It's raining hard outside, but it's the same as every night here in the tropics... in the wet season, it will rain torrentially for two solid hours after seven in the evening, and in the dry season, it's more intermittent and for a shorter duration. After a while I don't even notice the racket that it makes on the steeply-sloped palm roof of the circular rush-walled house they've given me.
I'm sitting in my hammock writing my diary by the flickering light from a bare low-wattage bulb that sways drunkenly in the draught that comes in under the eaves. The solar generator will only allow fifteen minutes of transmission each evening if I want enough power left for the light to last until I go to sleep.
Anthropology, linguistics and psychology qualifications have got me to where I am today... a tiny salary (barely more than pocket money, really) and a daily satellite transmission my only real contact with the university which had sent me to study a newly discovered tribe in the West African country of Benin. There weren't many in my field that had a handle on either of the two local languages of the Fon and Bariba tribes, and fewer still with any knowledge of the phallocrypt traditions which had up to now only been observed amongst the high mountain tribes of the Grand Baliem Valley and Telefomin regions of New Guinea. I guess you could say that the job was made for me.
Phallocrypt is the scientific name for penis sheaths. Worn mostly by tribes who have shunned clothing of any sort as genital protection and adornment, and up to now lived at least a couple of thousand miles away. Two years ago a keen student from the African Anthropology Association met a representative of the tribe at a market twenty miles northwest of here. A digital camera and recorder meant that he was able to establish the unique nature of his first contact. A language of clicks and whispers was recorded but not understood by any of the local traders who informed the scientist that the man or another of his tribe came to the town up from the densely forested valleys every few months to trade butterflies and skins for a sack of salt.
A year later and here I am, Dr. Dawn Massey, three months in and barely started; I'm the only outsider ever to visit this small village of seventy souls and am totally aware that observations are being made in both directions. Am I damaging the place or making a negative social impact by being here? Would bringing a larger team in do either? My reports must firstly consider these. I have got a handle on almost a hundred of the complex gesture/sound/posture combinations that these folks use as language. The men are outnumbered by the women, due as far as I can tell to a dangerous ritual that guides them into manhood from their teens.
The men hunt for food: animals, birds and fruit. They also build and repair the two large huts which the entire village live in. The women and old folks of both sexes bring up the young and care for the field of a type of sago palm which seems to be their one road into any kind of organised agriculture. They have no domesticated animals, not even dogs and though they allow tree pythons to inhabit the rafters of their homes, it seems to me that the two species tolerate each other rather than anything else. The snakes eat any rats which might try to steal from their hosts and stop any birds from making their nests in the fibrous roofs.
These people have no name for themselves, and seem to recognise all humans to be from the same tribe. As of today my thinking is that they could well have been here, living in isolation, for hundreds or even thousands of years. The nearest village was a three day long, twenty mile slog through jungle that seemed to grow back almost as fast as you could hack a path through it. That was to the northwest; further south it was closer to forty miles to the next road and nearer fifty to the nearest town.
At first it felt odd to me, everybody was naked whilst they were in the village and though I thought I might try to join in, I found that I was constantly attracting an unfair number of insects which, though they didn't bite, seemed to be after the salt in my sweat and as such were bloody annoying. Clothed, they didn't seem as much trouble, and I got used to it. There was always the cool running stream if I needed it.
The men spent their leisure time painting designs of great complexity on each other's faces, giving each other elaborate hairdo's and drinking a milky coloured beer made from a ground nut and the small red bananas which seemed to grow in profusion in the immediate surrounds of the village. The tribe told me that they did not plant these bananas, which were one of the main reasons for the sighting of their village.
The men's penis sheaths were made from the hollowed out gourds of a type of nut tree that grew with its roots in the stream along the high banks of which the two huge huts stood. It was their only bodily adornment and was worn anytime they left the cleared ground of the village. The women used half of the rounded end of the same kind of gourd, fastened around their waist, to protect their genitals anytime they found recourse to enter the jungle.
I hadn't been invited to live in their huts, but wasn't restricted in my use of them for everything except sleeping. For the first month they seemed suspicious of me, staring in horror at my bright red pubic hair whenever I took to the stream to bathe or wash. One of the women, using hastily contrived hand signs, offered to shave me ... as if I maybe didn't know how to shave. The next day as I undressed by the stream a ripple of murmurs as they all stared at the bright flash of almost blue white flesh where my pubes had been. I hadn't noticed any extra chafing against my clothes since I'd shaved myself in the cool light of dawn at the stream edge. Indeed the sweat seemed to dry off more quickly and the new feeling was surprisingly pleasant.
The tribe seemed to be in fairly good health, with all having good skin and strong teeth. They have a thing about bodily hair, with it only being tolerated on heads. From a young age everybody spent time sitting together in the stream grooming and shaving each other using bamboo combs and flint razors. It seemed to me that they must at some time have excavated the large pool in which they all sat to carry out this social event. It had been lined with white pebbles, so that by mid morning the water was warm.
