Congratulations Kyura and Inno Part 2: Good-bye Home

There comes a point in most people's lives when their home becomes their parent's home. Growing up, it is collective, my home, meaning mine and my parents and my siblings and whoever else lives there with us, it's ours. But at some point, that group doesn't include you anymore, and your home is no longer yours; your home is some other place where you stay without all those other folks. For myself, and I think for a lot of us in the U.S. who first leave home for college, that transition happens sort of gradually. You have a dorm or maybe even an apartment where you stay at school, but home is still your home. Maybe you have still have a room there, or at least most of your stuff accumulated during your first 18 years, possibly even still being added to with new accumulations that you just don't really need in your dorm. Eventually, you go, move to another place, take a few more things. At some point, your parents turn your room into a guest room, or an excessively gigantic sewing room bursting with fabric, patterns and sewing machines. You start confusing your friends by calling that place, where you used to have a space, and wherever you stay now "home," meaning it equally for both. And someday, you find yourself saying to your sisters, "are you going to Mommy and Daddy's today?" and you realize you're quite dispossessed of your home and you aren't even really sure how it happened. For Kyura, however, that transition was a big bright line that she could mark almost down to the minute.

Day 2: Good-bye Home

Good Friday had been a strange mix of lackadaisy and bustle during the day. Kyura's family's home in Jos was as full of people as the house in the village had been, perhaps even more so.

Friends bustling and chillin

All the female friends were posted up in the room Kyura and her sister had shared growing up. Lounging on the beds; taking tea from trays, sipping sweet gulps of Milo and chewing soft white bread; taking turns disappearing to bathe with buckets of water scooped from the large plastic cans stored in the corner of the large bathroom, plastic cans restocked throughout the day with fresh water drawn by two young men hauling rubber bag-full after rubber-bag full of cool refreshment from the well in the side yard; helping Kyura style her hair, iron her dress---when the power was compliant enough to course through the padded copper wires and into the iron---, and prepare for the day.

Drawing water

The rest of the house was alive with it's own activity. Kitchen staff prepared a constant stream of food for family and guests. The seamstress for the wedding whirled away on a treadle machine in the next room, producing and altering dress after matching orange and yellow dress in an array of styles. 

Like any other bride the day before her wedding, Kyura needed to get her nails done. And like so many other brides, she'd been talked into fake nails that were so very un-Kyura but manageable enough to last through the wedding. We trooped along with her, to the side porch where the manicurist pulled up a stool to do her work in the natural light of the sun. The tube of Chinese nail glue the manicurist bought turned out to be empty, so she ran out to a small shop and quickly returned with a new, and better stocked, package. Relatives came out to the porch to say hello as they passed through the house, aunties and young cousins. A few of us sat on chairs brought out from the sitting room or leaned against the porch rail, chatting while the manicurist did her craft and the boys in the yard hauled up water. Kyura fielded phone call after phone, mini-crisis after mini-crisis: calls from friends looking for places to stay for the wedding, the printers not having the programs ready for Inno to collect, the reception decorators not seeing the transferred funds in their bank accounts due to the Easter banking holidays. Kyura handled it all calmly from her porch throne.

Later in the afternoon, the groom's family would be coming to ask for Kyura. Inno's uncles would apply to Kyura's uncles for their niece to leave her home and come to theirs. If there was a set time for this, I have no idea when it was, but being Nigeria, if there was a set time for this, it's unlikely the uncles came anytime near that time. The sitting room filled with family elders from both sides, arranged on the thick sofas and chairs in a large circle. Kyura's sister brought out snacks and beverages and served each person. home, no longer her home.

Dancers

Outside, male elders with jingly metal bands fastened around their ankles sang and danced in a circle. Others joined, from the house? from the town? There were so many people everywhere I wasn't sure where most had come from. I joined, we danced until the group suddenly fell quiet.  Discussions began. I snuck in the back with the seamstress, hiding rather conspicuously on a tall bar stool behind a pushed-aside dining table, watching, not really understanding much more than that this was important and solemn and emotional. Kyura was called in and kneeled before her parents. Before long, she was being led out of the house, shrouded in a veil, another

Procession (to the car) to the church

procession of singing and dancing, another car ride away from home to a new place. Away from

At the request of the groom's family, Kyura's family had given her over to the custody of the church until the wedding morning. She, her maid of honor and her eldest aunt would stay at the church, in the care of the best man and the groom's family, until the morn. We followed on foot. The church where the wedding was to take place was separated from Kyura's parents' house only by a lane, and a very large cement wall on the edge of that lane. For tonight, Kyura had no home; her parent's house was no longer hers, and her husband's house was not yet hers. For tonight, she was to make do in the guest house of the assistant pastor. And make do it would certainly be.

