Appleseed Travel Journal - Scenes that Capture My Every Emotion

Brooks

• The market. Hundreds of women sit on the ground with stacks of tomatoes or greens or cassava or those that can afford it, have stands where their wares are neatly piled for easy viewing and hopeful purchasing. Most of them have carried their enormous bundles of capital on their heads for great distances, often with a baby strapped to their backs.
• Women. Mamas have left for the day searching for long sticks of firewood in the forest or walking the long distance to market to sell vegetables or buy beans. There was no food to cook for breakfast for her children or herself and no lunch will be eaten. Dinner will be cooked when she returns around 4, starting with laying a fire so hours later she and her children will have their first and only meal of the day.
• Children. Tiny, tiny little girls with a baby securely wrapped on their backs meander around the village spending their day idling looking for something to do. Their main job, even though they are so young themselves, five to 10, is making sure the siblings beneath them are taken care of. Their mothers have left for the day.
• Play. We were delighted to happen on a group of boys who had made various types of drums from tin cans, cloth, a hide, string, anything they could find. They were under a tree rhythmically tapping away singing and dancing. The talent was amazing…I couldn’t help but run over and dance with them…to their delight!
• Witchcraft. It’s everywhere. It’s culture. Superstition. A chief of the community (a territory of homes) explained how his father and his grandfather had kept a huge, very long, very big snake (a poisonous mamba snake). This snake must be fed and worshipped every day. It lived in the huge tree outside their home. That snake (and the ensuing babies) holds all the power to their health, finances, happiness and well being.
• Lake Tanganyika. Often I saw buck-naked children jumping from rocks, splashing in the cool water and fishermen casting enormous nets circling their prey with dozens of men and women standing on the shore cheering and shouting, just waiting to collect the fishes to sell at the market.
• Sexual Abuse. Prevalent. Incest. Prevalent. Rape. Prevalent. AIDS. Rampant.
• Physical Abuse. Husbands hit wives. Wives hit children. Children hit each other. Beating is normal.
• Community. Neighbors help neighbors. Money is exchanged often. If you have it, you share it. If you don’t, you receive it. There’s a level of obligation to help each other that is honoring and respectful, a “we need each otherness” that is inspiring to my self-sufficient, independent heart. One day you need me, the next I need you. We are there for each other. We are the same; we cannot exist alone.
• Joy. Have you seen an African dance? If there is rhythmic sound, there is movement. They cannot stand still. Something is moving. The head, the hand, the feet, the shoulders, something. And, sometimes all of him at once. My body does not move like that. I try, but it just doesn’t. They don’t try at all; it just happens. It’s in them, like blood. Music is part of life, an expression of joy…that means I’m happy! All of me is happy and I can’t express it any other way than to dance!
• Men. Men circle. They cluster in groups everywhere. They walk hand in hand. They touch each other’s shoulders. They hug and laugh and show genuine delight in meeting each other. They cannot talk without touching to emphasize and exclaim, “You know it!” or “Right on!” or more importantly, “I’m glad you get me and I get you and that we’re friends!”

The scenes are endless…East Africa is unique, unlike any other place on earth. It’s majestic, and expansive. Time seems to stand still for what’s important. Community is expressed in a thousand different ways, each one of them leaving me in awe.