Junai from Sandema!

Junai (good evening)!

In this post: Village stay!

I'm currently in the internet cafe in Sandema, which is very fortunate because if this lovely air-conditioned wonder didn't exist I would be going to Bolga (2 hour bus ride) for internet.

My village stay, from Monday to Friday, was an amazing experience. The people were wonderful, such amazing hosts, and it was really interesting to get to know a bit about rural lifestyle. I saw some big differences in gender roles, and also differences in activities depending on the weather. A consistent theme, which I believe is true for most of the country, is the greeting time - everyone greets their compound (probably about 5 separate areas in a compound) in the morning. The greeting for morning is Salue, and the reply is Salue Nalon.

A typical day for a woman might look like: Get up at 5:30, sweep the floor of the cooking area, put on a fire for cooking, spend about 2 hours or so making the first meal (tzed or rice), go work for some time (could be getting firewood, sowing seeds, picking shea nuts, plastering walls on the mud houses for the rainy season, etc), cook again, work some more, take a nap, start cooking again.

Men appear to spend most of the day working, and leave early in the morning; I didn't see the men very much because I spent my time with the women. Men take care of livestock and weeding.

As for my role in the family during the week, it was pretty slim. They didn't want me to work at all, because I'm a guest, but I eventually convinced them to let me help pick shea nuts and fetch water. There was also a lot of groundnut splitting (for groundnut soup). One of the girls in particular, Renaita, was adamant that I should just sit around and be waited on, and was continuously bringing me copious amounts of food; in the first day, she brought me a total of 6 eggs, in addition to the three meals of a personal casserole dish full of rice or tzed.

The community was all very welcoming, and on the second night they performed some local drum chants and taught me the local dance. They were very amused by my attempts, which were fairly hopeless. Finding rhythm in rapid stomping and arm waving is more difficult than one might think.

The community has invited me to return whenever I like, and I hope to visit on weekends since it's not far outside Sandema. One woman told me that if I came back, she'd give me a hen - nice to feel accepted, but I don't know how to politely refuse gifts of livestock... I already came back with a dozen guinea fowl eggs from my host family. Luckily I can at least cook those.

Again, so much more I could talk about, but I have to cut it off here. I need to get back to Wiaga, where I'm living, before it gets dark; also, it's going to take me about 2 hours to prepare dinner on my brand new charcoal stove, seeing as it took about half an hour for me to boil water this morning. I'm not living with a family, I'm in an apartment, but more details on that next time. I also hope to post some pictures from the village, so look out for that too!

Anne