Yesterday a parade of people waving tree branches and beating drums walked past my house. I didn't know why this was happening, but I approved. It seemed a very approvable sort of thing. Then I found out this parade is an ngoma, which means drum, but is also, according to a friend who works in Kolero, a Luguru (the local tribe) traditional coming of age ceremony for a girl who has begun to menstruate. Fine, but part of this ceremony includes the girl being ceremonied having to stay in her house for at least a month, sometimes longer. Add to this that in more remote villages women don't really have access to sanitary supplies, and girls stay home from school when they have their periods. And we wonder why girls don't necessarily do so well in school here. It was still a cool parade, though.
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