Bells will be ringing...and fires will be burning.
*****
Had an interesting week that was bookended by Christmas and Fire Festival. I know some people were worried if I would be able to do Christmas here at all, but it went off without a hitch.
There wouldn’t have been any problems in the village because outside of the commercial aspects of the holiday, what is there to celebrate? The birth of Jesus. How do you celebrate that? To me, it’s in prayer and being appreciative that God would humble himself to come to earth in the form of man. People here know I’m Christian and it’s kind of like “Oh…that’s nice,” and then on to some other topic.
Unless they’re asking me to buy them a Christmas present and we get into this fake argument about them being Muslim and Christmas being a Christian holiday. It usually ends with “Well, what are you going to get me for such-and-such Muslim holiday?” Alafey is the go-to answer because it means ‘health,’ as in “I will pray that God gives you health for the holiday.” So - they all get health from me for Christmas. :)
But instead of doing the village route where I listen to Little Drummer Boy on my iPod and miss home, I decided to go into town and hang out with friends at the office. There were ten of us all-total and that was nice because things didn’t get so disgusting around the house as they do with more people. I think seven of us were from our training group and the other three were from the first and second year before us. We showed up on Christmas Eve, went out that night to Desert Rose and got an awesome cheeseburger (it’s possible to get), came home and went to sleep (because ten o’clock is WAY past our power-less bedtimes), only to awake on Christmas morning to the smell of pancakes. That’s right - we had pancakes for breakfast courtesy of Hannah, a second-year volunteer. Guillermo shared his Nu…ste Leche? I think is how its spelled. It’s a caramel paste that’s amazing by itself out of the can on a crooked spoon (crooked spoons make everything taste better, don’t you know that?), but tastes even better spread over perfectly fluffy pancakes.
We all had makeshift stockings (some were real stockings from home, some were…possibly clean socks and mine was a clay pot) where Hannah and a few others donated candy and goods we’d gotten in Christmas boxes. We all bought a two-dollar gift and did a White Elephant exchange. The hit of the morning was a pillow of all things (not quite a necessity for the amount of money we get paid every month). After that, we all lounged around on dirty mattresses watching Elf and Love Actually.
I hand-washed my clothes (it might’ve been Christmas, but the real world continued existing outside our compound walls - even I draw the limit at three-day old underwear), uploaded some pictures to the Internet and just chilled. We ate candy canes and got sick off junk food. We played Trivial Pursuit and put WAY too much thought into the 1,000 Questions Every Fifth Grader Should Know (quick - name the four faces on Mount Rushmore then name who carved it). Hannah cooked all day and we had lasagna, salad, bean soup, pumpkin pie and chocolate éclairs for dinner.
All in all, a pretty good Christmas. Outside of the obvious, who could ask for anything more? (I sang while I typed that)
When I got back to site the next day, I had a day of rest and then YESTERDAY happened. Yesterday being the Fire Festival, a Dagomba annual tradition. It’s done in commemoration of a Dagomba chief finding his son. The boy was lost in the bush and all of the villagers went out to find him. They used torches made from the brush, set everything on fire and used the light to find him. They found him hiding under a sacred tree and the chief said they would celebrate that day every year from then on. That’s a paraphrase of the story I’ve been told anyways.
So last night we all started at the chief’s house, torches in hand, faces painted white with ash (mine, quite unnecessarily, but the ladies doing it got a kick out of the white lady getting even whiter) and marched to the road. The fire was there and we all dipped our torches into it and marched toward the western border of the village (which is the clinic). There was singing and shouting and dancing along the way. Well…I tried to take pictures and avoid having burning ash dropped onto to my arms (unsuccessful venture, I assure you), but you get the picture. We got to the clinic and put out our torches then marched back through town to the eastern border where we met another group of people waiting with their torches lit. We relit our torches and the two groups marched back to the chief’s palace.
All the while, the shouting and stomp-dancing was taking place and it was so hard to see between the dust and the smoke. The younger, unmarried guys were all pretending they had some juju medicine that protected them from the cutlass (the really dull cutlass that was struck against their arms with the flat part of the blade). When we passed the store one of my friends was trying to sell me some juju tim (medicine) that would protect me from the cutlass. He was laughing, just trying to make twenty cents off of me. I told him that no, I didn’t have the medicine and if someone tried to slap me with a machete, then they’re gonna need to juju medicine because I will rain down holy hell on them.
This set off a series of recounts of what I’d just said along the line of guys who were hanging out at the store to watch everyone run by with fire. It was pretty funny to see them all agree that, yes, no one had better try to slap Sister Balima with a machete. I, after all, had arm-wrestled one of the stronger guys in the village and won.
O mali ya.
She has strength.
No, I really just have an impeccable sense of timing. When I arm-wrestled that guy, I started early on him and it was over before he could blink. Of course I allowed no rematch. He would’ve killed me - that guy’s ripped. His cheeks have six-packs.
I got a few good pictures, but with all the dust I was sort of let down. Next year I’ll leave the camera at home and just dance and concentrate on not getting burned again.
Today, it’s back to the same-old routine. Gonna get some lesson plans together for the upcoming SHEP semester. I’m going to make a concentrated effort at visiting all the schools at least once a month. It sounds easy, but you wouldn’t believe how difficult it can be sometimes.
I also have a mess to clean up with my Bike Project. It’s all my fault in the end and it’s going to take a miracle to fix, but I’m getting really good at being like “You know what, it’s my fault - I take all the blame.” That can never hurt anyone, so even in failure, I can be given something. I’d rather have success, but humility is another sacred virtue. More on that later. The kids are kicking the ball on my tin roof and I think my walls are gonna crumble apart…
Had an interesting week that was bookended by Christmas and Fire Festival. I know some people were worried if I would be able to do Christmas here at all, but it went off without a hitch.
