So it has been a while since we posted, and we don't expect to be able to again for a while, so I'm following Gina's post earlier today right away with my thoughts on how we have been learning to live in Zambia now that we are really living here in our own house and our own village.
Zambians are very helpful when you ask them for information, but they can't give directions very well. Everything is "just there", or "very near". If the place you need to go is more than 100 m away or takes more than one turn to get to, you probably will have to ask another Zambian to clarify the directions as you get closer.
During my first weeks in Zambia I tended to lump Zambians into just a few categories. While I was learning the language, these categories largely revolved on how well they understood English, how patient they were with me as I tried to speak Lunda, or whether they seemed like they were hoping to get something from me or not. Now that I have been here for a while I am identifying a myriad of personalities and characteristics and seeing that Zambians are very diverse. I still haven't figured out sometimes whether the diversity is because of their Zambian culture or their own specific personality, but it is very important for me to observe and not anticipate a certain response when interacting with them. Regarding the language, the responses from people who don't understand the Lunda that I'm speaking is all over the board. I really appreciate the one's who try to speak slowly and work with me to understand what I am trying to say.
Even if Gina and I were not white and from a different country with a different culture and language, Zambians love to check the new folks out. The "front porch" culture of American days of yore is alive and well in Zambia. Just about everyone cooks outside their house, including us, and there is a path between each house that links everyone like beads on a string. So it is very easy for people to see what you are doing on a regular basis. This has been a great way to meet people, but the drawback is that we are stuck interacting with some people we'd rather not. But those are rare and meeting our neighbors has been a great way to get to know the village, learn the language, learn the culture.
After having our outdoor dish-drying rack built by some Zambians shortly after our arrival in the village, I took a shot at building some shelves for our outdoor bathing shelter. The shelves themselves were easy to construct after borrowing an axe from a friend, but I didn't have enough rope to tie all the shelves to the frame of wooden poles driven into the ground. So I learned how to make bush-rope after following one particularly helpful neighbor into the bush for a couple of hours one day. There are a couple of types of trees whose bark can be stripped off into long strips, and then cut into thinner strips which have the characteristics of thick and wide Zip-ties. Zambians use the stuff for all applications that Americans use rope and sometimes nails.
When I left my bike outside the house one day my neighbor commented that I should take the tire pump that is attached to my bike off because it could be stolen. Apparently tire pumps on bicycles in Zambia are similar to stereos in cars in America.
I have been enjoying the thunder and lightning storms in Zambia. We get a dose of it nearly daily and the thunder that precedes the storm, the deluge of rain in the beginning, and the slow taper to a drizzle afterwards is similar to one's favorite TV show- we really look forward to the routine, but the differences in duration and intensity are interesting to note.
I had my first meeting with fish farmer's last Sunday. Sunday's are the only day no one works in the fields, so it is the best day to get the most people to attend. The meeting went very well and I was delighted to help them problem solve some of the issues they are having with their fish ponds. One was in regards to weighing their fish. When they harvest, it is good to know the weight of the fish they harvest so they can sell it per kilogram, or keep track of their harvests. They asked that I try to locate a scale for the farmers so they could perform this important basic task. Paying for a scale is next to impossible for these farmers, and getting one donated is not likely, so I suggested that they could make bricks, rocks, or sandbags of known weight (calibrated on the scale at the nearest clinic), and then use a portable balance (hand made in the village) at the harvest site to know how much the fish weighed. The "Oh Yeah!" look on their face was priceless. I'm looking forward to helping them develop their new balance and weights when I return next week.
