Minding my ن s and ب s

It has been so cool lately that I feel like we have all been making up for those sleepless, sweat-drenched nights of a few months ago. The sunrise hardly makes a ripple on the surface of my sleep in the mornings, and throughout the day vague memories of dreams drift across my mind in fragments – pieces of the kind of lives lived only under miles of deep slumber. Even Asad only stumbles onto the back porch well after breakfast, bleary-eyed and groggy and Nimir, who has recently struck up an affair with the pretty black and white cat next door, is dead to the world until at least three o’clock in the afternoon. Only the chickens seem to be willfully up at a reasonable hour these days, and all nine of them follow us with an air of disgust from tent to bathroom to kitchen until they get their breakfast of sorghum and sesame seeds.

We’ve bumped our language lessons up to four times a week now (which may be a more rational explanation for my increased desire for sleep.) Arabic language learning continues to be the source of my greatest sense of accomplishment and my deepest discouragement. There are days in conversations when all the “random” questions fall just right and gullible people exclaim, “Wow, you know Arabic so well!” And then there are those days when the most basic and childlike request is so completely void from my vocabulary and grammatical awareness that you would never in your wildest dreams imagine I have lived here for a year. (And that is not false modesty.) Sometimes I console myself with the thought that learning a new language in our case has come complete with a new script that goes from right to left and a twenty eight letter alphabet, each of whose symbols have three unique forms. Though I know we sound like eight year olds trudging our way through Fun With Dick and Jane (in our case Ahmed and Zainab, actually), we really can read a lot of things now, albeit belabored. And the other day, when our teacher asked simple questions to which we wrote out full-sentence answers on lined paper, he could read our answers, even through his chuckles. So we are making progress, though I often worry it’s slower than it should be. (I should clarify that I am speaking only for myself here. Being married to a freak-of-nature-language-learner is a two-sided coin. And I say that with the deepest affection.) One thing that eases my mind however, especially on bad language learning days, is to think of how much better I will be at teaching other adults how to read and write because of this experience. I don’t remember becoming literate the first time I did it. But I am quite certain this second go around will stick with me for quite awhile. From now on, I will always have great admiration and empathy for that person awkwardly grasping a pen, tongue sticking out as they shakily struggle to curl an unfamiliar shape. Because right now, that person is me.

Couch

Two weeks ago, we dragged ourselves into the compound covered in mud, soaked to the bone and freezing cold after a crazy drive home from our trip out West. The drive back to hours longer than it should have as black cotton mud caked our wheels solid about every kilometer, locking us into immobility. Even after the guys scraped tens of pounds of mud out of the wheel wells and we could continue inching our way down the road, it often took two of us to fight the steering wheel into place so we wouldn't go careening off into the bush. Our poor little golf-cart-on-steroids was probably scared into performance by the sight of dozens of other vehicles half swallowed in mud and abandoned until the dry season. Altogether we counted one lorry, one tractor, two tractor trailers and six motorcycles- all casualties of the rainy season roads. Since being back we've decided that the next few months will probably be more wisely spent in office work, language learning and home repairs than travelling.

So, we've spent the last few weeks working on our little house. Our teammates flew in on a chartered flight with supplies a few days ago and I honestly felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder greeting Pa as he came in on the wagon. Not only did we have a few boxes of peanut butter, olive oil, cornmeal, shortening, vinegar, spices (and yes, Nutella) but we also had a COUCH! I feel so materialistic saying this, but I have to confess, this chunk of wood and cushioning has changed my world. I love having a couch! It's a futon actually, a very blasé piece of unoriginal craftsmanship purchased at the East African equivalent of Wal-Mart, and a few character-adding scratches show it had a rough trip in the back of the Cessna Caravan. But setting it down in our living room you would think we were looking at an 18^th century French armoire. We have a couch. We can sit on it and read a book in the evenings. We can welcome guests into it for a cup of tea. We can even take a nap there on rainy Sunday afternoons. A couch. I had no idea it would be such a big deal.

I have also been enjoying my newly rearranged kitchen. It is now separate from the dining room/living room and my shelves are painted. I have been enjoying cooking so much more now that I have more space, privacy and a prettier view of the little mountain. I remember when my kitchen was the front porch of our tent and my stove was a little camp burner. When we moved into this building with nothing more than a few trunks and a set of plastic chairs and table I felt like we had moved into a mansion. And now I have a gas stove and oven, gas refrigerator, solar electricity and a pantry full of things to eat other than lentils. It's amazing how really
simple living can make fairly simple living seem so luxurious. Or maybe more amazing is how quickly luxurious living can become discontenting (I don't know if that is a word but it is the one I want to use). Hmmm...

