Faith and Desperation
So the touched-by-god tree I wrote about in an earlier post is no longer a funny novelty. Since word has spread about Babu (the pastor who saw God) and his dawa (medicine) thousands of people have flocked to the tree in hopes of curing everything from HIV/AIDS to cancer. Sick people are crammed into overpacked cars and leave expecting the journey to be only a day long. However, the 20 km closest to the road has been taking people 4 days to traverse. The roads are shitty so cars are constantly breaking down and leaving people stranded for days without enough food and water. People have taken to camping by the side of the road while they wait which has left the previously spotless savannah scattered with trash. On our drive out of the Serengeti, we stopped at the gate to eat lunch and saw several dalla dallas ridiculously packed with people head to and fro the direction of the Babu tree.
A journal excerpt:
"This is me reacting to learning that the woman sitting on the bench behind me had failed to reach the tree in Loliondo and her baby had just died in her arms. Sadness - tears of empathy well up. Curiosity abut the cause of death - am I in danger of getting sick? Anger at the mother for trying to make the ridiculously long and arduous trip and bringing her baby along. Anger at the man who had the vision for making so many people (both healthy and sick) decide to make the journey. Anger at religion for creating a God that promises cures in the form of tree sap. Anger at people for believing in that God. Anger at their faith. Anger at their desperation. Anger at the system that makes so many Tanzanians sick from illnesses that could be prevented. Getting 5000 TSH to help pay for her trip back home and the burial of her child. Eating my hard boiled egg in my packed lunch because I don't know what else to do. Knowing I'm not hungry. Giving away the rest of my lunch. Self-conciousness about my reaction. The need to write it all down. The fear I'll forget.
I feel the sun burning my back as I sit by the gate to Serengeti. I'm torn between my belief that death is a most natural part of life and that I can't react so much to this death because deaths like this occur every dayminutesecond so I shuold be okay. How can I know all I know about the injustices of the world and not want to cry all the time? Survival?
More anger at the pastor. Anger at myself for being unable to understand. Knowing that I'll able to laugh soon. Knowing that the mother won't. Helplessness - where do I even begin to think about why that baby died and if/how it could have been prevented. The back of a dalla dalla driving by reads "Yesu ni bwana" (Jesus is the lord). Maribu storks walk around nearby; ironic storks."
Sorry this is such a bad picture. It's culturally inappropriate here to take pictures of people without asking their permission and I didn't feel causing a rucus. Anyway, this is one of the trucks that has been transformed from an animal carrier to transportation for too many people trying to get to Babu.
People camped out by the road.
I apologize for the negativity. It was just really crazy to drive by the long line of cars and people all thinking that we had been to the tree before them and probably hating us for it. While some people were really friendly as we drove by, one woman mouthed the words "fuck you" to my friend. I did laugh again when I realized what I bad decision it was not wear a bra that day and I had to make a makeshift bra by wrapping my fleece around me to cope with the road. In that area of Tanzania, "road" means driving through rivers and over huge rocks in a place where other cars have previously driven. Very bumpy, dusty, and butt-sweaty.
Morani Hair Whip
After the emotional and physically challenging drive out of Serengeti, we arrived at Lake Natron in the heart of Maasailand. We had one day to relax and decompress which was wonderful. We hiked to a nearby waterfall and then the naked thing happened. The next day we began our four-day stay with a Maasai family. As we all met at the village office, one of drivers had to explain certain things about us to our families that they might think is weird. For example, the first student who wore contacts in a homestay was encircled because her family was freaked out that she could take out her eyes and thought she was a witch. For me, the driver had to explain that I had a magic potion that turns colours that I need to add to my water before I drink it (chlorine). I gave my mama a big hug when I was called into the circle and realized she had a sleeping baby on her back. As we walked to the bomma, I found out she is the same age as me. We walked along in the too strong mid-day heat, two 21-year-old women each bearing the burdens that represent our lives right now. She carried a child and I carried my backpack. When we arrived at the bomma (a bomma is a small hut made mostly of dung and sticks; it is normally almost pitch black in the middle of the day because there are no windows and is always usually smoky because the mamas cook inside it as well), my mama told me to undress and then re-dressed me. First sheet-like piece of fabric wrapped around me waist. Then another tied over one of shoulders. Then another tied around my shoulders like a cape. Then the jewelry - eight necklaces, four bracelets, two armlets, two anklets, five rings, one piece of jewelry that wrapped around my torso, and one beaded hat that was very hard to balance on my head. I became a Maasai woman.
