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.