Lunch at the Chief's

Last Saturday, I was ushered out of the house by Mama nearly as soon as I'd woken up. My older sister Rafilwe had come in from Gabs, and together with my brother McPherson we were going to a kgotla meeting (a bit like town hall, I guess, but more cultural to the village). I was pretty confused to see my brother put on an animal skin cape as we were piling in the car to leave, and even more surprised when we got to the kgotla and saw all the men wearing antelope-type skins. It turns out the skins are a symbol of tribal initiation, an old practice that was banned with independence but has now been resurrected by the Bakgatla tribe here in Mochudi. There are traditional "schools" for the men and women (though attendance is now voluntary): in the men's, they march out 80km into the bush, bringing nothing but a blanket and maybe some T-shirts, and camp with a group of about 2,000 for 8 weeks, hunting and learning about tribal culture. McPherson told me he'd done it last winter. Pretty intense!

The kgotla meeting began when the kgosi (chief) pulled up in his H3 Hummer, and took his official seat draped with a leopard skin. It lasted 3 hours and was all in Setswana, and so all unintelligible to me, but there was a traumatizing moment when the MC asked me to stand in front of all the hundreds of people there and formally welcomed me to Mochudi, and invited me to a luncheon afterwards at the chief's house. News photographers rushed over to take my picture, and this morning my friend's mom said she'd seen me in one of the papers. (Guess I'm a minor celebrity here now...?) As it turns out, the meeting had been called to introduce a new squad of crime-fighting civilians on horseback, and to present the chief with a gift of cattle.

Lunch at the chief's was pretty interesting - the food was good, salads and tea sandwiches - and though I didn't actually meet the chief, I talked to the MC guy and found out he'd been to Seattle before through Boeing. Small world. Other than that I just stuck close to Mama and ate my food as inconspicuously as possible (pretty difficult for the only white person at a giant event).

This work week has been hot and pretty busy; the organization has been hosting a workshop for 50+ people, so we've had a lot of cooking and cleaning and chores to do. It's gotten pretty frustrating at times, because the staff all speak to us in rapid Setswana and somehow expect us to understand (we obviously don't 90 percent of the time). We have a Setswana lesson tomorrow, though, so no work; afterwards we're thinking of checking out the local museum.

Got one more week in Mochudi, and then it's off to Gabs, so I'll keep you all posted! Also Happy St. Patty's yesterday. As one could guess, it's not actually a holiday here.