Shirazi Update

Oops.  Late with the promised update again.  Sorry for the delay, but my health hasn’t been quite up to snuff.  My life is improving though, with the addition of some great antibiotics.  Here’s a taste of what’s been going on over the past 2-3weeks. 

Shirazi is a tiny coastal village south of Mombasa, fairly close to the Tanzania border.  The people there are mostly subsistence farmers (specializing in coconut) and fishermen, with some small tourism and other economic profit groups.  The community is almost uniformly Muslim, and traces its heritage back to the Oman/Yemen area.  It is a Swahili subculture- having its own language form and other unique aspects, but overall following the basic Swahili norms. 

We spent a week and a half in Shirazi, a time that included a part of Ramadhan and Eid celebration.  Our days started at 7:30 with Swahili classes for 3 hours (midtime chai break obviously mandatory) and ‘free’ afternoons mostly dedicated to swimming and completing our research projects (more lower down). 

A major part of our time in Shirazi was dominated by our homestay situations.  My homestay was fantastic!  My mamma, an older woman (probably over 50) is a fairly well off village member with a large family and stable business.  My brother, Sudi (about my age) is a secondary school (highschool) student in form 3.  He’s about my age because he missed several years of school due to difficulty in raising funds to attend school.  His older brother, Rashid, is married to a lovely quiet woman named Mwanacombo and has two daughters- Rasiki (about 3) and Nia (an infant).  Also in the house, my somo yako- Mwanajabu, a shy girl around 14, and Mwanacombo (around 11), Bob and Hajji- my mama’s grandchildren with absent parents  (8 and around 6), and Moody, probably around 15. 

                This consistent family group also included huge numbers of extended family members that were also neighbors and visitors.  There was constant rotation of people in the house, and different people came to dinner every night.  Eating was done by kerosene lamp, as the village has no electricity or running water.  Food was placed on two large platters, one for the men and one for the women, and everyone sat on the ground to eat with their hands.  Most of the food was either fried or extremely sugary (or both) and we had a fish or octopus every night. 

I arrived in Shirazi in the middle of the day and met a small portion of my family.  My mamma speaks very little English (just a few random words) but can understand a significant amount when interspersed with Swahili.  As soon as I arrived at her house, she redressed me because the clothing I was wearing was ‘inappropriate.’  For the record, I was wearing a below the knee skirt, a crew neck teeshirt and a scarf, in spite of the extreme heat.  Over all of this (not the scarf) she wrapped a kanga (a large rectangular piece of cloth that is used for about 101 purposes) around my waist and a second kanga tightly around my head, covering my hair.  I was then given a new pair of flip flops and sent out with Sudi (my English speaking brother) for a tour of the village.  Sudi began his Swahili education process almost immediately, and taught me Swahili words for almost everything that we saw.  I also was taught how coconut alcohol is produced- men climb up coconut trees (freehanded, without ropes) to cut strips in the fronds and collect the already fermented liquid from the leaves.  This pombe mnazi is consumed almost fresh at ‘bars’ around the village, in spite of it being a Muslim community.  However, as Sudi adamantly pointed out, pombe mnazi is not for students, as they are meant to study hard and avoid all distractions. 

Typically, a day started at 5 or 6 in the morning, or whenever the rooster outside of the window woke me.  I shared a bed with one of my sisters, and my mama slept on the floor.  Before I sound like a horrible person for this, my mamma chose to sleep on the floor after deciding the bed was too crowded with three of us in it.  Additionally, should I have requested to sleep on the floor, I would have caused major offense, as I was a guest in the house.  I would then be requested to shower, and then eat breakfast with the children.  During Ramadhan, I ate with the youngest children, the ones that were not required to fast.  After Ramadhan, all of the children ate with me while getting ready for school.  Following breakfast, I would be dressed by my mamma in my Shirazi clothes, mostly muumuus and kangas that she had specially selected for me.  When I say dressed by my mamma, I mean that I was physically dressed on most occasions, and she would also wrap my hair with headscarves.  It was a little crazy, but it happened to the majority of the girls in the group.  I was fortunate in that I rarely was given a dress that looked like it came from a prom in the 80s to wear.  The general taste ran to the extremely shiny and polyester-like floor length gowns covered by a kanga around the waist.  Many of the girls in the group had to bear them in high heat. 

Following meeting all of the students and analyzing each other’s outfits for the day, we would have Swahili class for several hours.  Before lunch, we would typically go swimming, with an expectant audience of children and young men watching us from the shore.  Even though the village is right on the water, many villagers, especially girls, do not know how to swim, as it is passed only by fishermen.  We were the source of much amusement on a daily basis. 

Lunch was served on a large mat made out of coconut fronds, as most things in the village tended to be.  Every part of the coconut tree is used and reused.  Almost all food has coconut milk present in it, scraped with a rasp made out of coconut wood.  The left over shavings, which are not used as food, are dried and used as cleaning supplies.  The husks are burned as fire wood, after being stripped of their hairs for creating ropes.  The fronds are made into roofing material known as makoute (a process that I now can do myself, just like every 4 year old in Shirazi).  A million other things are done with the palm, but I have no idea what the extent of the tasks it performs is.  Lunch was typical of every meal- boiled vegetables, fried food, and other things that weren’t part of a complete diet. 

After lunch, I would normally return home to drop off some materials before going out to interviews for our group project.  If I left without changing, my mama would send my little sister running after me with a pile of clothes to change into- a mistake that I only made once.  Sometimes I would just go home and relax with the family, once Sudi showed me how to cut, plant, and eat sugar cane- which grew in the front area of the house. 

On the last day in Shirazi, my family/clan had all of the girls in it get hennaed.  See tomorrow’s picture update for details.  It was a very nice gesture, and looks very beautiful, but also attracts a lot of attention on the street, which can be frustrating.  Being a muzungu, I don’t normally need a lot more attention than I already receive.