Reconciling Christmas exorbitance when my head and my heart are in Africa

Maybe it's because Zambia is still fresh in my head and my heart, having only come back a few short months ago. Maybe it's because every year I step back from Christmas excess a little more, while watching society around me continue to gorge on Christmas consumption. But I'm wondering how many others out there are feeling conflicted about our holiday season?

Every year I have more issues with Christmas. Every year Christmas in our society seems to be more characterized by gluttony, and I'm not just referring to the presents. There's something about thinking about a houseful of food - literally, since all of my Christmases have consisted of having every counter- and table-space in the house covered with food: cookies and dainties, boxes of chocolate and mandarin oranges, roasting pans of cabbage rolls, leftover turkey for turkey buns, meat pies warming in the oven, you know the drill - and yet there are people that I know (not just that I know there are people , these are people who I met, talked and visited with, likely even gave me a gift of groundnuts or cassava ) who are starting to run out of food right now, as the rainy season in Zambia progresses.

When I put my headspace back there in the village right now, and I imagine the spartan surroundings, little or no furniture to speak of, few possessions, and the dwindling food supplies in the granaries, and then compare that image to one that most of us are surrounded with here in the next few weeks - overabundance of food and overwhelmed with stuff, stuff, stuff that we really don't need - I can't help but have increased reservations about how I want to celebrate this holiday season.

Geez - I didn't mean to crap all over everyone's Christmas! And I know that for many of us, Christmas is about much more than feasting and "stuff" - but it is still a big part of it. This year, Kent and I decided to have a non-xmas, to take a break and appreciate what we currently have.

How are you reconciling Christmas exorbitance this year??

Coming to you LIVE from Africa!

Hello out there! I am back in the city (with internet access!) after another month in another village. I have had an incredible month. Anything that I learned or experienced during my time in the first village was multiplied tenfold this time, partly because I have had new knowledge and experiences to build on, and partly because my living situation was amazing. This time I lived directly in the village with the people that I was working with, and I was able to daily participate in household tasks and farming work (harvesting, processing) with the family that I stayed with, and grew to love. Leaving there was extremely difficult - too many tears from them and me - but now my time is flying.

I leave for Canada in a week!

Home to Cowtown on the 29th!

Right now I have a quick week in the office here in the city, then a few days of play with our Zambian team from Canada in Livingstone, the tourist capital (check out Victoria Falls on Google). I am swamped with reports and wrap-up before I go, so won't be able to post stories or pictures from the field just yet - but I have so much to tell. As a result, I will be continuing this blog through September, just so that I can address all of the things I have to say and reach all of the people flung across the globe that are sharing in my reflections and adventures.

Also just want to say a BIG thank-you to everyone who has taken the time to send me emails or comments. Some amazing thoughts and insight from you people! It makes me feel satisfied that what I am doing is touching so many lives even back home in these ways, and stimulating such contemplation about all of our lives, here in Africa, or there in Canada. Thank you for that, and thank you for sharing.

Just a tease to keep you tuned in... Stories and pictures to come:

• the 5 ft rock python that was discovered and killed a mere 200 metres from my home (all captured on video!)


• nightly drumming and dancing and singing by the fire with my family and extended family


• harvesting millet and grinding (literally) by stone, by hand
  
• being served chicken and nshima while the rest of the family eats only tomatoes and nshima, and being unable to do anything about it


• my mud hut with a grass thatch roof, and my grass bathing shelter and mud brick latrine


• is this spider above my bed poisonous?


• being continually humbled by the generosity and nature of these amazing people and reflecting on the selfishness and independence of our comfortable society

Talk to you soon!

With love, Cherie

Social capital

One thing that I was fascinated with during my studies is the idea that people here have social capital: a strong social network that works to advance the community as a whole, not individualistically like in the developed world. It is something that I have been trying to uncover while I’ve been here, but it has been harder to find than I thought. That is not because it doesn’t exist; instead, it’s because no one recognizes it as anything worth mentioning. It is just part of life.

The most striking example of social capital that I have found so far is the building of Kamphombo bridge. The rickety rutted “road” (path) that passes through all the villages in the area, off the main road, crosses the stream at many points. There are all variations of broken down bridges to cross with, but just after Chileka and before Kamphombo village there was no bridge, and during the rainy season when the water rises to enormous levels, it becomes impassable for long periods of time. People on the far side of the stream (ie Kamphombo and beyond) have literally died because they couldn’t reach medical care in the clinic in Chileka, or died from starvation because they couldn’t get their goods to market; women have even given birth on the riverbank, unable to cross to reach the clinic.

