Yesterday, September 24, 2011, was the seventy-seventh birthday of one of Freddie's oldest and dearest friends, Robert Alvord. It was also the day of Rob's memorial service. His death from cancer was not unexpected. In fact, Rob had called Freddie late one night during the week before his passing to tell Fred that he was dying. He wanted to say good-bye, and to acknowledge the importance of their friendship to him.
After Rob died, Freddie was called to the Alvord house for a consultation about the music for his memorial service. Rob had left a list of his requests, so Freddie handled the negotiations with the organist at the church. Some of the selections he most wanted the guests to hear would have involved a full symphony orchestra, so Freddie and the music director worked out a reasonable compromise.
The event, which took place on a Saturday morning three weeks after the cremation, was like a movie for me. The family, preceded by the verger who led them up the aisle in a group, filled up the first three rows at St. Alban's church. Their appearance did not shout money. It merely murmured "very rich, very old money."
They were in fact just a bit underdressed, confident enough not to do the conventional thing. Jacqui wore ivory silk pants and an apple green silk tunic. I suddenly felt dowdy in the black weeds I keep for such occasions, which at my age, I'm sadly finding more and more useful. This clan, lean and mostly blond, bronzed with year-around tans, crushed by their obvious grief, nevertheless walked in with the assurance of people who know their place in this world if not the next.
Rob grew up in a prosperous family of three generations of lawyers who represented the railroad industry. For all I know, the patriarch may have been a robber baron, but the Alvord money and influence allowed Rob to indulge in other things besides lawyering. He was enthusiastic about music, sketching and painting, and writing poetry. Some months before he died, the book of poems he had written to his wife, one at a time, every day since their wedding, was published.
Thus did the Robert Alvords perfectly follow the family plan of Thomas Jefferson, which, roughly paraphrased, explained his vision: I practice politics that my son may be a philosopher, and his son may be a painter.
Rob prepped at St. Alban's, and went on to Dartmouth and then Harvard Law. He married well, had several golden children, divorced, then married the beauteous Jacqui and produced with her two more golden babes, all of who were present at the event.
Our rector did not conduct the service. For that job, the family imported the priest who had been Headmaster of St. Alban's School after the halcyon days when Rob was already a legend there. The school, just next door, had already been established earlier as one of the major threads in this event. Of the five people who spoke on Rob's behalf, four reminisced fondly about the days they shared there. They all stressed, unselfconsciously, that they had tried to follow the precepts laid down by their very excellent school, but that Rob was without dispute the best among them. At the homily, the priest said that if Rob had been a student in the British public school system, of which St. Alban's is a slightly more egalitarian model, he would undoubtedly have been voted "Best Boy."
The priest then segued into his sermon by saying that when he got word that Rob had died, he was on an annual vacation with French friends at their country place in the Provence. When he told his hosts about Rob’s passing, the host descended into the ancient cellar of the house and brought up a brandy that had been bottled by his grandfather. The label, written in his grandfather’s hand, read Eau de Vie, 1954. The priest then connected the image to the Gospel story of The Woman at the Well by saying that "Water of Life" is what Christ offered, and that it was always flowing freely, gushing toward eternal life, and that it was available to all. Rob and his tribe seemed to have been splashed with a generous amount, buckets and buckets of it.
After the service, the congregation was invited to a reception at the Alvord residence a few blocks away. It was a large, comfortable place, Kennedy-esque, a little rumpled and full of large old antiques and large old dogs, who wandered forlornly among the guests, looking bewildered and begging for affection.
We stood in line a long time to speak to Jacqui because the chauffeur, an old family retainer, was weeping inconsolably on her shoulder. The second son finally rescued her by saying she was needed in the kitchen. I thought that a servant weeping at the master’s passing suggested a virtuous life.
Freddie remarked under his breath that he had seldom seen so many WASPs in the same place. I said,” This surely isn't Temple Emmanuel." I went on to say something like you're looking at the American Dream, the crème de la crème, right out of Edith Wharton, and Louis Auchincloss. Rob was to the manor born, was informally and without dispute voted "Best Boy" at St. Albans, lived by the ideals of his class—loyalty, generosity, strong sense of civic duty, reverence for family life. He had lived seventy-seven virtuous years, then died reluctantly but with grace and dignity, in the bed and house to which he was born, heaped with honors and mourned by his large family and army of friends. Lord now lettest thou thy servant Robert—a leader of men, a lover of life, and a jolly good fellow—depart in peace.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
A FORAY INTO HEDONISM, AFRICAN STYLE
A FORAY INTO HEDONISM, AFRICAN STYLE
Frequent and regular visits to beauty salons—beauty parlors as they are still called in the south—were something new to me when I lived in Africa. In the States, I only went to get my hair cut a couple of weeks after I really needed it. Spending a lot of time and money on beauty treatments made me nervous and offended my puritan sensibilities. I told myself silly and righteous things about both money and time, such as, “They could save an entire African village for what some women pay for manicures,” and “Why spend all that time sitting under a dryer when there are so many important things to do in this world?” I realize that back then when I started talking about The World, I was into some level of grandiosity and should have calmed myself down.
Another variation of this interior conversation was, “I’m supposed to be an intellectual.” That was a killer, because while I wanted to be taken seriously in the university community and then the professional world, I never wanted to look as undone and ill kempt as many of my colleagues did. The most successful women in the English Department in my day weren’t spending any time deciding which lipstick looked better—Fire and Ice or Pink Perfection. And in my own heart of hearts, I worried that the pursuit of fashion and beauty would crowd out thoughts of Beowulf, Chaucer, and The Great Vowel Shift.
Once I moved to Africa, my perspective changed. The African sun and air were beating me up and drying me out. I worked 14-hour days most of the time and had little focus on personal care. When I realized that I was beginning to look haggard, I decided that attention must be paid.
On Saturday afternoons, if no emergencies arose, I had an unaccustomed bit of time to myself. I started frequenting a local salon for regular mani-pedi appointments. And since I was already there, I decided to have my legs waxed and then get an occasional facial. I began to enjoy the feeling, and it was certainly affordable, even if one paid top dollar and tipped handsomely, as I always made sure to do.
Malawian beauty salons are almost always run by East Indians, who made up the merchant class in that part of Africa. Malawian girls did the actual work. Well-off Malawian women came in occasionally, but the clientele was largely Indian.
The young Indian women were often startlingly beautiful and soignée. Even the teen-agers came in for regular facials and hair treatments on Saturday. They joked and gossiped in Chichewa with the Malawian salon attendants and were as fluent in the local language as they, understandably so because they had all been born in Malawi.
Many of the older Indian ladies retained vestiges of great beauty. They were usually obese by our standards but evidently not by theirs. They seemed to like themselves just as they were. They didn’t talk about their weight or their diets, their exercise routines, their fat-to-muscle ratios in the obsessive way that so many Americans do. They just lolled about, looking faintly bored, having the dry skin rubbed off their heels and elbows, or having more holes pierced in their ears—the better to wear the fantastic gold jewelry they all seemed to have.
Making appointments, I should say having appointments, was difficult because time meant nothing in that environment. Many times when I showed up at the appointed time, I was told that the hairdresser hadn’t come in yet (no transport), or that the water was off, or that the manicurist had gone to a funeral in Blantyre. Come back tomorrow. Or the day after. Whenever.
Another annoying aspect of the beauty salon was the behavior of the Malawian girls. They increasingly got on my nerves. Some days a whole pack of them would be sitting around the shop, reading European or South African fashion magazines, laughing and squealing together. It was not restful. Further, they had a way of scrutinizing white people closely, looking intently at their hair, their skin, their clothes, and asking personal questions: how many servants do you have (a sore point for me), how many boyfriends do you have (another touchy subject), and the inevitable—will you take me back to the States when you leave?
When they talked and laughed among themselves, I would hear the word “Mazungu,” or foreigner, leading me to believe they were having a joke at my expense. About that time, I learned of a South African trained woman who made home visits to give massages, aromatherapy, manicures, pedicures, and best of all, foot massage. I never went back to the Malawian shop again.
The new masseuse, Salima, wasn’t very good, I’m sorry to report. She pummeled my body like bread dough, with no sensitivity at all; and she wanted to play the radio throughout the entire appointment. I found some dreamy sounding tapes in town and told her that I wanted to hear them in silence. She finally complied. After that, my Saturday afternoon sessions of soin passed more peacefully.