Gina and I had to go to our provincial capital of Solwezi for a meeting of Peace Corps volunteers and administrative staff, as well as celebrate Thanksgiving. Now that we are officially volunteers, we had to travel to Solwezi without a Peace Corps vehicle for the first time. We were going to take a bus, but we found a truck that was going to go to Solwezi that was charging a little less than the bus, and it would get us to Solwezi earlier, which we preferred. The back of the truck was an open bed with about 20 people packed into the back of it, ages 4 months to 60 years. Gina and I see this type of travel all the time in Zambia, but this was the first time on a trip of this length (expected to be about 4 hours). So we loaded up with the Zambians, their chickens, sacks of sugar and grain, and giant mushrooms for sale in Solwezi markets, and enjoyed the wind in our hair despite the cramped conditions. At one point I had a small boy so close to me that I felt I could have been arrested had I been in a country that enforced anti-pedophilia laws. And then the rains came. After getting a little wet the driver's helpers, who rode in the back with us, unrolled a heavy tarp to put over our heads. The tie down straps were nothing but the hands of those passengers near the edges willing to hold the tarp down. It only rained for a total of about an hour on the trip, so we weren't traveling under wrap for that long. After stopping what seemed like every 15 minutes in some sections of the trip for goods for sale on the side of the road, we made it to Solwezi in about 6 hours. Gina and I appreciated the Zambian travel experience, but I think we'll pay the little bit of extra cash and take the mini-bus to Solwezi next time.
It's possible that neither Gina nor I will be able to blog until January and February, when she and I, respectively, head to Lusaka on separate trips for training in our different programs. But we should be able to check email on our cell phones, and will be able to check snail-mail in Mwinilunga, so keep those emails, packages and letters coming!
Thursday, November 24, 2011
T-day and reminiscing the first month at site
Gina's Post:
So it seems like it’s been an eternity since we’ve posted a blog, but we’ve literally been out in the bush for about three weeks now. The provincial meetings in Solwezi have given us a nice opportunity to meet up with friends from training and even share an American Thanksgiving dinner complete with deep-fried turkey.
It’s been great to hear from friends and family, and we are truly appreciative of the letters and packages, which always seem to arrive on a rainy day (not too hard here since rainy season is in full swing, and there’s at least one torrential downpour per day). We’ve begun a pen-pal exchange with letters from Jane’s students and students at the local school, and they are very excited to hear from America. We may not have internet access before or during Christmas, so we just wanted to take the time to wish everyone a happy early holiday!
A few more housekeeping things before we write about the last month: I was able to upload some pictures to my web album from the end of training and our swear-in ceremony, so you can find them at: https://picasaweb.google.com/
Also, several of you said you were thinking of visiting us this summer, and we’re getting the hut ready for visitors, and would love to have people who are willing to go a little off the beaten path. If you are still thinking of coming within the next year or so, just let us know so we can plan our vacation schedules accordingly.
One Cruiser Drop:
After Scott’s swear-in with the President, we relaxed for about a day at the Solwezi house before going on a crazy shopping spree to furnish our not-yet-completed hut. The villagers worked like crazy getting the roof finished, the bathing shelter and toilet made, and the floor halfway done before we came. The one problem was, they didn’t have enough concrete to finish the floors, and it’s not just something you can pick up at the nearest Home Depot around here. So, we already knew we were moving into an unfinished hut, and we also knew that we wanted to plastic the thatched roof to make it waterproof as well as concrete the mud walls.
In Zambia, as we’ll probably write in another post, transportation is definitely not easy to come by. When a new Peace Corps volunteer gets posted to their site, they get the one “free ride” from a Peace Corps cruiser to stock up on everything of weight or from the big city for the next two years. If not, they either have to plan on hand making something in the village or paying an arm and a leg to strap it onto an already overloaded bus or truck. So, of course we took the opportunity of the cruiser drop to stock up on items we thought we’d need for the next two years. Below is a list of just some of the things we picked up in Solwezi with our move-in allowance:
Black plastic rolls for the roof
Lots of nails, hammer, saw
4 bags cement
A broken chair which Scott clamped together
A mattress (our bed is STILL being made by a local carpenter who is splitting his own wood)
Lots of candles
Lots of toilet paper
Two braziers—cans that Zambians have shaped into cook stoves fueled by charcoal
Two large stainless-steel pots and a cast-iron dutch oven pot
Lots of buckets
A big wash basin
Two corrugated iron sheets to build a brick oven
Chicken wire
Jerry cans (empty vegetable oil containers used to carry water)
A large container of cooking oil
Wash basins
Flour, pasta, and sugar
Etemwa (hoe) blade, hoping to get a handle hand-made in the village
A manual drill that you crank (no power tools up here!)
