Madagascar is huge and the customs are multiple. One thing that has remained common to all these ethnic groups on the island is the distribution of the day in quasi-automatic task.
From the first light of the sun and even before, we wake up around 4:30 a.m., this will depend mainly on the season because in winter we all tend to wake up a bit later. Of all the small household, mom will be the first to tackle the task. Make a fire and prepare food for the whole house. Then comes the turn of the children and the father. Everyone huddled around the fire while waiting for the first meal of the day.
Around five thirty, the man of the house goes out first to go to the fields, followed very soon after by the mother who will have prepared a small satchel containing a pot and something to eat during the long working day that awaits them in the fields.
Waiting, children are at home, the older ones take care of the smaller ones and will have as a task to clean the immediate surroundings as well as to take out the poultry and the cattles. Around eleven o'clock, all these beautiful people join the parents in the fields to eat together. After lunch, only the father stays in the fields to finish what must be done otherwise, the rest go home. On the way back, the boys take dead wood for the cooking fire in the house and the girls will fetch water.
In the end of the afternoon, moms will bleach the amount of rice needed for dinner and meanwhile, children take the opportunity to play a little. Once the rice task is finished, the mothers, generally grouped together, take the opportunity to redo the mats or prepare the masks for the next day. Before sunset, everyone must have returned for dinner and above all to be safe because in the countryside, there are still tales and legends aimed at frightening children at nightfall.
After dinner, generally young adults take advantage of the last light to chat a little before falling asleep each in their respective huts and house. Tomorrow, the day will be longer, they will go, almost all , at the week market.