The assistant pastor's guest house, or perhaps it was to be a servant's house, was a small one-room cement building out back of his home on the church property. It had an en-suite restroom divided from the room by a curtain. Kyura's wedding dress was hung from the curtain rod, tulle and beads pressing against the protective coating of the clear garment bag, saving the pure white dress from the dust of the walls. There was no furniture, just two old mattresses, one on the floor and one against the wall, the one against the wall in far worse condition. Kyura's aunt took one look at it and sent someone for a mat from the family home. A mosquito net hung matted in a twisted ball and low above the laid-out mattress. Agreement was quickly made not to let the net free for fear of what might fall, or crawl, out of it. Another runner was dispatched to the home for bug spray. The room had a single window next to the door. An electric fan was courried from the house. There was one outlet. Even when the power was on, it didn't work.

Best man trying to make the fan work

The best man arrived with a screwdriver, removed the outlet and attempted to wire the fan's plug directly to the wall. It still didn't work; probably a blessing that these wires were lifeless! A solution was concocted in the form of multiple power strips and strings of wire run in a line over from the assistant pastor's house, a plastic bag wrapped around the part where bare wires were twisted together on the ground outside. It worked, at least when there was electricity in general. A battery lantern was fetched from the house.

The groom's family brought dinner. Rice and some sort of soup or stew, tea. Dishes were fetched from the house. We sat on plastic lawn chairs that had been brought in. Kyura and the maid of honor sat tepidly on the floor mattress. We chatted and laughed and amused ourselves with the ridiculousness of this place as a bride-to-be suite. We laughed at the Nigerianess of everything about the room and the on-and-off electricity and the broken outlet and the creepy mosquito net and the scary mattress against the wall and the huge number of friends and family helping with everything and the perfect-despite-it-all haze that surrounded every piece of the events leading up to the big day. And we bid goodnight to Kyura, her aunt, and the maid of honor, to sleep as best they good, as we retired to our own lodgings until the morn. Sheets and blankets were fetched from Kyura's parents' house.

Congratulations Kyura and Inno Part 1: A Proper Village Send-Off

Back in April, I went to my friend Kyura's wedding. We hadn't seen each other since attending a conference together in Uganda in 2010, so when she invited me to her wedding, I just had to go, even though it meant postponing an already long-overdue visit back to Zambia. But I have found that attending friends' weddings is really important to me. Even if I hardly get to see them during the festivities, just showing up often means so much. This one was extra special because I actually got to spend a ton of time with the bride.

The wedding festivities took place over four days, beginning with a send-off ceremony and celebration for the bride, culminating with the wedding itself, and ending with a special thanksgiving for all their blessings.

Day 1: The Send-Off

I arrived in the village with one of Kyura's friends, shuttled there by a trusted driver who was willing to take us hours down the road from Kaduna and off the paved highways to the family's village. Looking around, I could see how much wealthier Nigeria is than Zambia. I'd never been in a Nigerian village before. There were powerlines running through the sky, nevermind that they probably were lifeless more often than live; metal roofs on every house I could see; everyone had shoes, even the children; and the roads, though dirt, were in decent condition. The family house was large and cement, with elegant columns lining the porch, like a plantation home, or a country estate for old British landed gentry. Of course, either of those would have been lacking the corridors full of stored water in 50-gallon drums and 20-liter gerry cans, the rumbling of the generator whirling electricity to cell phone chargers and lightbulbs, and the plastic patio chairs on which village women sat pouring local maize drink into empty plastic bottles. Nonetheless, I was impressed.