Empty large cornmeal sacks for house projects
We arrived in our village at dusk and had a warm welcome by villagers. The first week at site was exciting, exhausting, and amazing all at the same time. I have highlighted the details here—sorry for the time delay.
A Week in the Life:
10/27- Posting Day. After lots of shopping for the above items and many more, we left Solwezi in one of the most full cruisers I have ever seen, piled 5 feet high on top and with a fully loaded trailer in the back. It had not only our move-in stuff, but also that for two other volunteers. The awesome driver Patrick made it to Mwinilunga in record time of about 4 hours, with a few short stops at other volunteers’ houses to drop things off and pick up our new kitten, which we hope will be a rat-eating machine in our hut. There is also another volunteer’s kitten in the basket in the cruiser, and they are both sitting in the basket hissing at us. Was this really a good idea? In Mwinilunga, we ate a quick lunch of peanuts and hardboiled eggs and learn that the other cruiser driver was dissatisfied with the pay and has decided to head back to Lusaka without posting the two other volunteers. So they have to consolidate even more people and things into ours, and our awesome driver Patrick. Highlight was picking up the AWESOME package from Dad at the Mwinilunga post office complete with dark chocolate and Time and Economist magazines. We dropped Ryan off at his site and the two kittens parted ways, before buying a huge bag of charcoal for cooking and heading up yet another dirt road to our village, where it was almost dusk. We had a warm welcome of what seemed like over 100 villagers waiting to help us unload our stuff into our new home for the next two years. Unfortunately, Patrick missed the turn off into our narrow driveway and got the cruiser and trailer stuck in the mud about 300 meters from our house. Good thing we had a bunch of villagers to help push us out of the mud puddle, re-connect our trailer, and help help bring the stuff into the house. We didn’t have enough light or energy to get the brazier going, so one of our neighbors was kind enough to give us cassava nshima and rape (kinda like spinach) and cooked up a few of our eggs for dinner. We unpacked a few bags, set up our mosquito net, and crashed on our sleeping bags rolled our over our newly-purchased mattress, still covered in plastic.
10/28- First Day in the Village. You would think that with our exhaustion we would have slept like rocks, but unfortunately our newly-acquired rat-killer was scared to death and crying all night. I had to wake up to dig the powdered milk out of one of our bags to give it to her. I fetched about 80 L of water in two different trips, and the village children helped me carry ALL of it, even the large containers. We’ll see how long that lasts. We couldn’t unpack all of our stuff due to lack of shelves/nails on the wall and when we realized that the front half our main room was still dirt and would have to be concreted. I did my first village cooking project around lunchtime and supervised some teenage boys make a dish drying rack out of sticks and wood rope in exchange for some soya and rice. Scott and I then fetched fired mud bricks from an abandoned building site a few compounds down and did several loads of them back to our site, using his bike rack. We made a makeshift table using the bricks and the door that was never put up between the two rooms of our house. Villagers pointed us to a big sandy stretch of road about 1 km from our house, and some of them helped pack six large bags of sand and carry it to our house so we can hopefully get the remainder of our house cemented before the end of the week. We were FINALLY able to relax in the evening a little as neighbors came over and introduce themselves. It rained slightly and we heard frogs and crickets singing.
