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| Africa. Time in Botswana |
My first test as new family member was helping organize and throw a baby shower. The party organizers cook all day then make a luxurious little nest for the mother to be, Kagiso (Ka HEE so) in the yard, then while she rests bring her all the food, drinks and gifts. Everyone is expected to offer some sort of advice or blessing (dependent if your a mother or not). Evidently, if you give really good advice (or if they can’t hear you (?)) you have to dance. Some how I ended up dancing for everyone.*
I was pleased when I got asked to sit with Kagiso, next to her ‘nest’ and be in charge of organizing the gifts she received and folding any diapers (nappies) she was given. I didn’t understand that this was a rather arduous task because all of the gifts are packaged in cloth diapers that had been safety pinned in a million places to make ‘wrapping paper,’ so I had to frantically unpin them, save the pins, fold them, then display them in an aesthetically pleasing manner (that last step seemed irrelevant till someone told me to make them “look nicer” and a rather surly older woman emphatically asked if I “even knew how to fold.”)
During the gift mayhem, a snake slithered up to the patio where the baby shower was taking place, everyone screamed and a woman violently and repeatedly hit the snake with what seemed to be a wheel from a wagon (as in a radio flyer type wagon) till it died. All this happened before I could respond or even set down some the nappies I was covered in.
I learned after the fact that this woman was so insistent on guaranteeing the decapitation because most of the snakes in Mochudi are indeed black mambas. “Apart from being considered one of the world's deadliest snakes, the black mamba is also one of the most feared snakes in Africa due to its potent venom, large size, and the ferocity of its attack” (thanks wikipedia). This also made my bathroom-snake run in significantly more frightening.
Geoff reminded me nightly to not leave the windows open because the snakes would come in.
The baby shower ended in too much red wine and fanta for both Tshepo and I.
Early Sunday morning, I woke up to the standard blaring top 40 hits (city and village a like). My “uncle” Buju had the same ring tone on his phone as Millie- so I didn’t even have to miss my daily dose of Jason DeRulo.
After our 5 hour church service all in Setswana (Whoa.) I explored Mochudi which consists of many tiny shops, two grocery stores, informal vendors, a million hair salons (none of which were willing to give me sweet corn-rows******) and the world’s quaintest library.
At night Geoff and I made his favorite dinner (Bologna Sandwiches and Hot Chocolate) and watched High School Musical 3; Senior Year while Peter watched the news. I was surprised when this all happened simultaneously in the same room. At the same time. 6 feet apart.
There are two televisions in the same room; logically this is because only one of them plays DVDs and one does not. The craziness of the developing nation never fails me. “Isn’t television beautiful?”***** (quote Geoff.)
The news and our movie watching did not curb Uncle Buju’s (Boo joo) blaring hip-hop jams either.
I should explain also, every room in the house has walls that are maybe 12 feet high and vaulted ceilings, but the walls don’t go to the ceiling. If this doesn’t make sense, just imagine, if you could climb up the twelve feet, you could climb over the wall and into the next room. Everything, everything is audible always. ( I actually would be jarred awake all week when the electricity would cut because the silence became so deafening.)
Generations, the Botswana soap and by some outrageous miracle (happenstance might be more appropriate) The OC season 4 (!) was being featured on SABC TV and became our family’s nightly selection. We ate dinner in front of the television every night, including the night that I cooked American cusine.
As a thank you for so generously and warmly hosting me, I wanted to cook one meal, they expressed interest in Italian-American food. So I settled on Fettuccine Alfredo, Caprese Salad and garlic bread. I went to the market, bought all the yummiest freshest things. I worked so long and I even only had one mishap in the kitchen (when I went to bake the garlic bread, I preheated the oven; not realizing until a horrific smell that it was used for storage. Baking is not such a common thing. Whoops.)
Geoff came in first to try the sauce (made from scratch- and it [I promise] was so good). One lick of the spoon, “OH yuck, this is not nice to me.” Evidently Geoff does not like Cheese- he got a bologna sandwhich. The rest of the family had similar (but far less extreme reactions). Granny just mixed in beet root and a bunch of Chakalaka (Choc Oh LAW ka - my favorite spicy salad.) Tshepo said, “mmm Hmmm it’s fine- I know this food because I made a lot of blue box**** in the U.K.” Seeing my face she added, “No no it is nice, it is just not what we eat- you don’t like our food either.” Fair enough.