So after years of applying for funding to build a bridge, the government finally gave them some money to build. However, it was not enough to cover all of the supplies or even the wages for labour. Plus, supplies are hard to get. But this community is resourceful and hardworking. With all the Zambian cement going to South Africa to build stadiums for World Cup, they resorted to Malawi cement – a poorer quality. When it was difficult to get stones and gravel, this community pulled together and made their own – literally. From the boulder outcrops at the village, both men and women sledge-hammered off giant rocks (basketball size) to use as the base for the bridge supports and side walls. The same for the gravel: they made their own using nothing but sledgehammers and hand labour, until the rock was crushed to a fine gravel. Then when the rock needed to be transported the 4km from the village to the bridge site, they did so via wheelbarrows. There is no other transport, and the oxcarts were needed for the fields.

The men would work all day – a typical day was from 4am to 6:30pm – and the women would work in the morning until they needed to go to their fields. Most of the labourers – excluding the supervisors – were not getting paid, and could expect to see no remuneration except for the completion of the bridge itself. Yet this is all that they were hoping for.

(I apologize for the lack of pictures with this post; the network is soooo sloooow and the uploader keeps timing out. I'll try to put some pics of the bridge on my flickr account.)

How can you not admire this determination, this resourcefulness, this strength in body and heart? Yet even still when I asked some of the women involved to tell me about the strengths of their community, and the ways in which they help each other, no one mentioned the bridge at all. This is because they didn’t see it as anything special; it was necessary, and therefore everyone – because everyone has a vested interest in it – just hunkered down and did what was needed. This type of humility and community strength can still be found back home sometimes in some rural areas, but it seems to be a dying breed in our “civilized” city culture. Are we really so advanced? What have we lost in our race to be modern?

What it means to be in Africa

Sometimes I get lost in thought and think: I am in Africa. I am in Africa. But then, what does it mean to be in Africa? I think sometimes I expected it always to be the tall swaying grasses and the beating drums, the large cats racing and chasing, traditional singing and dancing – the type of magic that would feel like Africa. It feels like there should have been some climactic intro for me, like: wow! Here is Africa! Instead I find myself sitting here and reminding myself of the awe I should hold, being here in what has become regular and normal.

But here is what it means to be in Africa. It means that someone who lives in a solid house with tv, solar panel, and plush furniture and can buy their son new shoes and mayonnaise for their potatoes can live next door to a family of 22 that only eats once per day. It means that a 16 y.o. girl who is in grade 7 comes home from school to excitedly show me that her test results for HIV came back negative. It means that the dust flies everywhere everyday, yet every morning yards are swept and houses or huts are cleaned with a personal pride. It means people live here just as people live everywhere, making do with what they have, dreaming of a little bit more, but happy, and finding occasion to laugh. It doesn’t necessarily feel magical to be in Africa, that Hollywood feeling. In fact, it feels a bit normal. Life, is life. People here live. Yes, there are mud and thatch huts, and at night I can hear the drums and the singing around the cooking fires. Everyday I meet and talk with people who are starving, who are HIV+, who do everything by hand, who have never seen a camera before. But people grow the food they need to eat, they make arrangements for the transport to town when they need it, they get creative when they don’t possess or have access to things they require. Life, is life, and maybe here in Africa that is magic enough.

"Doing" (international) development

Talking with my in-country coach, Thulasy, while I’ve been doing my two- (now three-) week stint in Lusaka, I was telling her about how I wanted to get back to the village and leave the OPPAZ office in the city where I was working a 9-to-5, working on reports that analyzed the data that I had collected in the village. I made the comment to her that it didn’t feel like I was “doing development,” since I could be in any office in any country doing what I was doing – I didn’t need to be in Africa if I was limited to the office all the time. That is where the attachment to the village and to the field is so important. It ties back in to Dorothy and to building and maintaining that connection to those who we actually are doing this for. Those people are real. And far from being helpless and dependent on aid, the life that they create with such little means is what truly inspires me.

Every day in the village I spent my time talking with women who quite literally run out of food and money for three or four months of the year. How do they and their families survive? Some get by on one meal a day. Some manage to find some limited low-paid piecework for some of the better-off farmers, in order to buy enough food for – again – a meal a day. Some get small loans from people within the community to buy food. Some live off of the charity of others who perhaps had a better harvest than they did. Somehow they get by – malnourished, hungry – but they survive. This is not few and far between. This is by and large the norm for the people in the villages in that area, and I would wager that it is true for the villages all over Zambia, and all over Africa. It seemed that no matter the variation in production amounts from their crops, most families felt the pinch of no food and no money during those last few months before crops were harvested.

These women and their families live close to the earth, tied to the earth. Their livelihoods depend on it, through what it yields to them in crops. Their houses are made of it, round walls built of poles, packed with mud, and crowned with thatch. They warm themselves and their food with it, burning charcoal or wood in fires. They complete all of their daily activities in it, for it is everywhere: floors are of dirt, maize and groundnuts are shelled while sitting on the ground, dishes are polished using the sandy earth, children romp and play amongst it, clothes and skin are covered in it, the wind whips and boils it up into dust storms that coat and spray everything. When I think of these people, I think of the earth, and how they make life in such conditions seem normal.

