I tried, really tried, to convince this man/tourist dude that the 4 hippos he saw lounging in Outamba Kilimi Park in the middle of the river, ones who could tip his canoe, were not pygmy hippos. I went over their habits (i.e. they don’t lounge in water for visitors gazing pleasure, and they are solitary) but the man would not be persuaded. Plus this was 15 years ago, and he swears the hippos were small (he quoted them as being only 9 feet long), so they had to be pygmy!! I gave up. Who can argue with logic like that?
I went to my first burial ceremony yesterday. My friend’s father died a couple days ago while I was on a community tour. We came back the next morning for the ceremony. The story of this man’s demise is as follows. Four years ago, he went to the back of his house, where he saw a hawk grabbing a chicken out of the sky. The hawk dropped the chicken, so the man went to see if the chicken was ok, when the man suddenly collapsed. He could not walk after that and instead lay in his bed. Somebody told me it was leprosy, but my hunch is a stroke or something of that nature. He slowly stopped eating until he perished. The burial ceremony was strange. I’m used to coffins, etc. In this one, they took the whole man’s bed out of his room, with him on top of the bed wrapped in white satin. They sat and talked about him for awhile (I think – It was all in Mende), and prayed. Then they carried the bed to another location and prayed some more, and people really started crying then. It was very sad. Then they carried the man and his bed into the forest, to travel to the graveyard. Women aren’t allowed to go, and only a few men went along. Then everybody ate mangoes. It was a strange day. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that I am officially a trend setter. I realized I’d given away all my caps, and the sun has been really hot lately. So I saw a cap that said “Icehouse”, that was on sale from a travelling merchant, and it was of good quality, and Icehouse was the first beer I drank when I was in undergrad, and was about $1, so I thought I might as well buy one. Then Mr. Magona saw my hat and he liked it, so he went and bought one. Then the deceased man’s son made a comment about how much he liked the hat, and I wanted to give him a little joy for the day, so I bought him one. Then 5 other people suddenly bought a hat cuz they liked them so much, and of course we had to take a picture of us in our matching hats under the mango trees. I felt very fashionable, for the first time in my life! Did I mention it is mango season?