People in urban centres are facing long power cuts these days (up to 12 hours at a time). Apparently this is because last year’s rains were insufficient to fill the dam that supplies hydroelectric power. There are many local people for whom power cuts mean the end of small businesses they worked hard to create – photocopy shops, frozen fish vendors, yoghurt suppliers.
When I recently took in three African lodgers, I wasn’t sure how to handle the evening meal. All my English instincts told me that we needed to gather together around the table, like a family. But Kabiye villagers see things very differently. They rarely eat in mixed age groups; they don’t use chairs, tables, knives or forks; and they never talk while eating, because it’s considered rude to do two things with your mouth at once. Mealtimes are for refuelling, not for socialising.
So on the first evening I deliberately remained in the background and waited to see how the boys would organise things according to their own Kabiye world view. F came and ate with me, but the two younger boys ones (15 and 13) ate their dinner where all their instincts told them to: sitting on the kitchen floor together, happily eating rice and sauce with their fingers out of the saucepans. Since then, they have energetically resisted all attempts on my part to encourage them to join us at the table. And who am I to expect them to do any differently, since they are Kabiye living in their own Kabiye village, doing what the Kabiye have always done?
