In a way which is in no sense adventitious,the relationship between an anthropologist and hisinformant rests on a set of partial fictions half scen-through.[I]deally, communication between a fieldworkerand the communities he worked with should continue for longtime spans, so that it is possible to return for further information.Bebe (Malagasy for grandmother) arrived home in the late afternoon, holding a rope tied around the neck of a male goat. She had come from a market ten miles down the coast, away from the market at Androka Vaovao where the ethnographer had located his ethnographic research. Buying the goat at a different market was worth the effort to Bebe. She had avoided paying the white foreigners' price: the tripling or quadrupling of the locals' price charged to vazaba (white foreigner). The ethnographer was asked not to come along, not to make pointless the buying trip. Before she had left for market, he had given her money for the estimated price of a young mature goat. People in Androka would hear, eventually, of her purchase, which was fine to her. Going to a distant market indicated to her neighbors that she was not in the mood to be extorted with higher prices every time she bought something for her foreigner dependent “offspring.” Several months earlier, she had first referred to the ethnographer as her offspring, zanako, when he had given her a lump sum, a two-month advance, for room and board.