Heritage Documentation Projects
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Stuart Holm Heritage Documentation Projects |
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My contribution to Operation Rova |
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In 1998 I was contacted by British Executive Service Overseas (BESO) and asked if I would be willing to undertake voluntary work on a project in Antananarivo, the capital city of Madagascar. Although BESO normally provides placements for retired professional people, in this instance they had no retired volunteer with the necessary skills.
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A major national monument, the Queen's Palace (or Manjakamiadana Palace) in the capital Antananarivo was tragically burnt to the ground in November 1995. Virtually all that remained after the fire was the stone shell built around the earlier wooden palace by Scottish missionary James Cameron in the mid-nineteenth century. The loss of this remarkable royal palace and sacred tomb complex (known as the Rova) was a terrible tragedy for the Malagasy people, all the more so because much of the contents of the buildings were also lost. Fortunately about 6,000 items were salvaged from the blaze, probably representing 20-25% of the original collection of antiquities and royal memorabilia which included gifts from Britain's Queen Victoria to King Radama (for much of the nineteenth century, prior to the French conquest in the 1890s, Britain had generally enjoyed fairly good relations with the Malagasy royal family).
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6 November 1995
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With international support, the Malagasy government has established an organisation known as the Direction de l'Operation Rova (DNOR) to co-ordinate efforts to restore the surviving collections and rebuild as much as possible of the palace. Madagascar is not a wealthy country and has many pressing social problems to overcome. Consequently, there is limited local funding for heritage restoration but fortunately international organisations and individual countries have rallied behind the Malagasy people in supporting the challenge to rebuild this national symbol.
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Before the fire
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The assignment which BESO requested me to undertake was primarily to assist the DNOR in establishing a programme to make digital images of all surviving objects from the Queen's Palace. The project was sponsored by the British Embassy in Madagascar which funded the purchase of equipment and my travel costs. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to assist in such an interesting and worthwhile project. I spent two weeks in May 1998 working with the DNOR team in Antananarivo. On arrival, I helped the Director and his staff to refine the overall project brief and identify where I could help most effectively. I found that of the 6,000 salvaged items, about 1,600 had already been entered on a basic computer database. The existing data was well structured following an agreed African museum standard (The AFRICOM Data Standard). Most objects had an existing accession number which was usually marked on the object itself to an acceptable standard.
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During my visit
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I decided that the key tasks to be completed during my assignment were:
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During my stay in Antananarivo, installation of the equipment was successfully completed and training given in its use. The staff quickly grasped the principles of the new technology but encountered a number of problems due to lack of adequate ancillary equipment such as a tripod, lighting equipment, backgrounds and supports, etc. I made a number of recommendations for acquisition of further materials and equipment to facilitate the efficient production of good quality images. I understand that on my departure these recommendations were adopted and that the team have subsequently made good progress with image capture.
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Struggling with a flimsy tripod!
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Whilst I was there, a formal handover by the British Ambassador of the donated equipment resulted in some good television coverage which provided positive publicity for Operation Rova, BESO and Britain in general. I feel that all the initial objectives of the project were successfully met and I am hoping that there might be a possibility of making a follow-up visit once the image capture phase is completed.
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Uploading the images
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Although much of my time was spent working on the Rova project, Moyra and I managed to see just a little of this fascinating country. My hosts generously arranged visits to local sites and my involvement with the Embassy led to an unforgettable weekend in the company of a British diplomat on temporary secondment there. Together we explored a small part of the neighbouring countryside and spent a night near the rain forest nature reserve at Périnet. That evening we visited the reserve and saw various nocturnal lemurs and a tenrec, a hedgehog-like mammal. Next day we returned in daylight to see more lemurs including the wonderful indri, a group of which made their spine tingling territorial call whilst we were standing beneath the trees in which they sat.
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Later, we visited an intruiging industrial site at Mantasoa via an amazing trek across dirt roads. It turned out that we had mistakenly taken the back way, although on the way out we found that even the main road was largely unsurfaced. Fortunately we were in a Landrover which our new friend Ken Price thoroughly enjoyed driving over rough terrain. At Mantasoa we found the remarkably well preserved blast furnace built by French missionary Jean Laborde in the 1840s to cast cannon and other armaments for Queen Ranavalona. If anyone can tell me more about this fascinating industrial site (which includes an impressive armaments factory building now used by a local school) I would love to hear from you at
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The furnace at Mantazoa
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