Two interesting celebrations I took part in.
Amagqirha : Try to pronouce this word
Ama – g(grr sound)-> Q (is the click using tongue of top of mouth) -> irh (kinda like you have a hair ball in the back of your throat) -> HA
-the clicks I’ve gotten the hang of by now, there are three different kinds, Qha Qho words are a lot easier, but the q to the g took a while , and still have trouble.
This celebration doesn’t happen too often, and was very lucky to be invited to it. The traditional group of the area got together in classic look – beaded white hair, baboon headdress – multicoloured canes – distinctive face paint and a number of other cloths and beads that characterize Xhosa traditional attire. The local amagqirha/ sangoma/ traditional healer/ witch doctor was sick, and the passing of traditional healing rites was passed on that weekend to a new healer.
Many songs and dances were performed while others sat down with their usual blankets and canes, cheered with the now usual “ALALALALALALA” yell – drank their Qumboti (trad. Beer) – a few talks by Umbongis, the traditional oral poets and finish off with usual excessive drinking of attendees and chewing down as much goat as possible. I say usual because although this celebration was different, many of the same events happen in all xhosa cultural events.
The diversity in the villages here is very complex – and its difficult to explain how the Christian values/ traditional norms/ modern influence/ other nearby ethnic groups such as the Sotho – interact. But one thing is forsure, in the middle of every “sacred, traditional, cultural rite of passage” – villager cell phones will always go off.
Thanksgiving
No turkey. There are no set rules for this one, but the celebration is most prominent when people go away to be educated in a post secondary education and land a job. At that point, like funerals, everyone comes back – even those you don’t know at all – just so you can say – Thank you. Give thanks to all the people who without, you wouldn’t have landed the job. And having a job here is something to celebrate about (I’m told unofficially 60%+ unemployment). Traditional dancers and a professional choir from East London performed continued through long speeches. The night time celebrations were fun – I’ve learned a few of the “kwaito” jive dance moves – with a crowd of kids chanting “GO Nico! Go Nico!” while I showed them a few jive steps. The video of typical Kwaito moveswon’t load but please enjoy instead the non-kwaito dance moves of my crazy neighbour – also named Nico HEREfunkydance.MOV . That night, the power went out in the entire village – and myself and friend Eric led the nighttime choir in gospel prayer for electricity. Our prayers were not answered.
Ah yes racism, I had almost forgotten/not fully acknowledged that South Africans lived in a rigid government led apartheid regime which forcefully separated whites from blacks, ending only 15 years ago. I guess I was kind of ignorant living in the village, I’m the token white guy for miles and other whites are far away and few in the closest city, so I don’t have a chance to talk about the issues.
So there I was, Thomas a dutch volunteer and myself needed to escape our areas to watch a big soccer game. Soccer in South Africa is a black/coloured sport (coloured is tough to define, “mixed” you could say) while cricket and rugby is white. Still is. The city of Blomfontain has a descent white africanner (dutch speakin) population, many white students go to the popular university, but in a stadium full of 40,000 cheering fans, Thomas and I were the only two whities other than the photographers, injury therapists and coaches of course. To us, and hopefully to good people around the world, it doesn’t matter obviously – we were dead center in the fan crowds – the South Africans fans have all their own chants and actions, I only regained my voice 3 days after from shouting so loud during the game. Awsome match, Celtics win 2-0.
After the game we visited the local student tavern, the first time I had been in a place with all white people in the room – haha its an international thing, white people can’t dance compared to my dance machine villagers. We talked to a few good people, but for those who questioned exactly what we were doing “why? They’re stupid and steal our cattle” “we africanners don’t like black people” . Shucks, a cute racist.
So what are you gonna do, compress hundreds of years of oppression into a 5 minute argument about why they should stop discriminating in a room full of racist africanners? It was not my fight that night.
Hrmm first Christmas coming up/ first Christmukah + wacky Buddhist holiday away from friends and family. Thinking the beach is where I shall be.
gang,
life goes well back in the village for three weeks now. Not so alone afterall, I’ve had two visitors stay with me, Els from holland is on a board commitee member of my host organizations and just happened to be around, so hey, why not check out what one of the volunteers is doing. She stayed for only a two days, but she took me to the game reserve down the road - i guess there rhinos and giraffs close to my house. She ended the trip with “well…i haven’t seen you do any work, but it seems like the community has warmed up to you” good enough for me.
Kim, my fill in team leader is from australia and is with me right now. We climbed the big Ntabethemba mountain that is filled with witches yesturday, and returned alive.
And soon enough i’ll be taking off to the town of Bloemfontain to watch a massive south african soccer game with one of the dutch volunteers.
As for real work - lots of fun and organizing happening - World Aids Day, is coming up December 1st - and community leaders and myself have gotten together to plan a massive community event. Sport councils have been slowly coming together and many of the youth now play volleyball on their own. bonus. Currently i’ve taken up two tasks that are not on my job description: carpenter/welder and computer trainer. I’m helping build netball courts and community message boards - and trying my best to teach one of my main sport volunteers how to use a computer that was donated to the community.
The past 3 months i’ve becom somewhat of a fanatic in reading HIV/AIDS related articles and information. Just finished A Race against time by Stephen Lewis (a mandatory read for any overseas volunteer) - thought i’d post up some lectures for yourself. More Lewis and Stephen Lewis
missed my first halloween ever. how was it?
