The back of a cattle truck.
Standing up and gripping the side with two dozen other women.
20 pound blanket wrapped around me and an over-stuffed bag with everything I won’t need for the weekend at my feet.
As we rode through Ogade (pronounced Oh-Gah-deh), a village, my white face raised quite a ruckus. “Unlungu!” By the time we reached our first destination of the weekend it was extremely cold and past my bedtime. Since starting my Peace Corps service my bedtime has crept ever earlier. Always one to turn in before my husband, it was now not uncommon for me to head to bed with a book in hand at 8:00. So, naturally, I ask my friend and guide for the weekend, Phumelela, a 34 year old single mother of three (well, actually her fiance just paid labolla for her) and the sister to the groom of the wedding we were attending, “silalaphi lapha ekuseni namthanji?” Is this where we are sleeping tonight? I was to hear the first of many yeses to this question, but none were to be exactly true.
After standing around for a half hour or so I was taken to a small rounduvall and promptly left alone with five gogos (grandmothers). A steaming bowl of “insides” (exact translation) and tea was brought in for our dining pleasure and panic quickly set in. From a previous experience with this foul meat substance, I knew I should think of some way to avoid eating it quick. The liquid the insides are cooked in or the juice from the meat or perhaps a combination of both produce a “shrink-wrap” effect on ones whole mouth as soon as something cold to wash down the flavor is imbibed. My feeble attempts to explain that I was full fell short, but I was not willing to use the lie of vegetarianism as I was sure the weekend would hold many excellent carnivorous experiences that I did not want to miss out on. So, I wrapped the gray slimy meat in some Ujeqe (steamed bread) and swallowed it like a terrible pill. Fear of the shrink wrapping caused me to promptly begin dehydrating myself, and thank god I did, because a couple hours later I found myself crammed into a koombi with 25 other women, 2 men, a driver and all of our huge blankets and weekend bags. Had I needed to use the restroom during the next five hours it would have been quite the fiasco as I was wedged into the corner farthest from the door so tightly that I could hardly move to remove my cheek from the window.
I attempted to sleep, but the bumpy road, the loud music that was only turned down every hour or so to allow Phumelela to yell from somewhere in the front of the van, “Simphiwe, you right?” and the terrible breath and breathing from the old woman to my left largely prevented me from doing so. At 1:30 in the morning, we came to a stop. We all fell out and as I noticed the homes around us in the dark I once again asked, “silalaphi lapha ekuseni namthanji?”
Yebo.
Great, let’s go.
No Simphiwe. Here, here.
Oh. On the road?
Yebo.
That’s fine. I am flexible and was very tired. So I wrapped myself in a ball, covered myself in my big pink blanket in an attempt to protect myself from the cold mountain air and went to sleep lying against a chain-link fence. Shortly after falling asleep it was time to move again and on some cue I missed, the 25 other women busted out with a song. It was beautiful and it raised my sleepy spirits, until we came to a stop at a closed gate and I began to worry that perhaps we were singing the song in order to get the owner of the compound to open it up for us. My Americanism rose to the surface for the first time that weekend as I silently screamed “it is 2:30 in the morning, we have been sleeping on the side of the road, just come open the flipping gate” as I saw the family of the compound walking slowly towards us on the other side of the fence singing a different song. At this moment I decided to ask what the song we were singing meant. “Baba Nomsana…..” translates into:
Father Breadwinner, please come open the gate so we can come inside.
The thought entered my head that perhaps we had been sleeping on the side of the road in order to give them time to lock the gate so that we could then sing this song to encourage them to open it. This fear was confirmed when I asked why we waited to start singing. I was told that the bride’s family had not been ready for us. Where I come from “ready” would mean an unlocked gate, but here it apparently means a locked gate. At 2:30 in the morning.
By slow dancing procession we made our way to a smoky room and I asked once again whether I could expect to make this place my bed for the evening. Once again I was told yes. I wedged myself up against the wall and slumped to the floor between two unknown women who were quickly becoming two of my 25 very best friends. Waiting for us to all lay down to sleep I was soon dismayed when I realized that the three old men in the room were extremely drunk and wanting to know all about me. I gave them the low-down on me and then was further discouraged when we were brought tea and biscuits. I quickly consumed what I had been given, did my best to answer some personal questions in isiZulu and when I leaned towards the center of the room to replace my cup I noticed that not even four feet away from me lay a dead and partially slaughter cow. Blood oozing and open eyes still intact. I can only assume that I missed it when I first entered the room because I was sleep walking through a smoke cloud and very disoriented. The beast was so large that I had to wonder how it had even made it through the door. When I leaned back against the wall my neighbors made a little nest for me to lie in. Unfortunately the way I had to position myself forced me to make eye contact with the dead cow. I covered my face with the blanket, but when you know there is a large dead animal staring at you a few feet away, it is hard, at least for me, to not keep checking on it. Sleep finally came at half past three. I know the time because one of the drunken old men was apparently also inflicted with poor eyesight and so he kept pressing his special watch every ten minutes to allow the whole room to benefit from the loud female voice the sexily proclaimed that “the time was now 3:38.” Soon after I fought past the smoke, the sexy watch woman and the cow to find sleep, I was abruptly awoken by the marching band drum that had been brought into the room. Half of the women were dancing the traditional Zulu dances and I wondered where the energy was coming from. Maybe they understood that soon we will go to sleep and be allowed to sleep late into the morning.
