Long weekend at the Victoria Falls

Mosi-o-Tunya is the Smoke that Thunders is the Victoria Falls. Located on the border of Zambia and Zimbabawe, it is really quite special.

Some Smoke, definitely thundering

There was a variety of over-priced but very enjoyable activities. My mom and I went on a game viewing walk (we saw 5 out of the 9 white rhino left in Zambia!), very cool because the animals return your curiosity and allow you a lot closer than if you were in a car. This was followed by a sunset cruise down the Zambezi sipping Gin and Tonics and the next day, a treacherous trip to the Devil’s Pool-an unholy place to swim, at the very edge of the main falls. All that keeps you from being swept over the edge is a rocky ledge about 2 metres wide...

Leonard, our guide, diving into Devil's Pool

On Monday morning I hired a bike in Victoria Falls town (Zim side) and took it for a spin. Thanks to a little map provided by the bike shop I was able to find the ‘Big Tree’ a huge baobab tree in the Vic Falls National Park. I think it said it was about 1000 years old. I read later that baobabs were (are) held in high esteem partly for their fruit and partly because their flowers supposedly held the spirits of the ancestors. If anyone plucked a baobab flower off the tree, it was said that they would be eaten by a lion. I learnt this and various other interesting tid-bits back over on the Zambian side at the Livingstone Museum. What struck me about the information in the ethnography section was how folklore, myth and tradition are used for very functional purposes. The Nyami-Nyami or river god was purported to dwell in the turbulent Zambezi River and so people didn’t enter the waters or even the gorge (probably a good idea because of their incredible power and meant thriving wildlife populations in the gorge). Trees whose bark had been previously stripped for medicinal purposes were left alone because it was believed that if you too stripped bark off that same tree, you would contract the same disease as the first bark-collector (a great means for keeping trees healthy and thriving). People use mythology, folklore, ritual etc to explain, understand and perpetuate very important truths and ways of doing things, plus it’s more fun than simply telling your kids ‘don’t do that.’

The Big Tree

A dried up Baobab flower

 One of my favourite discoveries of my cycle around town was the COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) market. There is one in Lusaka too, where I’ve bought chitenge (fabric) but this one was especially great because of the piles of second hand clothes. From what I understand, piles of these used clothes arrive from the US and Europe and are donated as a means for income generation. You want vintage, you got vintage. Piles of flamboyantly coloured 80s men’s swimming shorts, perfect quality slacks and jeans, T-shirts with anything from “Wilson Family Reunion 1992” to lace or embroidery and even underwear. I’m a big fan of second hand shopping for various reasons and try to only buy used or South African manufactured clothing at home, so this was a real treat. For US$13 (around R100) I bought 2 pairs of shorts, a pair of black Levi’s skinny jeans, a t-shirt, a plaid button up shirt and a skirt. Feeling very pleased with myself I left the market and continued my cycle up the road into a residential area and then back down and around to the main road to marvel at Zimbabwean stone sculptures at the craft market.

COMESA market

Piles of second-hand clothes for sale

 One night in the hotel, as my mom was preparing her conference paper, I settled in to watch some ZBC (Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation) and AfricaMagic on the TV. Offerings on ZBC included music videos with a variety of footage of Bob Mugabe in the background of dancing musicians. Then there was a programme in a series highlighting the links and friendship between China and Africa. This particular episode was about the Tan-Zam railway. And even a documentary on a Chinese pop star, imperialism round two? Africa Magic had one of it’s perennial low-budget, questionably acted, Nollywood classics: a tale of love and desperation, of kidnap and rescue and the value of family love over money. All in all, edifying viewing.

Queues

I’ve been meaning to write for a while now and now I’ve eventually got around to it. I suppose since I only have 5 blog followers (2 of which are people I’ve never met and two of which are my parents...) it’s not really that  much of an issue.