I did not miss the Malawian beauty shop, but my visits there brought to mind a trip to a 300-hundred year old Turkish bath I had visited some years earlier in Istanbul, the year of the fall of the USSR. Shortly after the fall, I was sent with a party of specialists to visit the Russian Far East, Siberia, and all the “Stans.”
After five weeks in chaotic territories, I felt terrible, toxified by pollution and a diet of greasy, starchy food, washed down with rotgut vodka (the only comfort at the end of seemingly endless days). I was also nervous and achy, strung out from too much danger. After nine flights on the Aeroflot of the outback and twenty hours on a train through three war zones in the Caucasus, we were finally able to reach Baku. We flew to Istanbul for a few days’ rest before flying to Frankfurt and then home.
I experienced Istanbul as a rebirth: I woke up in a bed with fresh linens. We had hot water, room service, café au lait. No menacing KGB agents were posted outside our doors. No one asked to see our papers, as ragged soldier had done throughout our wild train ride through the mountains.
Once in Turkey, I felt safe but exhausted, grimy, ill, and tense in spite of having made it out to safety. On my first morning there, I saw an advertisement on the bedside table for a 300-year-old Turkish bath in the neighborhood. I instantly decided to go and had the hotel man point the way.
Once at the bath, I realized that I was a complete outsider. The Turkish women sat around nude, sipping thick coffee in tiny cups. Almost all were quite fat with pendulous breasts. Many bore brutal scars on their bellies. Cesareans perhaps. A sisterhood of cicatrices. They seemed utterly un-self-conscious, as though they were chatting in a coffee shop.
I felt as if I had landed on another planet. A young woman took my ticket, gave me a towel, showed me where to put my clothes, and indicated the place I was to sit. I sat, feeling immensely self-conscious as every eye in the room was on my naked, scrawny, pale white body. The woman appeared every few minutes to splash me with a bucket of warm water. Finally she motioned to me to take my place on the heated marble dome, the central feature of this ancient structure. I lay down on my stomach, and for the first few moments the stones felt blistering hot. While I waited, I wondered about the people who had stretched out where I was.
The young woman returned, and with big sponges and brushes, she scrubbed, soaped, and splashed one side and then the other. She asked without words if I wanted my feet done, my hair. I signaled “everything.” In the hour that followed, she managed to convey wordlessly that she was unhappy, that she had three kids and a husband who drank and beat her.
When I left, I wasn’t sure what the appropriate tip should be, so I aimed high. She mimed surprise and displeasure at what I had given her, so I gave her some more. As I was getting dressed, I saw her gleefully showing the other women the money, evidently gloating over her good fortune in having a foreign client too stupid to know the local pay scale or too tired to care.
In spite of this minor irritation, I returned to the hotel in an altered state, slept a deep and dreamless eighteen hours, and woke up feeling purified and more or less returned to myself. All this for less then the price of a good haircut in Washington or New York.
Frequent and regular visits to beauty salons—beauty parlors as they are still called in the south—were something new to me when I lived in Africa. In the States, I only went to get my hair cut a couple of weeks after I really needed it. Spending a lot of time and money on beauty treatments made me nervous and offended my puritan sensibilities. I told myself silly and righteous things about both money and time, such as, “They could save an entire African village for what some women pay for manicures,” and “Why spend all that time sitting under a dryer when there are so many important things to do in this world?” I realize that back then when I started talking about The World, I was into some level of grandiosity and should have calmed myself down.
Another variation of this interior conversation was, “I’m supposed to be an intellectual.” That was a killer, because while I wanted to be taken seriously in the university community and then the professional world, I never wanted to look as undone and ill kempt as many of my colleagues did. The most successful women in the English Department in my day weren’t spending any time deciding which lipstick looked better—Fire and Ice or Pink Perfection. And in my own heart of hearts, I worried that the pursuit of fashion and beauty would crowd out thoughts of Beowulf, Chaucer, and The Great Vowel Shift.
Once I moved to Africa, my perspective changed. The African sun and air were beating me up and drying me out. I worked 14-hour days most of the time and had little focus on personal care. When I realized that I was beginning to look haggard, I decided that attention must be paid.
On Saturday afternoons, if no emergencies arose, I had an unaccustomed bit of time to myself. I started frequenting a local salon for regular mani-pedi appointments. And since I was already there, I decided to have my legs waxed and then get an occasional facial. I began to enjoy the feeling, and it was certainly affordable, even if one paid top dollar and tipped handsomely, as I always made sure to do.
Malawian beauty salons are almost always run by East Indians, who made up the merchant class in that part of Africa. Malawian girls did the actual work. Well-off Malawian women came in occasionally, but the clientele was largely Indian.
The young Indian women were often startlingly beautiful and soignée. Even the teen-agers came in for regular facials and hair treatments on Saturday. They joked and gossiped in Chichewa with the Malawian salon attendants and were as fluent in the local language as they, understandably so because they had all been born in Malawi.
Many of the older Indian ladies retained vestiges of great beauty. They were usually obese by our standards but evidently not by theirs. They seemed to like themselves just as they were. They didn’t talk about their weight or their diets, their exercise routines, their fat-to-muscle ratios in the obsessive way that so many Americans do. They just lolled about, looking faintly bored, having the dry skin rubbed off their heels and elbows, or having more holes pierced in their ears—the better to wear the fantastic gold jewelry they all seemed to have.
Making appointments, I should say having appointments, was difficult because time meant nothing in that environment. Many times when I showed up at the appointed time, I was told that the hairdresser hadn’t come in yet (no transport), or that the water was off, or that the manicurist had gone to a funeral in Blantyre. Come back tomorrow. Or the day after. Whenever.
Another annoying aspect of the beauty salon was the behavior of the Malawian girls. They increasingly got on my nerves. Some days a whole pack of them would be sitting around the shop, reading European or South African fashion magazines, laughing and squealing together. It was not restful. Further, they had a way of scrutinizing white people closely, looking intently at their hair, their skin, their clothes, and asking personal questions: how many servants do you have (a sore point for me), how many boyfriends do you have (another touchy subject), and the inevitable—will you take me back to the States when you leave?
When they talked and laughed among themselves, I would hear the word “Mazungu,” or foreigner, leading me to believe they were having a joke at my expense. About that time, I learned of a South African trained woman who made home visits to give massages, aromatherapy, manicures, pedicures, and best of all, foot massage. I never went back to the Malawian shop again.
The new masseuse, Salima, wasn’t very good, I’m sorry to report. She pummeled my body like bread dough, with no sensitivity at all; and she wanted to play the radio throughout the entire appointment. I found some dreamy sounding tapes in town and told her that I wanted to hear them in silence. She finally complied. After that, my Saturday afternoon sessions of soin passed more peacefully.
I did not miss the Malawian beauty shop, but my visits there brought to mind a trip to a 300-hundred year old Turkish bath I had visited some years earlier in Istanbul, the year of the fall of the USSR. Shortly after the fall, I was sent with a party of specialists to visit the Russian Far East, Siberia, and all the “Stans.”
After five weeks in chaotic territories, I felt terrible, toxified by pollution and a diet of greasy, starchy food, washed down with rotgut vodka (the only comfort at the end of seemingly endless days). I was also nervous and achy, strung out from too much danger. After nine flights on the Aeroflot of the outback and twenty hours on a train through three war zones in the Caucasus, we were finally able to reach Baku. We flew to Istanbul for a few days’ rest before flying to Frankfurt and then home.
I experienced Istanbul as a rebirth: I woke up in a bed with fresh linens. We had hot water, room service, café au lait. No menacing KGB agents were posted outside our doors. No one asked to see our papers, as ragged soldier had done throughout our wild train ride through the mountains.
Once in Turkey, I felt safe but exhausted, grimy, ill, and tense in spite of having made it out to safety. On my first morning there, I saw an advertisement on the bedside table for a 300-year-old Turkish bath in the neighborhood. I instantly decided to go and had the hotel man point the way.
Once at the bath, I realized that I was a complete outsider. The Turkish women sat around nude, sipping thick coffee in tiny cups. Almost all were quite fat with pendulous breasts. Many bore brutal scars on their bellies. Cesareans perhaps. A sisterhood of cicatrices. They seemed utterly un-self-conscious, as though they were chatting in a coffee shop.
