The old man David had wailed terribly in the night from his position under the tree, the same spot he’d been dumped in yesterday, next to but a safe distance from the family compound. He’d been ‘pinched’ (massaged) by various family members, a technique everyone including the dispensary nurse Emanuel had agreed was the only thing apart from painkillers which could help him. From his screams as he was pinched it sounds as if he was being disembowelled, and everyone laughed loudly and openly when he made a particular gut-wrenching one or made a particularly fruity expletive. While they are kind and send children trotting over with plastic mugs of water when he shouts for them, they have a very stand-offish approach to others’ pain, almost ignoring it as a natural thing, treating visible symptoms but not expecting to eliminate pain.
Camels stomped through the compound and Erot put his town outfit on to go and help councillors with today’s election on the proposed new constitution.
We filmed some everyday moments like wives one and two finishing another hide for the skirt, someone setting off for water, children thumping the shiny skins off eengol fruits with rocks. Then we saw Ekidor, smart 12 or 13-year old mother’s help, grinding etirai leaves into a paste with water and applying it to her feet which were swollen, she said, from too much dancing the other night. She and Lokol the young herdsboy, older children of wife 1, both have a wise and wonderful dimension to them, old beyond their years, that marks them out from the other children even though they can play just as joyously and childishly when they’re not performing their multitude of family tasks. Ekidor (named after the door to the hut, which she must have been born near) also smeared her paste onto little boy Lokale’s face which was mysteriously swollen on one side. Probably a punch-up with the other half of this double-trouble pair, Longor, Marta’s child and his best friend. Amusingly Lokale, as Irene’s son, has to call Longor ‘father’ to mark the generation gap between them. The ‘father and son’ duo make two very loutish toddlers as they cruise around the compound, and Erot loves it when I do an impression of Lokale’s bruiser, heavy walking style.
Ekidor’s preparing of the swelling treatment shows what widespread common knowledge of plant medicine there is here, with young girls learning easily from their mothers how to prepare and apply basic home treatments. In this area there don’t seem to be health specialists as such, at least not for the commonly-occurring ngikesiney ka Akuj, natural or God-caused sicknesses; everyone knows basic family health practices here. Health specialists seem only to exist – in the form of ngimurok (emurons) – for ngikesiney ka ekapilan, sicknesses caused by curse, witchcraft, or another person’s evil intentions. These are still shrouded from us but an understanding of their uses and roles in family and animal health is slowly forming through conversations and accidental observations.
Wife one and Aipa went to town with their identity and elector cards to vote in the referendum election. They would vote, and vote yes (for the proposed new constitution drafted largely in response to the 2007 post-election violence) because the councillor Jeremiah had told them to, and this plus a trip to town seemed the only incentive. There was certainly very little interest in what the vote or the election meant or could offer to their lives, but they proudly showed me their identity cards where they stared down the lens from above their tall stacks of beads and strong Nilotic noses. Later they showed me their inked pinky fingers as proof that they’d cast a democratic vote, albeit blindly.
We cooked and shared couscous, which was a first for them, and then sat and listened to a pretty song from the ugly son about his favourite he-goat, sung spontaneously and without self-consciousness as he lay on his back on his mat in the darkness. I wondered when the half moon would be back from its hiding place on the other side of the earth. But even without it the night sky is bright and friendly here, with none of the menace that darkness can bring in towns. Its constellations are both an extremely familiar and comforting presence and a constantly shifting storyline for us all to keep track of and interpret.