There wouldn’t have been any problems in the village because outside of the commercial aspects of the holiday, what is there to celebrate? The birth of Jesus. How do you celebrate that? To me, it’s in prayer and being appreciative that God would humble himself to come to earth in the form of man. People here know I’m Christian and it’s kind of like “Oh…that’s nice,” and then on to some other topic.
Unless they’re asking me to buy them a Christmas present and we get into this fake argument about them being Muslim and Christmas being a Christian holiday. It usually ends with “Well, what are you going to get me for such-and-such Muslim holiday?” Alafey is the go-to answer because it means ‘health,’ as in “I will pray that God gives you health for the holiday.” So - they all get health from me for Christmas. :)
But instead of doing the village route where I listen to Little Drummer Boy on my iPod and miss home, I decided to go into town and hang out with friends at the office. There were ten of us all-total and that was nice because things didn’t get so disgusting around the house as they do with more people. I think seven of us were from our training group and the other three were from the first and second year before us. We showed up on Christmas Eve, went out that night to Desert Rose and got an awesome cheeseburger (it’s possible to get), came home and went to sleep (because ten o’clock is WAY past our power-less bedtimes), only to awake on Christmas morning to the smell of pancakes. That’s right - we had pancakes for breakfast courtesy of Hannah, a second-year volunteer. Guillermo shared his Nu…ste Leche? I think is how its spelled. It’s a caramel paste that’s amazing by itself out of the can on a crooked spoon (crooked spoons make everything taste better, don’t you know that?), but tastes even better spread over perfectly fluffy pancakes.
We all had makeshift stockings (some were real stockings from home, some were…possibly clean socks and mine was a clay pot) where Hannah and a few others donated candy and goods we’d gotten in Christmas boxes. We all bought a two-dollar gift and did a White Elephant exchange. The hit of the morning was a pillow of all things (not quite a necessity for the amount of money we get paid every month). After that, we all lounged around on dirty mattresses watching Elf and Love Actually.
I hand-washed my clothes (it might’ve been Christmas, but the real world continued existing outside our compound walls - even I draw the limit at three-day old underwear), uploaded some pictures to the Internet and just chilled. We ate candy canes and got sick off junk food. We played Trivial Pursuit and put WAY too much thought into the 1,000 Questions Every Fifth Grader Should Know (quick - name the four faces on Mount Rushmore then name who carved it). Hannah cooked all day and we had lasagna, salad, bean soup, pumpkin pie and chocolate éclairs for dinner.
All in all, a pretty good Christmas. Outside of the obvious, who could ask for anything more? (I sang while I typed that)
When I got back to site the next day, I had a day of rest and then YESTERDAY happened. Yesterday being the Fire Festival, a Dagomba annual tradition. It’s done in commemoration of a Dagomba chief finding his son. The boy was lost in the bush and all of the villagers went out to find him. They used torches made from the brush, set everything on fire and used the light to find him. They found him hiding under a sacred tree and the chief said they would celebrate that day every year from then on. That’s a paraphrase of the story I’ve been told anyways.
So last night we all started at the chief’s house, torches in hand, faces painted white with ash (mine, quite unnecessarily, but the ladies doing it got a kick out of the white lady getting even whiter) and marched to the road. The fire was there and we all dipped our torches into it and marched toward the western border of the village (which is the clinic). There was singing and shouting and dancing along the way. Well…I tried to take pictures and avoid having burning ash dropped onto to my arms (unsuccessful venture, I assure you), but you get the picture. We got to the clinic and put out our torches then marched back through town to the eastern border where we met another group of people waiting with their torches lit. We relit our torches and the two groups marched back to the chief’s palace.
All the while, the shouting and stomp-dancing was taking place and it was so hard to see between the dust and the smoke. The younger, unmarried guys were all pretending they had some juju medicine that protected them from the cutlass (the really dull cutlass that was struck against their arms with the flat part of the blade). When we passed the store one of my friends was trying to sell me some juju tim (medicine) that would protect me from the cutlass. He was laughing, just trying to make twenty cents off of me. I told him that no, I didn’t have the medicine and if someone tried to slap me with a machete, then they’re gonna need to juju medicine because I will rain down holy hell on them.
This set off a series of recounts of what I’d just said along the line of guys who were hanging out at the store to watch everyone run by with fire. It was pretty funny to see them all agree that, yes, no one had better try to slap Sister Balima with a machete. I, after all, had arm-wrestled one of the stronger guys in the village and won.
O mali ya.
She has strength.
No, I really just have an impeccable sense of timing. When I arm-wrestled that guy, I started early on him and it was over before he could blink. Of course I allowed no rematch. He would’ve killed me - that guy’s ripped. His cheeks have six-packs.
I got a few good pictures, but with all the dust I was sort of let down. Next year I’ll leave the camera at home and just dance and concentrate on not getting burned again.
Today, it’s back to the same-old routine. Gonna get some lesson plans together for the upcoming SHEP semester. I’m going to make a concentrated effort at visiting all the schools at least once a month. It sounds easy, but you wouldn’t believe how difficult it can be sometimes.
I also have a mess to clean up with my Bike Project. It’s all my fault in the end and it’s going to take a miracle to fix, but I’m getting really good at being like “You know what, it’s my fault - I take all the blame.” That can never hurt anyone, so even in failure, I can be given something. I’d rather have success, but humility is another sacred virtue. More on that later. The kids are kicking the ball on my tin roof and I think my walls are gonna crumble apart…