Hina, piko, biriani and other sikuku enjoyments

Brace yourselves. This shall be a long post.


In Islam there are two very important celebrations in the year. The first one is one that most people across the world are familiar with: Eid ul Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting that Muslim people across the world take part in (fasting from sunrise to sunset).

I was in Zanzibar for the last week of Ramadan and then also for Eid*. I remember the day that Ramadan ended. The ending is marked by the sighting of the moon. Everyone whom I spoke to was sure that Ramadan would end on the Monday for the moon had been sighted in Malaysia. People got themselves excited at the prospect of eating three meals again and drinking water throughout the day. But alas the day passed and no moon was seen.

So the next day dawned with breakfast eaten at 4:30 am. And then the day wound to a close and people made their way to Forodhani gardens to eat and hope that the moon would be seen. Soon it was known that the moon was seen in Dar es Salaam, on the mainland. Surely it would be seen on the island. People waited. And then something was said and someone knew and all across Forodhani and Stone Town you heard cheers and clapping because eventually the moon made its appearance; fasting would and Eid would begin.

The nest day the streets were awash with beautifully dressed and make-uped little girls and bigger girls and young women and older mothers and grandmothers. And the men were dressed in the clean, new white Djelebas. All clothes are new and the days running up to Eid the streets of Stone Town were full of women bustling back and forth to find the material and get measured and have their new clothes made at any one of the many, many tailors to be found in the city.

The day is spent visiting friends and family and the night is spent eating at the Mnazi Moja market or at Forodhani Gardens. There streets and roads and paths and open areas are full of people.

I didn't get very involved in the first Eid. I'd just arrived on the island and I was working with Jahazi Festival.

And then, about a week and a half ago, I suddenly found out that there was going to be another Eid. And then I found out that in fact this is the biggest celebration in the Muslim calendar. And yet I had never heard of it!

It is called Eid ul Adha, the festival of the sacrifice which marks the end of the Hajj to mecca (that a lot of people take in the days leading up to the festival). It is a celebration of the sacrifice that Abraham was willing to make of his son, and the animal that was eventually sacrificed in his place. So yes there is a lot of slaughtering of animals... which is well, sad.

The times and dates of the festival are again reliant on the moon cycle. There is no month of fasting before, where if you are in Zanzibar (where the majority of the people are Muslin and therefore fast) it means that there is no food, well very very little food, available from when you wake up until 6:30pm. The island seems to carry on as normal before Eid ul Adah. And then suddenly people have new clothes again and much much food is prepared and there is four days of celebration and eating and revelry.

So this time I got involved.

My mom had come to visit me for a week in Zanzibar and she wanted hina done (for all yall westerrrrn folk, henna is actually pronounce hina, and so for this blog, it will be written as such). And on my mom's last full day on the island, while enjoying a fresh, hot, strong espresso cup of coffee in Jaws Corner, who comes to say hello to me? None other than Sada, my 4 year old mate who met me once while I was chatting to her uncle and now remembers my name and knows she get fused when I see her. She had beautiful hina on her hands and so we went immediately to her house (just off of Jaws Corner) and found out that it was her sisters friend who does the designs. So that Afternoon Aisha (Sada's sister) too us to Mahira.

Mahira is an artist. We arrived at a house where we climbed to the roof and in a bare room that I named the hina room, we found women draped in all manner of poses while they waited for the wet paste to dry and stain their skins. Mahira sat in all manner of poses as she wound her designs around and up and over women's bodies. For the whole body is often adorned with hina. Even though a woman's body is covered save for her face and hands, it is quite a beautiful thought that this hina that is put on the body is a beauty accessory that women do for themselves, no matter if the wold can see it.

Sometimes the women chatted, sometimes they didn't. On the rooftop a cool breeze blew through the room. And after maybe an hour it was mine and mothers turn.

Mahira as I said, is an artist. She wore a brown scarf wrapped around her head, not as a hijab (how Muslim women wrap their heads) but as many women in South Africa and other African countries wear a scarf; wrapped over the top and taken to the back and then wound round and round to form a "bun" effect at the back. Mahira wore glasses of the 70's Cadillac style, bejewelled on the sides. She wore a simple loose dress that skimmed over her hips, had a v-cut at the neck and shortish flared sleeves with braiding on the edges. I can't tell you what the original colour of it was (I think natural yellows and browns and the like) because it was COVERED with stains from the hina and piko that she used. Similarly her hands and fingers were stained dark by the dyes.

