Funeral

One of the pastors who work on the islands here has died. I met him once when I went on an island trip for 2 nights, I know some of his kids (my age and older) who live close by. The whole occasion is very communal, when news gets out people start turning up at the house. So Tuesday afternoon I went and sat there for a couple of hours and returned after doing sports at school at 7pm. Later on in the evening a few boats full of guys come over from a couple of the islands where he had been a pastor. I knew a few from my visit. The body and a load of fellow pastors arrived and everyone who was there (between 120 and 200 people) went to greet them as they arrived. At the house the men and women stay separate, the women sleep with the body in the house and the men stay outside, so I stayed out. There was some singing and a devotion and a big open fire. The church choir finished at 2am and at 3 some ladies came and gave us chai (tea). Then all the guys thought it was going to rain so we went to find some shelter, there was almost enough room but not quite. So I and a couple of others returned to the fire and there was no rain.

From 6-7am so I got a little bit of shut eye. But then it was morning and it did rain. I found my house key which I lost during the night. When it stopped raining the men went up to the church and dug the grave (I only watched on). It wasn’t just a couple of guys, everyone pitched in. One guy would use a jembe (hoe) and break up a load of soil then someone else would jump in and use a spade to get the dirt out, but they were swapping these guys all the time. Back to the house where the ladies (who do all the cooking and washing) had made sweet potatoes and chai. Then everyone went up to the church. Every funeral I have been to here has been open casket and so was this one. There was also 17 pastors there. When the service finished I went back over to the house where I helped get some more firewood and start get the fire going (a job for the young men). There was a devotion and a late lunch. At about 8pm I went home where I slept.

Land of the Datooga

So last week Arne and I went on a home stay to Reagan’s house. But for 3 nights and two days we went to visit some other friends. They are a family working with the Datooga (one of the 100 or so tribes in TZ). They are on the south side of Lake Eyasi (just south of the Ngorongolo crater). The environment was fairly green as it is wet season but for 9 months of the year it’s dessert like.

We were able to visit some of the Datooga homes where I helped shepherd some goats with my fimbo (stick) that every Datooga man carries. We also helped stretch out a skin of a cow (covered with cow excretion) cutting little slits and then hammering with a rock little stakes to stretch it out, it wasn’t a clean job but it was something I’d never done and I enjoyed that. The women when they are married are presented with a leather skirt, which shows that they are married. They don’t take it off for years apparently they have a pungent smell especially when in a enclosed space with someone wearing one for instance a car. When we went into a house I was given a challenge by our host to find 10 non organic items apart from their clothes and jewellery, I saw a cooking pot, plastic bags, plastic cups, packets of animal medicine, and one or two other things but that was it, and not 10. By non organic I mean things that they hadn’t made themselves or sourced naturally like the grinding stones or the wooden stools.

One of the homes we visited was one of the richest guys around, he has hundreds of cows and hundreds of goats. He is also a witch doctor, we didn’t meet him, but going into his home we saw and were told about the pointed sticks in the house under the roof pointing out the door. The number sticks represents how powerful a witch doctor you are 1 being low and the highest being around 6 and this guy had 6. You could see that one stick was pretty recent as it wasn’t too black from the soot (cooking). In his thorn enclosure there were 5 houses one for each of his wives.

We went to the school in the village although you couldn’t tell it was a village because the centre consists of about 3 buildings: a café, house and a stable or roofed enclosure. To say you’d blink and miss would be a severe understatement. The houses are in thorn enclosures over 500m apart so it’s not what you’d picture when you think of a village. In the school Arne and I taught them the “God is so good” song in Swahili and spoke to them a little and a story resembling the Gospel.

It really gave some meaning to the saying ‘in the sticks’ the separating of the sheep from the goats and a picture like that of the Old Testament.

Whistling Drums

So recently at KSS (Kahunda secondary school) there was an inter dorm sports competition and more recently a regional interschool competition. The main sport is football and as far as I’ve seen exclusively for boys, though I’ve seen a couple of girls doing more kick ups than I can do by far.

When a goal is scored the avid drumbeating fans (other students) run onto the pitch to congratulate and celebrate with their scoring team. The sideline is not objective but subjective – it’s debateable. For the interschool competition they marked out a sideline but before that it was where the ref decided it was the watching students or where the players determine.

Most students don’t have a pair of shoes to play football in (it’s not a necessity). But you’d see a few pairs of shoes on the pitch. Often one student would have one shoe and another the other of the pair.

The referee’s cards can only be seen by the ref and anyone who has really good eyesight because they are about the size of your small fingernail. The ref would often have his discussions with a player by blasting on the whistle in quick succession almost like he was talking through it like Morse code.

In the way of first aid, there is none. If someone can’t get off the pitch themselves a handful of students come on and pick the injured player by his limbs and then walk him off the pitch.