Tribal village

We were introduced to the Venda tribute by Jamaica, the grandson of the chief of the little village. Jamaica told us about the traditions which were used still a few years ago, nowadays, only a few of them subsist. The chief was allowed to have until 8 wives, and had to pay 12 cows for each of them , but not if they were from the same family, in this case, for the price of one, he got one for free if he wanted to!!! The reason for so many wives was that the chief, busy with his responsibilities needed lots of help to assure the commune life of the village. His first wife was in charge to choose his other wives, her goal was to find hard worker and women who wouldn’t make problems between each other. The chief live in a hut, all of the village are round, the speciality of the chief’s hut is an inside wall which protected him in case the village is attacked. Also the entries are very low so the men inside the huts, warned of an attack were ready to fight with their weapon as soon as the first enemy entered. The men stood on the right, the women and children on the left so that the enemy killed only the men and saved women and children. An other hut was for the grand parents, here is also a wooden elevated lying space where exorcism was operated. A more recent hut was built and thought by Jamaica’s father. It is the teaching hut, with a bank all around the wall, and a very clever idea was to dig a place in the middle of the hut where the teacher or the speaker in front of a his public could stand up and his eyes could be at the same level like the people sitting! What for a lesson of humility! In the middle of the village stand a tree, which must obligatory give fruits, otherwise it would bring bad luck. The village is articulated around the tree, which is the first thing to choose to know where to build a new village. The “kraal” is a delimited circle where all events where celebrated with songs and dance. An other one is the women area, it means…the cooking area of course.
The entry of the village for the visitors is always celebrated with a welcome song in the tribute language, Tshivenda. If the people don’t sing on your arrival, they would do you a lots of trouble and you never would be accepted. We felt so very happy to have enjoyed our first minute listening the young children singing and dancing for us, wearing their traditional clothes. The visitors were placed in the first hut at the entry so if the enemy attack, first the visitors are killed and this village get a short time to collect their weapons and took their appropriated place.
The education is very strict in the village. The boys received a 6 months education (fishing, hunting, hut building…), Jamaica received 5, nowadays are still 3 months obligation and the young boys still learn how to hunt and catch birds, as well as hut building, however, this last task is only an education of traditional culture which allows the new generation to know how their parents lived, because today all the family live in the next township. What the girls learnt, Jamaica couldn’t tell us because the girls are not allowed to speak about it to the men. Jamaica could imagine that today, the women speak about it with their husbands, but himself didn’t know…legend or reality? It is not always easy to do the difference between what was tradition before and what is still on today.

For our personal experience of Tswana life, we were invited to taste the delicious food cooked by 2 Tswana women during our visit. We sat on the bank of the cooking kraal and were first welcome to wash our hands with warm water in a wooden container the 2 women offered to each of us. We get for all dishes a plate and helped ourselves of “miele meal”, a nutritive corn flour cooked in water, cabbage, tomato and onion sauce and chicken, each meal in a container placed on the bottom. Without fork nor knife nor spoon we enjoyed the taste of this basic but very nice food. As desert, we were invited to listen and watch traditional songs and dance around a big fire inside the kraal. We also took part and learnt a few words and dancing movements. Toilets are now available for the tourists with drinking tap water, but electricity doesn’t exist so we enjoyed the nice light of the candles in our respective hut where they had organized a mattress and a mosquito net on it for us. We spent the evening in the kraal enjoying a few beers of a icebox, talking between us until Jamaica and his little cousin joined us. And we had together a very very nice time. Flo, Hoi Kee, Jamaica and Alem took a drum and learnt to play all together even if no one could really drum anything it sounded surprisingly great, I did the metronome and the dance show. Obviously it was nothing worth for a musician or a dancer but as participant we had extremely fun at this time which marked the end of this enjoyable experience and this excursion for me, before all thanks to the wonderful company I had the chance to meet on this tour. The last surprise come late evening : Jamaica and Alem have grilled some interesting meat : Impala!!! Usual for them, almost impossible to munch for us!!! I ‘ve chewed for 10 minutes a little peace of this unexpected grilled meat.
Gideon the young guide learnt me a lot about his company, I took the chance to ask him thousands questions about the management of this tour operator on the way back to Nelspruit. The dream was already over, back to work. Actually, my work is a sort of tourism without moving. I listen interested about the travel the tourist who come here like to tell. This week is a wonderful one, almost every night all rooms are booked out with a lot of person coming and leaving, every night I learn more and more about the possibility for them to go on tour in the Kruger Park and the panorama road or details about other destination. Dave is almost always absent because on tout with guests. I stay then with Bella which is very busy with other rooms of other houses they offer to rent monthly. It means that I have got much more to manage myself and it gets more and more every day, Bella explains me many interesting things very patiently even though she is running all day between visit, pick ups, phone calls and her 2 kids keeping on fighting together when they come from school… busy work, hard day, tomorrow I must be awake at 4:45 for the first guest leaving to Kruger earlier especially those days because of public holidays. It is a crazy week, most of South African took 10 days off. Monday was public holiday as I wrote yesterday, tomorrow Thursday is Labour day also, Friday is public holiday then as it is only one day before the week end. Tuesday and Wednesday are not normal working day in consequence. The Dutch students coming every week end home have come back today already, no school today, one of them had 2 children at school yesterday… How do you want the country healthy running if they do 1 working day for 10 days…