I wanted to write about my theory of “queues.” I had this realisation about the Western-ness of queues whilst at Adventure City (or Adventure World, I can never get it right) Lusaka’s Water Park complete with super-fast red water slide, long mellow cruisey blue slide, various swimming pools and kiddie slides and more attention than a ‘mzungu’ in her swimming costume would care to deal with. Oh what it is to be exotic.

Anyway, I was standing at the top of the slide, watching a bit, I didn’t really want to go down the slide just yet, I was content to just stand for a while. There was a crew of young men waiting next to the slide as various people came up the stairs and went down the slide. There didn’t seem to be much of an order going on but after watching for a while, there definitely seemed to be some kind of understanding about who could go and when and why. So I came to the following conclusion: in the ‘Western’ world (used loosely, but you know what I mean) the quasi-sacred Queue functions under the belief that the best way to maintain order and distribute or allow access to something, when there are many people who desire it simultaneously, is on a first-come-first-serve basis. This system is regulated by the physical structure of a queue (a line formation) and corrects any stepping out of this physical line (from a polite ‘ahem’ to an ‘Excuuuse me, but there is a queue’).

The more African approach that I observed at the slides centred around need and a bit of resourcefulness. It was regulated by the faith that those wronged would speak up, and those in the wrong would accept being told off. What it seemed like was happening, not just ‘pushingin,’ but rather that there was an unspoken mutual understanding (just like the physical line of people that form a queue are in an unspoken agreement to stand in this way) that mostly, one waits in the general order that one got there but that one may go straight to the front, to the source of the goods or service, provided that one was in greater need (e.g. perhaps in an obvious hurry when others weren’t, or in a greater state of excitement about going down the twisty blue slide) or took a greater amount of initiative to do so. I also think that the understanding extends to include the regulating factor: if someone takes advantage of this arrangement, the others as a group will speak up and set him right.

Neither is perfect, in its most basic form, the former relies on a single unviolable concept: the Queue. It means that there is an easier way to manage a range of situations but on the down side it doesn’t allow for the specifics of a situation or accommodate special needs. The latter is more fluid and can thus be adjusted based on the situation and can be moderated democratically. However, if there are inequalities amongst those present (for example the kids sometimes had to wait longer before they could go down the slide because young adults would go in front of them) then it is not always possible for the situation to be fairly regulated. Just an interesting observation I thought.

Pastor D's studio

Background:

This is the latest installment in what has become a rather rollicking escapade . It begins a few weeks ago with a chance meeting with Richard (aka Big Rich) whilst I was walking down a busy street. He approached me, primarily because I was the only white person around, and began to tell me about how he is a musician and concluding that he is looking for a sponsor. Initially trying to keep walking and shake him off, I remembered an American women who’d I’d met since being here who does exactly that- supports local musicians. So I agreed to give her a copy of his CD and see what happened from there. Never that simple.

So this episode is a few weeks later, and I decided it was too fun not to write about. I find myself here, after 3 unsuccessful, yet interesting, visits to the recording studio/ pastor’s office/ simple tiled 2 room house to pick up the demo CD, still without any CD to show for it, but perhaps a bit of a story...

Characters:

Richard/ Big Rich: husky voiced (he says from drinking too much beer, I can believe it), probably middle aged, sinewy build, usually attired in pseudo-Rasta garb, good-natured guitar player, an interesting guy, favourite adjective is “massive.”

David (new character): the wonky toothed, more placid, younger brother and something of a trusty side-kick to Richard

Pastor D: the young female pastor at this church/recording studio

Pastor X (I just don’t know his name): fairly smooth and charming, somewhat serious, more into the recording studio side from what I can tell

Rachel: wide-eyed, honest, not sure what she actually does at the recording studio/ pastor’s office/ simple tiled 2 room house?

I get two calls from Richard: the first is in the morning, telling me to pick him up at Friday’s Corner at 9 hundred hours. “No, I am busy,” I say. “I can do this afternoon at 5.”

