Since my last post the big event in the village was the funeral of a much-loved local man. Compared with what I'm used to back in home, funerals are not the sad, somber occasions that I am used to. Rather they tend to be all-day-long affairs to which anyone is welcome, with lots of singing, preaching, and eating. The family is expected to feed all the guests -easily numbering in the hundreds- a proper meal, and they will usually slaughter at least a cow for the occasion.

Anyway, this is the second funeral I've attended since coming to the village (there have been two others that I know of, but both were smaller affairs that I didn't feel comfortable attending. One was for a 5 year-old child whom I didn't know who drowned in the river, and one was for a 28 year-old guy who got stabbed to death in a drunken bar-fight. He lived on the other side of the village, and I didn't know him either). Although this funeral was similar to the first one I attended, it was a very different experience for me and really brought home how far I've come in terms of making some kind of role for myself in the community since I got here 7 months ago.

The first few hours consisted of preaching, the family and a choir singing traditional songs and gospel songs, speeches, reading the names of people who had donated money to the family, and the actual burial (in the cattle kraal. The men to that part). Its interesting, but rather long and tedious -there's always a tent hired for the occasion, but there are always far too many people for everyone to get a space under the tent. Being a low-status woman (young, childless and unmarried) I sit towards the back, in the hot sun squeezed between mamas and teenage girls. You aren't allowed to sit cross-legged, which also gets uncomfortable after a while. Anyway, things got more interesting once the burial was over and it was time for food. Two of my friends/teachers at the local primary school encouraged me to come with them to help serve the food (this is a job for low-status girls and women, and young boys. These two friends are both young and unmarried like me, although they've both got a child apiece). So we spent the next 2 hours or so in a long line of young -mostly female- people passing plates full of food down the line and passing empty plates back up the line to the outdoor kitchen. It was interesting; the line snaked around and shifted according to who had been served. It was also a very strange and awkward experience for me, as a lot of people had come from outside the village for the funeral, and had therefore never seen me before. So there I was standing in a line in the middle of a crowd of several hundred seated older Xhosa people, many of whom were staring at me and whispering to their neighbours.

Anyway, I overheard people saying -and my friends confirmed- that people were whispering things like "wow, this must be a very important village! I've never seen a white person serving before!" Meanwhile, many of the local mamas who know and like me were thrilled to see me working hard like a good local girl; my passing of plates kept on getting interrupted by getting pulled into big bear hugs and smothered with kisses. On the other side (literally. The men sit on one side, the women on the other), many of the local men who know me would shoot me approving smiles, while lots of men from other villages wanted to come greet me (this whole elaborate business with a hand-shake and inquires about one's health), I think for the novelty and to see if I could greet them in isiXhosa. I got more and more self-conscious as the day wore on.

There's also the whole gendered hierarchy at play here, which is always a bit uncomfortable for someone who grew up in a different society. The men get fed first, and the get the best food. They were on to tea and dessert before most of the women got their meat. Then the women get fed second. Finally the kids and young women get fed the worst food (by the time us servers got fed, . There's all kinds of nuance at play as well though. Older, high-status women get served before some men, and some men bring big pieces of choice meat over to their female friends and family.

At the same time, the whole business of serving reinforces the gender order, as does the the fact that the quality of one's food declines with status. I can't say I'm particularly comfortable with it, but I don't find it frustrating or offensive, really. If anything, I feel like a bit of a fraud the way I have felt the few times in my life that I've been encouraged to actively participate in religious life, for instance at a church. Without the faith to back up the action the action feels vaguely dishonest and hollow to me, like playing "let's pretend we believe in divine punishment and divine salvation" or "let's pretend we believe that these males are more worthy beings." At the same time, obviously one can't be completely free of judgement, try as I might. I can't help having thoughts like "THAT dude gets to eat before me? Come ON! He's like 18 and all he does is lay on his ass all day and he dropped out of school in grade 1 and he threatens his girlfriend with abuse if she cheats on him!" But for the most part its just part and parcel of life here. And in all honesty, playing the role of a good local girl in situations like this is probably the best thing I can do in terms of being accepted in this community. Since the funeral I've had local friends of both sexes come up and tell me that "its really, really good that you did that [served the food]," and that "yeah, the other people from the other villages, they're not used to seeing a white person do these things. But we tell them that you live here, among us, so you just do these things with us." So in an, ahem, anthropological sense its better than the first funeral I went to, where I got fed before most of the other women, and got given a big piece of choice beef because I was a respected foreign novelty.

The other thing that I've been meaning to mention in these blog posts is the really interesting -and sometimes pretty humorous- names that people in this community have. Virtually all names mean something (they're composites of isiXhosa words, with feminine or masculine prefixes and suffixes. For example, Sipho means "gift" and Siphokazi is a feminine form of Sipho). Many people have more than one name: one on their birth certificate or ID document (if they have one), a nick-name by which they are typically referred, and and an adult name. Most people get a new name once they go through initiation and become a man (if they're male) or when -and if- they get married and thereby achieve full adult status (if they're female). Married women all have "No" at the beginning of their name; its a bit like "Mrs," and denotes respect. Some younger people of either sex will also have "No" at the beginning of their nick-name, however. My favourite names that I've come across in the village so far: Nopanado (for those of you who aren't familiar with South Africa, Panado is a popular brand of painkiller. Its basically like being named "Miss Aspirin" or "Miss Paracetamol). " Also Noguava (as in, the fruit. This is the name of a teenage boy), Nocellular (as in, a cellular telephone), and Homeboy (also a teenage boy).