Chicago Connections

Remember how I said the buses have names painted on the back? Several times I've seen the New York Yankees bus and I kept thinking if ever I met someone who was looking for a name to paint on his bus, I'd suggest Chicago Cubs. Today coming home the bus parked in front of us in the Kamenge dock was named Chicago Bulls. This after seeing someone walking down the street with a Chicago Bears sweatshirt and someone else with a Chicago Bulls t-shirt. Now the thing you have to bear in mind about all this is that at least as far as the clothes go, 99 times out of 100 I'd say people here have no personal relationship with the things written on their T-shirts. Or for that matter with the brand names of their other items of clothings. Africa is where your clothes go to die. Huge shipments of cast off, second hand clothes come in and are sold in the markets and are worn until they no longer serve the function of being clothes. I have no earthly notion what decision making process people go through when picking things out but I know it has nothing to do with logos or messages. This makes for some pretty interesting juxtapositions some times. A grandmother wearing a "What Happens in Vegas..." t-shirt over her traditional printed skirt. A young man wearing a 'play girl' t-shirt. A older man wearing (I kid you not) "My grandma went to Texas and all she brought me was this lousy T-shirt." Plus I'm guessing that Eminem doesn't actually have as many fans here in Burundi as you'd be lead to believe by the number of people wearing Eminem t-shirts. Something else I'd read and was reminded of tonight is that whenever there's a big sporting event like a SuperBowl or World Series or whatever they make a gajillion shirts for either outcome and then ship the ones that turn out to be wrong off to Africa's T-shirt market. So it's possible that somewhere here in Burundi someone is wearing a t-shirt celebrating the Chicago Bears as the SuperBowl Champions of 2007. If I find it Lauren, I'll bring it home. It's weird to thing about the whole message of a message tshirt being rendered meaningless along with the finer distinctions of brand. Gap, Adidas, Sean John, Izod, whatever, have all been stripped of their cache or stigma. Generally speaking the men and boys here dress exactly like the men in boys in America. They are in fact, wearing the exact same clothes which were worn by men and boys in America, except that shorts are still a rarish sight. It's just that for them, a shirt is a shirt. Pants are pants. And the variable which has meaning is cleanliness or degree of wear. Women's wear is a whole other story- as is so often the case. You'll see women in full on traditional dress, a large patterned print skirt with a matching patterned blouse with maybe even another wrap on top of that. You'll also see lots and lots of women in the aforementioned oversized T-shirts with a traditional skirt. And more and more now, at least in the city you'll also see women in full on Western wear, including pants which apparently as recently as a year ago you never saw.

My other Chicago connection of the day is that we spent the better part of the evening hanging out with Jefferson Mok a fellow Chicagoan here in Burundi. I came across his blog (which I highly recommend by the way) in my Burundi alerts and had to laugh as I read through his accounts of being at some of the exact same events we'd attended. So we made a Fanta appointment to swap learning Kirundi notes and of course celebrate being from Barak Obama's home town. We did a pretty good job of not entirely monopolizing the conversation with all things Chicago, mostly because the work he's doing is so intriguing. He got here three weeks ago- just a week before we did- and is working on setting up a shelter with programs for former female child soldiers who have now been demobilized. Like I said, check out his blog for further details.

It was a very slow day at the work camp. John had sprained his wrist yesterday from a fall and spent the day inside reading. Workwise, he didn't miss much. The masons in their own special way re-asserted their supremacy in the brick laying and budongo troweling department working so concertedly on one wall section at a time that there was literally no place for us to edge in and help with that part of things. So it was a little bit of brick and budongo shifting to make sure their piles stayed full and a lot of waiting around. Plus new volunteers keep popping up, women from the community who want to help and who then join us for lunch and today a young woman who just finished at university- in social work and community programs- and is hoping to get a job working with FWA in the future. Her English is very good and she was quite happy to help me work on my Kirundi which is great because explaining to Kirundi only or even Kirundi/French speakers that I would like to learn to conjugate the verb they just told me in 1st person singular form has led to some pretty funny who's on first type, roundabout conversations.

Jonathan, taking his role as umwigisha wanje very seriously today did actually quiz me on the way to lunch, which reminds me I'd better know the word for 'door' tomorrow or he is going to flunk me. Not satisfied with simply knowing that 'tree' is 'igiti' he requires that I also know the Kirundi names for the different kinds of trees. I couldn't explain to him that the harder part of that equation was me being able to tell the difference between a mango tree and an avocado tree and an orange tree with out the fruits themselves in evidence, never mind remembering the Kirundi names.

My hilarious Kirundi moment of the day: Maxime was quizzing me on Kirundi for different body parts. I felt pretty confident about this since I'd been working on it with Jonathan. Hand I got, head, heart, ear, nose, finger. And then I said crooking my thumb, "urukuma" for thumb. And Marite who'd been listening the whole time nearly fell over laughing. Maxime was laughing too as he corrected me, "urukumu." And there's Marite still fit to be tied. So I asked Maxime in French what was so funny, why was Marite laughing at me? And he replied that I had said something else. But did not elaborate what, precisely I had said. It is now my mission in life to find out.