Vagabond Rick Travels The World

Before coming to Africa, I knew I would meet a lot of different peoples and I was interested in three different groups – 1) the traditional African, 2) the modern African and 3) the ones in between. Although the order that I have witnessed each is not totally clear, I would like to present my observations and feelings about the traditional Africa, followed by the modern Africa and finally the in-between Africa because it’s working through my brain in this order. I have to have a big disclaimer on this one because my guess is that there is an infinite variety of each of these three groups in Africa. Plus, I question how I perceived some of my African experiences now that I have more to compare! I wanted to get some of this out as soon as I experienced it, but there has been so much for me to process that I have needed the time. I use my written journal to record the at-the-moment thoughts and just count yourselves lucky that you don’t get that version! I have had a lot of experiences already by myself (no friends, no family, no Americans) and it is a challenge to me.

I did a cultural safari to the Mt Hanang area near Katesh, Tanzania to visit with a clan of the Barabaig tribe a traditional people called the Rainmakers due to their belief in being able to make it rain. The Rainmakers piece seems a bit over-blown since this is just one minor piece of their pie, but I got to meet the rainmaker for this clan and it certainly was memorable. I was only with the Barabaigs for three days and nights, but they were very full days and I walked away (actually Savannah Safaris drove me!) feeling like I got a good picture of their world.

Aside… Don’t I have a lot of these?… I have had three shots of culture shock so far. The first two maybe aren’t the normal… First, I had a real difficult time being chauffered around by myself and with the amount of service/help I am getting in general. I don’t like wasting the gas that it takes to move a single person around on African roads and I have a hard time allowing anyone (usually a woman!) to carry my bags (especially on their head!). I read Redmond O’Hanlon’s Congo Journey during the first part of my trip (more on this book, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost – all HIGHLY recommended books about the Congo area of Africa). Congo Journey has a scene where the black African tells the white foreigner to get over the service because it keeps Africans employed. I got over it. You’ll see why I am telling you this when I get back to the story at hand. The second case of culture shock was when I ate lunch at a modern hotel in Dar es Salaam. It was the lack of real Africa that shocked me as I was surrounded by business folks in suits and very western clothes as compared to what I had experienced for the previous ten days. I got over that one by eating quickly! The third culture shock is the one I have just experienced this past week with the “in-betweens”, but that can wait. Back to the story…

I was greeted in Makayuni, Tanzania by Savannah after being dropped off by Ranger Safaris who I did the Serengeti safari with – the safari details will come after some more human stuff. In the Land Cruiser we had Abel the driver, Peter the cook and Albert the Another Land representative and camping equipment for an army. We drove four hours over some extreme “highway” (will discuss African highways when we get to safaris, suffice to say POTHOLES if it is a GOOD road!!!) to Katesh where we proceeded to pick up Mary the translator and Mbishi the Barabaig community leader. That’s five people to escort and take care of me! I was a bit overwhelmed. We arrived at the camp late afternoon and the team immediately started to build a camp near a traditional style stick and grass (?) quonset-like hut which we would use for meals. As I would learn, we were in a general area of the clan surrounded by many of their homes.

Mary and Albert took me to the clan’s most revered family’s home while camp setup took place. Monge and his elder brother (I forgot his name because I never saw him again) greeted me. They were wearing black because their father had passed away three months (?) prior and they will mourn his loss until October for a total of about eight months (as far as I am concerned anything date-wise with these folks is iffy because their calendar is moon cycles). Their father was the clan’s “perfect man” – someone extremely revered for his service, honesty, etc. A series of ceremonies takes place every other month over the eight-ish months in which they build a larger memorial. The memorial is a earthen and stick vertically-standing cylinder now about two meters high in which contains their father’s body. His body was placed in a hole in a sitting position, rubbed with oils and wrapped with leather before the cylinder memorial was constructed on top and around. Each cermony more earth and sticks are added making the cylinder wider and taller. I have a nice picture of the grave with Mt Hanang (Tanzania’s third largest mountain – situated like Shasta far above our 2000 meter level minus the glacier but with deep tropical canyons like Molokai Island, Hawaii). The cylinder includes a hole where milk is poured to presumably keep his spirit fed. The family compound included the father’s and primary wife’s home as well as other wives’ homes (yes, we will finally be discussing polygamy!) and miscellaneous other huts as well as newly built large huts meant to house clan members traveling from distances for the celebrations and one for making honey beer (more to come on that, too!).

