Walking into a National Geographic article…

I said in my last post that I would try and write some more detailed posts about my experiences in my first week when I had some more time, and so here is the first of them. To put it in context it was the first Wednesday after my arrival, and I was privileged enough to be invited to go with Kerry and Kari to visit a semi-nomadic tribe who quite literally live in mud houses in the middle of the African countryside. I’m starting with this as although it wasn’t the first notable experience in my first week it was certainly the most surreal. The best way I can describe it is that it was like walking into an article in National Geographic  – I almost felt like pinching myself to prove that I was really there.

I scribbled down some notes that evening in my journal, but I can still remember the whole morning really quite vividly as it made such an impression on me. I feel so lucky to have had this experience that I wish that I could invite everyone reading this to come see it for themselves (and smell it and taste it!), but instead I shall have to do the next best thing and describe it in as much detail as possible. If you’re reading this at work I suggest you check your boss isn’t looking, if you’re reading this at home I suggest you go make yourself a cup of tea – this could be rather a long read!

Just getting there was a bit of an adventure to start with. Due to the elections the President was visiting Maroua (the nearest big town), which was the town we needed to drive through to get to where we were going. We were concerned that the road might be closed later on, thus blocking our way home. A man in uniform was directing traffic to and from Maroua, so we stopped to ask him if the road would be closed. He refused to speak to us, just tried to wave us on, and the next thing we knew another man in military uniform with a very large gun came up and started shouting at as angrily in such heavily accented French that I couldn’t understand anything he was saying. Being shouted at incomprehensibly by someone with a gun is something I haven’t experienced since my first trip to Russia, but it’s not something I was too willing to repeat. However Martin was sitting in the front and somehow managed to calm the situation, apparently the man thought we were harassing the man directing traffic, and we were waved on.

As we drove on the road was lined with men in military uniform with guns – mostly looking very hot and bored. I was pleased to get out of Maroua and away from this, but apparently our brush with the Presidents protective forces was not over. To get to the tribe’s huts we had to drive along a track, that was really little more than a wide path through tall corn and millet plants, park on a little hill and then walk through the corn plants a little further. A military plane circling over-head had obviously spotted the car and decided it looked suspicious so as we were just settling outselves on the matt outside one of the huts it turned in the air towards us and swooped down low over our heads. Evidently we didn’t look too threatening as it did not return, which I was very pleased about

After this eventful journey commenced a very surreal and very confusing morning. The tribe speaks Fulfulde only, so I was completely lost as at that point I couldn’t even say hello! It’s hard not to look very rude when people keep trying to talk to you and you can’t even say ‘I’m sorry I don’t understand’ and it would have been impossible for Kari to translate everything for me – so I did an awful lot of smiling and nodding. For this reason I’m afraid no-one in this description has a name as I wasn’t able to understand even the introductions!

We sat outside one of the huts on a matt for a while, talking to a young woman and a little girl (who may have been hers – It was hard to tell as the tribe seems to function as one big family and I obviously couldn’t understand any explanations of who was who!). She explained that almost everyone else was working in the fields as its millet planting time, but that her grandmother would probably be along soon. Or at least that’s what I think I understood from snatched bits of translation and what then occurred – it also may not have actually been her grandmother, just one of the 3 sisters that seem to have a sort of matriarchal role within the tribe. Like I say, I spent most of that morning pretty confused as to what exactly was going on!

The grandmother then arrived and after much smiling and handshaking and greeting (greetings here seem to consist of about a hundred different questions all starting with ‘Jam’ about health, family, home etc, and are all answered with ‘Jam koodume’ – this was the only thing I could really understand, but with all the questions and greetings and introductions flying about I kept missing when people were actually asking me and needing to be prompted to reply!). After this flurry of activity we walked through more big corn plants (they’re about as tall as a sugar cane plant, a good few feet taller than me, so following the little winding paths through them made me feel rather like an explorer!) to get to another set of little huts. This time we went inside to sit on a mat and I had to try and stop myself staring at this woman’s teeth which were dyed bright red. I thought it was from eating too many of the strange high-caffeine nuts they eat here, but apparently it’s a dye they use purposefully because they think it looks really beautiful.

Then, as I looked around at the women who suddenly appeared to join us sitting on the mat I realised that what I had thought was scarring from an accident or really strange wrinkles on this woman’s face were actually tribal markings. All the women had scars running from the corner of their mouths and across their cheeks to their ears. Apparently it’s a coming of age ritual, done with a sharp knife or razor, and each tribe has different markings.

Around the same time I also realised that all the children kept staring at my ears. I was very confused as although my ears don’t match (I have one pointy top and one rounded) it’s not that noticeable and certainly not enough to gain the sort of attention my ears were getting! After feeling rather confused and smiling while turning my head so they could see better I realised that all of the children (even the ones who were only just walking) had pierced ears with earrings in and I had not put earrings in that morning so it looked like I didn’t have pierced ears.

