Is there sun in America? (Scott's)

On the day after Christmas I was working in the bean field of a Methodist missionary named Paul.  He was trying to promote the use of a hand-operated plow made from an upside down bicycle frame with one wheel and a digging blade attached to where the seat would normally be.  Rural villagers typically use a hoe to weed their crops and pile ridges of soil where the seeds were to be planted or where seedlings were growing to keep them from washing away.  I wanted to use them to see if this type of appropriate technology could be applied in our village, so I volunteered to weed part of his field to see for myself how the bicycle-plow worked. 
As I worked alongside some of the Zambian boys operating these plows I could tell they were talking about me.  I couldn't understand all they were saying as they were trying to be discreet so I asked them if they had any questions for me.  They said yes and proceeded with a long-winded question.  In my typical style of answering with other questions to clarify what they said, I found out they were asking if the sun shined in America.  This was an interesting question that I don't typically get.  Usually people want to know how long it takes to get to Zambia from America or want to know what we eat in America.  They can't believe that we don't eat cassava porridge for 2 out of 3 meals a day.   So, I was eager to explain that the sun did shine everywhere in America, but differed depending on the part of America one was in.  I could tell from their expression that they understood what I was saying but I was not really answering the underlying question they were asking.  Then I recalled how on many different occasions when I am not wearing my Teva sandles, but instead my thin flip flops that show off the deep contrasting tan line of where my Tevas usually rest, how Zambian's of all ages will notice the difference in skin tone between the tanned and untanned skin of the top of my foot.  So in my best Lunda I asked them if they were asking if the sun shined in America because it seemed to them that my light skin was not used to the sun in Zambia.  They shook their heads enthusiastically and we all had a good laugh.  I thought about going into an explanation of how different races of humans developed in different areas of the world, and what happens when those people go to other parts of the world, and how the atmosphere of the earth has changed in the relatively recent past sufficiently enough that lighter skinned people are more easily burned by the sun's rays, but I refrained.  We went along working for the rest of the hour before it started pouring rain, sending us inside for the day and remembering our mutual laugh about our obvious differences.

Rural Zambian Competition (Scott's Post)

Earlier in December Gina and I helped out one day with a camp for young women called "Camp Glow".  It is designed to empower young women in Zambia through health education and providing opportunities to do things they may not typically do that can promote a sense of self-esteem and worth.  Every province in Zambia that has a Peace Corps presence sponsors these week-long camps.  One of the activities was a relay race with about 7 different stages where girls did everything from a three-legged race to singing the national anthem while gargling water.  They were explained the rules in English and their local language, but the concept of a relay race, American style, was apparently not in their realm of experience.  Instead of finishing a particular leg and continuing to the next with a different member of their team as fast as their team could go, the girls wanted to do each leg as a separate race.  That is, when they finished a leg of the race, the winners waited and watched as the other members of opposing teams reached the end of that particular leg.  What resulted was a mass of girls together during each leg of the race instead of a steady thinning out of the racers along the course.  The girls were apparently so excited to be part of this unique event they didn't want to miss out on seeing their friends perform each leg of the race, all the while laughing and cheering each other on.  At the end there was one young woman who complained that there were so many people around the "station" of one of the legs of the race she couldn't get to start her leg in a timely manner.  In America it would have been a valid complaint because it hindered her from performing her best.  But there in the middle of a worn out soccer field among a gaggle of giggling girls she was looked upon as a sore loser.  In America the rules would have been followed closely so that the competition could be completed to show who was the best, but in Zambia the rules were loosely regarded in favor of doing the competition together as a group.

pictures through Christmas

Here is the link to pictures taken through Christmas time.

https://picasaweb.google.com/110221855486252629515/ThroughChristmas?authkey=Gv1sRgCKzW7Pi1i_TuSg

One Nation, Two Worlds (Scott's post)

