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Published: January 30th 2008
Female circumcision. A horrific procedure. In Njobvu village, Malawi, it has been replaced by the egg tradition. When a girl reachers 10 yrs of age, her mother attempts to insert and egg inside of her. She keeps doing this until she is successful, at which point the girl is considered a woman. This is just one of the traditions that we learned of during our visit to Njobu cultural village last weekend. We spent the night in mud huts (some of us sharing our mattresses with safari ants), ate pumpkin leaves, beans and rice and were entertained by traditional dancing. We also visited a traditional healer a.k.a. witch doctor. I was hoping he could heal me of the curse that could have been placed on me by the previous witch doctor I saw (the one who was dancing at the roadside and wearing something that resembled Joseph's amazing technicolor dreamcoat when the skull that hangs on Neale's front view mirror fell off and into my lap). Unfortunately, I couldn't afford to pay for the treatment at the time, especially when I didn't know if it was really needed. However, I did learn of medicines - mainly parts of trees - that
the doctor claimed could do such things as cure malaria, anemia and impotence and even make someone fall in love with you (or at least, if you're married, not find yourself with sister wives).
After Njobvu, we headed to Liwonde National Park. The park is not known for having a huge variety of wildlife (though we did see many hippos, crocodiles and empala). It is more well known for it's beautiful scenery. The view from our safari boat as we sailed down the Shire river reminded me why you have to love Africa.
As far as work goes, I have been busy as always. I have so much to tell you all but I already wrote all of this and the computer crashed so I'll try and upload one more photo. I will have to fill you in when I see you (in the now not-too-distant future).
I hope you're all well. Take care,
joanna x
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Jim Russell
non-member comment
Hey
Jo, glad to see you doing well !...even though I guess I'm permanently now off the quick, two-egg breakfast at IHOP !