“Okey, okey,” he says, in the rushed clipped tone of someone who is on the brink of running out of scarce air time yet still wanting to be polite. 

The second is at 4:30pm. “I’m at Friday’s Corner, come and fetch me.”

“Ok,” I say, not liking being rushed, “I’ll come in 15 minutes.”

“Okey okey,” he says, “please hurry.”

So ten minutes later, I pull up to Friday’s corner (a small shop, bus stop and popular bar), and spot the red black and green of Richard’s beanie. He is clutching a beer bottle in one hand and his guitar in the other, waving me over (with the beer hand). Trailing behind is dreadlocked brother David, who I am to meet for the first time. I have my suspicions that Richard has not left Friday’s Corner since the time of phonecall number one. We drive the few blocks to the music studio whilst Richard tells me about his musical family, they all play music and Dave and him are going to be “massive.”

As we approach the studio, Richard starts to worry about getting rid of his beer bottle as there will be a pastor there. I suggest there may be a bin once we get through the gates, before we reach the studio, “Okey, okey,” and he unceremoniously tosses the beer bottle out the car window into the gutter, as I turn in the driveway to enter the gate.

We park and enter the studio. I recognise the two young pastors, but not the young woman sitting on the couch. A Zambian woman, she is dressed in a simple black knee length dress and those kind of woven, strappy sandles that you used to wear when you went for walks or to the beach as a kid (the kinds that have rubber soles and alternately dolphins on the straps or a kind of paisley-esque pattern). Unusual. I like her. She is secretary-like, or PR. She is talking on her phone headset about Pastor D so we do not immediately meet. On the wall there are two framed photographs, one of "His Excellency, President Michael C. Sata" and the other of the senior pastor of the church.

We sit down and the pastors say they need to have a meeting with Richard. After some confusion as to whether or not I need to stay for this, it is decided I do and that they will have the meeting outside. Richard, anxious that I might leave or get annoyed, thrusts the guitar into David’s hands and hastily commissions him to entertain me with a song. “Okey, okey, just stay for a few minutes. We will discuss quickly and then we can go.” 

“Ok I agree,” resigned to the fact that these things take time and enjoying the drama, I sit back on the couch. I’m looking forward to the talents of David, reminded of the last time we came here and the ride back in the car during which Richard played songs for us to sing along.

Once Big Rich and the pastors have left the room, Rachel has returned and we chat a bit. She has the kind of huge, earnest eyes that widen every time she says something she really means (apparently often). Dave, strumming a tune, asks her if she can sing and she, unhesitant, starts a simple tune that he follows with a few strums on the guitar. Gradually developing into the most beautiful gospel song I have ever heard: just a single clear voice and the simple complimentary notes floating off the guitar, supporting the vocals from underneath. On the next song I feel I must contribute and tap out a simple beat on the arm of the couch.
I’m not very musical.
Then Rachel asks if I can sing.

“No,” I answer.

She say, “why not?”

 I say, “well I mean, I can sing, I like to sing but I’m pretty bad.”

“ Who says?”

“All my friends. And you know that’s true coming from friends...”

“You can do anything you want if you really want to, there will always be people who will criticize you but you can achieve it if you are really determined.”
Not sure what to say to this, I nod in agreement.
“And I’m sure you will one day be the best of singers, I have no doubt about it.”

Hmm, she really hasn’t heard me sing. Nevertheless, David asks if I know Enrique Iglesias’ ‘Hero’ and I say of course, so he strums the opening chords and I, somewhat hesitantly, begin with “Would you dance, if I asked you to dance?....”
We sing it through and Rachel joins in. Then, the beginning to Bob Marley’s “Jammin’ ” follows but is interrupted by the return of the three from their meeting on the verandah.

