I went with one of my Rotarian Club members to the home of another one as a part “Rotary Social,” part (okay MOSTLY) birthday party for said Rotarian’s ten year old daughter. We arrived to find for one that I was overdressed. But more importantly, there were at least 30 kids squealing, screaming, laughing (or whatever sound they had each personally chosen) in delight inside of a big bouncy castle contraption on the front lawn. There were two sections to this thing, the back was the castle part, and the front had a slide into a small pool of water. So some kids were in swimsuits getting totally wet and others were fully clothed in the castle portion bouncing and laughing and getting only slightly less wet.
The adults were sitting around talking, but there were much fewer of us. In addition to family relations and friend of the host, a total 5 of our club members had made it out to the event, which is pretty good since our club only has 14 members and a few of these are on indeterminate leave because of governmental transfers to jobs out of the area. There was a lot of sitting around doing nothing, at least for me, because I can’t hold much of a conversation and my co-Otse member who brought me wanted to mingle. He is 63, single and hoping someday to find love again, so he had to be on his toes. I was trying to determine whether it was socially acceptable to steal a beer at a BYOB party and decided against it.
Eventually the food arrived, the cakes were unveiled, and then we waited some more before they started to serve the food. It was actually a party for three children in this extended family who had had birthdays in the last 3 months – my host’s ten year old, her nine year old cousin and their 15 year old cousin. They each had a half sheet cake. Two of them had pictures of the kids expertly recreated on them, almost too pretty to eat.
Did I mention that this particular host was definitely upper class? He house was ginormous but local standards. He told me later there were five people living there; he, his daughter, his sister’s daughter and small child and his male cousin who had just started to live there. Just prior, it had been he, his daughter and a maid. I said, “Well, I guess there isn’t room for the maid anymore” to which I received an emphatic, “Oh yes, there still is.” He wife passed away two years ago and he has a good and responsible job so someone is needed to be there to take care of the household.
This was the second “party” I had been to in a week’s time where the children were fed first, which I think is pretty swell. The other was an event at Camphill put on by the school portion that has kids 7 to 14 (more on that somewhere else). We don’t stand in line to get our food, which is also swell. Instead, the young women dish up the plates and take them to the waitees. After we ate, we waited some more and they moved the gifts and cake front and center so they could be opened and the kids could stare at the cakes some more.
I hadn’t realized the nature of the party and the socio-economic class I was dealing with, but hadn’t wanted to show up empty handed. Unfortunately I couldn’t go shop for anything so I scrambled to find something suitable in my supplies. I needn’t have bothered, Tendandi received so many really nice gifts and mine was kind of a freak occurrence that made little sense to anyone. I sat anxiously as they opened each gift, one by one. Because there were three birthday girls they had to identify who each gift was for. I hadn’t know there would be three, so I didn’t put a card on mine and thus had to identify out loud that it was from me. I was more embarrassed than I needed to be. Although hoops and cheers went up for really awesome gifts, all gifts received a polite round of applause no matter what and I always had the out of being a dump foreigner. So what was my gift? A nifty blue pencil pouch with pencils, highlighter pen, permanent marker pen, sticky notes, a glue stick and a deck of cards. A practical and fun gift, right? Yeah, but she also received a huge prepackaged set of similar items. Except for the cards. Oh well, I got over it quickly enough when they started serving the cake.
After the cake, there was more sitting around. The kids went back to the jumpy castle thing. Some decided to pour wash powder into the “pool” to get bubbles, which of course didn’t work the way they planned but their clothes at least got cleaner. At times it looked like the whole thing would tip over from the numbers of kids inside. At one point our host, a quiet and kind man in his late 50s or early 60s, went inside and started jumping around too. More squeals and laughter from the kids. I captured a couple of pictures of him trying to extricate himself from the mayhem and clearly he had a good time.
With my co-Otse member off to get some wine for us to drink, I sat again with nothing to do or say. So I decided to pick up the garbage that people had simply put down under their seats on the lawn and never thought about again. I did this almost entirely by myself. Towards the end a few people came and added their stuff to my bag or picked up things near them and added to the bag. The sister-in-law of my host thanked me for doing it. At least now the yard was clean and there would be less to do later.
Then they brought snack bags out for the kids, the adults started drinking and the yard was covered again. By now I had other things to attend to because some of the kids were trying to get mulberries off the tree but the branches were really too high for most of them. So I started picking berries for the smaller kids until it got too dark for me to differentiate between a ripe and nonripe berry.
