Laundry Pains

When we left Africa a few months ago for a month of time in the US, I immediately went for the whites at every store I entered.  I couldn’t resist; I missed having whites in Africa.  I can see why they were typically only used by the economically advantaged and for special/religious ceremonies- it was impossible to keep clothing bleachy clean in a place with blowing dirt and silty water.  Below is a used-for-a-little-over-a-year American towel verses one I used in Africa (with washing machine laundering every time) for a little over a year… can you tell the difference?!

Ellie Dung

I've been doing some random thoughts on my post topics as of late, and here is another for you.

Elephant dung.

It is everywhere in any place even remotely, partially, tiptoeingly touched by the elephant species.  As an important part of the environmental cycles of Africa, the steaming pile of manure is an important way that these giant creatures contribute to their surroundings.  This is a nice way of saying that elephant dung is the ultimate African compost, churning tons of foliage mass into ground up hay every day.  In fact, most elephants produce over 100 pounds (over 50 kg) of dung per day!  But who knew it was important to humans, too?

I was sitting in the car in Western Zimbabwe one day waiting for my family to come back from a bathroom break.  We were literally in the middle of nowhere.  Not a human in sight for miles.  Then a car pulled up next to us.

It was strange, I first thought, that this car should park so close to us when there were, oh, 500 kilometers of space between us and the nearest parking space.  But the really strange thing turned out not to be the choice of parking, but rather why the car had parked.

A woman got out of the car with a plastic grocery bag.  She walked over to a fresh pile of elephant dung, and with her bare hands, she picked up as much dung as what would fit in the bag.  With no sheepishness at picking up a giant pile of feces, she set the bag in the trunk, returned to the car, and proceeded to drive away.

My mind was blown.  Seriously?  Had I just seen that?  Absolutely I had.  I had been the weird girl scrambling in the back seat, fumbling to get my camera to show my missing family what I had just witnessed...

When I asked a Ndebele wildlife scout later on that night outside of Hwange National Park about my strange encounter, he had nodded his head.  "Yes," he said. "Elephant dung is a very useful thing. It can be dried and burnt at night as a way of repelling bugs, or a lot of people use it ground up herbally for stomach ailments." He went on to explain that the smoke from burning ellie dung is believed to give people peaceful sleep and good dreams.

We may be living in the 21st Century, but how strangely awesome that there are still people out there that know some of the amazing uses for crazy pieces of nature.  Look up elephant dung online and you will find it is also a useful paper-producer, coffee filter, and garden fertilizer. 

And if nothing else, it makes one wicked snowball.

Piece of Cake

It sounds odd, yes.

And it’s a weird topic for a quick blogpost… but it’s the little things that are sometimes noticeable cultural differences. 

We eat our cake differently in the US.  I have no idea how much of the rest of the world eats cake like this, but in Africa a celebration cake or birthday cake is eaten out of the hand.  One will go to an absolutely posh party with linen napkins and every other decorative detail looked after, and then be served cake straight into his/her hand, gooey frosting and all.  In the US, it’s pretty safe to say that cake is never considered a finger food unless it comes in a cup-cake wrapper.  Funny little details.

I’ll take my cake with a fork, please!

 

Burning Days

As we are busy settling into Spain after a marvelous, too-short summer in the US, I am none-the-less thinking of Zimbabwe constantly.  Though there's a lot I miss, here is one thing I don't... Late July and August means burning, burning, burning and smoke, smoke, smoke.  As fields get cleared for new crops, the end of winter and early spring means Zim is full of farmers setting fire to the brush that has not received rain in six months.  I don't miss this, Zim!

 

 

The Popular President

I heard it was Obama's birthday this week.  It reminds me, this guy has no idea how popular he is in Africa.  He is everywhere in Zimbabwe as a symbol of pride, and enthusiasm for democracy.  Most often he can be seen on imported American shirts and US election paraphernalia, but something about the flare on this shirt Jonas and I came across one afternoon tells me the fabric may be authentically from Africa...