Maasai homestay was a rollercoaster. The drive to the village office where we were to meet our families was the too slow incline at the beginning. Stomach churning, you wonder why you decided to get on the ride. Fear rises as the ground fades away and all you see is sky. You have no idea what you got yourself into. There is no getting off. The ride begins – sometimes you enjoy the breeze during relaxing fall (sitting under a tree watching my sister herd our goats, beading outside my bomma with my mama, washing in a idyllic waterfall), sometimes you're upside down and screaming WHAT THE FUCK (sleeping on a goat hide in the bomma with my homestay siblings piled on top of me and putting their fingers in my mouth while the goats that also stay in the bomma poop and make vomiting noises all night). At the end, you step onto the platform with eyes teary from the wind and get in line to do it again. I would live all these days twice.
My Maasai self. My homestay mama, Neamborice, is giving me her anklets.
The children in my bomma :)
Homestay sister. She's making this face because she's scared of me most of the time. She is a cutie patootie.
A morani jumping at the esoto.
Esoto is a traditional Maasai dance between morani (warriors) and ndito (uncircumcised girls, normally around age 11). While it used to be a day long event that included lounging and romps in the bushes during the day, since more children are going to school, esoto now takes place at night. A group of morani gather at a designated bomma and begin to dance and sing. Dancing means jumping as high as possible and stomping on the ground. Singing means creating an animalistic rhythm with the bass-most tones. When the ndito arrive, the courting begins. With the morani on one side of the circle and ndito on the other, the morani jump and then approach the girl he fancies. To show he's interested he whips his long warrior braids in her face. Rrrrrr. In response, the girl shimmies to the necklaces she's wearing jangle. I got a few hair whips and I tried to shimmy my beads in response. (The ndito can literally shakes their necklaces while barely moving. The other mzungu women and I tried but ended up awkwardly jerking around.) Esoto is a highly sexually charged event; you feel it in your blood.
Outside my bomma. I took this picture to show the height of the bomma. I had to bend over to get in the door. The boy to my left is one of my favourite homestay brothers.
My other homestay sister wearing my silly beaded part hat. She would always sit beside me and stroke my leg as I beaded with my mama. I love her a lot.
This is what the inside of a bomma looks like in the middle of the day.
The mountain in the background is Oldonya Lengai, the Maasai Mountain of God. The Maasai began believing that the mountain was a god when it exploded at the same time as rinderpest and smallpox were decimating the population. The Maasai believed that the explosion was god expressing its anger. Women go up to the mountain for special prayer ceremonies in which they ask for rain and children. The goat in this picture is doing something funny.
My siblings in front of my bomma in front of Oldonya Lengai.
My Bibi (grandmother). Notice her extremely gauged earlobes and cartiledge. Gauging is a common Maasai beautification ritual. I've come to really love it and wanted to get the upper ear gauges until I found out they are made by burning the holes into your ears. Ouch. Other Maasai bodily modification includes burns. Many men and women have small circle scars on both cheeks and others have lines in patterns on their face and/or body. Symmetry is important.
Goat Cake Part II
How to eat meat for the first time in seven years:
- Meet your meat. Mine was a goat given to the group as a gift from one of the homestay families.
- Watch as the goat is suffocated to death. The Maasai kill goats this way to keep the blood which is considered a special treat. Suffocation is a weird way to watch an animal die because it takes a few minutes, and the animal makes no sound. It makes it easy to forget the pain being inflicted upon it.
- Watch morani stab the goat in the heart and then skin it.
- Hear the crack of leg bones snapped over someone's knee.
- Watch as all the insides fall out of the belly. Intestines galore.
- See the chest cavity open to display the blood that's collected there.
- Pause for a second and wonder whether you can actually ingest animal.
- Dip your hand in the chest cavity and taste the blood.
- Watch the morani remove the kidney and cut it up into pieces.
- Eat the raw kidney. Do not gag in front of the morani.
- Wait for dinner and put one piece of goat meat on your plate.
- Look at for a while.
- Consider what it means to ingest a previously living thing. For the first time, see the beauty in appreciating animals by eating them and knowing they make you strong.
- Put the meat in your mouth.
- Chew.
- Taste the meat. Recall the flavour from childhood memories of eating steak at the dinner table.
- Chew more. Goat is chewy.
- Keep chewing.
- Realize the meat won't ever fully break down in your mouth.
- Swallow.
- Later, let Baba Jack feed you a piece of the goat cake made for his birthday for good luck.
- Reaffirm vows of vegetarianism.
The goat cake. Yes it is wearing a head lamp.
I'm back in Arusha for the next couple of days finishing my ISP proposal and writing a synthesis paper about sexuality in Tanzania. Then I'm off to Mto wa Mbu for three weeks to do my study. I can't believe it's already April and I don't want this program to end. I haven't written much about the group of students I'm with but they're amazing - a combination between ridiculously silly and always intellectually engaging. Fart jokes shift to serious discussions about conversation regularly. Since my gap year in Israel I've come to define a real friend as one that continuously challenges and changes you. These are real friends. I laugh a lot here :) I still do miss my real friends back at home and around this wild wild world. I hope everything is wonderful. Lots of love.