Kyura and her friends were inside. The house was full of people, many of them bustling, preparing food and drink and clothes. Others, like myself, lost in the action, sitting on plush sofas in the dim parlor, chatting tentatively to strangers who would be good friends in a few days, eating lunch? dinner? a snack? something anyway, from plastic plates on our laps. A giant bowl of cooked cucumber and tomato salad(?) makes for an interesting whatever that insert-appropriate-eating-session-here was. I eventually found my way to the real action, where Kyura's closest friends, and the day's chiefmate, were helping her get ready for the send-off celebration. This would be the day for her family's village to officially say good-bye to her, to send her from her home to the home of her husband. It was like a giant wedding reception for just the bride. There was even a cake cutting.

Kyura wore a long green skirt decorated with lace and beads, an intricately beaded ivory top and a head wrap bordering between yellow and ivory dotted with green rhinestones. A group of elder village women arrived at the family house dancing and singing, yellow wrappers with orange stripes and white shirts a unifying dress code, corn-husk-and-seed rattles tied around their ankles provided percussion to accompany their voices as they stepped forward and back, holding long sticks in as they sang. They led the procession from the family house to the school grounds where the send off would be. As they danced, Kyura rode behind in a car, saving her long dress and new shoes from the mud of the morning's rains.

Dancing at the Send-Off

The school grounds were decorated with canopies and bunting in white, seafoam and evergreen. Guests of honor---family, friends, local dignitaries---sat under the canopies. Rows of villagers lined the edges of the school yard. Kyura's close friends who were accompanying her sat under a white canopy, surrounding the satin covered sofa where she and her chiefmate sat. An MC in the center of the yard led the celebration: dancing and prayers, one group then another, dignitaries, father's family, mother's family, friends of the bride, the groom's family, etc. Each was called up in their turn to dance with the bride-to-be, to shower her in cash, everything from 10 naira notes to 1000s, none of which the bride deigned to pick up. There was a special cadre of pre-teen girls for that. Dressed in black and white, they would swoop into the dancing masses and scoop the bills into cardboard box lids, taking their full lids to a special side place where they'd empty them into bigger boxes and return to the dancing for refills.



Prayers are offered for the bride

Village leaders, politicians, religious leaders and family members came forward to say a few words. I couldn't understand all the words as much of it was in the local language and some in Hausa, but the happy and joyful sentiments were obvious no matter the language. Kyura's parents told her how very proud they were of their dutiful daughter. She wasn't the only one crying.

Dinner under the canopies

While the dancing continued, plates of jollof rice, chicken, moin moin, salad, and I-don't-even-know-what-else-cuz-it-all-has-meat were passed around to those under the canopies. As the festivities wound down, brightly-colored styrofoam take-away containers of food were passed out to the villagers. Notebooks, buckets, plastic basins, and other keepsakes we would refer to here as swag were passed out to attendees on behalf of the bride's family, the groom's family, friends of the bride, aunties, etc. Guests were also giving presents, bringing them to the white canopy with the satin couch, wrapped packages in all kinds of shiny paper, and even a bright pink potty-chair---can't beat planning ahead.

As the celebration at the school grounds ended, the festivities continued back at the family house for those who weren't exhausted. The rest of us, including the bride and most of us friends, hit the hay, or foam rather, for a good night's sleep. Tomorrow we would travel into Jos.

Bye Bye Betty?

Goodbyes are so difficult.  I am not ready to say goodbye, but it looks like it may be time.  Betty is at the car hospital.  I had to call the AAA emergency line on Saturday.  We were heading home in the early evening when she suffered a loss of gas to the engine.  (See map; click for points of interest.)

She wasn’t out of gas--I gave her 8 gallons that afternoon—but the gas was not getting where it needed to be.  There was no power to the engine; there was no power steering; there were no breaks.  We coasted until she came to rest on the front lawn of a large house in Davidsonville, Maryland.

An hour or so and 23 miles later, a very nice tow truck driver was unloading Betty from the flatbed ambulance to the corner of a tiny mechanic’s lot in Southeast DC.  (Conveniently, and coincidentally, down the block from my work.)  I said goodnight to Betty and climbed back into the tow truck cab for a ride home.  I haven’t seen her since, and it’s not looking good.  The mechanic is having difficulty locating the part she needs—a flex coupler.

Betty and I have been through a lot together.  8 years I’ve had her.  8 years and 5 months.  That’s longer than any other vehicle I’ve had.  That’s even longer than any home I've had.  (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for kicking me out for college.)  When I bought Betty for $2200 on New Year’s Eve in 2007, Daddy told me she wouldn’t last a year.  My amazing mechanic in Cali said I’d probably get at least another year when I moved in 2013.  In that light, making it to 2016 isn’t too bad.  But still, I don’t want Betty to go.