This fortunately provided some distraction for me while conversation ensued between all the women and Kerry and Kari which I couldn’t understand. However the children were quite shy, assumedly rather scared of  this strange white girl sitting in their hut who couldn’t talk to them, and so they kept their distance even when staring quizzically at my ears. I was also cautious as I had been warned I needed to be careful not to be too over-enthusiastic in my attentions to the children as the people are very superstitious, and fearful of curses and the ‘Evil Eye, especially for their children – and so people are very suspicious of people paying too much attention to their children. This superstition is also shown by the fact that the small children had a string tied round their wrist or hung round their neck with leather pouches and stones and things attached – most of them were completely naked other than this, but their parents believe it will protect them from evil. They looked heavy and uncomfortable to me, and yet the children didn’t seem to notice them at all.

Unable to properly interact with the children or understand the adult conversation I sat around feeling like a bit of a spare part, however soon my chance to be useful to Kerry and Kari arrived. The tribe herds cows, so much of their diet is made up of milk – neither Kari nor Kerry like fresh milk at all but every time someone visits the people very generously produce a whole saucepan of warm milk for them to drink. Sure enough a saucepan was brought out, accompanied with a spoon made from a dried gourd (imagine a butternut squash cut in half with the fat end hollowed out). I had my first taste of proper fresh milk in the villages in Russia, and by fresh I mean taken from the cow that day not just fresh milk from the supermarket. No milk has ever tasted quite as good ever since and after a few days of powdered milk (the only milk that you can buy here) I was very much looking forward to some proper fresh milk. It was every bit as delicious as I had anticipated, so Kari and Kerry took a few sips to be polite and I happily drank up the rest. I asked Kerry to tell me how to say thank you and ‘It’s delicious’ in Fulfulde and I was simultaneously congratulated for my effort and laughed at for my appalling pronunciation!

There followed more sitting and listening to a conversation that I couldn’t understand, and so I took the opportunity to take in my surroundings. In the middle of the hut was a big woven mat that we all sat on to avoid having to sit on the dirt floor (shoes are taken off at the door so the mat stays clean). It wasn’t particularly comfortable as there were lots of sharp stones underneath and the mat wasn’t particularly thick, but it added a lovely splash of colour to the room and was much cleaner than sitting on the ground. All the cooking implements, dishes, bowls, etc are all bundled up and either hung up on the wall or stacked in rather precarious looking piles on a table to the side of the room. This keeps everything off the ground and clean, and makes it easy to pack up and go, as they are semi-nomadic. The only other piece of furniture in the room is a bed, which is a simple fame with sheets over it. I’m not sure how many people have to share it, as there seemed to be considerably fewer huts than there were people – and not everyone in the tribe was there. There is then a little area surrounded by stones which is used to keep a fire in during the ‘cold’ weather in winter.

After a bit more conversation we got up and went back to the first hut we had visited for lunch. However before we could eat my services were called upon again. When Kerry had visited before she had brought a camera and taken pictures of some of the children, those who had not been there were disappointed they had not had a chance to have their picture taken. Kerry hadn’t brought her camera this time, but I have been carrying mine everywhere ‘just in case.’ Therefore I was taken outside with all the children, with Kerry as my photographers assistant/translator, and managed to get some great pictures of the children. I was delighted and I had desperately wanted to take photos of the place but didn’t want to look rude, and this gave me the perfect excuse. The children all gathered round and laughed and pointed and shouted with delight at seeing themselves and their friends on the screen. After some more photos I was told to come back inside quickly because they were concerned with my very pale skin I would get burnt if I stayed on in the sunshine for too long! Lunch was served up shortly after we got back inside the hut, this was a pan of boiled rice with milk fat poured over the top. The saucepan was placed in the middle of the mat, and a bowl was passed round to wash our hands in. I nearly committed a terrible cultural faux pas as without thinking I nearly put both my hands in the bowl (In my defence I would normally do this to wash my hands, and I was handed the bowl first so couldn’t observe anyone else beforehand). Fortunately Kari saw what I was about to do, got my attention and told me that my left hand is considered dirty and so shouldn’t be put in a bowl for washing and shouldn’t be used for eating.  I then felt even more silly as I had never eaten rice with my fingers before, and so I had to be shown how to do it (you take it from the edge because its cooler, squish it into a ‘boule’ with your fingers and thumb and then try and get it into your mouth without dropping bits!). I managed to get the hang of it, though I apparently eat a bit like a child, and only dropped a few bits of rice!