Should they be normal? What is it that should be changed, or improved? Obviously, people need to have food and money year-round. Water, health – also important. But should we be striving for every family to have cement or brick houses with iron sheet roofs? Should we be pushing for electricity to come to the area (30km off the road), for every family to collect electronics and furniture and gadgets to make life easy and comfortable? Is that progress? I can’t see it here. There are things that are more important.

To be continued…

My role in the village

An unexpected delay of transport (read: the bus for which I had bought a ticket to go to Kasama today broke down so wouldn’t be running until Monday, and all the other buses this morning had already left, so I am stuck waiting another day in Lusaka) has allowed me to put together a blog post or two, since I didn’t have the time before, and had really wanted to. See, things happen for a reason.

I realize I haven’t told anything of my time in the village, and I have two veins to talk about: what I saw/did/experienced, and what it made me feel and think about. I’ll start this post with the goings-on during my time in Chileka village.

So I went to work specifically with a small group of women farmers who form a collective known as Tigwirizane (tig-weer-i-za-ney) Women’s Club, meaning “to work together.” The group is a member of the Zambian organization OPPAZ that I am partnered with here. My role in coming to Chileka was to do a baseline survey – basically conduct interviews with a number of the Tigwirizane members about their living conditions, their farming methods, incomes, how much and what crops they produce, and the amount that is marketed versus home consumption. The idea is that by taking a “snapshot” of such things now, and then doing the same thing again in a few years following training workshops and organic certification that will lead to bigger and better markets (theoretically), we can measure how much impact there has been on the community – that big buzzword of international development. Basically, we want to see how much the community has improved because of assistance from the outside, in this case, OPPAZ.

So in Chileka I was set up with a translator, Jonathan Chiwawa, the 23 y.o. son of the principal of the community school. He has graduated from high school but he needs to rewrite some exams in order to continue his studies for a trade; in the meantime he works on house jobs and on the farmwork, but his passion is his dance and drum performance group, which combines entertainment with community messages and teachings, like was done here for Child Health Week when their songs and their skits were about hygiene and related subjects. Mr. Chiwawa, the principal, acted as a sort of coordinator for OPPAZ and had helped set up my placement in the community, and Mrs. Chiwawa was the secretary for the Tigwirizane group and a powerful member of the community. Although I wasn’t staying with them, I became very close with the family and spent much of my time with them in their fields or at their home.

Every day we would visit the homes of women in the group to interview them. Picking our way through a maze of identical mud thatch houses, we would find the one we had selected by lottery, and she would stop doing whatever it was that she had been doing – usually shelling dried maize or groundnuts (peanuts) – offer me the only stool or sling chair that they owned, and pull out a mat to sit on. The women were always so excited for me to visit and talk – even if through a translator, although they just LOVED it when I pulled out my handful of Nyanja, the local language. They all believed that my coming there was the solution to all their problems, that I could make the poverty go away, no matter how much Jonathan and I explained what my project was about. Nonetheless, everyone was so cheerful and so giving; I would leave almost every interview with a gift of some kind, be it groundnuts, beans, melons, and sometimes even meat. Yes, these are the same people that go without full meals every day. Yet I cannot refuse; to do so would be completely rude and insulting. So I would take a big gulp and offer as many thank yous as I could, hoping to convey how very much I appreciated and admired their generosity.

Pre-village update

I tried to upload a video here - it loaded for about 6 hours and crapped out at the end anyway. So, no go.

Otherwise, I have been able to upload lots of pictures on the flickr website (see post below for link) while I worked over the last few days (it also takes hours), and have now maxed out my space there, so make sure you check those out.

At this point, I'm not sure how many blog entries I will be able to post before I leave the city. If not, it will be mid-August when I return to Lusaka and the office (and the internet).

One more thing...

So, how about some emails? There is nothing better to fill my heart with warmth when I am very far away and lonely and confused than emails from home. Of course I have had constant contact with Kent, and a few emails and comments from some people - thank you! I love you for it! - but I would sure love to hear from more of you. Any length, even just a hello, or a comment on the pictures or the blog posts, or especially any stories from home, what you have been doing, daily routines - you just don't realize how much it brings me home and makes me feel normal to hear from you and what everyone is doing. So please, send me stuff at cherie.ratte@gmail.com but do it this weekend, since I only have internet access until Thursday!

Thanks!

See more pictures on my flickr.com space

Just a quick note to say that I have been uploading more pictures on flickr.com since it is slow and painstaking to include them in my blog. You can check them out on www.flickr.com, and under "People" search for Starring Cherie in the role of Albino Baboon.