After dinner back at the ranch, we discussed Tanzania’s biggest problems. The list provided to me included health (malaria, clean water, aids), ignorance and educational deficiencies, poverty, infrastructure (pick the worst dirt road you can think of in USA and I am sure it will make a grand highway in Africa!), management of resources (blackouts are notorious although I did not experience any until Uganda because they had good rains this year to power the turbines) and corruption. I was glad their list matched up well to what gets reported in the West. Note that refugees and refugee camps is not listed. I am not sure if that is due to none in Tanzania or if they are more a problem for the West and the refugees than for the Tanzanians. I did not think about this at the time.

The second day included visits to the rainmaker and a couple of blacksmiths, brewing honey beer with the elders and a dance put on by the youths (8-18 years of age?). I met the rainmaker in his hut (typical four foot high mud/dung and stick unit – almost comical when you know that almost all of these guys are over 2 meters in height!). People come to the rainmaker to ask him to make it rain and they pay him with a goat or something similar (they don’t have money – they have a housing complex, wives, children, cows and goats, clothes, jewelry and tools). His “power” has been passed down to him by his father as it has been done forever (I have no idea how long these people have existed, but I am sure it is longer than we in the West can grasp). I asked him if he could tell me how he does it. He agreed, but he asked the only other clan member present, Monge, to leave. I know a rainmaker secret that the rest of the clan doesn’t know! So, he is sitting there across from me while dozens of flies are swarming in the air and on our faces wearing a western style shirt with “Rainmaker Software” logo on it and he pulls out a small gourd wrapped in sheep or goat skin with some kind of stopper – trust me when I say that it cannot get more surrealistic than this moment – the ultimate skeptic meets the guy that uses a gourd to make it rain!!! I am told that the gourd contains his ancestor’s spirits. He places the gourd near a local tree – any tree will do – and asks his ancestors for rain. It always rains soon thereafter. “Can you also make it stop raining?”, I ask. A second smaller gourd without the additional skin is pulled out! Of course! We had a good conversation in which he asked me where my wife is sensing that something wasn’t right. I filled him in and he offered condolences and said I would be married again.

The blacksmiths were fascinating. They take scrap pieces of metal and forge them with bellow-powered fire and handmade “anvil”, hammers and punches into knives, spears, jewelry, etc. Through the first two meetings I saw that we meet and quickly have nothing to say after greetings. The key is to sit back and watch and give the questions some time to surface. They have no idea that metals come from ores in the earth. They are very ingenious with their craftmanship and are highly regarded by their people for the essential products they produce. The two I met were cousins who learned the trade from their grandfather. I think a cultural exchange of metalworkers and artisans with these guys would be really interesting. I can just imagine what they could do with their current talents and imaginations and the addition of seeing other techniques and ideas.

Honey Beer Recipe
Take a 20 liter gourd with 105 pieces of some unknown local plant root. Add a bunch of local honey – bees, other stuff and pieces of honeycomb – not a problem. Fill with the most disgusting water you have ever imagined. Make sure you touch all of the ingredients with the most filthy hands you have ever imagined, too. Gently heat the gourd about a meter from a fire inside the men’s meeting hut (one of the buildings found in a family’s compound) for a few hours. Beer is ready to drink in 18-24 hours. The root provides the yeast. More to come…

The dance was smaller than will occur the next day. The boys are in one group and the girls in another. The boys beat a shield with their sticks (spears are safely put to the side), make some chanting sounds, jump up and down and skip towards the girls and back to the boys. Some of the girls are dressed in leather and bead gresses with lots of jewelry looking very pretty. They jump, too, although they are silent and serious. The girls are taught to be this way when dealing with boys, but I noticed that they gregariously greet each of the other girls with hugs, smiles and laughs. The Barabaig women get along with each other in a way that I think is lacking in the West. Maybe no jealousies? It was interesting, but this ain’t no West Africa when it comes to music and dancing!

