During one of our daily walks from the center back home, we stopped at the sound of our names.  Normally, children’s voices scream to us as we walk by, but this time it was an older voice calling to us.  Sure enough, Chief Mkongamira was there, motioning for us to come over to where he was seated, under a tree, with a group of others.

This man, who we’ve interacted with so many times before, has an open heart and has truly taken an interest in spending time with us.  When we walked over to formally greet him (in a chief’s presence, you cup your hands and clap them together) and he introduced us to the men and women, all chiefs from neighboring villages, sitting beside him.  Upon introducing the women, he commented “and because today we have gender, these women are also chiefs.”

I asked what occasion brought them all together and found out they were having a meeting.  These are the sort of gatherings during which they plan programs, make decisions, and discuss challenges and solutions for problems facing their communities. A simple meeting represents the primitive way in which they address policy.  I wish I could have understood how the meeting flowed.  I was curious to know how they organized themselves and how they made decisions.

That day’s agenda revolved around an upcoming program.  The following Saturday, a non-profit organization was coming to talk to the members of the village about “child spacing,” which was the term he gave to family planning.  Given the high rates of poverty and hunger, the village would engage in a discussion about their responsibility to their families and receive encouragement to only have the number of children that they can manage to support and feed sufficiently.

Before we continued on our way and let the chiefs get back to business, we took a picture with the whole group and just as the children do, they crowded around our cameras to see how they looked.  Everyone here loves the camera.

With the village headmen (and women).