Now hina is the brown dye that most people are very familiar with. Piko is the black dye that I only learnt of on the island. Piko is actually a regular black hair dye that is mixed and squeezed out into patterns. Mahira sat me down and in under 10 minutes I had beautiful beautiful designs on my hands and feet. My mom only got her feet done.

And then we were instructed very firmly that we HAD to sit still so that it dried and not a drop of it was smudged. We sat and chatted to the women and the young girls (I have to brag and say that it was mostly in kiSwahili!) and then we moved outside and the younger girls, whose task it appeared to be, began peeling off the now dried paste. And once this was done out hands and feet were washed and dried for us.

This took the whole afternoon. Yet another place of the women.

And then on Saturday my mom left and then on Sunday, well it was sikuku time!

Sikuku is what celebration is called, I think it is a Swahili term. Regardless, I received 3 invitations to go to peoples houses.

This is what happens on the day: people wake up and get dressed and the morning is spent visiting friends and drinking litres of chai and eating many, many slices of cake! This is indeed what I did - three cups of spiced chai, 2 slices of cake at one house, 2 slices of cake and three biscuits and a chapati at another. And then two hours later a plate of biriani, and then maybe one hour later some pilau. Good grief!

But apparently this is normal, to eat three breakfasts and up to two lunches. I did feel loved that people invited me to their houses to celebrate with them!

So that is the tale of hima, piko, biriani and sikuku.

This celebrating continued for 4 days. This is indeed the biggest and most important Eid on the Muslim calendar.

Skuku njema!



*Eid means festival

The Taarab Spell

At 10pm the night if fully dark. There is a moon, and a few stars, but the night is dark and wet. The town is lit electrically by tired yellow lights, and so the darkness remains in the light.

In the Ngome Kongwe (Old Fort), the open ground is lit powerfully and aggressively with large stage lights, colourful and white hot. The stage is huge the the chairs sitting in front seem smaller than they are. As do the people sitting on the stairs. The stage it full to bursting of music players and singers, making the stage seem all the more bigger and the chairs bellow all the more smaller.

All glitters - the men in dark suits and slicked back hair. The women sexy, colourful, cosmopolitan, powerful, flashing their dresses, a leg, with thick and theatrical make-up.

Men are crammed into any open space on the stage, violins, oud, cello, keyboard. The stage is vibrant and very much alive tonight.

A woman begins singing, high and sometimes grating on the ear. Her voice fills the spaces between the music's sometimes unfamiliar beat. The rhythm, the sounds, the women on stage and in front swaying, all create an atmosphere of delightful naughty fun.

People get pulled from their seats, and sway their buttocks' tantalisingly from side to side as they walk and sing towards the music. One lady holds a 10 000/= (Tanzanian shilling) note and as she walks past (supposedly) male friends, she increases her sway and flicks the note over and around their seated bodies. And then she is gone to join the crowd.

They all step to the music; step to the right sway, step to the left, sway. Over and over, hands and arms follow freely, hips move just barely or very energetically. Most are waving their 5 and 10 000/= notes for the singer to lean down and pick coyly from the outstretched hands. All the crowd sing along to the song.

It is a woman's space, I am told later, a place for women on the island to dress up, to sing and dance and be sung about. It is true. While the men play the instruments, the women dance. Sometimes a man joins in with the singing and oh my... his beautiful voice fills the fort with such deep longing. And makes the women blush.

The night is dark. The night is colour. The dresses bright, the make-up thick. The sound familiarly unfamiliar. The nature of sound. This is the space of the woman.

Sweet potato frutali

Last week thursday i learnt how to make groundnut flour.

You see i have kind of been assigned to work with the food and nutrition team at nature's gift permaculture. so i went for my first lesson and learnt sweet potato frutali. before you all start shouting for the recipe, hold on, delay your gratification, listen to the story and then you will get the recipe.

So it began with the entry request, "Odi!" followed by a, "yes come in". Odi is the Malawian equivalent of hello, knock knock, can i come in.

Inside was Carol and her sister-in-law, Delleah. The fire was already boiling, the sweet potatoes already softening, the courtyard a general smokey tinged.

