On Being a Village Mama October 17th

Without Mamas, I’m positive that village life would be utterly impossible. Mamas are the true backbone of Tanzania. They care for the children, walk to their fields to plant crops, carry the water (waiting at the pump in the blazing sun for hours) for the entire household, hand wash the clothing for the entire household (including the soiled clothes that are used as diapers), feed the mouths of those who reside in or within the vicinity of their household, and they make time to visit one another while plaiting each others hair. It tires me just to write all of these chores, and while I sometimes manage to do all of these tasks in one day, it exhausts me to the point of wanting to lie in my bed and sleep for the rest of the week. I feel like I accomplish so much by doing these household chores, but really, doing all of the washing, sweeping, cooking, and gardening doesn’t help me teach the students, it doesn’t get their papers graded, or the library cleaned out, and it doesn’t help me with the various health projects I have started in the community. When I stop to think about it, the household chores are just a burden that keeps me from my actual work: but these chores ARE the ACTUAL WORK for every Mama in the vill. For this, I admire the strength and humor that each Mama brings to these tasks. Sometimes when they are feeling charitable, they allow me to come and help them with some of the more “white-person attainable” tasks. On the 17th of October, this included the cutting of firewood with Mama Semi and Semi.
There are dead trees everywhere in Makong’onda. Many of them are the direct result from the burning that farmers use to clean the dead brush off of their fields. What they don’t see (in the long term, and we NEVER see the long term here) is that they are not only killing the trees that add important soil nutrients and help prevent soil erosion, but as they leave their fields with burning piles in their wake, they don’t watch the wind blow the fire into the rest of the brush, thus starting the rain-starved cashew nut trees on fire, and thus ruining the field all together. To cut firewood, we set off for one of these desecrated fields, 2 machetes and an army of small children in hand.
When we arrived at the field, I received my first lesson in cutting the trees. Mama Semi lifted her machete, struck the branch in the same place 4 times in a row, and then pulled the tree to the ground. Once down, she up-ended the tree and neatly sliced every single small branch, leaving a clean, smart, and straight piece of wood. The entire process took less than a minute. Taking my machete and strutting to another tree, I decided that I was going to make this look every bit as easy as Mama Semi, who if, at 5 foot nothing and weighing barely 120 pounds, could make this look easy, then so could I. I was barely through the second strut to the tree before Mama Semi removed my machete and ran her finger over the blade, then showed me the finger. I looked at her and shrugged. She replied that there was no blood on her finger. Puzzled as to why that was a bad thing, I asked her why that was a bad thing. She said that the blade was not sharp enough. I amusedly pointed out that in the case I missed, at least we knew I wouldn’t completely chop my hand off. Smirking, and surrounded by the giggles of the girls, Mama Semi moved aside and allowed me to proceed.
My first chop in the wood was good, only about 1 cm deep, but low on the tree, a good start. My second chop was good too, about 1.5cm deep, and about 3 inches above the first mark. Now my third chop had a higher probability of going into one of those holes, because I had just doubled my targets. No such luck. In fact, by the end of the 7th chop, the bottom of the tree was merely filled with 7 small and distinct pock marks, its small branches trembling slightly after receiving each one, as if the tree was laughing at me with each stroke of my blade. At this point, I decided to take a more American approach, I wrapped my hands around the top and proceeded to shake the life out of the dead tree, encouraging it with colorful American metaphors to come “out of the damn ground”. At this point, Mama Semi was on the ground with the 4 girls, and all of them were convulsing with laughter, Mama Semi shaking so hard I would have assumed she was having a seizure had she not punctuated each shake with an ear splitting snort. After composing herself, Mama Semi apologized to the tree (TO THE TREE! HMMMPH!) and then with one fatal swing (that only would have worked with the help of my strategically placed small dent (just saying)) she felled the tree. She said she thought I was getting the hang of it though, and turned me loose with the army of small children while she went off to cut more trees on her own.
Semi and I proved to be an excellent team, and in less that 45 minutes, we had 19 tall trees, one of which I was able to fall in less than a minute and 10 of which I needed Semi to help me fall, at 12 years old, she is already far more proficient with a machete than I. We returned with our booty to the clearing where Mama Semi was tying all of her trees together. All together, we made a decent team, in 45 minutes, we both cut more than 18 trees (I cut 19, she cut 52). As we carried the loot back through the village (each young lady with a huge bundle of at least 15-20 a top her head, me with 7 in a hand-held bundle) the villagers hooted congratulations to me for surviving my first wood-chopping experience, and congratulations to Mama Semi, for surviving putting up with me.
Being a Mama is HARD work, REALLY HARD work.