Or go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28474150@N07/ if it works.

Love you.

Purple people and albino baby baboons

Composing these blogs is more difficult than I expected it would be. Not only is time a factor – being very busy with work and having been away for the last five days at our mid-summer retreat and conference with the rest of the team here in Zambia – but figuring out exactly what I want to say takes a great deal of thought and reflection. Every time I think I know what I want to address, I end up changing it or scrapping it. There are so many aspects, so many angles, and so many experiences that just can’t be captured in mere words or pictures, so I struggle to best communicate what I am thinking, feeling, and encountering.

The best way to try to put you, the reader, into my headspace is with some sort of analogy. “Cultural integration” is the big buzzword/buzzphrase, but it goes way beyond eating what the locals eat, picking up key phrases in the local language(s) (Zambia has over 70), and even living within communities, within local families. Never being able to become one of the locals is a drastic understatement, and I hope the following analogy and story can help you to understand the constant intense focus that I (and the other overseas volunteers) feel when over here.

My analogy involves purple people from outer space. Yes. Bear with me. So imagine that a new species come to our planet, and that they look pretty much like humans in every way but they have bright purple skin. They even act like us – mostly. But many rumours fly around about the abilities that they have, superior intelligence, what-have-you, and of course the advanced technology – I mean, look at the sleek spaceships they arrived in! There are not many of them here on Earth, just a few here and there who are living and working among us to see how we can mutually benefit from trade deals and such. They speak only a little bit of English, otherwise their own language is unintelligible to us. Some of them attempt to mingle with us humans, but by and large outside of work situations they keep to themselves. Otherwise, they seem friendly enough.

So put yourself into this scenario, with these strange but interesting beings here and there among us. How do we react to them? How do we see them?

If you’re honest with yourself, you’d be downright excited to see one and to be able to talk to one and see what they’re like. Everyone is talking about them. If you see one walking down the street, aren’t you going to stare? I mean, they have purple skin!! And even if it’s not meant maliciously, you still have to look – you’ve never seen anything like it before. It is a weird mix of exotic zoo animal/movie star fascination. You don’t really know what they’re like, but you have heard so many things about them. Someone said they could fly! Someone else said that they have come to take over, so we should be careful. You also heard that they have so many amazing gadgets that they carry with them – a shrinking ray (wow!), a transporter (can you believe it!), a food materializer - wouldn’t you love to see those things, OR even try them??!

But you also heard that they eat through their noses – you just gotta see that. And that when they sleep, they peel a new layer of skin at night. You’re just not sure, so you might be a little intimidated of them when they do say hello.
But if you were to be able to talk to a purple person, you would find that they do not have any special powers, and that they do not want to be singled out. In fact, they are quite shy, and when given so much attention, they feel targeted. Because they can’t speak English very well they are not able to talk to humans much, except for the few who they have trained in their special purple language. As a result, they remain misunderstood.

Okay, before I lose myself too much in this scenario, I think you have figured it out. Here in Africa, us whites are the purple people. This is especially true in the villages where there are never any whites, like in Chileka village and area where I stayed for a month. I was the only muzungu (white person) that had ever stayed there, so the majority of people had never seen one before, and definitely never interacted with one. This would be why I continually got comments like “now I can say that I’ve eaten a meal with a white person!” or why people would get SO excited if they shook my hand (in fact, people would line up in great crowds to shake my hand sometimes). Every place I went, any time I was outside of my house, even sitting in the front area or ANYWHERE, everyone stared at me. Everyone. And Africans don’t use a smile as a greeting, or even respond to smiles, so having dozens and dozens of cold-faced intense stares meet me 24/7 can get pretty weary. On the other hand, as soon as I opened it up with a “muli bwanji!” (hi, how are you), the faces would break into a large grin and a warm friendly “bwino!” (fine). Not only were people excited to talk to me – she actually IS friendly – but speaking in their own language, now that was the cat’s ass!

The reason I talk about this stuff is because although it may seem trivial or even anticipated, it has an effect on my mental and emotional health, and on everything I do. To constantly be the centre of attention, for better or for worse, can be very draining. Like I said: zoo animal, movie star, physical deformity; even if the attention is just simple curiosity, you have no privacy, no peace at any time. You can try to ignore it, you can try to change the reference through positive interaction, but you can never make it go away. You never become “normal.”

