Patching

“…to join or unite the piece, marked by some action or condition [to preserve and make use of]… [for] a period of indeterminate length [of time in order to maintain tradition]”

The field notes were stolen by mistake. When the robbers broke through my mother’s bedroom window, they did not foresee or plan to steal a jumbled arrangement of paper, notes, interviews, journal entries and descriptions of events – the memorabilia of my research and investigation. It was on that day I realised that without my field notes, the ‘accuracy’ of my thesis would be put into question and the ethnography I had to write would inevitably become distorted.

Most of my fieldwork was done in winter. Days were often grey, gloomy, dark, and damp. That day was such a winter day. My field notes have been stolen, so the minutia such as the date, the time, and the reason for me being there are obviously fragmented. I can only retell the experiences left in my memory.

***

It was raining outside; the rain’s rapid pace was mostly camouflaged by the noises produced within the kitchen. I remember the sense of wellbeing, the comfort, and the heat that emanated from the open fire.  There was certainly moisture in that small kitchen, as the water vapour permeated the air. I could see the condensation trickling down the cold tiles on the walls. It had been a morning of hard labour preparing the fragrant liquors. Most fruit liquors were made during summer, herb liquors were made in spring, but we were making a fresh batch of “firewater” and honey liquor as well as quince liquor from the autumn produce. Firewater liquor is well known as a remedy for colds due to its heat generating properties, burning the “cold” away.

Seremetakis (1994) talks about how each season is marked with different smells. Here in Barroso, November is marked with the smells of marmalade, jams, pork smoking and chestnut pudding. In that kitchen I was once again immersed within the women’s world, within their ongoing resistance to ‘modernity’.

***

Often, I felt more like an observer, an outsider. I would ‘gaze’ in search of practices and beliefs which surrounded traditional medicine in order to find the remnants of ‘authenticity’ somewhat lost by the ‘insiders’ view. After all, I was the anthropologist. Intriguingly enough that day I felt like a fully-fledged participant. I drank tea, smelt the infusion and helped make the liquors, so much so that I almost lost the academic directed ‘gaze’. Usually I planned what to see, what to ask and what to keep in mind as I was being taught. Too much trying, not enough listening – it was the pitfall of my research. In attempting to become a ‘more’ objective researcher, I lost embodied meaning, which was conveyed through the senses. I recapture them now, in the fragments of my memory and try to convey the “lived” experience.

I sat next to Ana as she sowed the linen table cloth. Her middled aged hands wove in a swift and perfect synchrony of movement at the same time as describing to me the whole process.

“Listen,” she said.

Listening is the first step of learning.

“You need for each four litres of water, one of honey and one of firewater. You put the honey and the water in a pan on the stove until half of it is left. Add the ‘fire water’ and remove the heat. Put this mixture into glass bottles to store. Easy?”

I smiled as I jotted down the recipe down. “For the other one it’s the same process; but with the skin of the quince.”

Sitting at Ana’s kitchen seemed familiar. It evoked forgotten sounds, images, smells the sensoescapes that have become submerged by everyday living. I remember sitting down in the kitchen as a child as my mother and my aunts made liquors. The bodies of my mother, aunt, cousins that I, as a child, learned to mirror and help me understand the world in which I live. The bodies in Ana’s kitchen (re)taught me a way of sensing the world. They evoke the visual echoes of my mother in the world, which set off the visual echoes of her performances learnt through my body. It was through seeing her, acting her, that I become me. It is this mimicry of action, of practice, of manner and of gesture that has taught me to embody and perform culture, to create second nature, to make models, to explore difference, yield into and turn the “other” into some form of “self” (Taussig, 1993). Through physical and bodily acts of mimesis the distinction between the self and other becomes porous and flexible, allowing my body to embed and embody itself and the surrounding environment through incorporation and learning. Rather than dominating nature, mimesis as mimicry opens up a tactile experience of the world in which the Cartesian categories of subject and object are not firm, but rather malleable. In our practical involvement with things, however, this mosaic itself presupposes a background context of meaning that (bounds things to and) completes my experience. It is from this pre-learnt background that any given context and its material culture gain their sense and meaning.

***

Sitting at the fire place the child’s laughter grew louder. Her little brown curls bounced fluidly as she ran around the kitchen. “Vanessa, please don’t run inside,” her mother said sternly as she mixed the marmalade pan fiercely. Her chocolate eyes were wide open, and her little mouth in a pout.  I could understand her disappointment; it was pouring outside. I was sitting next to Mara, who was caressing her plum belly, discussing with Ana her limited birthing choices for her unborn daughter. Mara’s face was hardened with concern.

“Why don’t you talk do D. Diolinda?” Ana asked Mara “She has the skills to be your parteira [traditional birth attendant].”

She didn’t seem enthusiastic to follow through Ana’s advice. Maternity is contested. It’s a space where beliefs, traditions are constructed, maintained, contested and transmitted through the generations. She questioned many of practices from the “old days”. She didn’t think home births were at all safe. But, the alternative was also appalling. Recently the maternity section of Chaves, had been closed down. The travel to Vila Real, the nearest maternity ward, would take up to two hours. In recent times there had been many births in the ambulance on the way to Vila Real. As a result, inexperienced male paramedics had become ‘forced birth attendants’.

“Are you going to see Tia Mena after the birth?” Ana asked.

Mara nodded.

“Good, you know how dangerous ‘bad air’ is to a new born.”

***

I do remember feeling like something of an intruder in Tia Mena’s space. Her every movement became an object of my inquiry. But I had an excuse to pry, so I thought – because I was an anthropologist I could observe and transform her performance into spectacle that I would later on analyse and describe. She welcomed me in. She knew who I was, word had gone around.

“I have a couple of clients today. You can see the ritual if you wish.”

The kitchen was small and dark, lit only by the fire flames and a small window. Tia Mena’s soft voice gave life to those words.

Em Nome do pai e do filho e do espirito santo, Amen.
Eu que te corto? O ar
Ar de inveja, ar espinhado, ar de mau olhado,
Ar de defunto, ar das encruzilhadas,
Ar de todos os ares do mundo.
Assim venham de bem e amor
Assim como vieram as cinco chagas de Nosso Senhor
Pelo poder de Deus e da Virgem Maria 1 Pai-Nosso e 1 Ave Maria

The recital gave life to the performance. Its rhythm and meaning floated in the air that we breathed and became part of us, part of flesh. Through Tia Mena’s voice, I could discern the epithets of her personality. Meanings themselves cannot be imprisoned through the written word. One must learn through by hearing, by repeating so to experience and conceptualise the complexity of its embodiment. The whole experience was taken in through a sense of mnemonic practice.

I knew that there were other versions of this prayer recited in other kitchens, by other women. The importance of indicating that there are several ‘versions’ of the same prayer here is to highlight that traditional healers are actively involved in the (re)creation of rituals and beliefs. Orality provides fluidity. It provides a space where each healer can perform its unique narrative and display the personal journey. The point here is not to highlight its non ‘repeatable’ and non ‘reliable’ status, but its nature as a bricolage of oral history.

The nature of teaching through oral device creates a connection between mothers and daughters, between the healer and the ill. It is in everyday practice that knowledge is passed down between generations. It’s through cooking, sowing, making medicine, healing, rearing children and working in the fields that daughters embody tradition and knowledge, social status and cultural heritage.

***

The knowledge taught and learnt is patched, moulding young females. Learning occurs through explicit and implicit codes; ways of dealing with embodied knowledge and networks of learning. Explicit knowledge once learnt and absorbed, becomes implicit, embedded in actions.

Marlene Lage, June 2009.

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