At night I look at the stars which are way more incredible than anything I have ever seen in my life. The best I had experieced before includes Lost Coast where the dark Pacific and clear air make the Milky Way almost touchable and on top of 3,000+ meter Monitor Pass – so high and dry. But here in the middle of Tanzania my head is spinning over the southern sky and a Milky Way so thick that it looks like clouds. Satellites and shooting stars are easy to see. Will I see a better star show anywhere else in the World? I look forward to the Andes/Atacama Desert or maybe Australia to see if my head can swirl over more.

The Meeting Place… The teenage boys and girls meet regularly somewhere nearby and this is where boyfriend/girlfriend relationships form. Sex occurs.

Marriages are arranged. Men marry more than one wife if they have the means (cows/goats) to do so. My fellow safari-ers and I wondered what happens to the guys who don’t have wives because someone else has more than one. Answer… The men are older when they marry younger girls (around 18) so there is always a chance to eventually get married. By the way, Barabaig can live to 100 with 80 productive years and I saw many men and women well over 50 so they are not too far off from the norm in the West. So I ask the elders what happens if the Meeting Place leads to LOVE with someone other than the pre-arranged husband/wife (always the case!). They take a few minutes discussing it amongst themselves and I eventually tell Mary that if I asked something inappropriate then I apologize. She says that it is a perfect question and they are trying to figure out how to answer. Suddenly two men in the back of the hut who I did not notice get up and leave. The elders did not want to answer truthfully with them present since they were young! They tell me that if the girl gets pregnant then they get married and the boy’s family pays the needed dowery to the boy’s family. If no pregnancy, not a problem – she marries the pre-arranged husband.

I know this polygamy thing is interesting to all of us. You’re probably repulsed. I was too and I asked a lot of tough questions. I always think “who the hell wants to deal with two or more wives when one is plenty” – hehehe! It turns out that for the Barabaigs (I get the impression this is common with other tribes such as the Masai, too) the first wife has the right to refuse her husband getting other wives. I asked if that was just fake and if she would then be persecuted by the husband, family and clan. Apparently, it does happen and the wives are not persecuted over that decision. But generally, multiple wives are welcomed (OK feminists, you’ll need to calm down now!) because it introduces younger workers into the family and friends for the wife/wives. Each wife gets a hut in the compound for her and her children. A Barabaig could have 10-20 wives and God only know how many children if he has enough cattle/goats (doweries!!!)! I understand you can tell which wife a Masai husband is “visiting” because his spear is outside the doorway of her hut. I’m not sure how the Barabaigs handle this, but let me guess it is similar!

After spending a couple of weeks out with the animals in Tanzania, I decided that polygamy isn’t such a stretch for the tribes. Typically a bull/buck/male has a harem of females and their young. The bachelors hang out on their own and challenge the harem lord when feeling their oats. Eventually, a bachelor gets stronger than the existing lord and takes his “wives” and puts him out to pasture if not kills him. It is the ultimate survival of the fittest and is nature’s way of having the best gene pool. Without wanting to argue that humans are just another one of the animals, I do say that this polygamous lifestyle fits more in with the natural world they are living in than I possibly believed before my visit. Although I am very bothered by the fringe Mormons practicing child abuse, I do not think that is what is happening with tribal Africa and I believe their system suits most of them very well.

FGM (Female Genital Mutilation)… let’s discuss this one while we are working on tough topics. I was up on the subject before arriving and I engaged Mary in a lot of talk on the topic. She is an expert being that she works for women’s/girl’s rights in Tanzania. I thought it was another male domination trip to keep woman in her place. While I still feel this is true for many groups, I learned it is not so in Tanzania. FGM is practiced as part of a girl’s initiation celebration into womanhood. Part of the initiation involves having her labia and/or clitoris cut off. The practice leads to many problems especialy with concern to spreading disease and birth problems and I am sure you are just as horrified as I am. The men have nothing to do with the ceremony and they are quite bothered by the practice when asked about it. The women just do it because it is tradition. Oy Vey! So, it seems like a tradition which is disappearing in Tanzania because people are communicating about it and asking why they are doing it and why they are introducing more health problems which are avoidable. I got the same story in Kenya. The initiation cermony continues as it should minus “the cut”. I’m sure I will have more to say about this subject as I visit other places that it is practiced and I know I will continue to raise my absolute disgust with the practice as often as is needed. Polygamy will be weighed group-by-group. No need to weigh anything about the FGM practice.