I think what really helped me to accept that attention was something that happened when I was on safari. Lots of baboons everywhere, but one day we saw a group of baboons with babies – you gotta love the babies! We were busy oohing and aahing over all the babies, and then we spied an albino baby! Wow! How often does that happen?! Suddenly, all of our attention was on the albino baby; all of the other baboons and babies forgotten. All of our pictures were of the albino baby as well. Then it hit me – why were we so drawn to that one? Because she was different? Because she was rare? She didn’t ask to be born albino, nor did she ask for all the special attention. She was just hanging onto her momma and doing the same things as the rest of the babies. That little albino baby baboon was a reflection of me here in Zambia. I could no more blame the locals for their fascination with me than I could blame us and our fascination with that albino.

The next time you wonder about it, consider a day in the life of someone with a serious facial disfigurement and the kind of attention that receives. I may be feeling this intense pressure here, but I will eventually go home to where my comfort level will return to normal (in terms of race majority, anyway). Others do not have that advantage, and must deal with that stress of tactless staring throughout their entire lives.

Tales from the village (and the safari park!)

Hello everyone! I am back in the city and have (limited) access to the internet (if only I could get my laptop to connect!). I had an amazing time in the village for the last month, met some absolutely incredible people and did not want to leave. I have many stories and reflections to share, and some awesome pictures of some truly inspiring people who have almost nothing but enormous hearts. Also, in between leaving the village and returning to the city I took a few days and visited the South Luangwa national park (look it up!) to do some safaris and game (wildlife) drives - all I can say is, wow. Again, I have tons of stories and hundreds of pictures that I will post as soon as possible. So I'll get writing and start posting within the next few days. In the meantime - Mel: you can tell Hannah that YES I've seen giraffes, AND zebras, AND hippos, AND crocodiles, AND leopards, AND LIONS - all at just a few metres away from our open-air safari jeep! What an experience. These teaser pics were taken with my crappy camera - THAT'S how close I was!

For now, musale bwino (stay well). My love to you all - especially to K and the boys. xoxox

Food: nshima, chicken, and caterpillars, oh my!

The staple food of Zambia is nshima (pronounced in-shima), which is ground maize (like corn) cooked up with boiling water to form a cross between porridge and mashed potatoes, with about the same weight. Zambians eat nshima every day, and in the poor regions, every meal. It is bland and has little nutritional value, but it fills you up – therefore the staple. It is served with “relishes,” which are not what we in the West consider relish but instead like sauces or a sort of veggie stew, often cooked pumpkin leaves or rape. For those that can afford it, it is served with meat as well: chicken on the bone or a whole fish served up on the plate.

Regardless of what it is comes with, nshima, being the main part of the meal, takes up fully half of your plate – or, in the restaurants, a second full plate to accompany your meat and relishes. Imagine serving yourself a meal in which mashed potatoes covered half of your plate. I guess that has been done in hard times in our country as well. I find the nshima so filling that I can hardly eat 1/3 of that portion, which becomes a problem since nshima is also the eating utensil.

The way it works is like this: you take an amount of nshima in your right hand (right hand only – left hand is for…toilet duties…). Then you work that amount around with your fingers and the palm of your hand to form a ball – right hand only! Then you make an indent in the ball with your thumb and use that to scoop up either some relish or a piece of meat that you pull off with the same hand. Yep, it takes some getting used to. For myself, I find my balls start out the size of half a golf ball, and get progressively smaller as I get fuller. Otherwise, I’d never get anything else eaten from my plate – I just fill up too fast. Unfortunately, it’s a lot like rice, and you feel hungry again before long.

Our first night in Zambia was the first opportunity to have nshima, where we went to the home of one of EWB’s long-term volunteers and had a big feast. Among the dishes were – yes – deep-fried caterpillars! They were short and fat and black from frying, and yes, I tried them. Cold, full of oil, and tasteless, if not a bit fishy, is how I would describe them. Will I have them again? Maybe I’ll give it a second try, but I don’t think I’ll go out of my way for them!

Next post will be upon my return from the rural areas (early July), so will have lots of pictures and stories to tell.

Minibus riding 101: “Drop me off at the robots”

So, the minibuses that you catch to get around town are actually minivans, but you cram 16 people into them, and occasionally a live chicken or two. There is no such thing as personal space; you are basically all on top of each other. So much for ironing your clothes for the office.

Stops are a little tricky when you don’t know where they are, what they are called, and there is no way to indicate that you want out. I pick significant landmarks, like churches (90% of the population is Christian), or for my office in Lusaka, I simply ask to be dropped off at the robots. Yes, the robots. And I get there every time. Now, Zambia does not have some weird architecture or has not been taken over by overzealous technology. The “robots” are the traffic signals, and with roundabouts everywhere courtesy of the colonial days, “robots” are few and far between, so that they make for a good landmark. Apparently, some people still believe that the signals *do* function by robots controlling traffic, and so the name has stuck.