Pastor D smiles officially, as if business has been taken care of to her satisfaction, and thanks us each individually for being there today. Richard takes the CDs from her and says we can go. I ask if everything has been resolved and get some kind of unclear answer containing the words “disagreement,” “conflict of views,” and similar. But the finality of the serene smile on Pastor D’s face ushers us out the door before I think to get a fuller story.

In the car, Richard tells me to switch off the car, he wants to explain to me. I leave it to idle, feeling defiant, as he begins telling me his slightly slurred version of the preceeding meeting, and the “obstacle to his music.” The gist of his side of the story is that a while back, he did all the music for a recording of an album for which the head pastor did the vocals. I didn’t follow the whole thing but the long and the short is that they think he owes them money for CDs that were distributed and he says he does not because it is his music. This is, according to him, the reason that there has been difficulty getting the music from the studio. It seems there was some arrangement made about paying back the rest of the money before he could retrieve his data disk (with his recording on). As we head back towards Friday’s Corner Richard states adamantly: “I don’t want no-one telling me it’s his music. It’s my music and it’s massive.” I drop them off at Friday’s corner, after refusing repeated invites to come in and meet people. I say next time, I’m in a rush but it’s mainly because I’m tired and don’t feel like being a spectacle today.

It took me until the drive home to realise that I’m not even sure if the CDs we got today have any of his music on... Upon my return home, I check them on the stereo to find some other recording of a female pop vocalist.

?

So the quest continues, I hope that in the next instalment I’ll be able to tell you that I have successfully acquired Richard’s demo tape, but clearly I can’t make any more promises.

Leaving home again

Dear friends family and internet strangers, after a lovely month and a half at home in Cape Town, a time filled with family and friends and appreciation of the irreplaceable sense of home, I arrived in Zambia on Monday 10 October. After a 3 hour delay in Cape Town (yes, that’s also after I woke up at 4:30am to be in time) and a breakfast courtesy of the airline, I boarded my flight to Livingstone. An endless expanse of dry brown. Really, that’s the best way I could describe the majority of the flight. However as we approached Livingstone, things got more interesting with the Zambezi sluggishly snaking below and a glimpse of the Victoria Falls, or Mosi-oa-Tunya, smoking in the distance.

Livingstone airport: crisp, colonial, green gardens. The airport swarms with tall, lithe, beautiful, dark-skinned men wearing their orange-airport-official vests that hang off regal frames, frames that move with serene gaits. Frames that seem somehow strange in orange-airport-official vests.

As we wait to board the plane, the well dressed little boy of about 5 or 6 sitting across from me strikes up conversation: “My daddy’s going to buy for me a new car,” he says in English. He has this strange habit when he talks; lifting his arms up to his sides, at the sides of his face, and raising the index finger of his fisted hand up and down, up and down. Like little rhythmical goalposts surrounding his speech. He also followed me into the ladies bathroom to the dismay of his mother.

People on our flight are somehow friendly towards one another. In the queue in front of me a man chats to a lady, says he recognizes her. He is slick, business-like. He wears nice sun glasses. He strikes me as some kind of Man of Questionable Morals.

Basically, after being loaded off, luggage and all we all head through customs, pay $11 airport tax (which Man of Questionable Morals passive-aggressively debates; in the way that powerful men do; with the airport officials: “My good man....(why the hell should I pay this? or similar)” and are herded back onto the exact same plane with almost all the exact same people. Man of Questionable Morals jokingly proclaims once we are all back on the (less than half full) plane “We pay $5.50 to walk in the airport and then $5.50 to walk back out!” May he’s not so Questionable, maybe he’s just used to this.

The flight from Livingstone to Lusaka is short. Leaving the airport, I get my first taste of the town I’ll be spending most of the next 2 months in. The airport and outside are surprisingly quiet and peaceful. Maybe it’s to do with the afternoon rain clouds brewing in the sky. There are plenty of interesting things and people to look at but no hustle, no chaos. I am reminded of the mayhem of Lagos airport, granted I was only about 12 at the time. But still, I was expecting something more like that: a wall of heat hitting you as you exit the vaguely air-conditioned airport and a swarm of money-changers and porters looking as though they might do the same. But no, Lusaka, on first impressions seems distinctly “chilled.” Joan and her daughter Maya come to pick me up, they are the family; old friends from East London; that I’ll be staying with here.

