The Malagasy language is a mix of other languages and dialect from Africa, Asia and also has European (English and French) connections. Despite being formed from so many languages, we often use the same word in a different context to have a very different meaning. One example of this is “masina”:

• Masina ny hena; The meat is salty
• Masina io Nosy io; This island is sacred
• Efa lasa ny Masìna; The train is gone

Obviously with this different meaning the context is usually very clear, as we’re a bit surprised here the sacred train is salty. Or in Malagasy, "Ilay masìna masina dia masina."   Unfortunately for the "I’m Vezo" campaign, the context is not always as clear. During the focus group to test messages at the beginning of the campaign implementation, I realized that we had confusion as the Vezo use the same word for beach seiners and leaders, which are both target audiences. Given the importance of differentiating between these two words for the success of the campaign we decided to find another word to name the leaders to avoid confusion. Literally, leaders means Mpitariky, “the puller" and beach seiners are also called Mpitariky, “the puller."  So, we changed leaders to be "Mpitarik’olo” which means “people pullers,” to make it more meaningful to the community.  

Since then, we haven’t looked back and the new terminology has been accepted and used by everyone.

 

Beach seiners

Leaders wearing their campaign t-shirts