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.