African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [179]
On the last night there is a party after supper. Soft drinks, beer, snacks, and dancing, in between sketches contrived by the different groups.
One is about highly qualified girls trying to get jobs, but they fail, because the Chefs prefer unqualified girls who are pretty or with family connections. ‘You say you are my mother’s auntie’s second cousin? Take a seat and fill in this form in quadruplicate.’ The qualified girls go off, reciting their hard won qualifications to each other and the audience.
Another is about a charlatan village healer getting rich on the gullibility of his patients.
A sketch shows a woman possessed by the Spirit giving out all kinds of positive and optimistic prophecies for the future of the Women’s Book. Then the ngangas are mocked when she begins shaking and writhing and demanding money from derisive bystanders.
One sketch is solemn. ‘The way these books have helped us as communities is very important. They have changed our attitudes and our working style and have made us feel part of Zimbabwe. These books were an eye-opener to the community leaders and to us as development workers.’
When this party ends it is only ten o’clock, but the women say they won’t go to bed until they have properly sent off the Book Team. The training centre has a large and formal entrance hall. The women and some men take this over, demanding the Team’s drum. They start a wild stamping and leaping dance, far removed from the sedate dancing of the official party. The whole building vibrates with their singing and with the drum. People who have gone to bed descend to reprove them but find themselves pulled into the circle of the dancers. One of the songs they make up says, ‘This is our book. We, the women of Zimbabwe are making our book. It will change the lives of our children and our husbands. It will reach other countries. Hear us, hear us, Harare.’
Someone watching these women during the week of workshops would have one image of them, the same observer catching a glimpse of this uninhibited dancing, would see something very different.
It will be noticed that I am making the claim that Africans, or at least these Africans, have rhythm. Why not?–when they claim it themselves. These women are aware of the dramatic value of the thing, when, having introduced a workshop session with a dance, they sit down and say, with severity, ‘We feel that sub-clause (d) of clause 2 is incorrectly drafted. We are putting forward this alternative sub-clause.’ They are conscious of the value of both worlds and intend to keep both.
But, take heart, the politicoes who cannot endure that Africans have rhythm, who cannot believe that it is possible to have rhythm and other things too…at a meeting of intellectuals in Harare, a poet who had just come from the rural areas, where everything is sung, danced, mocked, acted, demanded that the writers and poets present sing a song, but they could not, they writhed with embarrassment, reluctance and selfconsciousness, just as civilized people are supposed to do.
And, when I sat for a couple of hours in a car watching a pavement in Bulawayo, of the dozens of people who passed only two women walked as they once all did–goddesses is the only word. The rest thumped and clumped and flumped and were clumsy and graceless, just like us. As a girl I used to watch village women walking to the well, one hand held up to steady the cans on their heads, and tried to be like them, but I could not do it.
That night the women did not go to bed at all. When they had done dancing, they all had showers and were sitting in the buses that were to take them to villages, by five in the morning. Some were tearful.
The Team sit drinking tea, summing up the week. A success. A woman on another course who has got hold of the draft women’s book, sits by us and says, ‘It is the Chefs and the bosses who should be reading these books and learning from us. They are always talking about educating the people. But it is they who need educating. They know nothing about