The last full day included visiting a local Barabaig primary school, the medicine man, women making leather and bead clothes as well as gourd products, and I witnessed another larger dance in my honor. When I woke up, I sat around the fire with the elders who sleep at our campsite and stay up all night guarding us with spears and poison-tipped arrows from predators, I guess. We saw a couple of jackals right after sunrise, but I think there are few real predators left in this area… tradtions don’t die off as easily as big game. We ate roasted corn which is cooked in the ashes out of husk which is the normal diet I saw while there. You bruch off the ash and pick each kernel off the cob with your fingers. Pick, eat, pick, eat… We had some good laughs without Mary present to translate.

The school is in the prettiest location I can imagine. It sits on a plateau out in the middle of “nowhere” overlooking rock outcroppings in the surrounding Mt Hanang area of the Great Rift Valley. Some kids have to travel 12 kilometers each way and that isn’t too bad when you consider some families have to go 20 kilometers to get water! All on foot, of course. Think about that next time you jump in your car to drive to the store a kilometer from home! The shool with 750 students had one completed school room (hard floors and shutters for the windows – holes in the brick walls). Another less completed classroom had a roof with a dirt floor and no shutters. The third classroom building had no roof yet so I presume it is not used yet. Part of the money from my visit goes towards funding the completion of that building. I met with the headmaster and a teacher. I know there is at least one other teacher although it is break time so it was unclear how many. About 100 children were present for cleaning up the school and receiving innoculations (nurses arrived while I was there). Let’s assume no more than three teachers or 250 students per!!!! I wish school had been in session so I could witness how it operates (or not). I asked how many students took their test for secondary school and how many passed. 49 took it most recently and 32 passed. How many attending?… 17. What happened to the other 15?… Could not afford it. Cost?… $300-400 per student. See, in Tanzania, only primary school (up to sixth grade) is paid for by the government. Kenya pays for primary and secondary while nothing is paid for in Uganda. I have a lot of bitching to do about what all of these governments, religious groups and aid groups are doing in Africa when a basic education cannot be provided to EVERY child, but I will save that tirade for another blog entry. So, I tell them there is nothing that can be done for the seventeen students that could not learn enough to pass the test – I am quite sure this is a failure with the parents just like most of the “education problems” in America. But I told them that we need to get a couple of the passing students back on track. I asked them to pick the two that can make a real difference using intelligence and commitment/potential as the guide and I will pay for their remaining education through Mary who I can definitely trust as the conduit. I asked to get copies of their report cards and I said I would cut off their funding if they were not serious. Plenty of other poor, serious students can be found. I have told many people in Africa about America’s “Show Me, Don’t Tell Me” philosophy and this was one of those moments. We also talked about school supply needs and I provided Mary with funds for pens, workbooks and chalk which she will purchase next time she is in town. I wonder where old American and British textbooks go and I plan to investigate this more because they are sorely needed out in the middle of Tanzania. I am also planning to look into ways to get old computers (you know the ones that are perfectly acceptable that we throw out!) to Albert so he can start a program in Arusha for children and young adults. I will pay for the cost of shipment to Albert if you have any (no monitors needed).

We then went into a classroom where the hundred students were waiting to greet me. Given the distance many of them had come, I was moved. I gave a little speech about how humbled I was to visit such great people which was translated into Swahili (the people here speak their tribal language, learn Swahili in school and then learn English in secondary although some were already learning it in primary). They clapped after every translation. Four children sit at each desk which is nothing more than a meter long board with legs. I took a couple of photos and then departed on the verge of tears not because I was sad, but rather due to how moving the smiling, loving children were even in a totally grungy school. Intense stuff!

The medicine man was wild. He had roots, bark, flowers and other plant material out to discuss some of his remedies for TB, malaria, etc. I listened and discussed with Mary and came away believing most of the medicines do work. They told me that Western pharmaceutical companies are working in Tanzania exploring many of the traditional medicines.

