An Anthropological Voice

It has been almost ten weeks now since I began observing the Hellenic tribe. Up to this point, the breakthrough's have been minimal, but I finally think I may have gained their acceptance. This past weekend, I managed to involve myself in one of their most sacred male rituals, oddly enough an adaptation of its American counterpart: the pickup basketball game.

One of the biggest differences between the two rituals is the complete unwillingness to ever play a full court game. This I attribute to the tribe's devotion their cigarette cult. Another contrast I discovered was that these Hellenes only know about half of our American rules. Apparently the missionaries who first reached this distant land were only partially successful in imparting civilization. So, such things as self-passes, NBA-style travelling, and garbage lay-ups are entirely permissible (ok, this last one happens in the states, too, I admit).

My participation got off to a decent enough start, that is until I drove to the basket and kicked the ball out to a teammate. My defender played me so closely that his head crashed into mine. Correction: his tooth crashed into my eyebrow. And so came about the return of the mavromati:


Although I refused to make a big deal about it, my defender, also an unofficial tribal leader of sorts, took the opportunity to emphasize my alterity. "Now he knows how we play here." I suppressed my urban instinct to "pummel his ass" and reminded myself that such things must be tolerated in the interests of science. We played on.

Not much else of interest happened til the activities were at an end. I, of course, let them win, not wanting to challenge the authority of the dominant males. However, the issue of my eye weighed greatly on the tribal elders, who insisted that I adapt the local remedy for bleeding: tobacco (again I refer the reader to the importance of the cigarette cult). The only problem was that the cut had essentially stopped bleeding already, so that when they opened up a cigarette and jammed some dried leaves into it, it reopened the wound.

Unflustered, I told myself that the inevitable scar would be an eternal monument, even a tribute to a very critical moment in the work I am pursuing here. Because God knows I'll never publish any of this rubbish.