With so much of the population deeply religious, questions often come up about what my faith is. Many people are aware that North Americans are not so faithful, but they are still quite disappointed to hear it. So I have begun to answer that I do not attend church in Canada, but have done so sometimes, which is true. That being said, I am always fascinated by religion and the strength and community that it gives people, and love to observe and participate. So what better time than now! Only one week in Zambia, and I decided to attend Catholic mass with my friend Elina, for the celebration of the Eucharist. Now this was unlike any Catholic mass I’m sure any of you have attended! A short mass (performed by a muzungu minister) intermingled with traditional Zambian drumming, dancing and songs – I enjoyed it so much. Of course, of the 500 or so people in attendance, I only counted two other muzungus besides myself, so again: here I am! Plus, towards the end, the minister called on all the visitors to the church to stand up and be recognized, and Elina nudged me to join in. No blending in here. But this was not the market; here I was welcomed into a community, and again I realized why it is that people put so much into their faith.

Following the mass was a procession through the streets, and if you have ever seen those giant swelling crowds on CNN that fill up the streets and seem to go on forever, picture me in the middle of it. I just tried to keep up with Elina and her 18-yr-old daughter Mercy. All in all, it was a wonderful way to be a part of people’s everyday lives here.

Dorothy is everywhere

In Engineers without Borders, we use the name of “Dorothy” to refer in general to any disadvantaged person in the Third World, those who we are trying to help, our beneficiaries.

So, as I mentioned, “Dorothy” is everywhere here. I don’t even have to leave Lusaka to find her, or him.

I see her in Teddy, the 20-ish-year-old who works here at the hotel from 7:30am to 5:30pm every day, who was orphaned when he lost his mother when he was in grade six, after losing his father in the Rwandan war in 1993. He worked piecework in other peoples’ farms in order to earn money to pay for his secondary school (junior high and high school), which costs $230 per semester, a fortune here. He finished with top marks, and now works at the hotel in order to save money and pursue his dreams of college.

I see “Dorothy” in Elina, a woman who lost her husband some years ago, and now raises her own four children as well as four of her brother’s children who were orphaned when they lost their parents in an accident. They range in age from 8 to 20, with one of her brother’s daughters being lame which required special surgery for her legs to be able to walk. “Dorothy” is also in Elina’s son, Lizwe, also 20-ish, also recently finished high school and planning on accounting college next year. In the meantime, he is the man of the family, and so supports the household by running the “shop” – a small stand that sells the basics of pop, bread, snacks, phone cards – for six days a week, and then working in the parish bookstore on the seventh day, after mass. Their family lives in a building that is the size of a backyard shed, where the main room serves as living room (a worn-out couch and two chairs, plus boxes), kitchen (an electric two-element portable burner), and dining room (coffee table). Still, their house is made of cement, and they have a tv and cell phones, and all the kids are in school, so their life is better than many.

Although these people have so little, they insist on giving me gifts. How can I feel okay accepting their gifts and hospitality, when I have so much in comparison? This will become more striking when I am in the rural areas, where “Dorothy” will be more prevalent, and probably more poor. But who judges what is poor? Of course, everyone needs the basic necessities of food, clean water, access to health care, a bit of clothing and appropriate shelter. However, other than that, the rest of the material items have little true value. The real wealth lies in the familial bonds and the social relationships of the community. I see a greater wealth here than money can buy.

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig...

Now that I’ve given somewhat of a description of the market, I can talk about more of the adventures that happen there. Every time you go to the market it is a true adventure. I never see other muzungus at the market; it is definitely intimidating, but it gets easier once you figure things out, get some local language, and know how much you should pay for things. One of the first things I bought at the market was a chitenge, which is a piece of cloth the size of a giant bath towel, in all different colours and patterns, worn most commonly as a skirt, but you can have “suits” (two-piece dresses) made out of them as well. It is the traditional piece of clothing for women here, since tops are usually t-shirts or any other regular shirt. It is worn by simply wrapping it around your waist and tucking the top corners in, and is worn over pants or a skirt. I see it a lot around the market, less so anywhere else in town, but it will be a must in the rural areas. It is also the sling with which women carry their babies on their backs, which you see everywhere.

Wearing my chitenge when I walk around town has earned me some buy-in with the locals. Since muzungus usually haunt the fancy shops and malls, those at the market and – gasp! – walking (instead of taxi) tend to stand out and draw attention. There are so many people on the street wherever you go, and basically 4 out of 5 are looking at you, with 1 or 2 of those actually calling out to you: “Hello madam!”, “Taxi?”, or “Muzungu!” When I am wearing my chitenge, the comments are usually: “Muzungu in chitenge!”, “You are looking very nice in your chitenge,”, or “You are looking like Zambian in chitenge!” If I throw a bit of Njanya (the language in Lusaka) in there – “Zicomo!” (Thanks!) – that brings on more approval. It takes the edge off of all the attention, but you still feel like a bit of a celebrity, albeit one of those celebrities that is both loved and disliked.

