A traditional Bambui experience

How can I describe today...

We started at the office at 9am, where I began the task of organisation using large sheets of paper and drawing up our plan for the week 

Then we had the BAWA chairman coming to hear our presentation on our plan of work, we have been giving them individually to the most influential people in the village starting with Mr Crythantus. He seemed very happy with what we were saying although I started talking too fast.

Then we came home and set out for the palace at 12.40 for our 1pm meeting with the quarter heads, as Bambui is split into 36 quarters. They are on Africa time so turned up at 2pm. We gave them our presentation which went down very well. I have to mention that I was the only women in a room of 30 men!

However this coincided with the celebration of the passing of the queens mother so they invited to stay. We were given drinks and luckily they had Fanta.

After this they started to just talk as it's very rare that you get so many quater heads in one location. They were discussing issues from their quarters, all of this was done in local dialect.

then things started to get weird.  At one point a juju came in who acts as the royal jester and we were taken outside to see the traditional death celebrations. This was very odd, it consisted of the king hitting a man with chickens and spitting wine on him. 

Then we returned and had catucatu chicken. Where during the earlier meeting a chicken was brought into the room and it was sitting under the bench. After the meeting whilst we were all talking it was taken, slaughtered and cooked and brought back where they lay them on a stone and palm leaves and cut the chicken with a machete , bones and all. It was then placed in a mixture of spices and was served to us on palm leaves with foo-foo a type of corn mash and green vegetables. This was all eaten by hand. 

We finally left at 5.30 after been invited to visit all the quaterheads, which is a great honor.

On another strange note I was also offered a child, to take to England, I politely declined even though I’m sure they meant it as a joke. Also she doesn't look to impressed about the idea too :D