MFF research, Benga, Carrying life lightly
A mother carries her child for 9 months. During pregnancy, the baby’s weight is the mother’s weight, there is no separation until the umbilical cord is cut.
once born, this same baby is carried on the mother’s back, and in those moments of birth, the mother takes back the weight of the pregnancy, as if the cord had not been cut. she carries the baby who continues to grow on her back until it gains a little more independence.
The children like to imitate adults, they have a lot of fun, they love to play, they learn by playing, they play at imitating adults, they enjoy carrying small weights of water that splash (bounce) on their heads in the hot sun of Benga, in Tete. These children grow up and the weight they carry on their heads also increases.
I don’t know how the women feel when they carry these weights, but from what I can see from here, they take the time to greet people, and sometimes a long greeting, when they cross paths between friends, they can stop and strike up a conversation and laugh lightly as if they had no load at all.
After arguing with the other women who didn’t want to help her put a second bucket of water on top of the first one she already had on her head at the risk of it being too heavy for her, she finally managed to persuade someone to help her, which totalled a load of an average of 30 to 40 kilos on her head and she even managed to make a rather obscene but funny gesture, lifting one of her legs in a dance gesture that left everyone laughing before she left as if she was carrying no weight at all.
It’s as if the water, the baby and the ‘Xidjumba’ (load) of the Machamba (cultivated fields) were weightless. Here, I’m fascinated by the lightness with which people carry the burdens of life.
