I had quite the cultural Saturday. 1st stop was at a “kukhumula” (goo-koo-moo-lah) which literally means to undress. Swazi tradition says when a woman becomes a widow she has to wear all black for 2 years. For the first month she must stay in her house and her relatives bring her food and do things for her while she mourns to show respect for her husband. She is also not allowed to plow the field her first year. Let’s retrace, you get waited on, you don’t have to do field work and you wear black which is slimming anyway, it’s not sounding so bad – I’m so kidding and not trying to be insensitive for someone who has lost their husband but as I was writing it…anyway…
The kukhumula ceremony occurs after the 2 years have passed and it’s pretty much a party for the widow. She is brought new clothes and dishes and a cow is slaughtered and there’s a huge feast. At night is an all night prayer for the widow and her children.
There’s the widow in the middle and everyone just puts what they brought on her – blankets and clothes and if they brought her a scarf they tie it on her head. See the woman with the stick on the right, okay like seriously there were 40+ women sitting inside that little house and I went and sat with them, oh it just makes my little intercultural heart flutter to be in rural Swaziland with all these women. The men were on the other side of the property, roasting the meat over the fire and drinking traditional Swazi beer made from fermented corn meal.
The onlookers.
My friend, Dolly, who I went with introduced me to her grandma and her aunt. Her grandma flipped when she saw me and hooked arms with me immediately and yelled at all the women “umnganami wami” (oom-gah-nee-wam) which means “my friend”, she wanted everyone to know I was with her. She’s not looking at the camera on purpose, it’s a Swazi thing, I still don’t know why they do it exactly but they all do it unless I ask them to look.
Here’s Dolly’s grandma’s kitchen, a traditional Swazi kitchen. I walked in to the small hut with no windows and a 5 foot door and my eyes immediately begin to burn with all the smoke (that’s why the picture is cloudy). I could hardly keep my eyes open because they were stinging so bad and I asked Dolly how the women could see to cook and she just laughed and said “We do”. Okay, well i mean that explains it 🙂
Then we drove a mile or so in the same area to a wedding but no pictures of that, sorry. It was raining and I didn’t want to get my camera wet.
Even now when i look at these pictures, i think, “I can’t believe I live in Africa”, i mean seriously, this place is in the mountains right behind my very American looking home.
You are officially Swazi! 🙂