10/29- First day at the Clinic. The cat actually slept most of the night and didn’t start crying until 4am, so we got a little more sleep. She’s actually purring rather than spitting at us when we touch it and we officially named her “Hops.” We had breakfast of oatmeal and tea, and Scott fetched more water since there was apparently still oil in some of the water-fetching containers we bought. My clinic counterpart heard we had arrived in town, so he stopped by my house and we rode the 3k to the clinic. I brought over some health posters about HIV prevention that I had picked up in Lusaka. Kenneth said that my first “patient” was in the clinic, which made me a little nervous since my role here is health educator rather than clinician. It was a woman in labor, and she had been at the clinic since the previous night. She was very young, and it was her first child. There were no men to be seen, but a group of her woman friends as well as a trained woman in the community called a traditional birth attendant (TBA). I sat in the room for about 20 minutes trying the best I could to speak in broken Lunda, and the women did a great job of laughing and correcting my mistakes. Since I could the Zambian women knew exactly what they were doing, and I had absolutely nothing to add to the situation except comic relief, I said “it will come slowly slowly” and then ducked out of the labor room. Not quite sure if I’m ready for a Zambian birth experience yet! I went over to the day clinic room, helped file some charts into a weird number system that I can’t quite understand and made a weekly schedule for my coming to the clinic. I sat in a few patient triages to see how the community health workers, who are volunteers from the community, (there are no doctors or nurses at my clinic) were treating patients. When I got home, Scott spent some time organizing various belongings into themed bags so at least we had somewhat of an idea where to look for stuff. I cleaned my bike and fetched more water while Scott went to look for a hoe handle with some of the villagers. He successfully found one, as well as ate dried crickets and drank honey wine AND negotiated the price on some handmade wicker chairs to be made by one of our neighbors. Some kids were climbing the 40 foot tall tree in front of our house to get some yummy citrus-like fruit, and they were delighted to have me take their pictures. They were all very polite, and even shared some of the fruit. Scott and I ate a dinner of eggs, crackers and chocolate, played with the cat and went to bed.
10/30- Food and Church Day. We woke up and decided we wanted to use our new dutch oven to try to make cornbread on the brazier. As it was cooking, our host family father informed us that we needed to introduce ourselves to the village headman as apparently we hadn’t done that yet. So, of course we left it on the coals, while we went to go meet the headman who wasn’t even home. Of course we came back to a lump of bread even blacker than the charcoal that was cooking it. I was not willing to give up on the first bush-baking experience, so whipped up yet another batter and with lots of supervision and coal maneuvering, we actually got a decent loaf of cornbread, which we shared with our neighbors who have been so generous to us over the past few days. Since it was Sunday, we headed over to the nearest Catholic Church to at least introduce ourselves, knowing we would probably miss the service after the failed headman and bread-burning experience. All villagers notice whether you go to church or not (it doesn’t really matter which one), and we didn’t want to send the wrong message our first week at site. Although the service was over, we were able to meet the traveling deacon, who says he divides his time among 20 bush parishes and shares the duties with a priest. Scott went to look for vegetables to buy from someone’s field and I made some curtains from some of the cornmeal sacks and swept the house. Scott came back with tomatoes, onions, and cassava leaves (sombe). Our host mother helped me pound the sombe using a huge wooden mortar and pestle. We made nshima out of cornmeal, which was a treat for the villagers and had more visitors, including two drunk guys asking for volleyballs for the school. It was our first time practicing our well-rehearsed explanation that we provide knowledge, not things. We went to visit another neighbor’s pineapple fields and saw a gorgeous sunset over the fields. We went inside to have some tea and raisenettes (thanks Dad!) and the kitty is now purring and climbing all over us.
10/31- Halloween BOMA trip. All district capitols are called BOMA’s and Mwinilunga is ours. The town we will use for all little errands such as going to the post office, re-stocking on supplies such as eggs, and meeting officials from the departments of health and fisheries. A few other PC volunteers centered around the area decided to meet up for Halloween, and although we were hesitant to leave our village we just settled into, we did want to meet some of the other volunteers and run some errands. We packed our bikes and Scott waxed the cement floor in the bedroom while I washed the dishes. On the way, we stopped at a neighboring village because we saw a guy sawing planks to make what looked like a table outside of his house. This was the first carpenter we had seen, so we negotiated the price for a bookshelf and a proper table. Including the carpenter stop, the bike trip took about 2 hours and wasn’t too hilly. We also stopped by the Ministry of Health and World Vision office to introduce ourselves to various government officials before meeting up with our Peace Corps friends for Halloween, picking up a lovely package from Scott’s sister-in-law and heading back to our village.
So that was our first 5 days in a nutshell. I’ll occasionally write “A Week in the Life” so you can see our progress as we slowly integrate into our community over the next two years. As you can see, each day is filled with its own adventure.
Thanks again to all our family, friends and neighbors back home for all of your support. We wish you a happy Thanksgiving and holiday season. Signing off until our next internet access allows J.
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