Betty has carried me through my life in four states.  Together, we did the move to three of them.  We’ve been across the entire country, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and many parts in between more than once;  Highway 40, I-80, Route 66, and of course the gorgeous drive down Route 1 with Munchkinhead.

Betty and me in Wisconsin winter-before-last.  She looked good in snow (it hid all the missing paint).

There was that time in Iowa, when Orgfish’s neighbors called the cops about this unsightly car parked in their neighborhood and the police left a giant florescent pink “WARNING” on Betty’s windshield.  (I sent it to Orgfish as her birthday postcard some years later.)  The adventures with Daddy moving from Cali to Wisconsin when we spent an unplanned day exploring Ephraim, Utah while the hose connecting Betty’s coolant overflow tank to the engine was replaced.  And that infamous time we got pulled over for DWB, also in Utah.  I guess we should have stayed out of Utah.

Daddy and me being the statue outside Ephraim City Hall while Betty was being repaired.

She’s had some tough times, my Betty.  There was that incident where I sort of backed the side of her into a pole trying to get out of a parking spot in Cali.  And that time a week later when I did it again in a different garage.  That first incident was the one that resulted in my having to go in-and-out the window for awhile until a body shop could get her unlocked.

After that, I couldn't lock Betty anymore.  She was ransacked at least once in every town in which we lived, but it was never that bad.  In El Cerrito and D.C., they just made a mess.  But in Cudahy, they took my tape adapter.  I had to fork out another $5 for a new one from Amazon. 

Betty after being ransacked in Cali.

But that was back before I made Betty her very own mixtape.  We've been listening to it a lot less these past few months.  One, I was getting a little tired of it, but more importantly, Betty hasn't been feeling well a lot of the time and it's important for me to listen to her as we putter around town.  She gets especially cantankerous on damp or rainy days and left turns.  I check her fluids at least weekly and keep a storehouse in the trunk of every liquid you could need to put in the car, plus spare clothes and an astronaut blanket in case we get stranded, and bungee cords and sheets for unexpected hauling adventures.  She can really carry stuff!

Taking home my new queen-size bed.  The frame was in the car.  Sometimes going in-and-out the window is a good thing!

Betty hasn't really had a radio in a few months.  The antenna was knocked off by a carwash back in Cali years ago.  The mechanic disconnected the auto-expander and quasi-fixed the antenna to the car.  A few months ago, I walked past Betty on the street and noticed it was gone completely.

Betty with antenna quasi-fixed back in 2014 (after we lost her front trim on who-knows-what).

Betty sans antenna in snowy DC this winter.

DC is rough on Betty.  Besides the antenna loss, the swampy humidity caused the fabric on the ceiling to start detaching.  I pinned it back in place with a decorative pattern of thumbtacks.  Sometimes, they fall off, too.  Backseat passengers, beware.  Parking outside with no shelter these past two years hasn't been great.  The mohawk on her roof that had developed slowly over the years has quickly gone, leaving just a small patch of white amid a mess of unpainted grey and rust.  Whenever AAA asks what color the vehicle is, I say, "well, where there's still paint, she's white."  AAA came out a lot the past year.  In addition to the tow, there were several dead batteries. We eventually figured out the culprit was the glove compartment light, which wouldn't shut off correctly ever since Munchkinhead broke off the latch on a very cold WI night coming home from the theater.  I braided some yarn, looped it through the inside hook and the hole in the door where the latch used to be and tied the door shut, but it wasn't enough pressure for the light switch.  A mechanic took out the bulb and Betty stopped dying.  Somebody took out a taillight with who-knows-what.  (I replaced it.)  Oh wait, that was me.  I backed into a tree trying to do a Y-turn; dented my bumper sticker.