Having finished the rice I sat back feeling full and contented and listened to the Fulfulde being spoken. It’s a really fun sounding language – it sort of stops and starts unexpectedly in the middle of words and the emphasis comes in odd places throughout the sentence. There’s no smooth rise and fall to the tones, it’s all stop and start and suddenly up and down. It was nice to listen to a language without any understanding as instead of causing me to try and translate I could just listen to the way it sounds, sort of like a strange kind of music. However my enjoyment of this ‘concert’ did not last long. Something concerning was obviously going on from the raised voices and worried faces, and next thing I knew Kerry had got up and followed a woman out of the hut. She was back shortly and asked Kari to come with her, because there was a sick girl in another hut (Kari is a nurse). Not really sure of what to do, but not really wanting to be left alone in a hut with people I couldn’t talk to I asked if I could follow.

We entered another hut, just like the first with a young girl, who was about 14-16years old and a newborn baby. I found out later that she had given birth to the baby 5 days before, completely alone. It was her first child. I’m still getting my head round the fact that when I was her age I was at school – my biggest dilemma was getting my homework in on time or whether some boy liked me!

I stood around feeling awkward and trying not to stare too much at her tiny, adorable little baby. I couldn’t really understand what was going on, but she had some upper gastric pain. Kari asked her some questions and felt her stomach, and gave her opinion that it was nothing serious – probably more exhaustion and heartburn than anything else. However the local women remained unconvinced. To my horror one woman rummaged into a bag of things on the table and produced a small, slight rusty looking razor. She wiped it with a cloth and handed it over to the other woman. At this point I looked away. I’d been told that facial expressions are keenly read and I knew I could not keep a calm face and watch what was about to happen, in fact I was slightly concerned I might throw up. They made small shallow cuts across her chest, and she began to cry. Soon after this we left to return to the other hut. All I could keep thinking about was how young she was.

Sitting back down in the hut everyone seemed to be carrying on talking as though nothing had happened, however even if I’d felt able to just throw myself back into normal conversation I couldn’t because of the language barrier, so I was left to think over what I’d just seen. I was really ready to go home but apparently there was still lots of talking to be done. Kerry then got up and left (to go see someone in another hut, or something, I was a bit confused) and all the women went with her. This left me and Kari and several children sitting awkward silence on the mat. However then another child came in and started talking to me. I couldn’t understand, but Kari translated that they were asking about my camera and if they could have another photo. I willingly got out my camera again, and after a few snaps the children all wanted to see the screen – the excitement of this and the need to come close to seen the tiny screen broke the ice, and evidently somehow proved I wasn’t scary, and suddenly I found myself surrounded by kids, holding my hand, stroking my arm, touching my feet (which I HATE, but forced myself not to flinch), and putting their arms round me. I managed to get Kari to take two lovely pictures of some of the children with me in the middle, which is a memory I shall treasure forever. I decided this was a good time to try out the only two sentences of Fulfulde I could manage – I asked how their health was, then told them my name and asked their names. They thought my accent and terrible pronunciation (especially of their names) was absolutely hilarious – their laughs were infectious and for the first time all morning I felt relaxed and actually really enjoyed myself. It’s strange to think that the last time I was in Africa, 3 years ago, I’d never worked with children before and was terrified. I remember the first time we walked into Kibera and meeting all the children and being petrified, and the week after sitting completely silently while Andy did the bible study as I couldn’t think of ANYTHING to say. But 3 years has changed a lot, and God has put me in so many more situations involving children’s work that this time I found myself feeling more relaxed and certainly much more able to communicate with children than adults. It was really wonderful to be able to compare the two experiences and just see how much work God has been doing in this area of my life.

However, soon Kerry and the women returned and it was time to leave. I smiled and nodded and shook hands, and waved at the children, and managed a barely comprehensible ‘goodbye’ in Fulfulde, and then we walked back through the corn plants, got in the car and drove back to normality (well, relatively speaking – everything still seems pretty strange here, even the village where I live looks sort of like something out of a National Geographic magazine!). I spent the rest of the day feeling almost as though I had dreamt the whole morning as it just felt so surreal, but the photos on my camera proved it was real!

Thus ends the EPIC account of my morning visiting the Fulani, if anyone has actually made it to the end I’m VERY impressed. Sorry it’s so long, I just couldn’t bear to miss out any details because it was such an incredible experience. Not all of it was pleasant, the image of that girl and her baby will remain with me for a very long time, however I felt wonderfully welcomed even though I couldn’t understand a word, ate and drank some delicious food, and felt so privileged to have been able to meet these people and get just a little glimpse of a way of life that is so different to my own.  I’m sorry if I sound like one of those irritating people who gush about going to Africa on their Gap YAH, but its rather hard not to after an experience like this!