After my comfort meal I slept the best I have in weeks.
Mid week I (alas!) found a really big bucket (REALLY Large) so I was able to bathe with my whole body in the bucket sitting down-much like a bath tub, rather than the stand and scoop method (which is proving to be both time/labor intensive and ridiculously messy- I have been getting water everywhere and frantically using anything available to clean it up before my family finds my puddles). Early in the week, circa 4:30 am, I was stewing in my tub when the electricity went out. This has been my single most flustered moment. Naked in the pitch black, need I remind you about le snakes?
Peter is a lecturer at Botswana Business College meaning I had the privilege of getting a ride into Gabs every morning at 5:30 commuting by car rather than spending the two hours it takes on public transport. Our morning rides became one of the highlights of my village stay. I have been advised to ‘live the questions now and perhaps [I] will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” I have accepted this but felt a lot of pain with the patience it requires to just let answers find you- patience is everything, everything here.
I think as a fellow foreigner, being from Kenya (or maybe because of the two years he and Tshepo spent in the UK) Peter was able to very objectively view the Setswana culture and offer a great amount of honest insight, and finally I lived my way into (at least a few) answers.
Friday morning I was woken a bit earlier than normal (i.e. before 4 am) to what sounded like rocks on our tin roof. (No one else woke up (!)) Outside I was greeted by insane thunder and lightening. Then the wet.
It was the first rain.
After I felt it on me, I sat on the porch of my village home watching, next to a fire, waiting for the water to boil, in the middle of the desert.
I listened to my ipod too. It was a good moment. So stay, don't go, 'cause I'm fading away.
The first rain in seven months.
I didn’t have class this particular Friday so Tshepo and Peter took me to the plot where they are building their house to do some work. When I inquired as to what sort of work we would be doing, Peter replied, “Ah Masego! The physical kind.” I had anticipated a fair amount of manual labor, but the addition of the African heat, made wheelbarrowing up hill nutz. (Mochudi is very hilly, especially when compared to Gabs.) My reward for being a good African worker was Chibuku, also known as shake shake. This is the native drink of choice, it is made of maize meal, water, sugar and yeast. Basically it is as if you started making break and then decided to put the dough in the bottom of a milk carton and fill it with water. Then let it sit till it becomes 4.0 % alc by vol. Mmmm. You have to shake it to mix the chunks up. I texted my friend Tino (who is from Zimbabwe) to tell him I was indeed drinking Chibuka and he replied “Ah yes drink and meal in one.” This is a true statement.
The weekend came a wedding and a funeral.
Friday night were preparations for the wedding. Tshepo told me to not work too hard because these were the “bad cousins;” evidently they have bad manners (I gathered this means they don’t follow the proper customs). Also, evidently not working to hard was very relative. I was invited to ‘help’ slaughter the cow, an invitation not afforded to any women, so defs not the thing to turn down. I am not sure if it was my inclination towards vegetarianism or the half liter of Shake Shake I had consumed but it was a rough time for my tummy during the ceremonial killing. All tears were held back, and like a champ (I think self congratulations are fairly warranted) I gracefully (sort of) ate part of the heart.
I feel newly kindred to the tshwana (Twan Ah = cow).
As the Mariri family continued to deconstruct the cow (yuck), Tshepo and I had to prepare Loputsi (Low poot SEE) which is a butternut squash salad- it tastes almost exactly like sweet potato pie (minus (unfortunately) the marshmallow.) The starch from the squash starts to make your hands burn and eventually crack (this is especially true when you are making enough for a 200 person wedding), so you have to keep dipping your hands in vegetable oil, a fine solution- except peeling a squash with a dull steak knife when your covered in oil is an exciting endeavour. My hands were bloodied and on fire within 20 minutes. But as stated, these were the bad cousins so it was only an hour and a half peeling session.
Women must wrap their heads and cover their shoulders for the funeral. My family was proud I looked so African. (So was I.)
The funeral started before sunrise at the house of Nthutsi’s mother, Mpho (Mm Po). It is similar in that there is a service, with various people speaking, Nthutsi is Mpho’s seventh child to bury, he was 25. She has two son’s still alive. When called to speak she said “I have nothing to say, we are burying every year- sometimes twice.”