I felt as if I had landed on another planet. A young woman took my ticket, gave me a towel, showed me where to put my clothes, and indicated the place I was to sit. I sat, feeling immensely self-conscious as every eye in the room was on my naked, scrawny, pale white body. The woman appeared every few minutes to splash me with a bucket of warm water. Finally she motioned to me to take my place on the heated marble dome, the central feature of this ancient structure. I lay down on my stomach, and for the first few moments the stones felt blistering hot. While I waited, I wondered about the people who had stretched out where I was.
The young woman returned, and with big sponges and brushes, she scrubbed, soaped, and splashed one side and then the other. She asked without words if I wanted my feet done, my hair. I signaled “everything.” In the hour that followed, she managed to convey wordlessly that she was unhappy, that she had three kids and a husband who drank and beat her.
When I left, I wasn’t sure what the appropriate tip should be, so I aimed high. She mimed surprise and displeasure at what I had given her, so I gave her some more. As I was getting dressed, I saw her gleefully showing the other women the money, evidently gloating over her good fortune in having a foreign client too stupid to know the local pay scale or too tired to care.
In spite of this minor irritation, I returned to the hotel in an altered state, slept a deep and dreamless eighteen hours, and woke up feeling purified and more or less returned to myself. All this for less then the price of a good haircut in Washington or New York.
Monday, December 1, 2008
THE CHRISTMAS THAT CAME A LITTLE LATE
Of my six Christmases in Africa, the one I remember most vividly was my first in Niger, the Christmas I thought wasn’t taking place.
In an overwhelmingly Muslim country like Niger, Christmas is not heralded by the imagery of the northern hemisphere—the fir trees, the holly and the ivy, Rudolph and Frosty. No jingle bells or ho, ho, ho, no fake or real snow, no seasonal specialties and holiday wines and spirits in the market. In Africa, even Christian countries like Malawi are too poor for such excesses. Poverty enforces a certain purity; and attempts by expatriates to introduce the standard symbols at their holiday parties always seemed to me to fall a little flat, merely calling attention to the absence of both the good and the bad aspects of Christmas.
Ironically, in Niger, a country in which Christmas scarcely exists, the images of the first Christmas, so blunted and debased in America by commercialism, can be seen everywhere in North Africa. If the citizens of Niamey wanted to stage a Living Nativity, it wouldn’t take long to assemble the props or the costumes. No cow shed with a straw roof would have to be constructed, nobody’s mother would have to stitch up cloaks and turbans, no sheep and goats would need to be trucked in from a nearby farm. Many women even today wear the garments we associate with the Virgin, a long, simple dress with a big scarf covering the head and shoulders. One sees plenty of men who could play shepherds because they are shepherds, wearing the rough garments, rope belts, and sandals that American moms must improvise for their little pageant actors. Everything necessary for a Nativity reenactment in Niamey is richly and readily available on the streets of the town.
The few Christian churches in Niamey, with the possible exception of the Roman Catholic Cathedral, did not seem to emphasize the holiday. Even there, the approach seemed rather casual. I remember driving through town on that Christmas Eve afternoon with the American Ambassador’s wife. She asked her chauffeur to drive by the Cathedral so she could inquire about the times of Christmas Eve masses, as she and Excellence were thinking of attending. We pulled up at the imposing structure, went into the reception, and asked the young woman at the desk for the schedule of Christmas masses. She looked puzzled and said she didn’t have one: we would have to ask Pere Bonnard for those details. We hunted down a sleepy little French priest who also told us he wasn’t sure about the times. He rummaged around on his desk and produced a scrap of paper that said Midnight Mass, 11:00 p.m.
I went to Mass that night and found it an interesting cultural event but not a worshipful one, at least not for me. I was too fascinated by the theatrical elements. Nigerienne women and girls danced up the aisles and presented themselves at the crèche just to the right of the central aisle. Mary and Joseph followed, walking slowly. Mary sat down by the crèche with Joseph standing beside her. When someone stepped out and proclaimed the birth of the Savior, the Bishop, an imposing Frenchman, appeared with a baby in his arms and held it aloft. And said commandingly, “Regardez” It was, I must say, a thrilling moment. As he walked up and down the aisle holding the baby above his head, he passed by my place on the aisle and I saw a tiny brown arm dangling limply from the blanket. When he returned the baby to the Virgin, she took it and put it into the cradle. It looked lifeless and never stirred or made a peep for the duration of the service. I decided it must be a doll. “Poupee?“ I whispered to the man sitting next to me. “Mais, non,” he replied, “c’est un bel enfant.” I concluded that if it were a real baby, it had been drugged for the occasion, an unsettling thought.
I went the next day to dinner at the home of the American Deputy Chief of Mission. He and his Australian wife served a lovely repast, with many dishes on the buffet, each accompanied by a card announcing what it was. The meal was a greatly expanded version of the traditional American holiday feast, but nothing else acknowledged that it was Christmas—no reference to it as we sat down to eat, no Christmas toast when the champagne was poured, no Christmas blessing. No children running around saying, ”He broke my truck,” or “This thing doesn’t have any batteries,” or “Can I have my pie now?” I went home feeling out of joint and thinking that for the second night in a row, Christmas had passed me by.
The next morning, I left for the office before sunrise, relieved to put The Christmas That Never Was behind me. The town was mostly deserted, and the dust of the Harmaton had turned the sky an unimaginable shade of salmon. I drove through the dawn along the wide boulevards lined with palms, the kind of avenues the French colonials built wherever they went. When I saw on my left three men on camels, not an uncommon sight on the streets of Niamey, I stopped the car to let them cross. Only as they passed directly in front of me did I see them clearly. Two looked like light-skinned Arabs or Tauregs, the third was a black African. All were majestic in full desert regalia. The image suddenly took my breath. “Ah,“ I thought, “Exit the Kings.”
Excerpt from a work in progress to be entitled The Color of a Lion’s Eye
Copyright (C) 2002 by Jane F. Bonin
In an overwhelmingly Muslim country like Niger, Christmas is not heralded by the imagery of the northern hemisphere—the fir trees, the holly and the ivy, Rudolph and Frosty. No jingle bells or ho, ho, ho, no fake or real snow, no seasonal specialties and holiday wines and spirits in the market. In Africa, even Christian countries like Malawi are too poor for such excesses. Poverty enforces a certain purity; and attempts by expatriates to introduce the standard symbols at their holiday parties always seemed to me to fall a little flat, merely calling attention to the absence of both the good and the bad aspects of Christmas.
Ironically, in Niger, a country in which Christmas scarcely exists, the images of the first Christmas, so blunted and debased in America by commercialism, can be seen everywhere in North Africa. If the citizens of Niamey wanted to stage a Living Nativity, it wouldn’t take long to assemble the props or the costumes. No cow shed with a straw roof would have to be constructed, nobody’s mother would have to stitch up cloaks and turbans, no sheep and goats would need to be trucked in from a nearby farm. Many women even today wear the garments we associate with the Virgin, a long, simple dress with a big scarf covering the head and shoulders. One sees plenty of men who could play shepherds because they are shepherds, wearing the rough garments, rope belts, and sandals that American moms must improvise for their little pageant actors. Everything necessary for a Nativity reenactment in Niamey is richly and readily available on the streets of the town.
The few Christian churches in Niamey, with the possible exception of the Roman Catholic Cathedral, did not seem to emphasize the holiday. Even there, the approach seemed rather casual. I remember driving through town on that Christmas Eve afternoon with the American Ambassador’s wife. She asked her chauffeur to drive by the Cathedral so she could inquire about the times of Christmas Eve masses, as she and Excellence were thinking of attending. We pulled up at the imposing structure, went into the reception, and asked the young woman at the desk for the schedule of Christmas masses. She looked puzzled and said she didn’t have one: we would have to ask Pere Bonnard for those details. We hunted down a sleepy little French priest who also told us he wasn’t sure about the times. He rummaged around on his desk and produced a scrap of paper that said Midnight Mass, 11:00 p.m.
