Capital Village

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We met up with our host families again.  I should say that when I say family, I mean Pius and his friend.  He’s 26 and unmarried and said he wasn’t in a place financially to do it yet.  Also, fyi the name of the village was Torgorme.

 

Anyhow, we went to put our stuff in his house, which was sort of two houses, sort of.  There was one long blue building perpendicular to another long blue building and he and his friend slept in one and Andrew and I slept and kept our stuff in another.  Along the way a woman was talking to Pius and said (in Ewe) that she wanted to marry Andrew.  He was flattered but didn’t seem particularly interested.  There were tons of goats and chickens running around all the time and they were super cute.  I wish chickens and goats ran around freely in America.

 

Correction, when we got back we all went to see a demonstration of how pots were made.  We each got a little pot with our name painted on it (by Pius!) when we showed up.  These were like those pots but much larger.  You have to see a video of it but they were clay pots that the women made completely by hand and it was seriously amazing how good they were at it.  They had to bend all the way over to do it on the ground though and that seemed like a huge annoyance.  They would just mold the clay up from the ground using some water from time to time.  To make the rim they would just grab two nice leaves, dip them in water, pinch them in their fingers and turn their bodies around as they went.  They were so smooth, it was crazy.  They could make a perfectly round pot in like 15 minutes or something.  They would sell them at the market for like 5C for smaller ones and like 20C for very large ones.

 

Anyway, so we went to see the river after putting our stuff down.  There were some kids nearby and we stopped to see a woman cooking on the way.  Pius tried to show us the red nuts that she was using and climbed a tree to look for some, but all of the usable ones had been taken, so he had to just borrow a couple from the woman.  He gave one to Andrew and I to eat, and they were sweet, but they were crumby and never left your mouth ever.  She had a baby with her.

 

The river was nice and wide and calm and had been cleared out a bit where they stored their canoes.  People would go out fishing – I think they had fish farms though – and also to collect sand.  When they did that, a man would go out with two kids and they’d put a bucket on a string and the kids would dive all the way down and shove the bucket into the ground.  Then they’d climb on the boat (naked) and they’d all pull it up.  This was the “fine sand” that they used in the clay to make pots and build their homes.  There wasn’t much activity other than our own visit when we went to the river, but a show-off boy ran down the length of a canoe and jumped in.  The water was warm and I kind of wanted to jump in too, but had so much crap on me and no swim suit.  Oh well.

 

There were huge stacks of lobster traps behind us.  They were woven cylinders that kind of closed in on one end and they’d put fish inside and the lobsters would crawl in and get stuck.  It was crazy how skillful the weaving was.  It was really just like our steel traps, except made out of leaves.

 

When we walked back up the path, we looked at the woman cooking and her baby again.  Apparently one of us scared the baby and it started to cry.

 

There was graffiti near the house we slept in that said “LOVE IS WICKED.”  They used the adjective “wicked” often to describe unwholesome things.

 

I think after that we went to the field.  Andrew played some volleyball with some people about his age.  They were pretty damn good and he hadn’t played in a long time.  They asked me if I wanted to play football, but I only had sandals on because my shoes had been ruined, so I said no thanks, I was happy to just watch Andrew play volleyball.  It looked like it might rain and there was even a clap of thunder at one point.  I got really excited but it never panned out.

 

We went to see some more dancing after the field.  It was similar dancing as before, but with way less people, and looked more genuine.  There were four girls sitting near each other in blue dresses and I asked about it.  Apparently someone they knew had died 40 days ago, and after 40 days of mourning, you’re supposed to celebrate and move on and be done with your sadness.  A student of Pius’s came up and started talking to him.  She was 17 and wearing a red and black jacket and had an interesting look.  Her and Pius seemed pretty close, but I don’t think anything weird was going on.  They hugged for a while though.  I don’t know why but I got the feeling she was smart.  We asked about relationships a little bit.  Apparently it’s okay to have girlfriends and girlfriend-like-things, and it’s also okay to have more than one wife, although not super common.  Apparently when that happens they usually all get mad at each other.  Pius said it’s because there are more women than men but I don’t believe that.  He also talked to us a little later about really suggestive dancing they do at some celebrations and that that’s how you find your wife or your girlfriend.  He seemed pretty pumped to talk about it.  I didn’t like dancing so I didn’t really care, but it was cool to see him excited.

 

After we watched the drumming for a bit we went to another village.  Apparently Torgorme is like a capital village and it has other smaller subvillages coming off the side of it.  I asked Pius about utilities and stuff at one point (he had an electric stove) and he said that Torgorme was very lucky because it was a capital village and therefore the gov’t paid attention to it and they got safe pipe-borne water and electricity, but the place we were going didn’t have it yet.  They’d have to wait until the government had time for then.  Until then, they got all of their water from Torgorme and if they needed electricity they had to go there, too.  It wasn’t a terrible walk, like 15 minutes, but imagine making that walk EVERY time you wanted water.

 

There wasn’t a whole lot doing in the other town.  The people were farmers and pot-makers, like in the other town.  It was a lot of houses just set-up and some public spaces.  We were standing in a big circle.  Pius said that at night they’d bring out flashlights or torches and sit together and talk or tell stories or dance to keep themselves occupied.  That sounded really cool and I was a little bit jealous for all but the dancing.  We walked back, and we stopped to look at the piggery.  There was one big pig and a bunch of little ones.  Apparently they only use them for meat, but only eat them on big celebration days.

 

We met a rasta dude named Don.  He was interesting.