Basanga

An amazing thing happened on Friday. I pushed a switch and a light came on! The next morning a pushed a button and had coffee. Everything has suddenly become easier and faster in my life. Instead of going outside in the morning to start a fire to get hot water for making coffee I only have to push a button. Of course there are still the daily outages for whatever length of time. Sunday it went out at 6AM and came back on at 10PM but somehow that doesn’t seem so bad any more.

I got a phone call at 9PM from someone in my church asking me if I wanted to go with them to a traditional ceremony for the Basanga tribe in a small village called Pande. It was a little bit hard to understand her over the phone but after switching between Swahili and French a few times I got it and agreed to go. Of course they told me we would leave at 6 and come back at 11 but we left at 8 and came back at 3. I tried my best to understand the purpose of the ceremony and what I could gather was the Paramount Chief of the Basanga people declared January 13 a holiday after his father (the former Paramount Chief) died on that day.

Like most African tribal celebrations there is a lot of traditional beer to go around and plenty of dancing to the beat of the drums. And then of course the chiefs do their best to wear “traditional clothing”. There is no real program beyond the fact that everyone knows there will be a time given to honor the chiefs, the honorary guests, plenty of dancing, and eventually food. I would have thought the chief would have made a grand speech to his subjects but he seemed content to sit in his high chair and allow people to pose with him for a picture but only if they bowed first and showed respect. Because it was in honor of the former chief he had his own chair with a picture of the now dead paramount chief in the chair. Of course mention was made about how the spirit of the dead chief was among us and helping his son be a good chief now.

The traditional clothing was amusing. Each chief had a tail they used as a scepter. Hair was collected from an animal and in some cases the tail cut off then the hair or tail was fitted into a handle so the chief could wave it around and point at things with it. The hair/tails came from a variety of animals but the amusing part was the handles. Some had authentic looking naturally made according to tradition handles, but some of the people used modern umbrella, broom, or mop handles. In a more obvious manner of modern meets traditional each chief wore his best clothes and overtop of them his traditional costume. So that meant men were wearing suits with a colorful skirt overtop of it and maybe a few strips of animal fur over the suit jacket and some a Mobutu style hat made of animal skin (although not leopard skin) and others traditional beads were somewhere attached to the costume. Interestingly enough the paramount chief did not dress in any traditional clothes or in a suit. He did however boast a Stanley exploration hat. I found this incredibly amusing because not only was Henry Stanley a horrible man who deeply abused the Congolese people but his entrance constituted the end of the Basanga kingdom as they knew it by imposing total submission to King Leopold or death.

They had their own form of a kegger. A giant drum where each lady in the village would bring the pot of traditional beer she had made and dump it in until it was full. In sticking with tradition there were also 6 huge gourds with the tops cut off that were filled with the traditional beer. The tops of the gourds were used as cups and each was filled and passed around to the group of well over 500 people (although many were children and were not permitted to drink the beer). For the visitors there was also modern Simba beer and D’Jina soft drinks available. The paramount chief being more of a whiskey man than a beer drinker was provided with his drink of choice, Sprite, maybe it was spiked with whiskey for him.

The dancing was typical of what I have seen elsewhere in Africa. They have an amazing ability to move their butts and hips in ways you wouldn’t think possible. I noticed before each person danced they tied a kikwembe (colorful wrap) around their waists. If they didn’t someone would tie one around them while they were dancing. Someone explained to me that was the secret. If you had the kikwembe tied around your waist it was easy to move your hips and butt the right way. Somehow I don’t think it would have helped me at all. The dancing is often a woman beckoning a man with her hands as they dance and he then approaches. Then they will turn it around and the woman will back away and the man will beckon her to approach. If that get too close another dancer will come to distract them or break them up. Some times the men dance with the men and the women with the women. I guess they dance close together and pull off of each others energies and moves but some times when the men danced together it looked so homosexual. If I had been any place but Africa I would have never believed the men were straight.

The food served began with trays of little meat pieces. It wasn’t the kind of meat pieces we would expect though. From what I could see they only served inners. The people preparing the food must have worked really hard on at least some of it because intestines were carefully wrapped around to give either a nice look or an easier way to eat it. I’m not sure. I saw one tray being passed around that I at first thought was full of roasted caterpillars which I would have eaten. Upon further investigation I quickly discovered it was roasted innards as opposed to the boiled innards that had just been passed. Afterwards there was the typical meal bukari (corn mush), rice because it was a special occasion, and chicken. Normally there would have also been a leaf to eat either sweet potato leaves, squash leaves, or the favorite cassava leaves but not today. I was a little disappointed.

The few times that people spoke they spoke in Kisanga and someone interpreted it into French. The traditional languages are dying in Congo and that was evident by how many people I heard speaking to each other in Swahili and French instead of Kisanga in general conversations. When I asked them about it they explained it was easier to understand Kisanga than to speak it. Although people are constantly trying to convince me that I need to learn Kisanga I have no intention of doing so since it is a dying language and Congo has 5 other very alive languages in which I actually need to learn. I have picked up just a few words that are the same as the Bemba language spoken by the largest tribe in Zambia. The one word I have learned is twasanta, thank you. It is amazing how knowing literally one word in someone’s language can make them so happy. When I thanked the chief before leaving with twasanta everyone cheered for me and explained that I was becoming a Basanga and they were so excited. Hopefully they don’t get disappointed over time when I don’t add anything to my vocabulary.

I realize this entry is incredibly long but I wanted to give you the full picture of the ceremony. I have finally finalized my plans and I will be leaving Congo on February 12 and leaving Zambia on February 26. I’m really looking forward to it except for the weather. I feel cold right now in the mornings of full blown summer in Congo so I don’t know how I’ll make it in American winter even if it is Texas.