Village Visit

Since yesterday was Sunday, most of us decided to take the day off. One of our guides had invited a few members of our group to go visit his village, which is only about a 30 minute drive north of town. I hadn’t seen a rural village yet, so I decided to tag along. We rented a taxi for three of us and headed north. It turned out to be a comparatively easy trip, with only 10 minutes off the paved road. I also found out that the village is fairly small—about 50 huts and 500 inhabitants.

By dumb luck, we happened to come on a very exciting day. One of the sub-chiefs (kind of like a vice president I’m told) in the village had recently passed away and his replacement was being installed. We unfortunately missed the formal ceremony in the morning, but the celebration was well underway when we arrived and was expected to continue long into the night. Everyone was extremely nice, especially since we had come with a local. They gave us plenty of food and water (some of us felt adventurous and actually drank it) for lunch, and there was a steady flow of people who introduced themselves and thanked us for visiting.

Later, it was time for the dancing. There were about 10 drummers who would walk through the crowd while playing continuously and one would stop in front of a person and start doing a solo. This means that person has to walk to the middle of the crowd and dance alone for a few minutes. While in the middle, people walk up and give you money, which you are then supposed to give to the drummers when you leave the middle. Of course, three tall white people kind of stick out, so we all had to dance at some point.

I got it first out of our group. I had watched a few others dance in hopes of copying their style, but I decided it was kind of a freestyle thing since everyone looked so different. This gave me enough confidence to let loose a little more, which in hindsight paid off. I wasn’t at all timid. I tried to give them a good show. People were cheering and laughing like crazy. Another student from our group, Vanessa, fortunately came in and made me look a little bit better towards the end. Our popularity skyrocketed after that, and we were approached to have our pictures taken with several people. I’m not sure if our dancing had anything to do with it, but we were also invited to take a picture with the chief and many of the elders afterwards.

Both the pictures I’m posting here were taken at the village. The first was taken during the drum circle. The background shows the villagers’ circular houses (around 10 feet in diameter) with thatched roofs. The second is with a fraction of the many children who followed us everywhere. Some would point and yell “Saminga!” which means white person.

Now that it’s Monday, it’s back to work. Today I started running my system with chlorine and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find my data values to be almost exactly what I had predicted them to be. Hooray for science!

Despite being on the other end of the world, I’ve been successful in keeping up with the football playoffs. One member of our group figured out how to get live streaming audio for the games, so I listened to the recent Patriots/Jaguars and Cowboys/Giants games. The time difference makes it a little difficult; the Patriots game was on at 1-4 a.m.! I was very sad to hear the Cowboys lose, but the nice thing about sports is there’s always next year.

Here a link that shows the weather for the area where I’m staying.

As you can see it’s quite warm this time of year. (I’m told being near the equator does that.) The locals laugh when we tell them how hot we are (as if 100 degrees isn’t hot); apparently it gets another 10-20 degrees warmer in March and April. So I guess they have a point. Despite the heat it remains socially unacceptable for men to wear shorts, which I find most disconcerting. Women can wear skirts that go below their knees, but no such luck for the men. Thankfully I was told this beforehand so I could pack accordingly.