To buy at the market is to barter, and if you have trouble bartering, you will constantly pay too much for even the smallest items. Since things are relatively cheap here anyway, many muzungus don’t mind, and just go along with whatever the shopkeep says. However, this just perpetuates the perception that muzungus are full of money and you can charge them exorbitant prices and they will pay. The trick is to have some idea of what the regular price for the item should be, and to be prepared to walk away – i.e. don’t get your heart set on it – if the shopkeep won’t come down in price. This is where local friends or cultural informants come in, because they can tell you what you should be paying for things. Failing that, I sometimes ask the seller of one item what the price of a different item should be; they have no reason to tell me an inflated price. Mostly, getting around in the market just takes a lot of just-do-it. It is no place for the meek, that’s for sure, which can make it hard if you’ve had a long day and just want to slip in, buy what you need, and slip out.

May 24th - Impressions and similarities

So here I am! Zambia! I have been here a week now, in the capital Lusaka, and am figuring my way around the city and the culture. So what is Africa like? Even though I’ve been to other developing countries, I still was not sure what to expect from Africa. To my surprise, it is just like India, or Pakistan, or even Malaysia or the Middle East. The cities are developed – in a non-Western way – and the rural areas are still lively and bustling with markets and trades. People live; it is not all desolate as World Vision or Unicef ads would have you believe (although some live like that, just as some live on the streets in Canada too). Here in Lusaka, people dress in North American-type clothing, they go to work or school from Monday to Friday, they go to church on Sunday. There are shops and restaurants, overcrowded roads with cars, trucks, and buses, and kids playing along the streets. It is not so different from home.

The details, of course, are different. The roads can be quite bad, especially inside some of the neighbourhoods, where it can be like the worst rutted road you have ever experienced, times five, with humps and drops one after the other, sometimes a foot or two down – so much that you wonder how any car can get through. But they do. The air quality is poor, with vehicles shooting out black exhaust that catches your breath as you walk by. The ground is not grass – except along fancy hotels, government buildings or wealthy private businesses. Instead it is a sort of dirt, but of a fine powder almost like sand but without the grittiness, and it is red. And it is everywhere, since sidewalks do not exist in most places. It blows around in the wind, it coats your shoes as you walk – it is a part of the life here. I’m sure it will be all-encompassing in the rural areas. Side roads and paths have potholes filled in with broken bits of cement or brick, in a wonderfully haphazard way. It all adds to the chaos of life here and elsewhere that I love, the unpredictability and ingenuity that comes when people have to make do with what is available.

The biggest difference here in Zambia is that there are people everywhere! The main roads are always overfilled with loaded cars and overloaded minibuses and people walking everywhere, and carrying everything. The market – very similar to marketplaces in other non-European countries – is a rush. Some outdoors and some indoors, the stalls may or may not have wooden frames (cement walls for indoor markets), may or may not have sheets or grass walls separating them, and consist of closet-sized boxes all lined up in a row, open at the front with a hawker calling out to passers-by, sometimes with their wares spread out or heaped up on cardboard sheets on the ground in front. You can buy everything at the market: new clothes, second-hand clothes from N. Am., old shoes, DVDs, dodgy electronics like radios and power bars, belts, fruit and peanuts (here called groundnuts), and whatever else you desire. Men without stalls go around carrying their wares, handfuls of lollipops or kids’ trinkets, plastic shopping bags, sunglasses, watches, or cologne. It is just like Pakistan! The women are amazing, carrying huge baskets of bananas, sweet potatoes, homemade meats, or the like on their heads as they walk, as well as small children up to about three years old in a sling on their backs. Intermixed with all of this are the finely dressed people, a few drunks, and heaps of ordinary shoppers; there are usually no muzungus (white people or foreigners) at the market. Instead, the muzungus are all out shopping at the sanitary air-conditioned department grocery stores – yuck. I love the chaos of the market, but it can get stressful with the bartering, the staring, and constantly wondering how much you are being overcharged.

One thing that has been different for me here is that there is no way for me to go unnoticed or to blend in. Everyone sees the muzungu coming from a mile away, the same as you would notice a 7ft person in a crowd. Of course, this has made it very difficult to take photos discreetly. Elsewhere, either by dress or tanned skin, I have managed to slip in under the wire a little more, but not here. And with the low numbers of muzungus around, I am feeling so conspicuous that I truly know what it feels like to be an obvious minority.

And yet, most of the time I feel welcomed. Many people greet me on the street, and those that do not, still respond well to my greeting. People are very friendly and warm here, and even though I will be the only muzungu in my village – wow – I think I will be even more welcomed, just as it is in the rural areas back home in Canada.

