Tiba: fire hazard

In light of the situation and the pending police investigation, I stay in Rabula another couple days. This morning’s rain storm led way to a beautiful sunny afternoon. By noon I was called and told that the conclusion of the wedding ceremony is at the bride’s parents’ home and I am to go there to help. I’m already tired from this morning’s episode, but I don’t want to offend anybody. Besides, I could use something to get my mind off the fact that months of my research is now lost. Dizzy from the events of the first couple days, it didn’t even phase me that there is MORE to this whole wedding thing. I walk up to path to return to the place where I washed the pots just a couple days earlier.

At first I was instructed to help the women I know best, who were preparing meals in large cast iron pots over an open fire. But after serious deliberation amongst the mamas, I am told that I must stay inside the house and cut cabbage. Unsure of the reason behind this change, I say “ndicela, ndifuna ukungaphandla” (please, I want to go outside [to help]). In my mind, for whatever reason, it felt like a bit of a demotion. And I wasn’t pleased with the decision to isolate me from the women of the village that I know the best.

I approach one of the mama’s (again, this is a respectful term for anybody older than I and married) in the house. I explain that I want to be helpful and ask why my task was being changed from helping to cook to cutting cabbage. She smiled warmly and motioned to another to help explain in English the reasoning behind the change. She told me that they were afraid my hair would catch fire and that my skin would turn dark from the smoke. I laughed out loud, but immediately correct my laughter when I see the seriousness in her face. “For real?!” I think to myself all the campfires I’ve been around my whole life. And then I think of the attention the texture of my hair often receives. It is different; and unfamiliar to the women in the village.

Determined not be excluded because of my ‘white’ hair and skin, I suggest that I put my hair in a ponytail. I demonstrate by pulling my hair back with my hands for effect. Now, they laugh as if I just pulled a really good party trick. A little deflated, I look outside and noticed that the weather was again taking a quick turn for the worse. What was a humid, sunny afternoon was now threatened by dark clouds accompanied by the roar of thunder from far away over the Transkei. It became obvious to me at that moment that another storm was imminent. I decide not to argue. I smile at the women and begin cutting cabbage.

I felt appreciative but also slightly disheartened. Once again I was treated differently because of my racial makeup. I understood the decision derived from their concern for my safety, but still I felt unsettled. Upon a second reflection, I became sad and resentful that I took advantage of that privileged position to avoid sitting outside in the cold and rain with the women I knew best. Not that I could have done anything otherwise, but the revelation was depressing. I spiritlessly cut cabbage as I contemplate my whiteness as a fire hazard.