I asked Saumu to take me to her home so we could look at everything she owns to see what she has and what she needs for school. She laid out all her worldly possessions – 4 pairs on underwear (including the ones she was wearing), 2 dresses, 5 pairs of pants or shorts, 1 undershirt, 6 shirts, one ratty pair of school shoes, a broken backpack, an old toothbrush (it resembled the ones my mom keeps in the bottom drawer in the bathroom thinking we’ll use them to scrub the floor one day), 1 pair of holey socks, 1 school uniform, 1 hand towel, and a pair of sandals that actually belong to her older sister. She also had an envelope full of the cards, photos and letters that Midoli and I had written to her over the last few years. No toothpaste, no soap, no comb, no school bag, no mosquito net, no bedding. She didn’t take me to the place where she apparently sleeps, but rather dragged all her stuff to her Auntie’s home to show me. Needless to say, we have a bit of shopping to do.
After we sorted out her possessions and made a list of what we need to buy, I was invited to have some Uji, the local porridge made from maize meal, with her Auntie and some of the neighbor ladies loitering about. While we sat on the red earth corridor between mud-and-stick huts, Saumu brought out the photos and the musical Christmas card I had sent her to show her neighbors. They laughed hysterically at the Christmas card and gawked at all the photos while Saumu explained everyone in them. Most of the ladies had toddlers clinging to them or wandering around playing with sticks in the dirt nearby. Saumu showed the ladies the photo of Scott and Emma (my boyfriend and his 20 month old daughter) and I - and they all oohed and ahhed over the cute Muzungu baby (and my apparently cute Mpenzi). Up to this point, I had been doing pretty well at communicating only in Kiswahili to this group of women. Once they saw Emma though, they had all kinds of questions beyond my comprehension. They naturally assumed she was my daughter and considered me a member of their motherhood club, I suppose. Emma is close in age to their toddlers, though at least twice the size and weight. The lady sitting closest to me looked concerned, and asked something I didn’t quite understand. I caught something that sounded like “enyesha”... but not quite “endesha” which I know means, ‘to drive.’ I apologized and said I didn’t understand. To mime the verb, she pulled her bare breast out of her tank top and aimed it at her toddler’s face, who was sitting next to her. She pointed from bare breast to her scrawny baby’s mouth. This is how I came to learn the verb, “nyonyesha” – ‘to breast-feed.’
Trying incredibly hard not to laugh too hard at my own ignorance and the situation, I tried my best to explain that I am not the biological mother of my boyfriend’s baby and that at 1.5 years of age, she doesn’t breast-feed anymore (unheard of in Africa – breastfeeding as long as possible ensures that at least your baby is getting food even if you, the mother, are not). This woman looked very confused. With my limited vocabulary I attempted to explain that Emma lives half the time with her biological mother – not me - and half the time with her father, who is my boyfriend, who happens to live in my parents home. (Trying to explain this in Kiswahili has helped me conclude that my situation might be more than just a little complicated). In any case, I am sure that this woman was merely inquiring about who was feeding “my” baby while I was sitting there in her village showing her photos. Saumu knows the deal – she knows everyone’s names, ages and relationships, so I called her over to explain, and she did a much better job explaining my relationship to Emma than I did.
No comments:
Post a Comment