In Kabiye culture, children and teenagers are taught to have total respect for elders and authority. To merely come when you are called is not sufficient. You have to drop what ever you are doing and come running. Yesterday, I called Essotchelinam to come and help me with something. He arrived dripping wet and wrapped in a towel. I told him he could finish his shower first.
On the very day I arrived back in the village, amongst piles of half-opened suitcases and cardboard boxes, I cut my hand on a kitchen knife. Faustin swung into action and drove me down to Kara hospital (24km round trip) where I had three stitches and a tetanus jab. Not the best way to ease back into life up on the mountain!
Eduardo placed the knife in a separate drawer in the kitchen, and no-one must use it until I get better. He explained that if the knife was to be used to cut something hot in the meantime, I would feel the pain. I was also interested to learn that in Kabiye, you can’t say “I cut myself with a knife”. The correct form is “A knife cut me”, as though it was the fault of the knife itself, not the person holding it.
Update: had the stitches out today and all is well.
Nice to go from 0 degrees in Paris to 30 degrees in Lomé overnight. I was born for the tropics.
The first few weeks back in Togo are always very full. First, I spent two weeks in Lomé and Cotonou getting visas for Togo and Benin, having the car repaired and visiting members of the Kabiye language committee. Courtesy visits are a high priority in African culture.
Some good news: M was my first ever househelp when I arrived in Togo in 1996. He was 15 then, and I’ve been sponsoring his education ever since. Now, at 28, he’s just announced that he’s been recruited as a lycée teacher, which gives him job security for life.
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?