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| January 28, 2009 |
Still in Goz Beida-Koukou tomorrow
We are making progress. We've been successful in finding several elderly men and one woman who can sing the old songs, we were told the stories the children were told when it gets dark, stories that described traditional marriage, methods of settling disputes, the old justice system ('dia'- example; in the days before the violence, if a man killed another man, the killer had to pay the family of the dead man between 15 and 30 camels - a woman's life is worth exactly half of a man's-so that's between 7 and 15 camels) , agricultural methods, trade, circumcision ceremonies, death. There was a traditional method of doing everything-the whole village would have been involved in all the main rites of passage. Of course not everyone is a story teller, and for us, so much is about finding the right ways to phrase the question (we are improving).It's very HOT here. Eastern Chad is a new experience every day. UN vehicles travel the 40 kilometers to Koukou in armed convoys. Almost every aid compound in G.B. has been attacked in the past month. The word here is the next big rebel attack on NDJamena will be at the full moon. That's two weeks away. I will be in a different part of eastern Chad-near Farchana.