I promise though, all I need to be happy is my Nutella.

Garin

Friday July 2, 2010

Bryan and I started out the day with an invigorating hike up the small rocky mountain within footsteps of Abdul's front door. The enormous boulders looked like they had been unceremoniously dumped out of some giant pail, making me feeling like a character from Gulliver's Travels as we scrambled over them in our climb to the top. From the summit, we could see dozens more of these mountains on the blue-green expanse of horizon, looking like piles of pebbles in a child's sandbox.
When we reached the mountain where Garin was being held, I was initially disappointed to see many clusters of only dozens of people, not the "hundreds" I had begun to expect. Though it was late afternoon, the time the festivities were set to begin, most people were still busy cooking, dressing their children, or sitting around large pots of home-brewed sorghum beer getting happier and happier. Bryan was invited to sit with a group of men under a huge baobab tree while I was ushered to a hut where women were busy making themselves beautiful. In the midst of an intoxicatingly different world, I was amused by how familiar the preening and fawning in front of small plastic mirrors was to me. Take away the thatch roof, drone of a Nilotic language and the swarms of flies and I could have been back in my college dorm room before a formal. In fact, I was kicking myself for not having though to bring some of my own jewelry or at least dangly earrings as I watched the women fasten inches of colorful beads alongside brass bangles or insert sickle nose-rings into their nostrils. Hair was branded up with cowry shells and beads and skin was thoroughly massaged with oil and strong perfume. Older women had strands of flattened coke bottle tops attached to their elbows that clinked pleasantly when they moved. Women held each other's squalling babies, sometimes three to a lap, while putting finishing touches on hair or fastened jewelry in hard to reach places. In the dim light of the hut I was surprised at how effectively I seemed to blend into the mud wall I was leaning up against. That sensation is rare here, and I both savored it and mourned it a little bit. Observing the every-day intimacy of these women as they preparing for the occasion was a great privilege. I loved being able to see and hear the things I did. But I felt very much like an outsider. This obviously is only right considering that is exactly what I am, and to a certain degree, will always be. Still, I envied the sisterhood of the moment.
Hours passed and eventually, the buzz of energy around me seemed to intensify. Someone poked their head into the hut and as soon as their eyes were adjusted enough to see me, said "Come on. It's time to go." Bryan and Abdul along with several other friends were waiting outside and we began walking out of the village towards the far side of the mountain. On the way we received several quick tips, which we appreciated knowing absolutely nothing about what was about to happen. The advice ran something as follows: Don't have anything on your head –even your sunglasses, Bryan – or you might get captured. If you dance, it's very important to keep time with everyone else or you might fall down. Always carry your bom in your right hand (a traditional wooden hunting stick obligatory for the occasion). If anyone rushes at you with their bom, don't run away from them or towards them but just stay ready. You know, just the basics really. While I was still scrambling to figure out the literal meaning of "captured" and "stay ready" as well as whether the falling down was merely due to poor dancing skills or some outside influence, we walked up on Garin.
Close to two hundred people were running around in a circle with boms waving in the air, trilling and barking shrilly as nearly twenty witchdoctors clustered in the middle singing boldly and beating huge twirled antelope horns and sticks together. It had the effect of a huge human whirlpool. Often the singing would stop momentarily and the people would slow their running to a walk, laughing and jostling each other until the witchdoctors organized themselves for another song. Demanding even more of my attention were the times the witchdoctors would suddenly dart free of the ring and scamper off to a new space, maybe fifty feet away, and while the crowd rushed to keep up and regroup, passive observers (of which they were many) would scramble frantically to get out of the way of the rushing horde. I saw a lone witchdoctor, tall and strong despite being well into his fifties swagger through the crowd. He teased young girls who ignored him outright, but when one boy cautiously accepted his outstretched hand, he pulled the boy into him, sending the terrified kid into hysterics of squirming to get away. The whole event seemed to maintain a delicate balance of pure fun and thinly veiled unease.
The singing and dancing went on late into the night, moving from the far field to the confines of the village itself. More and more people poured slowly in from far away areas though in the darkness it was difficult to see how many people were gathered around us. With nightfall, the ceremony grew perceptibly darker and we thought it best to go back to our tent at Abdul's house. Several people wanted to catch a lift back with us and so we left along with three other men. As the singing and percussion faded into the night behind us, I could see dozens of blue flashlights freckling invisible pathways in the distance as even more people streamed in to celebrate.
However, our adventure was not quite finished as we headed in for the night. A rusted old army tank, its cannon still pointing uncomfortably towards the main road to town, is the marker I had been using all week to note the military checkpoint on the road ahead. Such checkpoints are common here, and appropriate travel documents have always cleared as through, though simply waving and slowing down is usually sufficient. This night however, as we rolled past the old tank and towards our home for the night a soldier jumped out into the road in front of us, screaming things I couldn't begin to understand while his AK-47 was leveled right at our eyes. Bryan slowed the car to a stop and no one moved a muscle. But the soldier continued to scream at us. Abdul was sitting next to me and quietly told Bryan to switch of the car headlights. Bryan did so, and the soldier's shouts, now coming out of the pitch black behind what I imagined was the still pointed gun, lowered a decibel. Abdul eased out of the car, his hands lifted harmlessly from his sides. Out of the corner of my eye I saw another soldier appear out of the bushes on our left. My stomach had turned to water and I laughed inside at all the times I've berated TV characters who have ruined everyone's chances of escape by melting in front of a gun we all know the bad guy won't shoot; and here I was frozen stiff in front of a gun, not all that close to me, that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was just for show and would never be fired tonight. But staring at that little black hole at the end of a rifle in the hands of someone you know has used it many times before is a very humbling experience. It scared me. As it turned out, we had travelled down a road we shouldn't have at some point, and our perceived lack of respect for the local authorities was being addressed. After brief muffled conversation ahead of us and profuse apologies, we were waved on with an annoyed hand gesture. Abdul and the guys in the back laughed it off, but we passed that check point with far more caution the next day.
Once again, we slept deeply that night; it's possible however, that our prayers were a bit longer and more heartfelt before we said goodnight though.

