African art and crazy coffins

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Yesterday was our first organized trip through SUNY, which essentially means that Mercy takes us on a planned schedule of events and everything has been paid for in advance through our fees we paid to come here. Yesterday’s outing was just a short one, that didn’t start until 1:30pm when Mercy picked us up in a van (going somewhere in the van always feels like an extreme luxury because you don’t need to worry about finding a tro-tro home, negotiating a good price for a taxi, or worrying about walking from the main gate to the ISH on the opposite side of campus at night).

First, Mercy took us to an African art museum, which was without a doubt one of the coolest places I’ve ever been. One of the girls in our group is an art history major, and she was telling me how people still don’t believe that old African art is in fact art because it is still considered exclusively to be “artifact” rather than “art.” A lot of the art was old preserved carvings, stools, drums, tribal chief staffs, etc. which was really cool to see, but the majority was more contemporary art made by African painters and sculptors. The subjects of most all of the paintings were African landscapes, African people, and many many many different depictions of the African market places. Some of the coolest ones were completely abstract paintings, that looked mostly just like splatters of orange, red, yellow, brown, and white paint, but you would only have to have walked in a market place here one time to be able to identify the painting as such. It was pretty incredible. Everything in the museum had a price on it and was meant for sale. The prices ranged from millions of dollars for some of the large paintings, to 10 for some of the pottery pieces… I’ve already started brainstorming how to best get one of the handmade pottery pieces back home. ☺

Another cool thing at the museum that was very unique to Africa, were the famous hand carved caskets. But when you think of an “African hand carved casket,” you probably think large wooden casket, made of very dark African wood covered with unique African carvings. No no. You couldn’t be more wrong.

When we walked into the casket room it literally took me one to two minutes to realized that they were in fact caskets, and I only made the connection because I overheard someone say so. I felt like I walked into a brightly colored child’s home furnishing store. There were human sized Coca-Cola bottles, Motorola cell phones, tro-tros, and a comical looking bright yellow tiger, all of which were painted in extremely bright and vivid colors that looked like they honestly could have been painted in poster paint. Mercy told us that these types of coffins were typically selected to portray something about the person’s personality, and by the looks of it I would guess that any deceased person in one of those coffins would have to have had quite a sense of humor. Legistically speaking, the coffins only rose little above an average person’s shoulder and I was honestly doubting whether people would ever actually use those as real coffins, and when I asked Mercy about the size, she kind of laughed and said quietly that people have a tendency to shrink when they die. lol She must be right because on a large bright red/orange crab shaped coffin (that was made complete by two very large protruding claws and two little beady black eyes on top of the coffin’s lid) I saw light blue satin that had been pinched out from when the coffin was last closed.

There was also a display of urns to hold ashes, but on first seeing them, I legitimately thought they were some kind of cookie jar. lol These, like the coffins, were in the shapes of chickens, beer bottles (of which there were several different beer brands to choose from) and other crazy unexpected items.

After the museum we went to a pool at a nearby resort, and had dinner at the restaurant there. Side note: one of the main differences about eating out here, and eating out back in the states is that here a group of people dining together all receive their meals at different times, and one begins eating as soon as their meal is presented. So last night, dining with a group of 13, Shane and I happened to be the last two to receive our meals, and consequently were just beginning to eat as others were finishing, which is always slightly awkward.

Other than that, the night passed relatively uneventful.

Tomorrow is my birthday!!! Shane and two other girls from our group that I’ve made friends with have been planning privately, and have gone off campus twice this past week refusing to tell me where they’re going. I’m excited to see what an African birthday holds in store!! ☺

=p

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Comments

[Nina]

hurrah!
Happy birthday, dear! I read these.. and Love you!