This article examines the protective measures and rites of blessing that residents of Diego Suarez use to keep their babies safe from harm and incorporate them into their respective religious and ethnic communities. I argue that new mothers, and their ‘water babies,’ are ‘acquiring bones’ (establishing themselves within the community) in ways that challenge the widely held perception that Malagasy practices around ancestors are primarily remembrance-oriented. By shifting our gaze away from death, and towards the family-specific ancestral practices around pregnancy and birth, we see that the process of ‘acquiring bones’ is as aspirational as it is retrospective. Moreover, securing one’s worth in society is not exclusively tied to adulthood activities or paternal ancestral lineages; instead it is a flexible process that begins in childhood when parents first instill in their children a sense of what it means to be a member of a particular family or religious community.

中文翻译：

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将“水宝宝”（Zaza Rano）变成“真正的人类”（Vrai Humains）

本文探讨了迭戈·苏亚雷斯 (Diego Suarez) 居民用来保护婴儿免受伤害并将他们融入各自宗教和种族社区的保护措​​施和祝福仪式。我认为，新妈妈和她们的“水宝宝”正在“获取骨头”（在社区中建立自己），挑战了广泛认为的马达加斯加人围绕祖先的做法主要是面向记忆的观念。通过将我们的目光从死亡转移到围绕怀孕和出生的家庭特定的祖先习俗，我们看到“获得骨头”的过程既是有抱负的，也是回顾性的。此外，确保一个人在社会中的价值不仅仅与成年活动或父系血统有关。