for their activities other than that. The two Ombiasa said that they had learnt about the lemur behaviour from their trips into the forest. They only consider them to be in competition with humans during famines, but are otherwise not a threat to plants which they use. From the results, lemurs were identified as eating forty-two different plant species, eleven of which had not been assigned human uses. Of those eleven not assigned human uses, the unidentified species "Rotsy" and Rinorea grevenea were recognised as a lemur resource by more than one informant. For these resources, there is no human competition with the lemurs. Out of eight plants that had been identified by more than one informant as being used by lemurs, the same part of three was identified as being used for exactly the same purposes by both humans and lemurs. These species were Salvadora augustifolia and Opercullicarya hyphenoiles, both of which are used as food, and Operulicarya decaryi, which is used by both humans and lemurs to stop bleeding.
The village doctor said that there was a noticeable change that had occurred in the community over the years. Zebu herders, who remained more dependent upon the forest resources, were more reliant upon the ancestral spirits, and the powers of the Ombiasa to cure ailments and illnesses than those who worked in the fields along the river. They were more able to earn money, become more independent of the spirit mediums, and place more reliance on both the church and the hospital rather than forest resources which were more difficult to find and less reliable. This was reaffirmed by those informants who said that if it was affordable, hospital treatment was preferable and more effective. Others mentioned their fear of unfamiliar western techniques. For example, one of the guides who had been suffering from Gonnorohea for a year, refused to have a painful intravenous injection from the hospital, and so settled for the less effective cure offered by plant medication. Hamlets that lie a day or more's walk away from Ifotaka are still reliant upon the hospital in Ifotaka, and often patients die before reaching the hospital if local remedies have been ineffective. In addit ion to the changed use of forest resources for medicines, one of the village elders said that there had been a marked decrease in the reliance of villagers on forest resources for food, in preference for destroying sections and growing their own crops in the fertile space made available. Small birds are still hunted, especially by children, and wild fruit occasionally sold in the market when there is a strain on the availability of other food (e.g. Opuntia sp.).
Misunderstandings due to poor vocabulary and grammar of the interpreter, who would also try to convert meaning into more western terms, may not have accurately described properties that the Ombiasa described them as having. This may be reflected in the database catagories. For example, Tetradenia goudotii is described by Manihira as being used to "wash female genitalia" and so placed in a section on personal hygiene, whereas Fanishoa described it as being used to " wash after giving birth" and is under the section on pregnancy. The main problem encountered with this ethnobotanical investigation was the difficulty in identifying the plants; many plants were not collected because it was the wrong time of year (dry season), some of the plants were rare and so it was difficult to collect samples that would have provided adequate information for identification.
Conclusion:
The ethnobotanical data collected on this expedition was extensive, and the different status of the two Ombiasa provided a view of common perception of how forest resources could be used. With regard to lemurs, a group of men were also asked about their understandings of lemur-resource use, and this largely correlated with the knowledge of the two Ombiasa. Only a partial overlap was observed for resource use by lemurs and by humans , although this would increase under environmentally stressful conditions. The community at large seem to have shifted from using the forest resources in a sustainable manner, to exploiting its fertility and becoming less dependent on wild growing plant u se. With a rapidly expanding population, understanding of plants for use in pregnancy will probably continue because it is of universal and ongoing value, whilst the removal of other plants will be likely in a system that relies more and more on forest destruction for growing food, grazing livestock, the sale of wood, and has an increasing faith in the efficacy of hospital treatment. The ethnobotanical database put together identifies another reason for the importance of conserving the Ifotaka forest. Wh i lst providing an insight into the overlap that the local communities perceive lemurs to have with their own forest use, it also calls for a more substantial study of the medicinal properties and economic opportunities that traditional plant use may offer within this changing and modernising community.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Boiteau, P. & Boiteau, L, 1993 "Plantes medicinales de Madagascar" Paris: Karthala
Cotton, C.M. 1999 "Ethnobotany: Principles and Applications" New York: Wiley
Martin, G.J. 1995 "Ethnobotany" London: Chapman & Hall
Ravi-Maitso, 1990 " Plantes medicinales malgaches" A. Descheemaeker
Quansah, N. Ethnobotany Report ref properly please.
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