I asked what i could do, and i was told that i could start making the groundnut flour. I was given a wooden pestle and mortar and about 500g of raw peanuts. Delleah showed me briefly how to go about pounding the nuts in the pestle.

I think the ladies laughed briefly inside, as i slowly started crushing the nuts. After a while Delleah took the pestle from me and shook the not yet smooth flour out. Into a flat bottomed bowl they went and she began shaking and separating the fine powder from the large bits. she put the large bits back into the pestle. and then she repeated this twice or three times again to get only the flour out. This she put into another bowl and i continued pounding.

After a while again, without a word, Delleah took over from me, saying something a little while later that i must be getting tired. this time i did the sifting. "But you can do it", carol exclaimed and patted me on the back.

A while later, again without word, Carol took over from Delleah, also something about getting tired.

And so we shared the process of making lunch. No one got tired, we all made the flour.

we chatted while we worked. I learnt that her son had not actually been born with malaria but had contracted it a few days after he was born because in the hospital they slept without a mosquito net. Her son got something like 17 injections in the first few days of his life.

I also learnt that in all her life in malawi, she had never been to the lake.

i was going to the lake over the weekend.

I learnt that Delleah was working at Escom (yes, also electricity suppliers) and studying Human Resources. And that she was 24 (my age) and had amZING dress sense.

Then we actually started making the frutali.

I tried to do some stirring but the smoke blew into my eyes so fiercely that i had to give it back to carol. she said i was lucky, that is smoke blows onto you, the "elders of her village" would tell the children that it meant they were lucky. she didnt seem to believe it. i got a tingling in my tummy. i hope it is true.

i was sent to make the salad dressing. it was okay, nothing worth mentioning. (however, the salad dressing that i made today - baby, it was a killer!)

carol asked me if i was happy here, and if i was that i should stay here longer than three months, many 6 months, or a year. my gut twisted and renched. i felt so guilty, because i was planning on "resigning" the next day. (which i have - which means i am leaving in a week to travel up north and to stay in nkata bay for a while).

then i was made to learn how to dish up the meal. well, i did the salad. carol dolled out the sweet potato and the soup.

and finally here is the recipe:

Sweet Potato Frutali

- sweet potato (however much you want to make for however many people)
- raw groundnuts (peanuts), about 500g for 12 people (adjust accordingly)
- a good, strong pestle and mortar
- salt and pepper
- water (4 or 5 litres for 12 people, adjust accordingly)
- leeks, as many as you would like

1. start with groundnuts. take a few handfuls and put into pestle. Begin pounding the groundnuts so that they break up. The nuts will not become smooth after one round. Pour the semi-pounded nuts into a container and begin sifting through, picking out the large bits. This is done in a flat dish: shake the contents and the large pieces with jump to the top. Repeat this exercise until what remains is a smooth flour consistency, like maize meal or wholemeal flour. Return large pieces to the pestle and repeat the pounding and the sieving until there are no more large pieces. Do this with all the ground nuts. Set aside an hour at first to make the groundnut flour. The more skilled you become, the quicker it will get.

2. In the mean time cook the sweet potatoes (with a little bit of salt is desired).

3. Once you have your groundnut flour, get the water boiling on the stove or fire and add the flour, stirring continuously to avoid clumping and to make a smooth paste. Cook the flour. It will thicken to the consistency of maize meal porridge (in other words a thick runny consistency, like a soup), the type you eat for breakfast with milk and sugar). Therefore adjust water/flour consistency accordingly) Add salt and pepper to taste.

4. A minute or two before serving slice in leeks.

5. Serve hot groundnut soup over still warm sweet potatoes.



And then the next day i resigned and i went to tell carol. while all the others who i told left my explanation at "this isnt the right place for me now, i have personal things to deal with and that i am not in the right space to do the project", made me sit down and tell her why. and so on friday afternoon i sat at her house again, cried a little at leaving her. and i understood what i had just read in a book. that love is about extending yourself to a person, with the sole intention of helping that person to improve themselves spiritually. it felt okay to tell carol all i had been thinking. and she didnt try and convince me otherwise (except for a bit at the beginning), she just understood.

And that was just by making an effort to learn how to cook sweet potato frutali.



PS - please excuse the typos and small letters, typing on a bit of a broken computer!