A long first post from Zambia, but there is so much to describe. After Tuesday I will not have any electricity or internet for a month – but still cell phone service! for as long as my phone battery lasts – but new blog posts will still come up since I will post-date them here from Lusaka. I will receive all comments and emails at the end of June, and hope to hear from you then!

May 17th – London, England

So I am –t—h—i—s— close to being in Africa! After an intensive week of pre-departure training with National Office staff in Toronto, our group of 10 headed off to London on the evening of Thursday the 15th. While eight of the group continued on from London to Lusaka (Zambia) through Nairobi, two of us (Olivia and I) decided to have an extended stay in London! Actually, what happened was that Olivia got quite sick on the plane over the Atlantic, and remained sick throughout our 8-hour layover at Heathrow, such that she was nauseous and vomiting for something like 12 hours and she was not granted clearance to fly by the airline. The Heathrow medics decided that she should be admitted to hospital to be rehydrated and given a dosage of anti-nausea, so I remained with her after sorting our flights for the following day and advising the rest of our group.

Olivia is fully recuperated now, and on the plus side, we got to ride in a UK ambulance, experience the UK National Health Service (5-hour wait in the emergency ward), stay overnight in a hotel and deal with our jetlag with a 12-hour sleep and a hot shower. As well, I took a long walk around the neighbourhood surrounding the hospital while Olivia slept. I found a nice natural area to enjoy with everything so lush and green and the flowers on the trees all smelling so good. The act of actually leaving the airport and interacting with more of British culture helped my brain to sort out that I *was* away from home, since I was in a weird state from being in Pearson airport in Toronto, then onto a closed-in airplane without a window, and then directly into Heathrow airport in London without any real recognizable differences. The accents had changed but since I hadn’t *seen* myself travel (i.e. actually seen us lift off from the ground or land somewhere new) it had not felt like we were in a different place, or country for that matter. Somehow, I don’t think that it will be possible to not notice differences in the Nairobi airport…
Next blog – in Zambia!!

May 17th - pre-departure training, Toronto

My first blog! I will give a quick intro for anyone who is not familiar with what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. Since I’ve been studying International Development at University of Calgary for the last year (similar to humanitarian work, but more focused on building and empowering the less fortunate), I hooked up with an organization called Engineers without Borders (EWB) who work overseas in four African countries doing just that. I applied and was selected to be part of their team going to Zambia this summer, so I will be there from May through to the end of August 2008. For the ten of us going to Zambia, we are separated and partnered with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who work on local development projects in either the Water and Sanitation sector or the Agriculture sector.

I have been partnered with OPPAZ (Organic Producers and Processors Association of Zambia) which acts as an umbrella organization for small-scale organic farmers, meaning that they pool farmers and farmer collectives (such as co-ops) and provide resources and connections for them. My position with OPPAZ is to conduct a baseline survey for them this summer, which will have me traveling to two villages in two provinces (Petauke in Eastern province and Kasama in Northern province) where I will be working with members of OPPAZ and looking at how they utilize OPPAZ, advising them on what they have access to, checking in on what they need from OPPAZ, and measuring the effectiveness in the area. It falls into the monitoring and evaluation work that EWBers also perform for our partner organizations, in order to assist them in becoming even more effective in their development work and business. I will be alternating my time in the field with time at the head office in the capital, Lusaka, to write reports on the data I have collected, so my schedule has me spending one month in Petauke, then a week or two in Lusaka, then a month in Kasama, and the last week or two in Lusaka again.

The cool thing about the EWB placement is that the emphasis is on cultural immersion in order to make us the most effective. This means no 5-star hotels or white land cruisers! We stay with local families in their modest homes – which can mean mud-walled homes in some cases – and we share their meals, all of their accommodations (cup showers and latrines included), and become a part of their family during our stay there. With my placement having me move so often, I won’t be able to bond strongly with one family all summer like some of my other colleagues, but I will be able to compare different families and lifestyles in all of my different accommodations.

So that’s me this summer. I expect to put up lots of cool pictures with my blogs, but internet access may be limited so potentially only once a month. I will have a cell phone once in Zambia, and the phone number will be posted here on the blog, so please feel free to call me! It is VERY expensive for me to call Canada, but calls from Canada to Zambia can be as low as 13 cents a minute, so it is easy for people to call me! I can take calls in the evening (Zambian time): I will be 8 hours ahead of Alberta and Saskatchewan time, and 7 hours ahead of Manitoba time. Rather than use phone companies, the cheapest phone cards to call Zambia can be found on the internet (just Google it), but remember that you need a specific card to call Zambian CELL phones (different than land-lines). The card that Kent has is only 13 cents a minute to Zambia cell phones (Nobelcom.com), so not too bad. Contrary to what you would expect, I will probably have good cell service no matter where I am in the country. I would love to hear from people throughout the summer, so don’t be afraid to call!