blog 3

September 15, 2009

We are at the beginning of our third week and life continues to be packed with interest and wonderful experiences. We have definitely arrived in time for one of the two rainy seasons (the lesser one, we are assured), so it rains most days in the late afternoon for an hour or so. Of course this carries with it the greater likelihood of power outages, disturbed phone networks and non-functioning internet connections but, apart from that, it doesn’t interfere very much with life here and is definitely good for the crops. Those rough roads that I mentioned are now more deeply rutted as the heavy rains wash the murram away, leaving rocks and gullies to challenge the drivers!

Paul continues to work on grant applications, trying to help the members of the Agri-Business Department and the Administration to ‘think outside the box’ about the broader field of science and the ways in which this small college with no lab can gradually inch its way towards being a facility offering pre-nursing and pre-med courses.

My French class is very entertaining and hopefully useful. Since they are students in the Tourism Department, we are at liberty to talk about hotels, restaurants, menus and food, subjects that seem to be of great interest! Social Work lectures are more of a challenge to me, since I think that students learn a lot through discussion and these students are mostly used to being lectured to and not raising questions or expressing their own ideas.

To describe our new surroundings a little more, Kanungu is the biggest town in the district. The town itself consists of a petrol (gas) station and shops and offices on either side of the road. There is a market on Saturdays, where local people bring their produce into town and lay it out on blankets on the ground - plantain, beans, onions, tomatoes.. .. There are shops for meat (no refrigeration), for fruit, for vegetables, for school supplies, and for clothes (second-hand from Europe or America) There are also fabric shops, where you can order a dress or a shirt and they will run it up for you on their treadle sewing machine. There is one tiny supermarket, where we can buy sugar, jam, rice, torches (flashlights), eggs, bags, toilet paper and anything that they get from their delivery.

The area surrounding the town is all cultivated, mostly by subsistence farmers, who grow small amounts of bananas, beans, pineapples, tea, coffee or potatoes. Land is handed on down the generations, so with large families - up to 10 or 12 children - pieces of land are getting smaller and smaller and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for people to make a living. The pressure of population has driven families higher and higher up into the mountains, so that we see terraced cultivation right up to the tops, where the soil is thin and the climb is arduous.

All the work here seems to be done by hand. The ubiquitous hoe is the same one that I saw 40 years ago and it has probably been here a lot longer than that. It is used for tilling the soil, for weeding and for digging up crops. The other two implements we see here are the panga, a large blade used for cutting things, and a sharp L-shaped tool, used for cutting grass. Visiting a building site the other day, we found men sitting by a pile of stones crushing them with a hammer to make smaller stones for drainage - this is back-breaking work. Two other men meanwhile were sawing logs : the log was put up on a trestle, one man stood on top of the trestle and one man underneath and they pushed and pulled a very long saw-blade between them. When the work got hard and they started to slow down, they would sing in order to re-establish the rhythm. When we asked about machinery for such a job, we were told that manpower is not only cheaper, it is also more efficient as they can get more boards out of a log than the machine can!

A highlight of last week was to be invited to a Give-Away Ceremony. This is held the day before a wedding and, traditionally, is when the bride-price was arranged. The tradition continues with the exchange of gifts between the families and the official ‘giving away’ of the bride to the groom and his family. The event was held in a very rural area and, as is typically the case, the whole village was invited, as well as friends and family. It was held in an open area, in which tents had been erected and seating was set out: hundreds of plastic chairs, borrowed from everywhere, plus sofas and armchairs carried out from people’s houses! There were about 400 people there and we were there too, the only mazungus (white people) within miles, feeling honored to be included. A traditional meal was provided - yes, for all those people! - and then 4 hours passed while people mingled and talked to each other. Finally, as the bride was ready come out with all her attendants, the sky turned black, the heavens opened and it poured for almost an hour. People cowered under the tents, their beautiful dresses getting splashed and the ground becoming a running river of red mud! As soon as the rain let up, the bride and her entourage appeared, all dressed in beautiful outfits and the ceremony started and continued with gifts, speeches and singing until about 9 pm. One of the highlights was the arrival of several cardboard boxes which, when opened, revealed 3 cakes and the necessary equipment to make a traditional 3-tiered cake stand! Within minutes, there was the wedding cake, topped off with sparklers, which sent silver sparks out into the African night as everyone sang - it was a magic moment!

Till next time, blessings and peace to all,

Jessica and Paul