I went to Mass that night and found it an interesting cultural event but not a worshipful one, at least not for me. I was too fascinated by the theatrical elements. Nigerienne women and girls danced up the aisles and presented themselves at the crèche just to the right of the central aisle. Mary and Joseph followed, walking slowly. Mary sat down by the crèche with Joseph standing beside her. When someone stepped out and proclaimed the birth of the Savior, the Bishop, an imposing Frenchman, appeared with a baby in his arms and held it aloft. And said commandingly, “Regardez” It was, I must say, a thrilling moment. As he walked up and down the aisle holding the baby above his head, he passed by my place on the aisle and I saw a tiny brown arm dangling limply from the blanket. When he returned the baby to the Virgin, she took it and put it into the cradle. It looked lifeless and never stirred or made a peep for the duration of the service. I decided it must be a doll. “Poupee?“ I whispered to the man sitting next to me. “Mais, non,” he replied, “c’est un bel enfant.” I concluded that if it were a real baby, it had been drugged for the occasion, an unsettling thought.
I went the next day to dinner at the home of the American Deputy Chief of Mission. He and his Australian wife served a lovely repast, with many dishes on the buffet, each accompanied by a card announcing what it was. The meal was a greatly expanded version of the traditional American holiday feast, but nothing else acknowledged that it was Christmas—no reference to it as we sat down to eat, no Christmas toast when the champagne was poured, no Christmas blessing. No children running around saying, ”He broke my truck,” or “This thing doesn’t have any batteries,” or “Can I have my pie now?” I went home feeling out of joint and thinking that for the second night in a row, Christmas had passed me by.
The next morning, I left for the office before sunrise, relieved to put The Christmas That Never Was behind me. The town was mostly deserted, and the dust of the Harmaton had turned the sky an unimaginable shade of salmon. I drove through the dawn along the wide boulevards lined with palms, the kind of avenues the French colonials built wherever they went. When I saw on my left three men on camels, not an uncommon sight on the streets of Niamey, I stopped the car to let them cross. Only as they passed directly in front of me did I see them clearly. Two looked like light-skinned Arabs or Tauregs, the third was a black African. All were majestic in full desert regalia. The image suddenly took my breath. “Ah,“ I thought, “Exit the Kings.”
Excerpt from a work in progress to be entitled The Color of a Lion’s Eye
Copyright (C) 2002 by Jane F. Bonin
Friday, June 20, 2008
A FLOCK OF PIGEONS
Ours weren’t the showy white kind with tails like ruffled fans, the kind Picasso and Matisse made into a cliche image of southern France. Ours were the common ones found in every African village and even in the back yards of city dwellings. Dingy birds, tan or gray mixed with white, they seemed dull in a landscape of tropical birds, flame trees and poinsettias growing wild in the bush.
One day while sitting on the veranda (or khande, as they called it in southern Africa) about the time the shadows fell on Mt. Mulange, I watched the homecoming of my neighbor’s flock. Two or three at a time, they flew in, circled, then touched down. One could see this sight all over Malawi in the late afternoon. Nearly every family kept pigeons to supplement the food supply. They were flying protein.
I had no interest in pigeons as food, but I came to love seeing them winging unerringly home night after night. I started thinking about getting a flock too. “Weston,” I said to my cook not long after, “I think I’d like some pigeons.” He began to tell me that he could get them at the market the next morning and prepare them for dinner. How many guests would I be having?
“No, no,” I said. “I just want some to watch.” He looked mildly surprised, and I was mildly embarrassed. In a country where so many people are just one step ahead of serious hunger, it seemed frivolous to say I wanted them for my pleasure. He was probably thinking, “These crazy Mazungus! What next?”
Then an idea formed as I was speaking it. “Weston, if you take care of the flock now, I will give them to you when I leave. When I’ve gone, you can do with them as you like. He said, “Don’t worry, Madam. I will see to them.”
The very next day, Weston and Maki, the garden boy, went to the market to buy the materials to build a pigeonniere. With Weston supervising and Maki doing the construction, the little pigeon house was up on its pole in the middle of the back garden by nightfall. It must have been a traditional design because it looked like all the other pigeon houses I had seen, down to the the umbrella shaped roof and the rickety ladder leading up to the door. All we needed now were the birds.
When Weston and Maki returned from the market with six birds in a crate on the back of the bicycle, I peeked inside to see them. Six pairs of startled and startling red eyes stared back. Weston scattered grain at the base of the pole while Maki stood on the ladder and stuffed straw into the house. Weston kept the birds in the crate for several days, feeding them every morning and evening. Then he put them into the house and shut them up at the time when the birds usually fly home and tuck up for the night.
The next morning, the entire household assembled to witness their release. Miriam, Weston’s wife, stood with the children, who were dressed in their school uniforms. Even the day guard, Wilson, who had just reported for duty, was present for the historic occasion. The birds came out, one by one, perched on the little sill, and flapped off without a backward glance. I wondered if we would see them again.
The work day seemed endless because I was in a fever of anticipation to get home to await the arrival of the flock. We waited, Weston, Miriam, and the children, on the khande. Maki had gone for the day by this time, but Wison (not to be confused with Wilson), the night guard, was watching the skies from his post at the gate.
The pigeons next door were already coming in, but ours were nowhere to be seen. We waited an agonizing fifteen minutes more. When Wison spotted the first one winging in, he shouted, “Madam, they are coming home.” A lone bird, a gray one, circled and landed briskly and began pecking the grain at the foot of the pole. I was worried about the rest but then two more, then a third arrived and landed.
When it became apparent that no more were coming, Weston said, “Don’t worry, Madam. They have gone back to the market. I will fetch them home in the morning.”
Early the next day, the lady next door sent her gardener to say that her flock had returned accompanied by a strange bird. Weston went for it and brought it back. That evening, it failed to return; so Weston retrieved it again and shut it up in the crate. That night at pigeon bedtime, he put it up with its fellows. The following evening, it came home with the rest.
By now, it was clear that we had lost one. A check of the market and a visit to the neighbor proved fruitless. Weston was philosophical. “A cat, probably.” I took care not to register too much disappointment. Malawi had, after all, one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, and I thought that excessive concern over a pigeon would be unseemly. And, I concluded, five out of six ain’t bad.
We never replaced the one that was lost and continued with a flock of five until the pigeons began their family. Because the pigeonniere was high up on the pole, we couldn’t see from the ground if their constant courtship activities had produced results.
When Weston reported that there were eggs in the nest, I wanted to know how many. Weston said we shouldn’t disturb them at this critical stage. I had many unanswered questions. Were all the hens laying? How many hens did we have? Did the whole flock go out every day, or did one or more stay back to sit on the nest?
One day Maki reported that he had heard “chip chipping” from above, but Weston would not let anyone go up to see. A week or so later, he himself crept up the precarious steps to investigate. He came back down and announced, “There are six.”
About a week later, I was sitting on the khande after lunch with Katie sleeping at my feet when suddenly she bounded off the porch and into the garden. I didn’t see the chick fall from the nest but she obviously had. Katie, the Silver Streak, killed it in one swift motion and began carrying it around the garden in her mouth, looking proud of herself. She didn’t maul it or try to eat it. I was annoyed with her until I remembered that Weimariners are bird dogs; she had done as her nature required.
I called for Weston. He took in the situation in a glance. He patted Katie on the head, and she dropped the tiny naked thing at his feet. He picked it up and said the children would bury it when they came home from school, which they did with all due ceremony but no discernible grief. They were used to death.
There were no more calamities after that. The babies learned to fly and were soon coming and going with the flock. More little ones hatched and the pigeons were in continuous production mode after that. I lost track of how many we had, but Weston always knew and could report the number immediately if I asked.
Six or 8 months later, not long before my term of service was scheduled to end, I was obliged to move to new quarters because the Indian gentleman who owned the house I lived in wanted to sell it. I hated to leave because I was happy where I was and moving meant that Weston and his family would be dislocated. The children were settled in their school and would have to transfer to a new one.
Another perturbing thing was that my successor had written to say that she did not intend to employ Weston. She didn’t want a man with a family on the place. She preferred a single woman. When I told Weston the disappointing news, he said, “Don’t worry, Madam. I will find another situation.” He asked if in the meantime, he could move the pigeons to his brother’s village. I had hoped that my successor would move into the house, continue to employ Weston and allow him and his family to stay on the place. I assumed that the pigeons would remain there too. Nothing would change. Like so many of my schemes to make life better for the Africans I came to admire and love, it was not to be.
Weston and Maki captured the pigeons the next morning and put them into a crate, packed up the pigeon house, the stairs, and the pole, and took them to the village where Weston’s brother lived. The brother was happy enough to be their custodian because Weston had agreed to share the eggs.
