Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Culture at work - Tenela

Tenela means “Going Out!” The men in Mablauwuni village “tenelard” - went on a walk about for 3 days last week trying to appease the ancestors.......
Mablauwuni village hasn’t had rain for 5 weeks now and some of the crops are a sorry sight! The “elders” (older men and community leaders) of Mablauwuni held a meeting and concluded that the ancestors were angry with the villagers and are withholding the rain because Mablauwuni Village is dirty – the “earth” is dirty!
The women were not allowed to go anywhere and had to literally lock themselves in their homes. The children under 18 were allowed to go to school and the men carried sticks and walked around the village burning any bones they found and killing any animal in sight – this included tortoises and lizards. Trees that had been previously struck by lightning were also burnt. The men also went up small kopjes (hills) to apologise for dirtying the earth and pray to the ancestors to send the rain. The men would eventually gather at a pool in the community called “Blauwuni” pool where they would eat their killings! The “spoils” were roasted and eaten by the men.

After 3 days, one would consider this to be quite a mission and hope for results. Well, the rain DIDN’T come and the heat continued in Kezi!

God at work!
On Sunday just before the meeting ended, everyone stood up and spent some time in prayer – asking God to send us rain! The prayer was heartfelt and lasted about 15minutes. It didn’t take long after that for us to see a build up of clouds and down came the rain. It was a huge testimony especially to the ladies who were “locked” up in their homes that God does cause miracles to happen, that God is at work and hears our prayers. Some of the older men were rather sceptical......

We were just so pleased to have rain which cooled everything down.

By Molly Manhanga

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