continued musings

This continues from the previous two posts:

This is when the street vendors are out, selling their loafs of bread, and their fried octopus for 100 shillings a piece and the customers stab the white meat with toothpicks while dropping the coins on the table all in one motion and then pop the bits, suction cups and all, in their mouths. It’s men out at this hour, the women home with the kids, making the last minute preparations for the light evening meal. It’s men who are out, chatting and buying and lingering near the kerosene lamps fashioned from old cans of bug killer and thin rope for the wick. I am uncomfortable going out at that hour to buy the bread and chipsi mayai that is our dinner almost every night. The only other women out are a few sellers of chapati and maandazi and their reputations are questioned because of it. Perhaps they are widows or divorcees or their husbands are drunks or military and stationed far away and send all their money to their mistresses instead of home, and perhaps these women sell sex on the side and perhaps they don’t but it doesn’t matter because every one believes they do anyway. They are desperate for the money, desperate enough that the gossip doesn’t matter because their children’s bellies are empty and mothers can do anything to fill their children’s bellies. If I was a Pemban, it would be me with the questionable reputation, and my husband too, because why would he send his wife out among all those men to buy the food, when he should do that himself, while I stay protected in the house. But since I am not Pemban, since I will never be Pemban, no matter how hard I try to fix my accent and how well I tie my head wrap, I can go out to buy the evening bread and people know it’s not because I do not have a husband to do that but because I am foreign and foreigners have their own customs, and they do things in their own way, not uswahilini, the Swahili way.

But it took me a long time to learn to accept that, and I used to be always angsty about doing things just right and by local custom and habits, but that’s okay now, because I’ve seen that some customs are just patterns that mean not much and others are even hurtful and those are okay to break even if it makes people a little uncomfortable.