Spit

Thursday July 1, 2010:

Bryan and I woke up earlier than we might have otherwise. Our tent was pitched within the small ring of huts, and by six o'clock the world outside was stirring. When we emerged, Abdul's wife was sitting on the ground by the embers of a fire preparing the first batch of coffee of the day while her children played around her. Like coffee everywhere in this great country, every cup begins with green coffee beans. Abdul's wife picked coals out of the fire as mindlessly as if she were selecting dates out of a pile of fruit and tossed them into a pan with the beans. She then shook the pan back and forth, coaxing the beans over the coals until they were roasted evenly on all sides. The beans were then poured into a wooden mortar along with a piece of cinnamon bark and pounded with a shaft of discarded metal from an old tractor. From this point on the coffee was poured into a clay pot of boiling water and filtered back through plant fibers several times until the scalding black liquid found its way into our waiting porcelain cups with two inches of sugar at the bottom. I am not a big coffee drinker, but even I have to appreciate the finesse with which such a beverage is treated and how brilliant the results. Bryan thinks he's in heaven.
Although Garin was not set to begin until the following evening, we wanted to make an appearance at the mountain where it was to be held and present our gifts of coffee and sugar to the elders before the big occasion. Already neighbors and passers-by were chattering about who was coming in from where and how no one was going to sleep for days on end. You could feel the excitement.
We drove to the mountain nearby with Abdul which involved a fair amount of off-roading and ducking from thorn branches. As we passed through a relief of an open space we noticed a group of men sitting under a massive baobab tree on the far edge of the field. The shadow they sat in blurred features but even from a distance I could see bare skin, fur and feathers. Abdul laughed and waved at them while telling us, "Those are the Kujurs." The witchdoctors. I grew up in Africa, and spent a fair amount of that time in rural areas. Animism and witchcraft is familiar to me in some ways. I have met people who work in the dark arts. In spite of these things or because of them, I'm not sure which, when I glanced back over my shoulder and saw those fifteen men in animal skins and feathers sprinting towards our car waving wooden hunting clubs and yelling, I was terrified. Abdul told Bryan to stop the car and he did. I could hardly breathe as they surrounded us on all sides. They all wore leather loin cloths and wooden beads. Each had a small feather headdress on their forehead. The younger ones had denim shorts or tennis shoes on under the hides but the baboon, monkey, dog and genet skin satchels slung over their shoulders kept me from laughing. I tried to look friendly without making eye contact, expecting any moment to be reprimanded (or worse) for committing some unforgivable taboo. Instead the half-naked men greeted us heartily, shaking our hands roughly and asking about our families. A couple were men we had met the day before and they said they were so happy to see that we had actually shown up. We laughed nervously and someone mentioned that we were here to bring a small gift for the occasion. Just as I was beginning to relax into the moment however, we were asked to get out of the car. Bryan and I looked at each other, unsure of what to do. The request was repeated. Get out of the car. Bryan capitulated but I stayed put. Abdul chuckled and motioned me out of the car. "Get out. They need to do their work." Groaning inwardly I stepped out of the car. One of the Kujurs stepped forward and firmly grabbed the back of Bryan's head. Leaning in uncomfortably close he pulled Bryan's face towards him and with amazing precision, showered a thick spray of saliva and a yellow grit across both cheeks and forehead.
I'm ashamed to say it, but at this point I was close to tears. Praying for open-mindedness, forgiveness, wisdom or whatever was most appropriate (because I wasn't sure I knew) the witchdoctor stepped up to me and I closed my eyes. I heard him chewing softly and then felt a fine cool mist of spit and something sandy hit my face. The urge to wipe was excruciating. Thankfully, the grit had a faint smell of ginger and wasn't entirely unpleasant if you put your mind to it. Our arms were then stretched out in front of us and our fingers gently pulled. Our shoulders were twisted firmly to each side and then we were left alone. Goodbyes were said and we went on our way. As we left we asked Abdul what had just happened. "It was a blessing," he said. "They were welcoming you to this place." I had never been blessed like this, and was more than a little uncomfortable. But after some thought I decided God knows all our hearts and how blessings have been given and taken. I would just accept this one and move on. Nonetheless I couldn't help but wonder how long I had to wait before wiping off the blessing was considered appropriate.
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. We delivered our caffeinated gifts of good-will and carried on with a quiet afternoon. All around us people were busy with preparations – braiding hair, stringing beads, washing clothes, oiling instruments, all leaving us wondering what tomorrow would be like. The day ended with a walk to the river. At an uninhabited spot Bryan and I carried our towel and soap down to the muddy banks and stripped down. The water was brown but still flowing which made me feel better for some reason. Besides, the one inch visibility level of the water also made me feel better for modesty reasons if someone meandered by. But no one did. We came out feeling cleaner, whether or not we really were, and headed back to the house for a dinner of sorghum and okra and another good night's rest.