The night before the the pigeonniere was to be dismantled, I sat on the khande one last time and watched the flock swoop home through the amethyst twilight. Weston shut them in their little house where they would stay until the brother came with a truck to take them away. Early in the morning, he climbed back up the steps with a small cardboard box and extracted a pair to give to Maki.
I was surprised at how desolate I was to see them go. They would be well cared for, and I was happy to be making Weston a pigeon baron. And surely I wasn’t attached to those birds. I hadn’t tended them, hadn’t named any of them, and can’t see any of them clearly as I write this ten years later.
I realized later that I was grieving for a time of peace and comfort when I could sit and enjoy the lawn and the flame trees and the frangipani. I could forget the frustrations and uncertainties of the day and throw a ball to Katie, who never missed, not even once. The pigeons captured the essence of these brief periods of repose at day’s end. Their soaring flight home every evening meant that I was home too. I had made a home of a rented house, tacky government-issue furniture, a flock of village pigeons, and a servant and his family. The sense of being at home that I felt during those evenings on the khande was an unexpected blessing. I never experienced it again in Africa.
I didn’t cry when the pigeons were driven away in Weston’s brother’s borrowed truck, or later when I said good bye to Weston, to Miriam and the children, to Maki and Katie. I was rational about the whole thing, knowing that I had come for a limited time and would be leaving. I protected myself from the pain of good-bye. But now, I cry while writing, while reading over what I’ve written, while looking at pictures of those beautiful African faces, especially those of the sturdy African men who knew how to do everything, even pretend that a flock of pigeons was cause for great excitement. When I feel really sad and my memories of them tear at my heart, I sometimes hear Weston say, “Don’t worry, Madam. Everything will be all right.”
One day while sitting on the veranda (or khande, as they called it in southern Africa) about the time the shadows fell on Mt. Mulange, I watched the homecoming of my neighbor’s flock. Two or three at a time, they flew in, circled, then touched down. One could see this sight all over Malawi in the late afternoon. Nearly every family kept pigeons to supplement the food supply. They were flying protein.
I had no interest in pigeons as food, but I came to love seeing them winging unerringly home night after night. I started thinking about getting a flock too. “Weston,” I said to my cook not long after, “I think I’d like some pigeons.” He began to tell me that he could get them at the market the next morning and prepare them for dinner. How many guests would I be having?
“No, no,” I said. “I just want some to watch.” He looked mildly surprised, and I was mildly embarrassed. In a country where so many people are just one step ahead of serious hunger, it seemed frivolous to say I wanted them for my pleasure. He was probably thinking, “These crazy Mazungus! What next?”
Then an idea formed as I was speaking it. “Weston, if you take care of the flock now, I will give them to you when I leave. When I’ve gone, you can do with them as you like. He said, “Don’t worry, Madam. I will see to them.”
The very next day, Weston and Maki, the garden boy, went to the market to buy the materials to build a pigeonniere. With Weston supervising and Maki doing the construction, the little pigeon house was up on its pole in the middle of the back garden by nightfall. It must have been a traditional design because it looked like all the other pigeon houses I had seen, down to the the umbrella shaped roof and the rickety ladder leading up to the door. All we needed now were the birds.
When Weston and Maki returned from the market with six birds in a crate on the back of the bicycle, I peeked inside to see them. Six pairs of startled and startling red eyes stared back. Weston scattered grain at the base of the pole while Maki stood on the ladder and stuffed straw into the house. Weston kept the birds in the crate for several days, feeding them every morning and evening. Then he put them into the house and shut them up at the time when the birds usually fly home and tuck up for the night.
The next morning, the entire household assembled to witness their release. Miriam, Weston’s wife, stood with the children, who were dressed in their school uniforms. Even the day guard, Wilson, who had just reported for duty, was present for the historic occasion. The birds came out, one by one, perched on the little sill, and flapped off without a backward glance. I wondered if we would see them again.
The work day seemed endless because I was in a fever of anticipation to get home to await the arrival of the flock. We waited, Weston, Miriam, and the children, on the khande. Maki had gone for the day by this time, but Wison (not to be confused with Wilson), the night guard, was watching the skies from his post at the gate.
The pigeons next door were already coming in, but ours were nowhere to be seen. We waited an agonizing fifteen minutes more. When Wison spotted the first one winging in, he shouted, “Madam, they are coming home.” A lone bird, a gray one, circled and landed briskly and began pecking the grain at the foot of the pole. I was worried about the rest but then two more, then a third arrived and landed.
When it became apparent that no more were coming, Weston said, “Don’t worry, Madam. They have gone back to the market. I will fetch them home in the morning.”
Early the next day, the lady next door sent her gardener to say that her flock had returned accompanied by a strange bird. Weston went for it and brought it back. That evening, it failed to return; so Weston retrieved it again and shut it up in the crate. That night at pigeon bedtime, he put it up with its fellows. The following evening, it came home with the rest.
By now, it was clear that we had lost one. A check of the market and a visit to the neighbor proved fruitless. Weston was philosophical. “A cat, probably.” I took care not to register too much disappointment. Malawi had, after all, one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, and I thought that excessive concern over a pigeon would be unseemly. And, I concluded, five out of six ain’t bad.
We never replaced the one that was lost and continued with a flock of five until the pigeons began their family. Because the pigeonniere was high up on the pole, we couldn’t see from the ground if their constant courtship activities had produced results.
When Weston reported that there were eggs in the nest, I wanted to know how many. Weston said we shouldn’t disturb them at this critical stage. I had many unanswered questions. Were all the hens laying? How many hens did we have? Did the whole flock go out every day, or did one or more stay back to sit on the nest?
One day Maki reported that he had heard “chip chipping” from above, but Weston would not let anyone go up to see. A week or so later, he himself crept up the precarious steps to investigate. He came back down and announced, “There are six.”
About a week later, I was sitting on the khande after lunch with Katie sleeping at my feet when suddenly she bounded off the porch and into the garden. I didn’t see the chick fall from the nest but she obviously had. Katie, the Silver Streak, killed it in one swift motion and began carrying it around the garden in her mouth, looking proud of herself. She didn’t maul it or try to eat it. I was annoyed with her until I remembered that Weimariners are bird dogs; she had done as her nature required.
I called for Weston. He took in the situation in a glance. He patted Katie on the head, and she dropped the tiny naked thing at his feet. He picked it up and said the children would bury it when they came home from school, which they did with all due ceremony but no discernible grief. They were used to death.
There were no more calamities after that. The babies learned to fly and were soon coming and going with the flock. More little ones hatched and the pigeons were in continuous production mode after that. I lost track of how many we had, but Weston always knew and could report the number immediately if I asked.
Six or 8 months later, not long before my term of service was scheduled to end, I was obliged to move to new quarters because the Indian gentleman who owned the house I lived in wanted to sell it. I hated to leave because I was happy where I was and moving meant that Weston and his family would be dislocated. The children were settled in their school and would have to transfer to a new one.
Another perturbing thing was that my successor had written to say that she did not intend to employ Weston. She didn’t want a man with a family on the place. She preferred a single woman. When I told Weston the disappointing news, he said, “Don’t worry, Madam. I will find another situation.” He asked if in the meantime, he could move the pigeons to his brother’s village. I had hoped that my successor would move into the house, continue to employ Weston and allow him and his family to stay on the place. I assumed that the pigeons would remain there too. Nothing would change. Like so many of my schemes to make life better for the Africans I came to admire and love, it was not to be.
Weston and Maki captured the pigeons the next morning and put them into a crate, packed up the pigeon house, the stairs, and the pole, and took them to the village where Weston’s brother lived. The brother was happy enough to be their custodian because Weston had agreed to share the eggs.
The night before the the pigeonniere was to be dismantled, I sat on the khande one last time and watched the flock swoop home through the amethyst twilight. Weston shut them in their little house where they would stay until the brother came with a truck to take them away. Early in the morning, he climbed back up the steps with a small cardboard box and extracted a pair to give to Maki.
I was surprised at how desolate I was to see them go. They would be well cared for, and I was happy to be making Weston a pigeon baron. And surely I wasn’t attached to those birds. I hadn’t tended them, hadn’t named any of them, and can’t see any of them clearly as I write this ten years later.
