Celebrating

Important events in village life require a feast of some kind or another. Many or these involve the drinking of local beer made from fermented grain and called mbege. An earthen pot is sunk in the dirt up to it's rim and filled with warm mash. Each drinker has his own straw or mrija, fashioned from joined hollow grass stems and covered over with small fish intestine, very much like heat shrink electrical tubing. The drying shrinks the tubing and holds the mrija together. A small piece of tin is punctured with holes and wrapped around the lower end as a screen. The mrija is rather brittle and must be carried in a long tube for protection unless one is so fortunate to get some transfussion hose from a hospital and make a flexible mrija. The mbege is very low in alcohol content and one can drink and socialize for hours and still walk home. From time to time warm water is added to the pot to encourage the fermentation. Corn ugali sits on the ground and someone has almost finished off the meat stew. My co-worker, Don and his wife, Judy are having a go at it. Since Mennonites were supposed to be teetotalers the Bishop, who saw these photos, mused that they must be "pretending." Right.