Bone

Disclaimer:

The next few blogs I will write will all be describing the past four days we spent out in a rural area. I am splitting up each day into its own blog because if I tried to cram everything I saw, heard, smelled and tasted into one entry, you would think I was attempting to rewrite War and Peace and would never read this blog again. Even so, it's important for me to record the experience as I saw and felt it – for me to process and to remember. When (or maybe I should say if) you read the next few blogs I write, please keep in mind that my eyes are the only ones you get to see this world through, and therefore are only one (limited) perspective. Remember also, especially those of you that love me and tend to worry when you hear these strange stories, that I am happy and safe. We are so honored to be in this place in this time. I promise.

Wednesday June 30, 2010:
On Wednesday of last week Bryan and I packed up our tent and water filter and headed back out of town again. The community we are working with was holding what we had heard described as a "tribal gathering" and we had been invited to witness this celebration of culture and learn more about the people, language and history of this group. We were excited about what we would find and deeply curious because we knew very little of what we should expect. Our travelling companion (and host of sorts) was our guard Abdul. He was born and raised in this village and his two wives and youngest children still lived there.

We were blessed with dry weather on the way out. We took a back route to avoid the last river that nearly trapped us, but as a result had to cross several smaller ones along the way, many of which were only muddy. Thankfully, we only got stuck in one for a little while, and other than a flat tire, had no more problems. At about four o'clock in the afternoon we arrived, dirty and a bit hungry, but none the worse for wear. Abdul lives in a small village on the outskirts of "town" at the base of a small rocky mountain, (maybe better describes as a big rocky hill). The cluster of mud huts scattered around the hill seemed surprisingly deserted, but Abdul explained that most people had still not moved back from their dry season homes closer to the river. We were welcomed warmly by Abdul's family. After a round of strong freshly roasted coffee served in tiny glass cups, we were told that Garin would not actually begin until Friday evening. However, there was a similar celebration in connection to the "main event" at a nearby mountain (hill) that night which Abdul suggested we should see. He wanted us to wait until closer to sunset and then begin walking.

