Merina

In Madagascar, the Merina community take their deceased from their resting places every few years and wrap their bones in silk.

Colorful Coffins and Funerals to Die For Sarah Murray 2011

Check the stats on the Merina IUD it is not really more pleasant to get used to but I and most of my fellow merina users have stopped meeting with the monthly almost entirely.

Why Does It Have to Require So Much Thought? | Her Bad Mother 2008

Since you are the master of detailing the pro's and con's, how about a piece on the IUD (specifically Merina).

Strep Throat and Medical Ethics aka TBTAM 2007

She called me and Merina “The Gannets” because we were always starving and scrounging for food.

Rainbow’s End Lauren St John 2007

Because Merina and I had our hearts set on becoming pop singers, Margot forced us to listen to Jim Bakker tapes, in which the U.S. televangelist bemoaned the evils of pop music and devil-promoting bands like Queen and AC/DC, and detailed the subliminal satanic messages contained in songs like “Another One Bites the Dust,” which you could hear if you played the records backward.

Rainbow’s End Lauren St John 2007

My first introduction to our new government was when the Ministry of the Environment sent a shiny, black car to Roosevelt to collect Merina and me and we were chauffeured away, with the matrons, prefects, and our friends staring after us in disbelief, to see the minister himself.

Rainbow’s End Lauren St John 2007

As a result, while our classmates were locked away in dreary afternoon prep sessions, Merina and I spent our time swimming with boys, watching The Blue Lagoon, and eating pineapple and cream gâteaux at Barbours department store.

Rainbow’s End Lauren St John 2007

Merina had spent her formative years in Zambia in a mixed-race school with black toddler friends, so she had no real journey to make when it came to color, and I spoke to no one about my own journey—which had to do with trying to comprehend the past and working out how to negotiate the future—because I could hardly articulate it to myself.

Rainbow’s End Lauren St John 2007

From the day that we became friends—a date we solemnly marked while on shoe-cleaning duty by pricking our fingers and vowing to be blood sisters—Merina and I had only two obsessions, and neither of them involved study.

Rainbow’s End Lauren St John 2007

When we first arrived at Roosevelt, Merina, Jean, and I had more interest in horses than in boys, but that soon passed, and the walls of our dormitory filled up with posters of insipid white stars like Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett, and Andy Gibb, and Michael Jackson, who was still a handsome black man.

Rainbow’s End Lauren St John 2007