I realized later that I was grieving for a time of peace and comfort when I could sit and enjoy the lawn and the flame trees and the frangipani. I could forget the frustrations and uncertainties of the day and throw a ball to Katie, who never missed, not even once. The pigeons captured the essence of these brief periods of repose at day’s end. Their soaring flight home every evening meant that I was home too. I had made a home of a rented house, tacky government-issue furniture, a flock of village pigeons, and a servant and his family. The sense of being at home that I felt during those evenings on the khande was an unexpected blessing. I never experienced it again in Africa.
I didn’t cry when the pigeons were driven away in Weston’s brother’s borrowed truck, or later when I said good bye to Weston, to Miriam and the children, to Maki and Katie. I was rational about the whole thing, knowing that I had come for a limited time and would be leaving. I protected myself from the pain of good-bye. But now, I cry while writing, while reading over what I’ve written, while looking at pictures of those beautiful African faces, especially those of the sturdy African men who knew how to do everything, even pretend that a flock of pigeons was cause for great excitement. When I feel really sad and my memories of them tear at my heart, I sometimes hear Weston say, “Don’t worry, Madam. Everything will be all right.”
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
KITUNDU AND NJINGA
Two vital words in Chichewa, the language of southern Malawi, are kitundu and njinga. Without njinga or bicycles, kitundu or “stuff” cannot be easily moved. Because njinga are expensive and few can afford them, people have learned to use their bodies as a means of transporting their kitundu wherever it needs to go. Seeing people carrying huge loads is a common sight on the roads and along the footpaths through the bush.
Men and women carry sheets of tin, logs of firewood, sacks of grain, boxes and parcels of all sizes. I once saw a man with enough straw on his head to thatch the roof of his hut. Portable sewing machines on the heads of men is a familiar sight in both villages and towns as itinerant tailors bear their machines through the neighborhoods, accompanied by small boys with folded squares of brightly colored of fabric stacked on their heads. When they hear the cry “Hey, Tailor, over here!” they go to the person who wants work done.
Often the client selects the fabric he wants on the spot, and the tailor cuts, sews, and finishes the garment that same day. For more intricate designs and higher quality fabrics, such as the beautiful and intricate wax patterns and refined batiks, the client would normally visit a shop in town.
While the men seem to be the bearers of the largest loads, the women and girls must also carry kitundu. A baby is not kitundu, but the female bearers of kitundu have to transport their smallest child along with everything else. The concept of babysitters, daycare, preschool and all the other institutions that ease the burdens of motherhood in industrial societies are mostly not available to African women. So from a baby’s earliest days, as soon as it is strong enough to hold up its head, until the age of two, sometimes three, they are carried about on their mothers’ backs. Meanwhile, the women go on with their lives quite naturally, pulling water, pounding meal, cooking, washing, shopping, working in the fields, and carrying things. One sees women with buckets of water on their heads, huge bundles of clothes, baskets of bread, pans of fish or fruit, and large bags of maize flour. The baby behind is usually asleep, and if he isn’t, he makes no fuss.
The African women and girls I saw every day were remarkably sure-footed and poised, almost casual in their movements. I have seen women jump across a ditch with a bucket of water on her head and a baby on her back, never sloshing a drop or jolting the child. They are as skilled as circus performers. I marveled at their grace and sense of balance and their strength. I was watching a woman of about my size, pulling water from a well nearby. Her biceps bulged with the effort. She rested a moment, preparing to lift the bucket onto her head. I asked her if she thought I would be able to carry it on my head. “No, Ma’am,” she said, “It would snap your neck.” She smiled as she coiled the piece of twisted fabric she would set on her head as a cradle to keep the pail from slipping. “African women are strong,” she said, starting down the path with long, confident strides. “We have to be. And we start young.”
And indeed they do. Small girls begin carrying their brothers and sisters on their backs when they are not much bigger than the child. One day, I saw my houseboy Weston’s little girl, Helen, walking up the driveway with a teddy bear tied on her back and a shoebox balanced on her head. She was four at the time and already in training to bear her burdens gracefully.
As babies get bigger and heavier, they begin to try to direct their mother’s activities. I saw one trying to reach around and unbutton his mother’s blouse and another carrying her mother’s purse and fiddling with the clasp. Sometimes they buck a little, as if to say, “Come on, giddy-up.” The young ones make only gentle suggestions; these children are never impatient or pushy.
The most remarkable thing to me was the way in which a woman can place a child on her own back without assistance. She does it with one hand, by grasping the baby by its upper arm, bending slightly, then slinging it up onto her back. Then she folds a long piece of cotton cloth to make a tchinge, slings it up too, grabs both ends and ties them in one deft motion. When the baby is properly loaded, she goes forward on her ceaseless round of tasks.
The mothers never carried diaper bags, baby bottles, tissues, baby wipes, pacifiers, toys, or any of the other paraphernalia so necessary for western children. African babies are either at the breast or on the back. When I think of the hundreds of dollars we spend on strollers, baby carriages, and all the rest of it, I wonder which children are the happiest. As part of the Bigification of Everything in America, a child’s stroller now takes up most of the sidewalk, and yet the pampered little riders are often fretful and demanding. In contrast, Malawian babies seldom cry unless they are sick or in pain. They are by nature sweet, patient, and contented. Maybe they don’t demand attention because they get so much “body time” with their mothers, who are always busy but never hurried and never far away. For at least two years the child lives as an extension of its mother’s body, is lovingly cared for, and also nurtured by other women in the family and the community as their own. A stroller as big as an SUV seems little compensation for that.
Obviously, the babies liked riding on their mother’s back. I sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a child on my back as I went through the day’s work. One day, Maki the garden boy, as these workers were called, brought his tiny wife Elizabeth, only a few weeks out of childbed, to show me their newborn. The baby was named Harrison, or so I thought. I later discovered that his name was Allison. Many Malawians, like the Chinese, have trouble with the letter L, which sometimes comes out as an R. Allison had been sleeping soundly when they arrived; but when he started stirring, I asked to hold him. Elizabeth handed him over, and he continued his nap, undisturbed. As the visit was winding down, she took the tchinge he was wrapped in and began to fold it to make the baby’s sling so she could put him on her back. On an impulse, I asked if she would put him on my back for a few minutes before they left. She seemed startled, but she and Maki motioned for me to bend over. They placed the infant a little below my shoulder blades, and Elizabeth wrapped the sling around him and brought the corners around to the front and tied them tightly around my ribcage. The baby struggled while we were fussing with the tchinge, but once he was firmly fastened on, he snuggled down and went back to sleep. Baby Onboard.
He fit comfortably on my back, a satisfying little load. Maki and Elizabeth and I walked around the garden; and when they saw that I wasn’t ready to give the baby up, we strolled up the road in front of my house. Passersby looked at us curiously, as if the sight of a Mazungu with a black child on her back was extraordinary. I guess it was. When they left, Elizabeth whispered something to Maki in Chichewa, which he translated as, “Amayi said, ‘Thank you for touching our baby.’”
Transporting kitundu and kids is one thing, but strong as they are and accustomed from childhood to carrying heavy loads, there are limits to the amount of kitundu that a Malawian can carry. The Malawians profited in the colonial period when the British introduced the bicycle into the territory. They named the contraption “njinga” in imitation of the sound of the bell. For them the njinga was not a recreational vehicle or a toy but a means of transporting themselves and their kitundu as well.
Men ride with large specially-adapted baskets of goods strapped on behind. These wire or willow baskets, as much as three or four feet wide, are used to carry chickens or rabbits. Although Malawians ride when the load is light enough, they use the bicycle most often as we would use a luggage cart. They push the thing along loaded with pieces of lumber, goat carcasses, sacks of charcoal or loads of firewood. For transporting the latter, they often affix a wooden rack to the back of the bike, which allows them to stack the logs up even higher than their heads. I once saw a man riding a bike with a sofa strapped on the back. Fortunately there were few cars on that road because he took up as much room as a truck.
One day I received a visit from a young American who told me he was riding from cape-to-Cairo for Pedals for Progress, an organization whose mission was to collect used and discarded bicycles for distribution in developing countries. Last year, when my apartment building back in Washington DC decreed that residents must claim and tag their bikes in the bike room by a certain date or they would be given to charity, Pedals for Progress made a haul. I cannot imagine an African moving away and abandoning a bicycle. I remembered that in Africa used clothing markets are called “Dead Men’s Markets” because Africans can’t understand why wearable clothes were being put up for sale unless the owner had died.