Other first impressions of Lusaka as we drive home: The streets are wide and un-potholed. Dry. Lots of coppery-brown. Not chaotic. Many billboards. There are so many South African chains and brands here, I’ve never really thought of it before but we are like the USA of Africa.

Also, I keep getting called ‘Madam.’ It’s weird, I haven’t been called that in South Africa. Ever, I think?

The Littlefield house is a big, old house on huge grounds in an ex-pat area. The house and the area bring back memories of my time in Nigeria with my family when I was 12. Not always comfortable memories, a place I didn’t really understand and felt like retreating from.

After a somewhat uneasy first day, I feel like I’ve settled down to do what I set out this year to do: be selfish. To read my books, do some study, think and observe. I’ve been going for a long walk or run every day, trying to map out the place in my head a bit. I discovered a yoga DVD in Joan’s bookshelf which I’ve been doing and loving (yes, I’m doing yoga from a DVD...). Other than that, I’ve been working on my other housewife skills such as figuring out ways to trick the kids into eating more vegetables or distract them from the TV. And of course watching So You Think You Could Dance (advantage of SA being the America of Africa- I get to watch programmes on M-Net! Albeit American programmes...), bonus since I thought I’d have to catch it all up when homeJ

The rain came on the first afternoon, the kind of thunderstorm rain that releases this lovely dusty smell from the dry red ground.

More to follow...

A Rainy Saturday

I thought I’d describe a typical weekend day at home with the Mdaniswas. To give an idea of the rhythms of my life here and what a days comings and goings include, that is when I'm home for the whole day and not, for example visiting friends at the hospital accomodation. I say a typical weekend day because week-days are never typical and I tend to often get home in the late afternoon for a bit of hanging out and then supper. OK, on with it then...

SIVUKA, SIBASE We wake up, we start a fire

General wake-up time is with the sun, which at the moment, since its winter, means around 6:45/7 am. Thembie and Lutho wake up much earlier in the week (4 or 5am) because Thembie has to go to school about 20 minutes taxi-ride away and has to wash and feed baby Lithemba before that. Lutho being the youngest, and a bit of a busy-body is just up and about helping her to light the fire etc. So, first thing in the morning, a fire is lit and stoked to boil water for washing.

SIHLAMBA We wash

Once the water is boiled, I pour some into my “kom” and take it into my room where I wash. I’ve grown rather fond of bucket bathing, and also splash a lot less all over my room now than I used to. It’s incredibly water-efficient: I reckon we use about 2 litres of water each, boiled on a kettle on the fire outside and then poured into a “kom,” round washing basin, and I feel just as clean if not cleaner than had I showered. I was discussing this the other day with a friend, a volunteer from the UK, who lives up on the old mission grounds. They’ve been having problems with their shower of late and so often resort to bucket bathing. She also said that she felt cleaner this way and the theory we came up with is that when you bucket bath you actually have to be pro-active about making yourself wet and thus soapy (since you’ll be using a sponge or facecloth to spread the water and soap simultaneously around) whereas when you shower you sometimes end up just standing under the water for a while thinking “ah, this is nice and warm” and then get out without realising you barely made soap-to-skin contact. Anyway, it’s just a theory and maybe it’s rather that you smell fresher because it’s tricky to wash all the soap off, but I’m OK with that too!