The women’s group was making leather dresses for girls to use in ceremonies. If their father is wealthy enough then he buys them beads to further decorate the leather. The leather is not properly tanned and really stinks. Like with most of the huts, the flies were rampantly active on our faces, but by now I was pretty much ignoring them like the Barabaig. Unless one was on my lips or eyes, I didn’t do anything because it is a waste. The craftmanship was interesting, but the best part of the visit took us back to the arranged marriage issue… I met a girl who had been assigned a husband, but she ran off with her boyfriend to his home. Her father found her and beat her. She escaped again and was found and beaten. She did it a third time except this time the boy’s family hid her better. A hastily arranged wedding then took place with the boyfriend. The boy’s family paid the required dowery and now everything is good with the two families and between the girl and her dad.

I’m sure this long post has already put most of you to sleep so let’s get back to a more fun topic… BEER. So we went to see how the beer came out. The elders filtered the beer out of the big gourd using plant material stuffed into the top into smaller gourds. They gave me a large pour in a cow horn. I tasted it and it is sweet and warm and fermented… not too bad! I downed the hornful. The men do not get drunk. Seven of us or so consumed the beer at that time and later in the evening. The drink was still fermenting so it caused some gas, but it did not kill me! I drank enough to make me totally ill from the disugusting water, but the fermentation apparently killed the buggers as I had predicted. The Egyptians were mighty smart when they came up with this idea.

After some beer we watched the big dance. Some Barabaig Pentecostal converts asked if they could do their dance, too, and it was approved. They only wear Western clothes. No short dresses or blankets without underwear for them! I was going to visit those dancers up the hill a few meters past the girls side, but they started to preach (guy with bible screaming at the traditional group as the rest yelled AMEN) – I didn’t need to know the language to know what they were doing. I told Mary that I did not want to visit with them and that Jesus would not have judged the tradtional Barabaig over their clothing. They are very lost about what is important in life as far as I am concerned thanks to the evangelicals. The boys soon stopped dancing. Mary met with them and learned that they did not want to continue while being preached at. She told them what I said about Jesus not judging them and they carried on. Mary is a great Barabaig woman. I asked if I could take photos of the girls in their beautiful outfits. Mary said sure, but I asked her to ask each girl and I only wanted ones that happily volunteered respecting their wishes to not be photographed. One volunteered. She was followed by quite a few others including four who posed together and one with her boyfriend. Only one smiled and only a couple looked towards the camera. The rest did not smile and looked away. I was again very moved by the Barabaig people.

The final night was spent by the fire drinking the beer with the elders. We discussed their god the sun (is this too different than our beliefs?… “And then there was light”, the all-powerful god maker of all – what would exist on this planet without the sun????). Also we talked about stars (they have no clue that they are suns or groups of suns and we talked about the big earthquake in the Great Rift Valley in 1964 (they have no idea what causes an earthquake so I gave a very spur-of-the-moment demonstration using two eaten corn cobs representing the two plates that are running into each other :). You may denigrate them for being so ignorant, but I look at from the standpoint that their days are full just trying to survive and they really do not need to ask esoteric questions such as where the metal they use comes from or why an earthquake happens. I’m thankful that I live in a society with enough comforts and time to ask these questions, but I am not confusing our luxury with them being stupid – try to survive a week like they do and then we’ll see who is so stupid!!!!

I was warned by Team Tanzania before my departure from our group safari not to accept the tribe’s chief’s virgin daughter. Oh, we roared over that one! Sure enough, Mongi told me that he liked me and that I can marry one of his daughters who was at the dance if I want to move there! We had a bigger laugh than I had with Team Tanzania. I’m not sure how serious he was, but I politely declined. It was a night not to be forgotten finishing with a round of thank you speeches, more honey beer and the guys singing songs to me.

The Barabaigs may not have easy lives without the benefits of modern life, but they have a lot going for them including strong families and community. Would I trade my life for theirs? No, but I never felt real sorry for them because their lives are real. What do you want to bet that their lifestyle outlasts ours?!!!! I just want to thank Nichole, Paula, Albert, Mary, Peter, Abel and the mostly the Barabaig clan for providing me with an experience that I will never forget and one that taught me as much about the human experience as I have ever known. It has taken me a month to put this in the blog because I have needed that amount of time to just begin to digest it. I fear the writing does not convey that, but it’s the best I can do now.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 9:55 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.