And then there was that time a few weeks ago when Betty got shot.  Just her tire, luckily.  The police tape is still in her backseat, next to the blanket I put in her for when homeless people use her as a warm place to sleep.  (Tho I would prefer if they'd put the seat back upright when they're done.)  The tire shop had to bust off one of her hubcaps in order to rotate the tires when I got her new one.  That put her down to two hubcaps.  We'd lost one in Cali when the mechanic had to bust it off.  She wears the two she has left on her back tires.  The recently removed one rides in the trunk.  I always have to call AAA when I have a flat tire, not because I can't fix a flat, but because I can't jack up the car.  There's no frame left for the portable jack to lift; it just goes right through the car.  AAA has to come out with their big fancy jack and lift her from the frame underneath.

Betty's got character; there's so much that's still so wonderful about her. She floats down the highway--when her engine's getting gas anyway.  I can parallel park her like you wouldn't believe, even on the left-hand side of the street.  Her heater is amazing--the air-conditioning hasn't worked since at least '08, but I hate air-conditioning anyway.  She's very polite--no horn.  Her interior is spacious and comfy.--At least I think so; Daddy thinks her front seat is broken, claims it's lopsided.  He may be right, but since I weigh about 100 lbs less than him, I can't really tell.  The thing I notice more is that one hole in the floor by my left foot that my stiletto will slip into if I'm not careful.  It matches the hole in the seatback from the previous owner's dog.  But I digress. 

Betty is so spacious, Munchkinhead turns into a t-rex when she tries to drive her.

And most importantly, she gives me an amazing freedom.  Not just the standard freedom of a car that allows me to go places far or near whenever I want, but the additional freedom of going places I otherwise couldn't or wouldn't.  I never worry about where I park Betty, if she'll get scratched--who'd notice? or that she'll be stolen--that'd be a very weak joy ride.  I get the prime spots in the grocery store lot, right next to the cart return.  Her heft makes her a great option for snow-covered streets (ok, my Wisconsin training helps a little with that, too.)  And I'm safer in neighborhoods where I otherwise would stick out like a blazing red target.  The combination of Betty and my white privilege allow me to go anywhere.  Betty helps me blend in where it's rough, and being a white girl gets me a pass when Betty raises suspicions in the fancy places.  In a city like D.C. where neighborhoods can change from one to the other in half-a-block, and where it's so easy to get lost, this is especially important.

Betty and I have travelled a long way together and we're both a little worse for the wear.

Betty and I both looking shiny, if not new, back in the summer of '08.

 



Betty turning 170K just over a year ago.

 

 

I'm just not ready to give up.  Not yet.  Not quite.  Not without a lot of tears.  So here's hope that somehow, a 1993 LeSabre flex coupler shows up in D.C., and that the mechanic can then figure out why gas stops going to the engine sometimes.  The flex coupler isn't for that; it's so the steering column doesn't detach from the wheels.  That's why she's been hating those left turns.

Ivory’s Adventures in Canada: 5 pin bowling

In early fall, I took an unusual sort of trip for me, a straight up vacation.  No conference, no coffee meetings, just a visit to my friend Jack.  We had a lot of fabulous adventures full of many, many new-to-me things.  Canadians sure do things goofy!

 

One of those goofy adventures was 5 pin bowling.  I’ve done plenty of bowling.  Heck, I even have a bowling skirt.  But, I’d never done 5 pin bowling before.  The pins are the same, except it’s only the front ones.  The balls are different.  They’re about the size of a softball and rather light compared to a full size bowling ball.  There’s less pin action because the pins are on strings, like puppets, for resetting.

The play and scoring are a little different, too.  You get 3 chances instead of 2 and pins are worth different points depending on where they are.  The head pin is 5, the next two out are 3 and the end two are 2 each.  There’s still strikes and spares and they work essentially the same.  There’s no bonus for taking 3 balls to knock down all the pins.  The max score per frame is 30.  I have no idea what a decent game score is.  All I know is, I beat Jack both games.  Hee hee.

My first couple rolls were terrible because I tried rolling the mini ball like I do my regular ball, straight down the lane.  That didn’t work because that roll relies on the size of the ball and closeness of the pins to knock things into other things.  Then I tried throwing it with a hook using the movements Mr. Trizzle had taught me for a curve roll.  It worked beautifully.

It was a lot of fun.  I kinda wish we had 5 pin bowling down here.

5 pin bowling in action

Birthday!

Happy Birthday to me,
I’m oft-en in a tree-ee,
I’m no-ot a monkey,
But my sister wants to be.

They grow up so fast, don’t they ;)

Oh, Betty!

