The Village Bulletin

 

So this has been a very busy week in my tiny mountain village. Last weekend, there was an event. A party, a celebration, a religious experience, a ceremony… I’m not entirely sure. I never got a clear explanation. However I do know that some people were returning to the village after being gone a long time, something about calling on gods and spirits, and that there was a hullabaloo that involved a lot of drums being continuously played for three days. Waking up at three in the morning to rhythmic drumming did give the peculiar sensation of being called to Jumanji at times, so that was a new experience for me. Friday night when it started, one of the other teachers at my school came to my house and invited me to come bring my camera and take photos. I am never certain when it is polite to take photos at cultural events, so having her there to guide me around was great. She brought me everywhere and told me to take as many pictures as I liked. I’ve included some of the best. I don’t think I will ever get a clear idea of exactly what happened, but it was very fun to see everyone dancing and singing and playing drums. There was also an obscene amount of bread being made in cauldrons the size of car tires (sadly because it was dark inside the house where it was being made, none of those photos came out very well).

Pass a few days of productive teaching and there is another kerfuffle in the middle of the night. Now, for a community who rises and sets with the sun (myself included) having a meeting at one in the morning is not a common occurrence. I live on the chief’s compound, which meant that the spontaneous meeting in the early hours where a bunch of people came over and yelled for about an hour kept me up. I didn’t catch any of the conversation except that they wanted Chief Motsomi’s attention about something. At first I was concerned that someone had died, my primary suspect being the chief himself (he’s very old, especially for a Mosotho). I saw him the next morning though, so I was still confused. It wasn’t until later that morning when my other teacher arrived very late that I got an explanation. She said she had been out in the fields all morning with her husband. Apparently in the middle of the night, a bunch of guys from a village far away across the mountains had come and raided a bunch of people’s fields and stolen all their potatoes. My teacher’s fields had been ransacked and most of her crops were gone. A bunch of the local herdboys had seen them and chased them off and called out the alarm, which is why people wet to check on their fields at 1 AM. Apparently this is not a normal thing here, which is something of a relief. My teacher believes that the thieves were lazy and didn’t want to do the work of growing crops themselves, but I’m not ready to rule out desperation as a motive. Whatever their reasons, they caused a lot of stress and worry and stole food from families who barely have enough as it is. Fortunately, later that afternoon, I learned that the thieves had been arrested by their own chief and would being paying for damages, and I hope returning the crops.

So in the space of a week, there have been a lot of sleepless nights in my normally sleepy little village. Hopefully, this is the last crop theft I hear of, though the cultural event was very fun so maybe I’ll get to attend another one of those during my time here. Next weekend, I head off on my first vacation! I’m going to Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland) for a music festival with a bunch of other volunteers and I am very excited. I’ll be sure to write it all up when I get home and sleep the vacation off.

Also, I started painting my door frame just for the fun of it.

Tsmaea hantle!