International Women’s Day

2011/03/08 International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day is March 8 (today), just so you know. So when I got home yesterday (March 7th) all the women who work at Soalandy were holding a beauty salon below my porch. At first I didn’t realize why they all of a sudden decided to wash and iron their hair. Then they told me what time to be ready in the morning for the carnival (parade) and I put two and two together. Now when I say iron their hair I don’t mean a Chi flatiron was used after their hair was blown out. The iron in use was in fact, an iron, and not an electric one, but a reliable charcoal filled metal iron. They offered to iron mine too, I declined. Instead I sat with them and watched while making friendship bracelets. I wasn’t sure what my school or my BOE was going to do for the parade today but when I asked about what we were all wearing, they told me not to worry about it because I am a vazaha.

As a result of my clothing exclusion, instead of walking with the school I walked with the women of Soalandy, mostly because they co-opted me today. If you see the pictures, you can see what I wore. I saw almost all of my students while we paraded around, and I’ll tell you what they don’t know whether or not what I was wearing was hilarious or awesome. So they greeted me with a number of “tsarabe (~very good) Miss Amber” with tons of laughing. We walked around town and then everyone convened on town hall where there were some long speeches I didn’t understand and then a mini party upstairs with some invited folks. There is a film showing this afternoon (maybe on a projector outside of town hall?) but I am beat and am hiding indoors for the rest of the day and doing some work. It would be cool to see I realize, but I feel like I participated a lot today. Yes, this includes the forced dancing of course. But it was fun and it was interesting to have a day that celebrates women here and the best part of course is that I got the day off from teaching! Pictures will be up this weekend.

• 3 comments
• Posted under Uncategorized