We set out around 6:45, just as dusk was settling in. We walked through several homesteads on the way out, greeting old men and throngs of mostly naked children. All we know of the vernacular language so far is very basic greetings but even these were received with much happy laughter and good natured correction. But it didn't take long for the huts to thin out and soon the trail was winding only between green grass and acacia trees. Just as the sun was setting Abdul pointed out the mountain we were heading towards and I was careful to disguise my surprise. It was much further away than I had anticipated. Even though Abdul walks with a heavy limp, he moves unbelievably fast and I was grateful to be in the back of the line so that my occasional trots to keep up were unseen.

We walked for an hour and a half.

Other than our headlamps, it quickly became absolutely and completely dark. As we walked Abdul was provoked by passing landmarks to narrate stories of the war. "You see that field over there?" he would ask. "That is where they shot all our cattle. All of them." Or more sobering, "This place right here…this is where forty-three men and seven women were shot. Over by that tree two more men were killed." We asked Abdul questions about the things he said, morbidly curious but cautious too. He had been there when these things had happened. He knew those people's names. He spoke freely though, even when he pointed out the place where his father had been shot, grabbing his upper arm to show where the bullet had entered. We continued walking in silence until, almost as an after-thought, Bryan asked if Abdul's father were still alive. Abdul seemed surprised at the question. "No. He died right back there were I showed you. There were no doctors or medicine. The bullet killed him." Almost to confirm the things Abdul was saying to us but that I had such difficulty comprehending, a dark shadow rose off to the side of the path ahead of us. As we walked up I could make out bent metal, twisted seats and burned out windows. I didn't know what it was and had to quietly ask Bryan. It was the rusted carcass of a gunship, lying on its side, the barrels of it tank guns pointing awkwardly into the starry sky. A broken chunk of modern warfare lying dead in a field between dried up stalks of sorghum looked to me like it must have fallen out of the sky. But people like Abdul know all too well that it didn't.

We reached the neighboring mountain around 8:30. The path was growing increasingly hard to follow in the four feet of light our headlamps provided and Abdul kept stopping to listen for sounds to guide us, voices carrying across the night, darks barking, drums beating. We eventually moved towards the small island of light given off by the soft glow of a fire, and I was surprised to see that gathered around it were not people, but bright-eyed goats. The people were nearby and welcomed us to join them in their dark circle, talking quietly and waiting for a signal that the celebration had started. We sat on woven mats and listened. All I could see were the brittle silhouettes of trees catching bright stars in their net-like branches. We sat so long I was starting to get sleepy but eventually the darkness was pierced with shrill cries faintly under laid with drums from somewhere very close. The people around us rose and started walking towards a near home, so we joined them.

When we walked up we were gently hustled over to a woven rope bed. The moon still hadn't risen so everything you couldn't see and imagine was dark. The only memories of light were the occasional artificial beams of a cheap flashlight, fractions of firelight between dozens of closely shuffling feet or the eerie glow of a cigarette end as someone nearby inhaled deeply. In the absence of light our ears and nose and fingers had to add texture and shape to the darkness. Through them I could see this: Somewhere very close was the sound of loud singing, mostly female, and many bare feet hitting the hard ground over and over again. Of the many smells drifting by intermittently, the few I could recognize were smoke, sweat, urine and cinnamon. Many people moved closely by on every side, occasionally brushing skin against skin. At one point what seemed to be a very old woman stumbled into me and giggled, "Come and play with us!" somewhere near my ear. I didn't know whether her choice of words, (in English no less), was amusing or deeply disturbing but she passed on before I had to decide in order to respond. We sat in the dark and listened to the beautiful rhythms and unfamiliar cadences and to the sound of many people dancing for a long time. To my ears everything sounded very old, like echoes off the mountain from a very long time ago. It was one of the most fascinating things I've never seen.

Eventually, Abdul suggested we start the long walk home and we said our goodbyes for the time being. On our way back I thought I saw a fire on a near hill, but later realized it was actually the moon rising out of a bank of clouds. We were quieter on the way back than we had been walking in and I had to concentrate hard to keep moving quickly while keeping an eye open for anything on the path that would make me regret accidently stepping on it. One of the only times we stopped was for Abdul to point out something starkly white lying several feet off of the path. We shined our lights on it vaguely. "It's human bone…" he said, "from during the war." I couldn't make out what part of a person it used to be, but didn't try too hard, and Abdul moved quickly on.

When we go back to Abdul's home his wife and children were asleep on mats outside their hut. Bryan and I quietly brushed our teeth in the dark and then crawled into our tent. I slept so deeply that night, more tired from walking so far than I wanted to admit. But I fell asleep thinking about dancing in the dark and Abdul's father. I couldn't help but wonder what memories played through Abdul's mind on our walk that night, memories my imagination can hardly touch.