Kaketa

Shy, gentle, incredibly beautiful and strong as nails, Kaketa spends her days working hard. My glimpse into her life started at sunrise one morning, when her son came over to bring us to her home. Bleary-eyed but ready for the morning hikes we'd gotten used to, Janess and I made our way through the sand. As we reached her hut, we could see that the gaps between the wood were packed with mud underneath the grass roof to keep out the cold on frosty desert nights. 

Shivering a greeting, Kaketa wrapped herself in a cloth and started walking. Janess and I had to speedwalk just to keep up with her, occasionally breaking into a jog to close the ever-increasing distance between us. We walked for two hours that day to get to Kaketa's millet (masango) field, quickly feeling the heat of the sunrise and our exertion. Fully embarrassed by the fact that Kaketa was hugely and obviously pregnant yet was booking it through the deep sand to get to the field, I had to stop for water and rest while Kaketa smiled kindly. Once we got to the field, I was exhausted. Unfortunately, that was when the harvesting work started. 

She had us doing children's work, thankfully, which meant that we picked the beans that grew using millet stalks as a trellis. Picking beans was less difficult than cutting millet, at least for me, so I quickly found a routine. All morning, Janess and I picked beans with Kaketa's kids, while she sang hymns in Portuguese and Ovangambwe as she worked. She taught us some songs, but because it was near the beginning of our time in Tchincombe, we weren't very good. As we spent time in the village, we learned the songs that she taught us, and learned how to translate them. Singing praises to God in three different languages, we bonded together.


Kaketa and her husband were fairly new Christians, and still working through the hiccups that come with sorting out for yourself what to take and what to leave from your old life. One of their struggles was domestic abuse - while village tradition made it okay to beat your wife under certain circumstances (like if she was alone with another man), Christians in the village had taken a firm stand against domestic abuse altogether.


 The approach that the Ovangambwe Christians had decided the Bible taught was that marriage is a relationship, and each person has value and a voice. Trying to sort through tradition and decide for themselves what was okay was something that Kaketa and her husband were working through as a new Christian couple. Although I was outraged at first that this issue was even in question, I learned to see that change is gradual and what matters most is the direction of change. The paradigm shift from viewing women as property to contributing member of a relationship is huge, and so encouraging to see.

When we finally returned to the village, Janess and I were exhausted. We gratefully accepted Kaketa's invitation to take a nap, and returned after resting to find that she had been working all afternoon around the home. Supper was being made, dishes washed, and masango was being pounded into flour. We were put to work as well, and shelled beans during what was left of the afternoon, before supper. We had a leisurely meal of pirao and beans that night, and left amazed and humbled by how hard the lives of Tchincombe women are.

Throughout our time in the village, Kaketa was a regular part of our experience. One of the joys of living together in the same village is that although we usually only had one day per family, we got to know each other anyways. Later, when we knew each other better, I told her how exhausted Janess and I were from that morning hike out to the field. She laughed and told me that she was trying to go slow for us because we looked so tired. I must have looked stunned at hearing that it was her "slow" pace, and she laughed some more.  I miss her laugh, and pray for her often.