An elderly Motswana woman was helping explain everything, kindly answering all of my questions. Finally I worked up the courage and asked how Nthutsi died and she said that she didn’t know, “maybe he was sick.” This was the same exact thing Tshepo had said to me earlier. It means he died from AIDs.
She proceeded to add that it’s good I ask so many questions, but to remember “some men don’t like that.”
They lowered the coffin while everyone sang traditional songs, men on one side, women on the other and the sun rose. By some miraculous happenstance, everyone can sing in these ultra complicated wonderful harmonies with no coordination. It was a very cloudy day (my third in 7 weeks.) Peter told me if it rains when you are buried it means you were a good person.
No one cried. It seems Africa is out of tears. Here they say Saturdays are for funerals. Saturdays are all the same.
When they began to fill the grave I couldn’t help but look to Mpho, no tears just silence.
At one point I noticed, the youngest brother wiping his face in his jacket collar. Afterwards he asked if I saw him wiping his eyes; he wanted to let me know that it was just the dust. I told him it was just the dust in my eyes too.
After what felt like an ordeal, I was emotionally and physically spent. Being greeted in the middle of a dirt road by our Africa adventure team, my soul was soothed. It feels quite nice to have that sort of camaraderie and to have, really a little family amongst African craziness. It was assumed that Rachel and Monica would be attending the wedding since they were now part of families that have close ties to my family (The host family) and we had arranged, much to the delight of Tshepo and Granny, to bring Adam, Axel and Nick.
As Masego Mariri, it was expected (since after all I share a surname with the Bride) that I would serve food, as well my female friends. It was pretty delightful and silly resulting in many minor miscommunications on appropriate portion size and only a slight incident of me dripping scalding beef on Rachel’s new dress.
There was a lot of eating, a lot of dancing and even more drinking of home made Chibuku. Adam and Axel participated the gift giving dance, where you dance in a line with your gift and make a big pile in front of where the bride will come out. Batsi had told us to get a knife, or a potato peeler (?) (we got the latter) as a present, which felt sort of...minimal... but it turned out to be the perfect gift. The Swedes proudly danced our present to the pile. I don’t think we understood how much we stand out until time in the village, it was all quite the spectacle at the wedding.
Our farwell night was concluded with Tshepo and Peter taking us Mokgowa out to the local hot spot Bee6.
Tshepo and Peter have already invited us back for fun in Mochudi.
I think we have discovered here that “...the only courage that is demanded of us: [is] to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.”******I am irrefutably experiencing the most strange, singular and most inexplicable moments and with each one am attempting to be my most brave.
I tried to explain on a very welcomed and appreciated phone call back to the states that sometimes I get this mental image of a little me walking around on a globe (or map) through a little Botswana. That is when I realize how far away I am. This visual was solidified when I watched the Botswana weather report on the news- which is exactly the same as at home, with the green screen and the little temperatures and tiny rain clouds, only rather than Washington state it is (yes, obviously) southern Africa.
10,064.9 miles away. I notice each one of them.
The village was amazing but viva las vegas. I am glad to be back.
Miss miss miss you.
Love
Jackie/Masego
I am pretty sure that they just wanted to see the Lekgowa dance (but Geoff said I looked like Shakira- perhaps because they were surprised I can hold my own when dancing or perhaps because I was dancing to the Waka Waka Africa song- either way I am satisfied)
* I am very curious to know if they will remember, or really know that my name is Jackie.
*** Blue box as in Kraft Mac n’ Cheese.
**** It is crazy that he asked this, because there is an extended portion on the romanticizing of the television in one of the novels I just completed for my African Lit class and a little girl from Ghana in 1965 claims television is the most beautiful thing in the world.
***** Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. Thank you Bone, I have been thoroughly moved.
****** Perhaps for the best.
There are way too many good quotes in this post. Good job.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Garrett. You are a beautiful and thoughtful story teller. All the details, of the people, the place, the oddities, what you're feeling and how you are transforming are exquisite and I (almost) feel like I'm there with you while I read this.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad the Letters are providing insight for your journey! I had a feeling they would. It seems like you are gaining a lot of strenght and courage on this trip.
Love Bone
......YOU ATE A HEART!!!!
p.s. we gotta skype soon