May
2006
Faith and Freedom: Who the World Thinks We Are0
Mama Chezi is a huge woman in many respects. She takes up a large amount of space in the small round, dirt-floored hut where we are clustering around a single candle and a smouldering pile of white sage. Although she can speak English, she refuses to do so, and speaks to our guides, Ayenda and Joe, in Xhosa. As guests in the village of Umngazana, my friend and I have just finished an extravagant dinner of chicken, mussels, mealie pap, and bistiyo, and Ayenda has brought us at Mama Chezi’s instructions to meet her and to see if the ancestral spirits will move her to bless us. The hut is dark and solemn, and when people hear that Mama Chezi will intercede for us, they begin to file in to help her pray — to clap, to sing, and to drum. The hut is full of strangers. And then Ayenda introduces us, in Xhosa, as Americans. One older man, sitting against the side of the hut, looks at us scornfully and says, “Ah, Bush.”
When you are in one of the most remote parts of South Africa, where there are no paved roads, where huge glass bottles of Coke constitute gifts for the ancestors, with little or no electricity or running water, and people still look at you and complain about your president, you know you’re in trouble. Read the rest of this entry »
As I walked in the sun down the line of march yesterday, I finally managed to ask one of the many Spanish-speaking people with me what was being shouted (I had the syllables, but not the meaning). Her English was not very good, and my Spanish was much worse, but we finally got it (and you probably already know what it is): Un pueblo unido jamas serra vencido. I’ve chanted the same thing in English, many times: A people united will never be defeated.