Two Little Stories…

Babbo and the Blacksmith.
A sweet man and his family sit with a bin of brass miscellany to melt. One son keeps the goatskin bellows going with his feet or hands. Babbo, the youngest, is enamored with George’s land cruiser and pretends to drive, his smile bright. The rest of the family is beading, pounding bracelets, or running around the thorn enclosure. It seems straight out of Time Life magazine until…another tourist van shows up. This is new. The blacksmith says he has sold a piece of his land to a developer for a hotel and things are changing quickly. It’s not clear he understands the longer term consequences of tourism in his village. Nonetheless, he and his family seem content. I hope it will stay that way.

Ushoka and her Sisters.
Let me set the context first. We are in a small village (Mbulu I think). Parts of it are equipped with Vodacom and Airtel vendors. Other parts are barely held together. We stop to visit a herder and his family. The man is not home. He has gone to the next village. His wives invite us in. All seven of them. The home is an L-shaped structure with independent areas for each wife. We entered one wife’s home for a visit and all of the others joined us there. The smell and the flies are overpowering. The air is still, almost suffocating. The home is a 10 by 10 sized main room with an anteroom of perhaps an equal size. The anteroom is the sleeping quarters and we can see in but are not invited there. In the first and main room, wooden benches stretch around its perimeter; two small three-legged stools are in a corner. A stone for pounding maize is in another corner as is an elder woman making a goatskin skirt. We make a series of introductions; George has known this particular family for many many years. He translates our conversation between English and Swahili. Here are the questions they ask:
Are you a farmer or a herder? We explain that we are neither. Instead we buy all of our food at a store. Lots of head shaking and tsk tsk.
Don’t you breastfeed? Yes. How long? It varies but six months to one year depending on the family. (I didn’t mention Similac)
Where do you live? In a structure ten stories high. Too far up she says and explains that she would be afraid of falling out since she gets dizzy climbing even the simplest mountaintop.
How many wives do you have? Just one says Andy. She isn’t impressed. He isn’t very wealthy if he has only one. She feels sorry for him but even sorrier for me. She explains that she is one of seven wives and asks, how it feels not to have any “sisters”. I understand what she means. I know women who are ex-wives who have a very strong sisterhood. I don’t have that. I have friendships that form my own sisterhood but not in the way that she does. I wouldn’t change my situation; no polygamy for us. But I have a new understanding of how one might feel in such a structure.

Ushoka and some of her sisters have markings around their eyes and on their cheeks and foreheads. It is called tribal scarification. When the slave trade was in full force, many women would scar their faces to make themselves less “marketable.” The practice of scarification continues today. A needle is used to open a cut under the skin and then a small piece of charcoal is placed inside. The result is a black scar.

As I mentioned, a woman sits in one corner. She is visiting from another village and is a medicine woman or healer. She wears as many as twenty thick brass bracelets on each arm. When we ask about them, we learn that when someone is ill, they bring a brass band to her and she sends them healing energy while carrying the weight of the illness until they have recovered. She sits and works on cutting a goatskin. It will take her three weeks to make this hide into a skirt for one of the young wives. I ask to see it and compliment her on her work. The hide is not cured and the smell is overwhelming. At one point, I think Rose might be ill.

George explains that we must be going. The air outside seems fresher than before. The result of being inside with the goatskin. The women want to take pictures with us. I am sure this is what they think we want. And I’m not sorry to have the photos. Hugs and handshakes are exchanged and then we return to the land cruiser to be on our way.

Was it rude or just prudent to suggest that we put on copious amounts of hand sanitizer immediately afterward?