No more funerals (or mangoes)
The weather here keeps getting more and more brutal. Most days I feel as though I am boiling in my own sweat.
People keep giving me mangoes faster than I can eat them. It is becoming a problem...
I meant to mention last post that funerals really do have a season here. People who live past 70 get a three day or more event with multiple animal slotterings, food vendors and dollo binges (millet beer)and spontaneous parades in which your father promenades around waving a stick like a manic wind up toy leading the drummers around. This happened for the funeral of the village chief a couple days after my last post. They usually spend a year or two saving up for a funeral of an old person.
They purposefully plan it for this time of they year, when they have time to throw a party.
Conversely, if you die younger than 70 they pretty much take your clothes off and drop you in a ditch.
And in a country where the life expectancy is only at about 40, and even dogs only live until about 5, well, most people dont have a funeral. All the more reason to make it a spectacle, I guess.
I was serenaded a few days ago by an old man who had both of his feet bent backwards. He walked on the top of his feet as though they were his soles. Every once in a while Ill see someone with an injury like that, a broken limb that didnt heal right, a kid with their ankle sloped in a 45 degree angle. Most of the people in my village have at least one ugly scar, often their legs have several of them.
Anyway, he kept mumbling things that I mostly couldnt understand before whipping out his wooden flute. Then came the inevitable begging for money. It always follows.
This past week we did a blitz of villages, my neighbors and I, on Microcredit groups for women. Basically its a group of women that each agree to save the same amount every certain number of days, with the idea of then generating credit.
There was a story I was going too tell with this, Im so tired though, my mind is wandering a lot. ack.
I do nine sensibilizations on Malaria first week of April.
Ok. I might try to do this justice in my next post, I cant write right now.
Thank you for the CDs Megan.
People keep giving me mangoes faster than I can eat them. It is becoming a problem...
I meant to mention last post that funerals really do have a season here. People who live past 70 get a three day or more event with multiple animal slotterings, food vendors and dollo binges (millet beer)and spontaneous parades in which your father promenades around waving a stick like a manic wind up toy leading the drummers around. This happened for the funeral of the village chief a couple days after my last post. They usually spend a year or two saving up for a funeral of an old person.
They purposefully plan it for this time of they year, when they have time to throw a party.
Conversely, if you die younger than 70 they pretty much take your clothes off and drop you in a ditch.
And in a country where the life expectancy is only at about 40, and even dogs only live until about 5, well, most people dont have a funeral. All the more reason to make it a spectacle, I guess.
I was serenaded a few days ago by an old man who had both of his feet bent backwards. He walked on the top of his feet as though they were his soles. Every once in a while Ill see someone with an injury like that, a broken limb that didnt heal right, a kid with their ankle sloped in a 45 degree angle. Most of the people in my village have at least one ugly scar, often their legs have several of them.
Anyway, he kept mumbling things that I mostly couldnt understand before whipping out his wooden flute. Then came the inevitable begging for money. It always follows.
This past week we did a blitz of villages, my neighbors and I, on Microcredit groups for women. Basically its a group of women that each agree to save the same amount every certain number of days, with the idea of then generating credit.
There was a story I was going too tell with this, Im so tired though, my mind is wandering a lot. ack.
I do nine sensibilizations on Malaria first week of April.
Ok. I might try to do this justice in my next post, I cant write right now.
Thank you for the CDs Megan.