Fully awake I was told that we were moving once again. It was now somewhere between 4:30 and 5:00 in the morning and we made our way to a larger rounduvall on the other side of the compound. This new room presented the best option for sleep with its clean appearance, the availability of sleeping mats and the warm fire so I started to get settled after asking the same old question once again and being given an affirmative response once again. Before I had a chance to put my head down, more biscuits and tea were brought in. These were quickly followed by three buckets for bathing and hot water. Oh well, I thought, there are 26 of us and only 3 buckets so I will sleep and go last. (Don't worry, fresh water is brought in for each round of bathers.)
That was not to be as I was informed that those three buckets belonged to Phumelela, her best friend and me. Alright. Now I am not particularly overly modest about my body. Actually, I would be mildly okay with taking a bucket bath with 25 other women lining the circular walls watching. My real concern was how to do this correctly. I bathe in a bucket almost daily except when I say “in” a bucket, I am actually in the bucket because it is a large oval thing in which I stand while alternatively dipping my cup into the bucket with clean water and the one with soapy water. It is, in fact, a three bucket system. Also, I was not sure how naked I was supposed to get. Do I strip down or leave some layers on? Overwhelmed I decided to kill time until Phumelela took the lead. I followed her moves, but apparently I was not doing an appropriate job because three gogos got up from their spectator positions to help me with my back.
“Should we wash your hair?”
NO!
“You need more bubbles.”
That is the least of my concern – I am just trying to get this over with.
“Now you rinse all the soap off.”
I am twenty-seven years old.
Following the lead of others, I am crouching completely naked in a small bucket while all this is taking place. I had been afraid that if I took all my clothes off they would think I was gross and was alternatively afraid that if I didn’t remove everything they would also think I was gross. But, in reality no matter what I did they were to think I was gross for instead of washing my underwear in the used bath water, I jammed them back into my bag. In Zulu culture women never put their dirty undergarments in the laundry pile nor do they wash these articles of clothing with the rest of the washing. And forget about hanging these things up for anyone to accidentally see. Instead, after one is done bathing, the dirty water should be used to wash the undergarments and then they should be discreetly hung up to dry. In conversations with co-workers I have learned that although no one thinks twice about popping out a breast for any old occasion, hanging underwear on the line or even letting dirty underwear exist in the house is unheard of.
This experience was anti-climatically followed by several hours of idleness where I watched the remaining women bathe, ate my weight in biscuits and dressed myself for the wedding in my shiny Old Navy dress I wear at all such occasions in this country. When I felt I could not sit around one more minute thinking about how I could have and should have been sleeping, I put my long-johns on under my dress and headed out to see what was going on. What I found was 20 or so of the elders from the bride’s family being wrapped in blankets, towels and aprons galore. This was just fine considering it was freezing cold out – actually these plump balls of adoration seemed quite content to be wrapped up but this ritual takes place in the dead of summer as well. Spring wedding? Not if you’re an elder of the family who has to sit for hours wrapped up in 33 layers. Give me a winter celebration please! This was followed by a long discussion with the ancestors by a small wiry man who then pronounced that the celebration could continue. Continue it did, right out the gate and into the awaiting koombies.
Then it was off to America. Not literally, but it was quite a different world in the town of Estcourt. The church was just like those smallish wannabe mega-churches in the states and decorated in rather modern wedding decor. I did not forget I was in South Africa though as the wedding party, in their western style outfits, danced down the aisle (and it was not a parody of The Office) and between each speech the whole congregation was lead in prayer and song. Service over. Back in the koombies for a rushed meal or three. First I was whisked off to a secret “women’s only area” where ujeqe and chicken curry was being cooked in several huge cast iron pots over open fires. I have come to understand that this food is meant to sustain those on whom the wedding’s functioning relies. Apparently my hostesses were so concern that I might waste away from only eating biscuits for almost 24 hour that not only did they take me to this exclusive dining area, but I was also thrust into the middle of a goat fest. It was literally a goat-fest which is, should you not know, a dozen or so women crouched around a whole cooked goat. I was building up the courage to pull a chunk of the meat off the animal when I was handed a dripping handful. It was delicious, but before I could finish, I was summoned to the tent and given another full meal. No worries about being too full – there was no time to eat. Hurry and scoop it all into a piece of plastic wrap that was provided and then run, literally run, to the koombies to get a spot. An hour of fighting and jostling and we are all packed into the automobile so we could wait one more hour for dark to settle so the cops would not see how over full the taxi was. Finally, off we go, a mobile dance party back to where we had started, five hours away. At midnight when we get back to the groom’s family compound I am handed an energy drink and I realize that tonight no, we will not even pretend to sleep.
Within minutes I and all my companions are busy chopping and peeling and frying. To me it seems that everyone amazingly knows their role and falls right into it whereas I am walking around in circles concerned mostly with the threat of salmonella and the need to understand why the beets and coleslaw need to be chopped so perfectly when everything else is in complete disarray. In fact the compulsion of my companions to spend hours and hours perfectly chopping the veggies begins to really wear on me and I decide it is time to put myself to bed at 3:00 am before I raise my fist and go off on a feminist rampage. I wander into the next room and find the only place to sleep is spooning with a gogo I have never seen before. She knows me by name and raises an arm to welcome me into her bed without question. Snuggling with this stranger does not even bother me in the least. I am that tired and within a moment fast asleep. I awake three hours later to singing and dancing and the smell of the 400 pieces of fried chicken surrounding my sleeping spot. The coleslaw and beet makers are still at, but after my nap this no longer raises my blood pressure. Instead I dive head first into the remaining nine hours of preparation.
As this continues activities of the utmost importance are taking place outside.
To be continued.....