I wash in my room but for the younger boys, its in the main hut (a communal area for cooking and relaxing, kind of a kitchen come lounge come twins’ bedroom). Privacy, as I know it, is not a big part of Xhosa culture. I think privacy has become a bit of a western luxury (and certainly something that I miss from time to time). I think that this stems out of necessity: when you have limited resources and space both have to get shared, resulting in a generally more communal attitude. In this case, everyone has to wash in the mornings and there are only 3 “koms.” Aside from me, the two oldest sons and mama (who can pull rank when need be); no-one has the option of either their own room to wash in, a bathroom set aside for that specific purpose, or kicking other people (who are trying to eat breakfast, hunt for school shoes or iron their shirts) out. So, washing happens in and amongst all of the above. On the weekend, washing is not so imperative and sometimes doesn’t happen.

SITYA We eat

On weekends, we tend to have tea in the morning and then a late morning meal and a mid-afternoon meal with maybe some of the left-overs from that in the evening. The content of meals varies little, even with the time of day. Starch, starch and starch. Cheap and fills you up. Today it was rice and imifino (varies kinds of wild green leafs which grow in the garden and look like small weeds to the untrained eye) which is a common meal, or pap and imifino. The other meal we eat a lot of is umnqusho (samp and beans, delicious on a cold day). That is about the extent of the family’s diet. Every now and then we’ll have cabbage and on special occasions, when I’ve brought visitors round, we’ll have “soup” i.e. soya mince with tomato and onion, cabbage and a starch (pap or rice). Meat is maybe a once-a-month treat.

SIDLALA (AMAKWENKWE AYAGEZA...) We play (the boys are silly...)

Today was really cold and rainy so most of the time was spent indoors. I’d borrowed a digital camera for the past week and so much fun was had by all taking photos. Mama went off in the morning to a weekend-long funeral. I’m not sure the whole story but I think it’s preparations for a funeral that is to happen next weekend. So that left me, Thembie, baby Lithemba, the twins, Sihle and Lihle and the little boys: Buntu and Lutho. An example of the variety of rainy day activities we did today:

·         “7’s”: a ball game my mom taught me when I was younger and kept me busy for many a rainy holiday day. You have to bounce a tennis ball against a wall first 7, then 6 then 5 and so on times each time doing a progressively more difficult trick before you catch it.

·         Card games: bringing a pack of cards with me was the best idea ever and they’ve done some serious mileage. Spoons or “Amacephe,” Go Fish “Hamba Loba” and a game the boys taught me called “Top 10” have been the favourites thus far.

·         More iintsomi: I also borrowed a dictaphone from a friend who is here doing PhD research so that I could record some of the stories. We all really enjoyed this and I hope to type some up as well as copy them onto a CD to give to the family.

·         Hand-clapping games: as taught to me by Lutho and Buntu.

·         General mutual terrorising by the boys as they grew progressively more restless due to the rain

SIXOVA ISONKA, SIPHEKE IPIZZA We knead bread, we cook pizza

preparing the fire for the pizza



My, albeit, few requests to help cooking have thus far been met with amused exchanges between mama and Thembie and a, I sense, slightly reluctant agreement and everytime I do do something cooking-wise I get endlessy praised for knowing how to cook when what I actually did was manage to beg Thembie for the stirring stick and stir a pot of pap for a minute or 2, or clean out a big cast-iron “imbiza.” Mostly, I’ve given up trying to cook, a)because I often get home past cooking time in the week and b) because cooking for 10 is no joke so I can understand why they might be reluctant for amateur interference. Anyway; today I managed to get Thembie to let me help make the bread and was determined to show her that I have actually kneaded bread before. She was eventually impressed by my “xova-ing” before retrieving the bowl and continuing as master chef which admittedly she does very well. Xhosa bread, as it is known, is just standard white bread dough which is then rubbed with oil, put in a cast-iron imbiza and cooked on an open fire with coals on top of the lid as well as underneath. When cooked, and whilst still warm, Thembie rubs the thick crust with a mixture of sugar and water. We took off a small piece of dough and experimented making a kind of pizza, really just a flat-bread-rubbed with oil and laid flat in a smaller pot over the fire. It worked out really well actually.