Curiously, as valuable as bicycles are in Africa, women in Malawi do not ride them. I saw Weston’s big girl Monica riding his bike around the garden but she never took it onto the street. I suspect it’s the attachment to modesty that Malawians have. Women and girls can’t show their legs or wear pants, which lets out a lot of activities we take for granted. “Pedals for Progress” hasn’t been extended to women yet.
Men and women carry sheets of tin, logs of firewood, sacks of grain, boxes and parcels of all sizes. I once saw a man with enough straw on his head to thatch the roof of his hut. Portable sewing machines on the heads of men is a familiar sight in both villages and towns as itinerant tailors bear their machines through the neighborhoods, accompanied by small boys with folded squares of brightly colored of fabric stacked on their heads. When they hear the cry “Hey, Tailor, over here!” they go to the person who wants work done.
Often the client selects the fabric he wants on the spot, and the tailor cuts, sews, and finishes the garment that same day. For more intricate designs and higher quality fabrics, such as the beautiful and intricate wax patterns and refined batiks, the client would normally visit a shop in town.
While the men seem to be the bearers of the largest loads, the women and girls must also carry kitundu. A baby is not kitundu, but the female bearers of kitundu have to transport their smallest child along with everything else. The concept of babysitters, daycare, preschool and all the other institutions that ease the burdens of motherhood in industrial societies are mostly not available to African women. So from a baby’s earliest days, as soon as it is strong enough to hold up its head, until the age of two, sometimes three, they are carried about on their mothers’ backs. Meanwhile, the women go on with their lives quite naturally, pulling water, pounding meal, cooking, washing, shopping, working in the fields, and carrying things. One sees women with buckets of water on their heads, huge bundles of clothes, baskets of bread, pans of fish or fruit, and large bags of maize flour. The baby behind is usually asleep, and if he isn’t, he makes no fuss.
The African women and girls I saw every day were remarkably sure-footed and poised, almost casual in their movements. I have seen women jump across a ditch with a bucket of water on her head and a baby on her back, never sloshing a drop or jolting the child. They are as skilled as circus performers. I marveled at their grace and sense of balance and their strength. I was watching a woman of about my size, pulling water from a well nearby. Her biceps bulged with the effort. She rested a moment, preparing to lift the bucket onto her head. I asked her if she thought I would be able to carry it on my head. “No, Ma’am,” she said, “It would snap your neck.” She smiled as she coiled the piece of twisted fabric she would set on her head as a cradle to keep the pail from slipping. “African women are strong,” she said, starting down the path with long, confident strides. “We have to be. And we start young.”
And indeed they do. Small girls begin carrying their brothers and sisters on their backs when they are not much bigger than the child. One day, I saw my houseboy Weston’s little girl, Helen, walking up the driveway with a teddy bear tied on her back and a shoebox balanced on her head. She was four at the time and already in training to bear her burdens gracefully.
As babies get bigger and heavier, they begin to try to direct their mother’s activities. I saw one trying to reach around and unbutton his mother’s blouse and another carrying her mother’s purse and fiddling with the clasp. Sometimes they buck a little, as if to say, “Come on, giddy-up.” The young ones make only gentle suggestions; these children are never impatient or pushy.
The most remarkable thing to me was the way in which a woman can place a child on her own back without assistance. She does it with one hand, by grasping the baby by its upper arm, bending slightly, then slinging it up onto her back. Then she folds a long piece of cotton cloth to make a tchinge, slings it up too, grabs both ends and ties them in one deft motion. When the baby is properly loaded, she goes forward on her ceaseless round of tasks.
The mothers never carried diaper bags, baby bottles, tissues, baby wipes, pacifiers, toys, or any of the other paraphernalia so necessary for western children. African babies are either at the breast or on the back. When I think of the hundreds of dollars we spend on strollers, baby carriages, and all the rest of it, I wonder which children are the happiest. As part of the Bigification of Everything in America, a child’s stroller now takes up most of the sidewalk, and yet the pampered little riders are often fretful and demanding. In contrast, Malawian babies seldom cry unless they are sick or in pain. They are by nature sweet, patient, and contented. Maybe they don’t demand attention because they get so much “body time” with their mothers, who are always busy but never hurried and never far away. For at least two years the child lives as an extension of its mother’s body, is lovingly cared for, and also nurtured by other women in the family and the community as their own. A stroller as big as an SUV seems little compensation for that.
Obviously, the babies liked riding on their mother’s back. I sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a child on my back as I went through the day’s work. One day, Maki the garden boy, as these workers were called, brought his tiny wife Elizabeth, only a few weeks out of childbed, to show me their newborn. The baby was named Harrison, or so I thought. I later discovered that his name was Allison. Many Malawians, like the Chinese, have trouble with the letter L, which sometimes comes out as an R. Allison had been sleeping soundly when they arrived; but when he started stirring, I asked to hold him. Elizabeth handed him over, and he continued his nap, undisturbed. As the visit was winding down, she took the tchinge he was wrapped in and began to fold it to make the baby’s sling so she could put him on her back. On an impulse, I asked if she would put him on my back for a few minutes before they left. She seemed startled, but she and Maki motioned for me to bend over. They placed the infant a little below my shoulder blades, and Elizabeth wrapped the sling around him and brought the corners around to the front and tied them tightly around my ribcage. The baby struggled while we were fussing with the tchinge, but once he was firmly fastened on, he snuggled down and went back to sleep. Baby Onboard.
He fit comfortably on my back, a satisfying little load. Maki and Elizabeth and I walked around the garden; and when they saw that I wasn’t ready to give the baby up, we strolled up the road in front of my house. Passersby looked at us curiously, as if the sight of a Mazungu with a black child on her back was extraordinary. I guess it was. When they left, Elizabeth whispered something to Maki in Chichewa, which he translated as, “Amayi said, ‘Thank you for touching our baby.’”
Transporting kitundu and kids is one thing, but strong as they are and accustomed from childhood to carrying heavy loads, there are limits to the amount of kitundu that a Malawian can carry. The Malawians profited in the colonial period when the British introduced the bicycle into the territory. They named the contraption “njinga” in imitation of the sound of the bell. For them the njinga was not a recreational vehicle or a toy but a means of transporting themselves and their kitundu as well.
Men ride with large specially-adapted baskets of goods strapped on behind. These wire or willow baskets, as much as three or four feet wide, are used to carry chickens or rabbits. Although Malawians ride when the load is light enough, they use the bicycle most often as we would use a luggage cart. They push the thing along loaded with pieces of lumber, goat carcasses, sacks of charcoal or loads of firewood. For transporting the latter, they often affix a wooden rack to the back of the bike, which allows them to stack the logs up even higher than their heads. I once saw a man riding a bike with a sofa strapped on the back. Fortunately there were few cars on that road because he took up as much room as a truck.
One day I received a visit from a young American who told me he was riding from cape-to-Cairo for Pedals for Progress, an organization whose mission was to collect used and discarded bicycles for distribution in developing countries. Last year, when my apartment building back in Washington DC decreed that residents must claim and tag their bikes in the bike room by a certain date or they would be given to charity, Pedals for Progress made a haul. I cannot imagine an African moving away and abandoning a bicycle. I remembered that in Africa used clothing markets are called “Dead Men’s Markets” because Africans can’t understand why wearable clothes were being put up for sale unless the owner had died.
Curiously, as valuable as bicycles are in Africa, women in Malawi do not ride them. I saw Weston’s big girl Monica riding his bike around the garden but she never took it onto the street. I suspect it’s the attachment to modesty that Malawians have. Women and girls can’t show their legs or wear pants, which lets out a lot of activities we take for granted. “Pedals for Progress” hasn’t been extended to women yet.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
FAREWELL TO SLAVA
I was privileged to be present at the Washington memorial service of the great Russian cellist and conductor, Mistislav Rostopovitch. I had an entré in this remarkable event by virtue of my relationship with Freddie, who was principal timpanist in the orchestra Slava had conducted for seventeen years. I was already sad because Freddie was bereft that his great friend had departed this life.
