Tribal: Part 1 (Patreon)

As the sun beat down on the village, Gwen did her absolute best to keep herself useful around the village. She’d expected to be fetching water and making baskets, but it seemed that that was all done by mostly kids or the men. Strangely enough, many of the women were content to laze around or play games and gossip much of the time. Still, she figured that even if there was nothing else readily available to do, she could teach. The locals were generally kind and accepting of her despite finding her strange and fascinating, always trying to touch her hair or compare skin tones, but that only gave away their primitivity. It was obvious that these people had little in the way of education and technology, so Gwen didn’t think there would be any problems with trying to wrangle the kids together to try and teach them world history or read them fairy tales in order to try and stimulate their minds. It would have been a shame, she thought, to just sit with them here doing nothing, dressed in rags and bored out of their minds.

(1)

Corralling the kids however was a much more difficult task than it had originally seemed however. On one end, the boys in the village were spinning wheels with sticks or fighting in the yard circles, a practice that the locals insisted was good for young boys to grow up to be strong warriors. They were extremely difficult to get to calm down for any length of time as it was, let alone trying to get them to sit still for Snow White or Paul Bunyan. The girls on the other hand were like cats. They were slinky, lazy, and more concerned with talking about boys or food or sex than about math and science. Still, Gwen found that their unwillingness to get up and move around made them a perfectly captive audience when it was time for a lesson. Sometimes she would start with gossip to try and intrigue them only to slowly drift into describing in detail some cool technology from America that might inspire the girls to try to go to college one day.

The first week went by like that, with Gwen fussing over whether or not she was going to be able to make the kind of difference that she had originally hoped to. It irritated her that she had come all the way to Kiba, Nigeria just to hang around and have nothing to do. Still, no matter how hard she tried, no one ever wanted to take up a craft of learn about another culture. They didn’t even want to put her to work. She always thought she was going to be the brilliant English teacher teaching African kids how to read or whatever in documentaries, but everywhere Gwen went she felt dismissed, like no one even cared that she was there.

After some time, she huffed in frustration that all the kids ditched her lesson once more only to realize she was being watched.

“Still running around like a dead chicken, ah?” A woman said. “You make lots of friends this way?”

Gwen looked over and saw Ada, a village woman only a few years older than herself. Ada was pleasantly fat with smooth skin and an adorably rounded face her hair was bound upward with a colorful wrap as she sat in a cool, but revealing tribal outfit. Her belly spilled into her lap forming a multitude of rolls.

(2)

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to complain.” Gwen said.

The girl waved a plump hand. “No worries, girl. But it is foolish to wonder why children do not want to sit and read books. These are more adult pursuits I think. Why are you so insistent on doing so much work all the time? You come to Kiba and all you do is work, work, work. And you try to tell us to work too and wonder why we don’t want to. We don’t like your way.” Ada explained casually.

Gwen hadn’t thought about that. Classic white-savior fantasy, she thought: White girl goes to Africa, makes everyone act European, brings them culture and education before receiving a Nobel Prize for “saving” the poor savages. It horrified her to realize how easily she’d become the person that she always promised herself she’d never be if she left the country. She’d never even ONCE considered trying to assimilate into THEIR culture, looking at it only as something that needed fixed instead of their chosen way of life.

“Of course…” Ada said slowly. “If you REALLY wanted something to do….You could always join the elders…”

“Wait, I could become a village elder? ME??” Gwen asked, incredulously.

“Of course. Many young girls turn down the job. Others take it when they are older. But we always need our elders….And we are one short lately after Mama Mosi died.” Ada continue thoughtfully.

Or at least it seemed thoughtful. Gwen couldn’t tell if it was that or Ada being cryptic

“How uhh…How does one BECOME a village elder?” Gwen responded playfully. “You know, if someone I knew were to be interested.”

Ada had taken Gwen’s hand and led her to Mama Yumna, one of the village elders to talk to her personally. Like the other elders, Mama Yumna was a fat-bellied whale of a woman with a thin, tan-colored wrap covering what Gwen could tell was a bald head. At first she felt intimidated by the slow-breathing woman, but as the two younger girls approached, she felt any worry about the woman’s temperament dissolve. She didn’t look annoyed or bothered by Gwen’s presence, the blonde theorized. It seemed more like she was just fatigued from walking in the sun.

(3)

“Mama! Gwen-dolyn here says she wants to join the elders.” Ada said in her thick, Nigerian-tinted accent.

Mama Yumna seemed surprised and sat up, blinking several times at the young blonde.

“Ohhh…Oh? Is this true, girl? Are you certain?” Mama Yumna asked, seemingly taken aback by the statement.

“Yes.” Gwen said confidently. “If it means helping out and finding my place in the village, it would be my honor to join the elders of the village in keeping our families safe and happy.

Mama Yumna looked at Ada and smiled. “Heh!” She half-cackled. “That’s fine to me!”

The heavyset old woman turned to Ada and smiled widely. “Get the women together.” She said. “We will need to start cooking for the celebration.”