SIHLELI We sit

There’s always a lot of sitting and chatting going on, often punctuated by Sihle intermittently throwing the cat on some unsuspecting victim’s back or grabbing baby Lithemba and making him dance or sitting him down on some or other obscure place such as his shoulder or on top of the water bucket. The twins also had a part of a newspaper-the advert section and were looking through at all the products. It’s one of the things that I remember quite clearly from my first week living here, crouching over a grocery store advertising insert with the younger boys and being asked what certain products were, poring over the multitude of colourful things one could buy. Lihle was looking at all the products and saying what he’d do with each one-treadmills, cellphones, laptops and pooltables. We also saw a picture of cheese and I said how I like it so much and then Sihle began teasing the little boys that they’d never eaten cheese (which they indignantly claimed they had; I think he was joking but I don’t think they’d have had it very often). Just the thought that they could have never had cheese was strange to me and Thembie said she didn’t like cheese (even stranger, yes??).

At times I wonder how much of a Heisenberg-ian effect I’m having: you know, changing what you observe by observing it. Becoming a part of the family must, even if slightly now since we have all become comfortable around one another, change the dynamic. The strangeness of my presence must definitely have changed the daily rhythms in some ways, even if just slightly. For example, we’ve spent a LOT of time playing cards and since I brought the pack of cards, I wonder what was done in that time before? Also I wonder if people, especially the little boys, spend more time at home because I’m here? The twins go off to play soccer fairly regularly and some evenings go to watch wrestling and Generations on TV at a nearby house with a generator but otherwise, a lot of time is spent together at home. This definitely has it’s pros and cons. Pros are a strong family unit and quality time spent together without an agenda, but the cons include people not having separate interests or developing separate talents. I know for myself, and this obviously has a lot to do with the culture in which I’ve been brought up in, I need the space of my work in the week or my own room to read at night, the space to be my own person. This is no new observation, “Western” cultures are caricaturised as individualistic whilst African as communalistic (not sure if all of the former are actually words, but I'm sure the meaning is understood). However, this seemingly different notion of personhood intrigues me.  

SILALA We sleep

This evening I went up to the hospital accommodation to babysit the kids of some doctor friends of mine but  most evenings at home, we go off to our separate beds around 7ish. Thembie, baby Lithemba, mama and the little boys share a bedroom. The two oldest sons each have their own rooms. I have my own room and the twins sleep in the communal hut once everyone has gone off.

Rhythms of the day and time are very different here. It’s been a challenge and learning experience for me, who is quite a busy-body and semi-obsessed with the “constructive” usage of time, to explore different conceptions of the above. All in all, I thought today whilst chasing Lutho around with a bucket of water ready to splash him, that I‘m going to miss these rainy Saturdays.

Me and Mama Nonyaniso

"Kwathi ke kaloku ngantsomi..."

On Sunday night I was introduced for the first time to the tradition of “iintsomi.” “Iintsomi” are basically stories, but form part of an ancient Xhosa folklore tradition. An “intsomi” (singular) can be an old story or one that is just made up by the teller on the spot. The purpose of “iintsomi” is obviously night-time entertainment (I read that children are told that one can grow horns if they tell “iintsomi” during the day- I suppose a clever way of deterring kids from pestering for stories during working hours. I don’t know if this is so common anymore as the next day, whilst walking to the shop, little Lutho recounted the previous night’s intsomi in broad daylight); but also seems to often have a moral or life lesson built into it or an explanation for perhaps why a certain animal is the way it is.

My favourite one was an old, well-known “intsomi” about ‘Sinyologondwana’ (not 100% sure of the spelling of that), which from what I gathered is a fictional animal; and a small cheeky child called Nomvulazana. I’ve asked Thembie to write it up for me so I hope to put it up here soon.  It had some beautiful parts that were sung and involved little Nomvulazana being swallowed by a frog (don’t worry, she was later regurgitated at her parents’ home)!