I stepped into the cool, dark interior of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of John the Baptist and looked up at dozens of images in the Byzantine style of Jesus and the Apostles, the saints and martyrs. The sanctuary is covered floor to ceiling with them, all looking down with huge, sad eyes. The air was thick with wisps, sometimes clouds of incense, hundreds of candles, the sound of the choir singing over the diapason of Russian bassi profondi. All the priests were huge men with massive beards. They moved around the altar like gentle bears, their big paws holding the sacred books and vessels, all looking as though they had just stepped out of the pages of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
The priest-in-charge spoke briefly about “our brother Slava.” Freddie hadn’t realized that his old friend and colleague was particularly religious, but it seems that Slava was a regular communicant and had helped establish the church and contributed the money for the massive bells, which only a few days earlier had tolled eighty strokes for him. The people in this congregation regarded him with great admiration and affection, but he wasn’t at all a remote figure to them, separated by his talent and celebrity. He was “their brother Slava.”
The head priest (there were about eight others in the room), told the people that Slava had summoned him to Paris to help him prepare for his imminent death. The clergyman spent several days at his bedside. He said that by the time he died, the Maestro was ready to go. He had made his confession and received Absolution and Extreme Unction. His deathbed lay on the bosom of Mother Russia, where Slava would find his final resting place.
I felt a great sadness that such a luminous soul had left us, that an intense light in this world had been extinguished. I knew Slava only by reputation. I had a moment with him when Freddie presented me to him. He took me in his large embrace and kissed me first on the left cheek, then the right, then again on the left. “You make my darling Frediki happy,” he said in his thickly accented English. I wasn’t sure whether it was a statement of fact or a command.
The only religion I know of that would have suited the largeness of Slava was the Russian Orthodox Church, with its mystical intensity and embracing sensuality. Thinking back on my first few minutes in the church, I realized that the environment makes a global appeal to the senses in the coming together of the art, the music, the incense. The worship is active, with the congregation standing the entire time, and the people making the sign of the Cross repeatedly and chanting all the responses. I had only once before seen a congregation so passionately involved. In Kiev, the “Jerusalem of Russia,” not long after the fall of the Soviet Union, I saw people weeping and prostrating themselves upon the floor. I assumed that such devotion was occurring because the Russian people were finally free to practice their religion after long repression. Perhaps it is always so in the Russian Church. I wondered if the religious practices I found acceptable were really too narrow for me. My restrained Broad Church Anglicanism suddenly seemed too dry, too tight a fit. Maybe I longed to fall down and weep for my sins and be comforted by one of these big, gentle priests. Maybe I was a Holy Roller at heart in the guise of a via media Episcopalian.
By the time the service was over and the congregation and clergy had bid farewell to Slava one more time, I was feeling both sad and elated. Sad that Slava, who had contributed so much to this world was gone, and elated that I actually felt piercing emotion in church, which I had not experienced for a long time.
After the ceremony, the people were invited to a meal and a glass of wine. I was feeling a bit overwrought but wanted to stay for Freddie.
After a lengthy blessing and acknowledgment of Slava’s presence among them, supper was served -- fine salmon (lox Freddie called them), excellent dark breads, lovely ham and cheeses. A lady named Nadia, who had been Slava’s assistant, rose to say that Slava loved toasts, and she proposed one to the Maestro. We toasted with tiny cups of vodka (Stoly, I noticed). Some people sipped, but the Russians simply tossed it back unflinchingly.
At the table, I met a pianist named Lambert Orkis, Slava’s accompanist who had traveled with him on many tours. The day before, I had read an article he had written for The Washington Post entitled “Goodbye, Maestro.” He recounted that Slava once told him he drank like a student. We all wondered what he meant—that he drank too much, that he drank indiscriminately?
What an evening! I found my way into this rich world, populated by some of the gods and heroes of music, because of my connection with Freddie—Slava’s beloved Frediki. No one knew me, so I wasn’t obliged to say anything intelligent or pretend that I understood what was going on.
Later in the week, many members of the orchestra, Slava’s comrades in arms during the years he made music with them, would gather at a downtown club to honor their fallen friend. They would no doubt tell Slava stories, laugh and be sad at the same time, slam back lots of vodka, and add another chapter to the legend of Mistislav Leopoldovitch Rostopovitch.
I stepped into the cool, dark interior of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of John the Baptist and looked up at dozens of images in the Byzantine style of Jesus and the Apostles, the saints and martyrs. The sanctuary is covered floor to ceiling with them, all looking down with huge, sad eyes. The air was thick with wisps, sometimes clouds of incense, hundreds of candles, the sound of the choir singing over the diapason of Russian bassi profondi. All the priests were huge men with massive beards. They moved around the altar like gentle bears, their big paws holding the sacred books and vessels, all looking as though they had just stepped out of the pages of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
The priest-in-charge spoke briefly about “our brother Slava.” Freddie hadn’t realized that his old friend and colleague was particularly religious, but it seems that Slava was a regular communicant and had helped establish the church and contributed the money for the massive bells, which only a few days earlier had tolled eighty strokes for him. The people in this congregation regarded him with great admiration and affection, but he wasn’t at all a remote figure to them, separated by his talent and celebrity. He was “their brother Slava.”
The head priest (there were about eight others in the room), told the people that Slava had summoned him to Paris to help him prepare for his imminent death. The clergyman spent several days at his bedside. He said that by the time he died, the Maestro was ready to go. He had made his confession and received Absolution and Extreme Unction. His deathbed lay on the bosom of Mother Russia, where Slava would find his final resting place.
I felt a great sadness that such a luminous soul had left us, that an intense light in this world had been extinguished. I knew Slava only by reputation. I had a moment with him when Freddie presented me to him. He took me in his large embrace and kissed me first on the left cheek, then the right, then again on the left. “You make my darling Frediki happy,” he said in his thickly accented English. I wasn’t sure whether it was a statement of fact or a command.
The only religion I know of that would have suited the largeness of Slava was the Russian Orthodox Church, with its mystical intensity and embracing sensuality. Thinking back on my first few minutes in the church, I realized that the environment makes a global appeal to the senses in the coming together of the art, the music, the incense. The worship is active, with the congregation standing the entire time, and the people making the sign of the Cross repeatedly and chanting all the responses. I had only once before seen a congregation so passionately involved. In Kiev, the “Jerusalem of Russia,” not long after the fall of the Soviet Union, I saw people weeping and prostrating themselves upon the floor. I assumed that such devotion was occurring because the Russian people were finally free to practice their religion after long repression. Perhaps it is always so in the Russian Church. I wondered if the religious practices I found acceptable were really too narrow for me. My restrained Broad Church Anglicanism suddenly seemed too dry, too tight a fit. Maybe I longed to fall down and weep for my sins and be comforted by one of these big, gentle priests. Maybe I was a Holy Roller at heart in the guise of a via media Episcopalian.
By the time the service was over and the congregation and clergy had bid farewell to Slava one more time, I was feeling both sad and elated. Sad that Slava, who had contributed so much to this world was gone, and elated that I actually felt piercing emotion in church, which I had not experienced for a long time.
After the ceremony, the people were invited to a meal and a glass of wine. I was feeling a bit overwrought but wanted to stay for Freddie.
After a lengthy blessing and acknowledgment of Slava’s presence among them, supper was served -- fine salmon (lox Freddie called them), excellent dark breads, lovely ham and cheeses. A lady named Nadia, who had been Slava’s assistant, rose to say that Slava loved toasts, and she proposed one to the Maestro. We toasted with tiny cups of vodka (Stoly, I noticed). Some people sipped, but the Russians simply tossed it back unflinchingly.
At the table, I met a pianist named Lambert Orkis, Slava’s accompanist who had traveled with him on many tours. The day before, I had read an article he had written for The Washington Post entitled “Goodbye, Maestro.” He recounted that Slava once told him he drank like a student. We all wondered what he meant—that he drank too much, that he drank indiscriminately?
What an evening! I found my way into this rich world, populated by some of the gods and heroes of music, because of my connection with Freddie—Slava’s beloved Frediki. No one knew me, so I wasn’t obliged to say anything intelligent or pretend that I understood what was going on.
Later in the week, many members of the orchestra, Slava’s comrades in arms during the years he made music with them, would gather at a downtown club to honor their fallen friend. They would no doubt tell Slava stories, laugh and be sad at the same time, slam back lots of vodka, and add another chapter to the legend of Mistislav Leopoldovitch Rostopovitch.
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