With darkness, a distinct change ran through the crowd. The women moved their chairs over to the “dance driveway” and the men clustered their chairs a bit further away on the lawn where they could watch. Kids were dancing, some of the young ones gyrating and moving in amazing ways, being the most excellent mimics of adults. Although none of the adults there could do that anymore, so maybe they really had learned it from their teenage siblings and cousins. Anyway, there were a couple small kids – maybe 3 or 4 in age max – who danced like pros and their moves would generally be considered very sexually provocative if done by an adult, but they didn’t know it yet. They were just having fun.
The teen age girls were dancing with a couple of the middle aged women, so I joined in and they started trying to show me some of the generally acceptable dance moves. We laughed a lot and I know some of them were laughing at me, but mostly not. I asked one if I was doing it so poorly that they were laughing. She said it was more that they had never had a white person dance with them and try to learn the moves and that generally, I was doing okay.
After the young’un left, it was up to us older women to keep the dancing going, which we did as best we could. There was one woman there who was far and away the most beautiful and gifted in the movements. She had the eyes of men and woman alike on her as she danced. For awhile we danced with her and then, by some unspoken sign, all the women left her to dance alone, which she did for about 10 or 15 minutes. Eyes were glued on her movements, which were not the extreme gyrations of the young children, but very sensuous. My friend seeking companionship had brought his chair closer to the dance floor so he could have a better view. He later asked our host her story and our host replied that she was a cousin of some sort, didn’t work and was “looking for a sponsor,” which is I guess an interesting way of putting it.
At some point, she left and we reclaimed the dance floor. Another woman took it upon herself to try to teach me some of the more age appropriate moves and we had fun dancing. She was kind of drunk by then and sometimes would put on really sad faces. It became clear to me as she and I danced at one point that some of the dance moves and posturing are truly competitive and so there was a give and take back and forth where she would do something and I was to do something back – either copy her or add a little extra to it. Apparently I was doing it right because the women sitting there were laughing and clapping and she was acting sad and put out, but then would laugh too.
I had had this same brief interchange earlier with one of the teenage girls on the dance floor but hadn’t understood it clearly and thought she was just making fun of me. Apparently we were competing. Probably for one of the antisocial men sitting off in the dark in their huddle.
Occasionally a young man would come over and do some wild dance move and then run off into the darkness again. Only two young men sustained more than a 10 minute dance period, but they were dancing like the possessed so I get how that isn’t possible to keep up for long. My co-Otse Rotarian did the most dancing, but the women definitely laughed at him, so he decided to just sit and watch. My host would come out periodically and dance for a few minutes and at one point I saw him really bust a move. He joked later that for about 15 seconds he could dance awesomely, but much longer than that any he would just show his age. It should be about quality, not quantity though, right?
So now, a party that I initially felt separate from had totally embraced me and I felt part of the group. My host had introduced me to many of his guests, mostly a family relation of some sort and they for the most part were friendly and welcoming. His deceased wife’s sister and her husband were responsible for making the best seswaa I have had since I have been here. Seswaa is meat that is cooked, pounded with a heavy object until it is soft and kind of stringy, like pulled pork or something. Apparently the secret is to make it with goat meat, not beef, as was explained to me after I had tried some. Then I had to explain to a shocked young man that American’s don’t eat a lot of goat meat generally, although there are certainly pockets of people who must know the secret of goat meat but aren’t sharing it widely. Anyway, these friendly people told me they would make it for me when I decided to have a party at my house, because everyone knows a party without seswaa isn’t a real party. I tried to think of what comparable food item makes a party a party in America, but I couldn’t.
But the highlight of the evening had to be when I went into the kitchen where my host’s niece and her daughter were. The daughter was around 2 years and she was fussing and crying. Usually when kids are in this state I only make it worse, especially with kids here who may not exactly know what to think of this very pale person staring down at them. But I started a game of peek a boo with her, adding “eh, eh, eh?” with it for the sound effects. She looked at me and actually stopped crying and started to return my “eh, eh, ehs?” Then it was time to move in to a high five, which she eventually got. Whatever it was she was crying about was temporarily forgotten. Next time I see here I will teach her to blow kisses and wink. This is definitely my favorite age group I am discovering: the more non-verbal the better.
Did I mention how sore I am this morning? Oh but to dance again was well worth it!