Most “iintsomi” start with a standard opening line, the one I heard most often was  “Kwathi ke kaloku ngantsomi” and then the narrative unfolds to end too in a standard ending “Phela, phela ngantsomi.” I liked this template of an opening and conclusion. Not only does it frame the story well (and save the teller from an awkward “ahem...that’s the end”); but it invites the listener into the “iintsomi” world for a while. Silence fell as those magical words that every child longs to hear are uttered “Kwathi ke kaloku ngantsomi...” and the story begins, audience captivated as if spell bound, to be released by only upon hearing the next magical phrase: “phela, phela ngantsomi.”

All round, it was a pretty special evening. After the first “intsomi,” 8-year-old Lutho asked me to tell an intsomi that I knew so I began a fairly dodgy rendition of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (which became Xhosified and little-boy-ified to sound something like: “Gaw-dee-loks”). He loved it, despite my poor story-telling skills and massive improvisation halfway through (Goldilocks visiting the bedroom twice because I forgot that she had to be found sleeping AFTER she’d eating the porridge, oops...).

Last night we began another “iintsomi” session. This time mama was home and she told a long and lovely one. I was fascinated by how captivated everyone was,and how quickly we all huddled round, even the twins (who are 15 year old  teenage boys) and not a word was uttered the entire length of the story, except for sporadic group efforts to explain certain words to me. Sihle, one of the twins, succeeded mama’s “intsomi” with some progressively silly “iintsomi” that he concocted (typical for his mischievous sense of humour), primarily to goad his 2 younger brother’s. In the one, Buntu got cheated into receiving a bag full of snakes. The twins and I thought they were very funny but mama, Thembie and the little boys weren’t terribly impressed  My dad once told me of a book about “Shadows” and their place in a traditional African homestead. I’m not sure the details of the book or what it said about shadows but I did think of the idea last night as we sat together telling and hearing stories, lit only by a single paraffin lamp. I thought as I looked at Sihle’s face, only the side silhouette of his mischievous smile fully visible, that shadows were so integral to the story-teller. Even in my attempt to tell an “intsomi,” I felt somewhat protected by the semi-darkness and in this felt more free to tell my story and not be shy or embarrassed.  Shadows are an important characteristic of night-time communication. The dynamic is different when you can’t fully see the other person or people, when their face, body and even words are softened by the slide and settle of shadows.

Phela, phela ngantsomi...

First things first...

So, having been here for almost 5 months I realise it is quite late to start writing a blog. However, seeing as my time to leave is rapidly approaching, I began to reflect on the myriad experiences I’ve had, things I’ve learnt and people I’ve met during my time in Zithulele, Transkei, and wondering how I could consolidate all this somehow. A brief summary of where I am and what I'm doing: I've been living in the former Transkei region in the Eastern Cape. Incredibly rich in history, natural beauty and resources, the Transkei is deperately poor materially. I've been living with a Xhosa family, the Mdaniswas in their mud-brick homestead in a village called Zithulele, learning to speak Xhosa and experiencing a different way of life. We are very near to an old mission hospital called, aptly, Zithulele Mission Hospital which is a thriving rural hospital, currently growing from strength to strength. I've also been working for an NGO called Jabulani Rural Health Foundation, which was established by some of the long-term doctors here. 

I think it must be a normal human reaction when we experience something novel, out of the ordinary or mindset-shifting: we want to figure out some way to pin it down, order all the thoughts and experiences and perhaps share some of it with other people. This is how I’ve arrived at the point of writing a blog. Despite the undeniable self-indulgence of splashing my opinions and vanities all over cyber-space, I’ve decided to venture into the blogging world; write what I like and trust that you, reader, will be discerning enough to just click that convenient little red cross on the top right hand corner of your screen when you’ve had enough of my waffling!