Betty’s my Buick.  My beautiful 1993 Buick LeSabre with 130,000 miles on her.  She’s the same as my daddy’s car, just a decade older.  I got her during law school, when I finally gave up on trying to get around Nashville solely on public transit.

Betty parked by a twin Buick in Nashville

She’s been holding up pretty well the past 4 years, several trips across the country, 100 miles a day on my drive-to-work days, still getting 20 miles per gallon (not bad for an 18 year-old boat!).

Alfred and Munchkinhead on Betty down in Arizona

I love Betty.  Her interior is spacious and comfy.  She sails down the highway like a she’s surfing on air, even at 80 mph.  She’s a tough cookie, can take a hit and not even show a scratch.

Giving Betty a bath in Wisconsin

Betty’s a good car, but Betty’s starting to show her age.  Paint’s chipping off the way that’s common with white GM vehicles from the 90s.  Her underbody, well, as my mechanic puts it, “the underbody looks like a car from Wisconsin.”  She is.  The engine’s leaking oil from three or four different places, all minor leaks my mechanic doesn’t think are worth the cost to fix.  The muffler has a hole in it, actually several; one’s extra large and right by the catalytic converter. Oh, and the air conditioner doesn’t work; all the coolant leaked out.  But that doesn’t bother me.  All minor issues really; she still runs great and my mechanic thinks I can another two years at least out of her.

But then there’s the door.  My front driver’s side door won’t open.  I’ve had that fixed once before.  - The parking structures around here have these poles in really strange places and I’m not so good at seeing them. – I’m not sure it’s worth the several hundred dollars to fix it again.  The window still rolls down; the door just doesn’t open.  Luckily, I’ve moved enough beds on Betty that I know another way to get in and out of the car. ;)

Betty the Buick

Adventures from Home: Batons, Balls and Bugs, pt. 3

A long, long time ago, when Alfred was still a Schultz and we hadn’t yet left the safe bubble of St. Francis, a little girl picked up a flyer at a parade.  “Leslynettes Baton Twirling Corps.”  Alfred was delighted – she already had a friend from school in the corps - and it wasn’t long before she was marching down the street in a little blue leotard with red sequined sailor collar and small sequined anchor on her hip.

Twenty years and more costumes than you can count later, that little twirler still knows her parade routines.  So do her sisters, who also eventually joined the corps, although never becoming close to as good as she was.  Fishtails with two batons simultaneously, only Alfred.  Regular double and occasional triple toss-turn-arounds, only Alfred.  Crying in the corner in her hula skirt, a very cute little munchkinhead.  Almost hitting the judge with her baton, yeah, that’d be me.

But for us, not being good at something has never been a reason to not have fun doing it.  So when we found those old baton cases in the back hall closet this summer, we were more thrilled to pull out our old metal rods and do a few tosses.

“No, I think that was routine 4, routine 2 had something like this.”  We tried to sort out which routines we could remember.  “Well 3 is certainly the easiest,” one of us piped up, followed by all three of us in unison, “Up, up. Down, down. Out 2-3-4, out 2-3-4. Up. Out. Shoulder 2-3-4 and down.”  “And 6, we all know 6.”  It turned out we remembered a good number of them.  Of the 6 main routines, we knew 1, 3, 4 and 6.  So we had a little parade around the front lawn.

Always feeling more graceful than we looked, we took over the dirveway doing thumbflips, tour jetes, toss-turn-arounds and leaps.  Then we decided to have some real fun, a strut off!  With some more of our favorite routine at the end.  Daddy sat on the porch with his iced tea, laughing as we outlined an invisible square with our high steps.

Mommy’s not-so-little twirlers

 

Munchkinhead clearly won the strut off. 

And Now, a Word from Our (Copyright Law) Sponsor...

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Why Haven't I Seen This on the National News Yet?

Ok, the fact that I don't watch the national news, or any news for that matter, may be one reason.  But it still seems like this is not getting enough coverage.

BART police officer shoots a man dead in Oakland, on the BART platform, in front of a BART train full of people returning from New Year's Eve festivities in the City.  Riots in Oakland last night.  Most of the people at school hadn't heard a thing about it.  My classmates from The Town were doing a good job of remedying that.  Here's the news story.

WARNING:  What you will see here is extremely disturbing.