Small things mean a lot when life is reduced to the simplicity of just getting by each day. Last night I had a dinner date with a British woman who is doing volunteer language training here, with a group called Mondo Challenge. She brought along another volunteer from the US, newer to the village, as well as their supervisor from Arusha. Joseph joined us (to ensure there would be someone to walk me home in the dark after dinner) and so it turned into quite the little party. And, surprise, there was fried chicken on the menu (lately, chicken seems to appear no more frequently than once every 2 weeks, unless I special order it a few days ahead). In addition, for the first time I've ever experienced, they were frying up some tilapia fish from Lake Victoria. What a feast! Especially with a big heap of chipsi (fries) on the side.
Today little Arnold, who's probably almost two years old and one of the children who's been absolutely terrified by the very sight of me (happens about 20% of the time I'd guess) was finally won over by patience and toffee. He's now willing to look in my general direction, if not to look me in the eye, wave bye-bye and say Bye Jotu. One down...
And, today I decided to get tough with the stove. I sent Maali the askari off to buy me some kerosene and new wicking, as the latter seemed to be the source of a lot of concern when anyone would look at the stove. Armed with my multi-tool and the helpful advice of Mama Farrajah, the beast was dismantled, reassembled, refuelled, and is now behaving reasonably well. I was in a stay-at-home mood this evening so I skipped out on the usual trek to the village and ended up cooking ramen noodles with a can of tuna fish dumped in. Not gourmet fare, but my pantry (aka plastic bag) of supermarket food from the city is not very well stocked. Besides, just the fact that I was eating something different from the usual fare made it taste pretty darned good.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow. First thing in the morning Mary, our TEMBO librarian, is hosting a very special ceremony for her daughter Happyness. She has worked very hard to put together an Alternative Rite of Passage ceremony, as her daughter is now at the age when, (despite the process being officially illegal in Tanzania) her daughter would normally be circumcised as she enters womanhood. Mary travels throughout the region giving seminars about the problems of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), trying to spread the word throughout the Maasai community about the inherent dangers in this process, and discussing alternatives. As has been done in other communities (though tomorrow will be a first for Longido), groups are working hard to promote these alternative ceremonies -- much of the tradition is retained...the girls are still taken aside and taught what they need to know by their mothers and female relatives, there is a large celebration, gifts are given...all the good bits remain, but the actual act of circumcision does not take place. I've been called upon to make my first official speech, and am hoping to win the crowd over with my introductory 5 lines of weak Kiswahili. Unfortunately, this all starts at 7am, mostly because that's the only hour the District Commissioner could fit into his schedule, and it's important that he attend to demostrate his support for this new ceremony to all in attendance. Yikes, this means I'll need to be up before 6am if I want enough time to heat some bathwater and toss back a little coffee. I've had to temporarily return my large-sized thermos jug to its owner for a few days so I can't make the necessary preparations tonight.
And so, I'd best put this posting to bed.
Continuing...next day. I just strolled down to the village in the sweltering mid-afternoon heat, hoping to check my email and submit this blog post. Unfortunately only 2 people have the key to the office which holds my precious dial-up connection. One is in Nairobi today, the other, nowhere to be found (which is rather hard to pull off in a village this size). Oh well, tomorrow may prove more fruitful, and meantime I'll just carry on.
The ceremony was really something to see. But first, let me digress (and the delay in getting around to describing the event will be fitting...you'll see) and tell you a little bit about "African time". An old aboriginal friend of mine back in Canada, used to excuse his frustrating perpetual lateness by sayng that he ran on "In'jun time". Well, let me tell you...he had nothing on this community. First of all, when someone tells you an hour to meet, you need to double check whether that's Tanzanian time or English time. The two clocks are different. Here, the morning begins at 6am with the sun, so for example the invitation I received for this morning's ceremony said 1:00 asubuhi (morning). That in itself could lead to sufficient confusion, BUT, it gets way more difficult when you toss in the idea that almost nobody here is even remotely time-conscious. I probably drive the locals crazy. They ask me to arrive at their home at some fixed hour and golly, I appear at that time, usually to find them in some state of semi-undress, only beginning to prepare for my arrival. (Some of you know, I've never been very savvy about the concept of arriving fashionably late).
So...this morning I ran around by candlelight heating bathwater, making coffee, packing up things for the ceremony, trying to find Joseph because I'd been entrusted with all of the office keys last night and he hadn't come by to pick them up yet, and promptly at 6:50 as discussed, I was on Tina's doorstep ready to walk together to the 7:00am event. To her credit (the poor woman is getting used to my crazy punctuality) she was only minutes away from being ready to go. We managed to arrive at Mary's home shortly after the appointed time and found everyone in the process of setting up the yard for seating, making streamers, firing up pots for food, beginning to dress the girls for the ceremony and such. We were ushered indoors to chat with everyone and wait. The previously mentioned District Commissioner, who had called for this early start time to begin with, showed up at about 8:30, and things started to swing into action.
The women gathered inside the house and laid out a stiff cowhide that is traditionally used to perform the circumcision on. Happyness was put through a simulation of how she would normally be held by the women during the actual act (no knives, I promise, and I do have pictures of a beautiful smiling young girl quite unperturbed by all of this), then, wrapped in a kanga (like a sarong, worn by all women here as an overskirt or apron when they're doing cooking, cleaning etc.) to symbolize her new womanhood, and taken outside to greet the crowd. I was then sent to join the head table and after a few introductory remarks, it appeared that speeches were to begin. Alas, the DC decided that since it was so early in the morning, there hadn't yet been time for a sufficiently large group to gather, in order to justify him making a speech. He declared that we would take a break and reconvene an hour later, at 10:00am. So, Tina and I headed back through the fields to her home for chai and an opportunity to sort out childcare for the rest of the morning. Back at 10:00 and hey, no surprise here, the DC had sent someone to assess the crowd and it still wasn't up to par so he delayed again. I think it was close to 11:00 when he finally appeared and things started up again. A groups of young girls, probably a few years ahead of their circumcision dates sang songs and did a little drama about how they didn't want to be put through the traditional ritual. And then, the speeches...I can only tell you that some folks here really have the gift of the gab, as my mom used to say.
Shortly after noon, I stood to give my quickie congratulatory speech and then had to beg off and leave. By this time I'd been frying in direct sunlight way too long and was near collapse. A quick goodbye to our hosts, a moment to give Happyness a little gift, and we were off. Of course everyone was concerned that I was going to miss the food, but I'd honestly reached the end of my heat-tolerance. The highlight of the morning for me, came when one of the elder women who has obviously been performing FGM for many years stood and said she would never do so again. Hopefully, today marked a real point of change which will spread rapidly through the community. Just so you know, it is now 6 pm and I can still here the boombox pounding from the general direction of Mary's house. I expect that all afternoon there have been new arrivals and that this party will last long into the evening as friends and relatives from throughout the area come and go.
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