kitchen party

Every culture has its rites of passage – and of course, getting married is one of the most important. This past weekend, we hosted a “kitchen party” for the fiance of my sister’s husband (who is, in name at least, also my husband, but I suppose that would require more explanation than I’m prepared to give at this moment).

A kitchen party is a bit like a combination of a bridal shower and a bachelorette party. It is a celebration for a young woman who is getting married; she’s surrounded by other women – no men allowed, and no women below marrying age – who shower her with gifts. Most of the presents are, of course, for the kitchen, and the giver instructs the bride-to-be in the use of each gift. But they also give her advice about being married, how to treat her husband, difficulties that they may encounter, wifely ‘duties’, and so forth.

So by 3pm on Sunday, we had a houseful of joyful women – mostly Zimbabweans, but also Namibian and Zambian friends – waiting to celebrate with and advise Marylyn on her upcoming nuptials. Yes, I was the only white woman present. And no, it wasn’t awkward. Our husband’s sister was the mistress of ceremonies – and I can’t think of how to describe her other than to say that she is positively hilarious in any language. When I met her and she was informed that I am second wife to her brother, she made me kneel in front of her and take her hand, head bowed, showing deference as she is my auntie. We laughed. But this was not nearly so funny as her later leading performance of songs about sex, acted out with a single finger wagging straight out at pelvis level to remind us all of what “the thing” was all about.

I am not really supposed to say too much about the advice given and the songs sung and the topics of, uh, discussion (and laughter) that arose. But let’s just say that while most gifts were for cooking, Daisy and I had chosen to give the bride-to-be a set of towels and rugs for the bathroom. You would not think that towels could lead to a crass and giggling enactment about luring one’s husband into bed, but they did. And we were in an uproar. I was never so glad to have bought bath sheets.

catching up in windhoek

Saying that Daisy is my sister is not something I say in the usual African way of referring to women around my age as sisi. It means that what I feel for her is familial - and it’s all that much more so, for me, because I don’t always understand her, because we do disagree at times, because we each make decisions that the other finds incomprehensible.

The other night we were watching CNN. Anderson Cooper was reporting on a study about children’s perceptions of race that the network had commissioned. Not shockingly, as has been found countless times before, children react to skin color early and often – and even when they are black, tend to prefer pictures of children who are lighter-skinned. The white kids are thought to be smarter, prettier, and better behaved; those with darker skin tones are mean, unliked, and stupid.

When I first met Daisy some eight years ago now, she was distant. Polite, but measured. She hesitated about me - not in a manner demonstrative of a lack of confidence or fear, but from a place of grounded experience that showed it was likely there might be something about me to keep at arm’s length. I chose not to attribute this to anything at first. But in time the cause worked its way out.

One night at a conference in Vic Falls some years ago, we were sitting at the bar. As the only two women in the group that had come from Namibia, we were sharing a hotel room. Well, it was really more like a little house unto itself, with multiple bedrooms, a kitchen, and a sitting room where the Chief joined us late in the evening and rather unexpectedly. But that’s another story entirely.

Most of the conference participants had gone back to their rooms. But Daisy and I sat talking with the bartender, and out of nowhere, the Chief joined us. We kept him lubricated with J&B until we found out he had never had a Springbok – a shot of half Amarula and half crème de menthe layered in a glass to show the line between the emerald shade of the mint and the creamy tan of the Amarula. We ordered three and drank. The conversation wandered into talking about white people. Maybe it was the contrast of the liquors that did it, both on the bar and in our blood. Daisy pressed her forearm up against mine. About racism, she knew, she said, speaking with the certainty of growing up black in Rhodesia. “But this difference,” she continued, putting a finger on her arm, then mine, then hers again, “I don’t see it.”

I have thought about this conversation many times over the years, thought about it as a crossing point for me, a moment in which it became possible for me to both be a white person and talk about them with the detached annoyance of familiarity. I looked no different. But my view was changed. Daisy had taught me something, and the lesson continued as we watched CNN’s report on perceptions of race. She began speaking of Takudzwa, our niece, who is turning five in August. Takudzwa knows me as Auntie Rachel; the first time we all spent time together in the village she was shy and hid behind her mother Aggie’s skirts most of the time, peeking at me – but beginning to do so playfully by the time we left. When I stayed with Aggie, her husband Gilbert, their son Tanaka, and of course, Takudzwa, in their tiny concrete house in the townships of Harare, Takudzwa would come running to me for sanctuary when she cried, if Tanaka was teasing her or refusing to hand over a toy. She sees me without fear or hesitation.

“You know, for Takudzwa, white people are not the same as they were for me,” Daisy said, turning away from the TV to look at me. “For her, she has grown up with you, seen you in the village, slept in the same room with you, washed in the same shower as you, peed in the same toilet as you. You are the same to her. When I was growing up, when we would go to Harare, we would see white people – but we could not even sit where they could sit, or eat, or go to the toilet where they did. Everything was apart.”

I have, in my office, the emblematic picture of a white woman doing fieldwork in rural Africa, squatting amongst adorable little African children in a schoolyard, dresses and t-shirts dirty, my gaze on the camera and theirs on me. I am often careful to talk about how this was hardly the first time any of them had seen a white person, as seems to be a claim to originality that whites like to make. In this light, then, perhaps it is not so much the experience of being around that matters – but the experience of being with.

This morning, after I typed up a program for this afternoon's party, Daisy thanked me in Afrikaans. "Dankie," she said, in that slightly teasing tone she reserves for facetious moments.

"You're just saying that because I'm white," I replied, straight-faced. Then she and I and the rest of our houseful of Zimbabweans burst out laughing.