The motto on the Zambian seal is "One Nation, One Zambia".  It's a great motto.  It has been bringing together over 70 different tribes in this country all speaking different languages for many years in relative peace.  One aspect of Zambian culture where it falls short of its goal is bringing together rural and urban Zambians.
During a meeting in our village to discuss how we should proceed with finishing the well that our villagers are digging it was determined that the major problem right now to overcome was getting the well deeper.  The water level is lowest at the end of the dry season, which is about October in our area, and the villagers made a lot of progress on the well, reaching a depth of 8.5 meters.  However, as they continue to dig, the water table continues to hinder progress with digging deeper and makes it difficult to get anything but very muddy water from the well.  So it was decided that someone needed to ask water officials in our Boma (Mwinilunga, the nearest big town) for assistance with getting a water pump to evacuate the water from the well allowing it to be dug to about 12 m.
"OK, who is going to do that?" I asked.  I already knew the answer before I asked since this topic comes up whenever we discuss getting assistance for anything from government officials in the Boma. 
"You know, Mr. Scott, when you go and talk to the people in offices there in the Boma, they listen.  But when it is one of us doing the talking, we come away with nothing."  Ryvus said.  The villagers in the rural areas seem to have an inferiority complex when it comes to interacting with officials from the Boma.  The list of possible reasons why is long and complex.  Perhaps it is because the officials don't have any respect for the villagers.  Or because of the difference in education between Boma officials (which is usually a high school education and sometimes a Bachelor's degree), and the villagers (which can range from no formal education to grade 9 completion only).  Or an obvious lack of interest in helping the villagers.  Or a lack of understanding of the problems of the villagers.  One reason for lack of assistance that is not likely is a heavy workload.  Overworked is not something for which I have seen much evidence.  Many Peace Corps volunteers have lamented about how it seems that government officials are not doing much of anything when they visit them in their offices.
This inferiority complex, for whatever reason it exists, is probably one of the top 5 reasons for the slow pace of development in this country.  Some others include corruption, lack of infrastructure, the need for government officials to get "sitting fees" to do anything outside of their physical office, and feeling helpless against the effects of witchcraft.  But those are topics for a different blog.
With an understanding of the situation I went to the Boma and talked to three different agencies who might have a water pump for their activities.  Two of the three said they have a water pump, but it is in the provincial capital, Solwezi, and they are not sure when it will be back in Mwinilunga.  I wouldn't be surprised if the pump in question is actually the same pump, shared by both agencies when they have a project to complete in Mwinilunga.  We agreed to keep in touch about when it might be back, which translates to me calling the officials periodically to see if the pump is there or not. 
The third agency quickly dismissed the need for a water pump at all.  "Ah, those villagers are better off using their traditional ways to dig.  Just have them use buckets to draw the water as they dig." said the official in a tone wavering between disgust and conceit.  I asked the official to imagine standing in a hole 9 meters deep and just a little over 1 m in diameter trying to use a shovel and a pick to dig while avoiding getting hit in the head with one or two buckets continuously going in and out of the well, periodically sloshing water over you as the buckets going out hit the side of the well.  The official shrugged, "It is hard work, but that is what they should do.  It is expensive to transport a pump and the fuel to operate it to the village.  And they should use the local materials they have so they learn to do it sustainably."
Sustainable!  I thought.  As the Ministry of Health peppers rural Zambia with a borehole next to every school and health clinic in Zambia, and World Vision installs boreholes in other areas where they are focusing on children's welfare, this official has the nerve to talk about sustainability.  It is the catch-phrase of many organizations, including the Peace Corps, giving assistance to Zambia these days.  Those organizations are seeing the "free handouts" mentality growing in rural Zambia as government and NGO's have tried to jump start development in rural Zambia with gifts of equipment, structures, and training.  Many villages expect to receive the same free things that they heard about another village receiving.  I didn't think of this sustainability "rebuttal" until after I left.  At the time of my interaction with the man I spoke with remorse, "It is easy for us, with our nice bicycles and motorcycles, new shoes and nice clothes, and a well-paying job, to say 'let them use buckets'.  But this is hard work that none of US would be willing to do when we know there is an easier way.  So I will continue to try to find a water pump until all options are exhausted.  Only then will I tell my villagers that no agencies are willing to help with obtaining a water pump and that they will 'just have to use buckets'".  With that I simply walked off in disappointment.  To date we found a water pump we could use for a price but it is too small to be able to pump 12 m of vertical head.  I have not exhausted all options yet but I am thinking of how to tell our villagers to 'just use buckets' in a positive way.
By the way, lest you worry about our water supply, we are confident in our water filter to make our water clean enough for drinking if it has to come from the questionable water sources further away, and in the rainy season which we are in right now it is easy to collect fresh rain water from the gutters I built on parts of our roof.  For our villagers, however; using gutters requires some materials in which most are not willing to invest, so the woman and girls resort to carrying water on their heads for their daily water needs, where bathing and rehydration get the short straw because of the amount of time and energy required to get water from those questionable water sources.  Meanwhile those officals in the Boma, just 16 kilometers but a world away, continue to turn on a faucet in their house whenever they need water.

A Memorable Week--Gina's Post

 

A Week in the Life: September Edition (Sorry it's Late!)

Again I'm on Zam time with getting my blogs posted, but I wanted to give just another little snippet of village life intertwined with transportation stories of some of our travels.   This last series of journal entries dates from September when we were on our LONG journey back to the northwest of the Northwest province from Lake Tanganyika.

September 26th: 24+ Hours of Transport
I don't know if we actually woke up, because I don't know if being on a night bus since 2:30pm the day before counts as sleeping.  But . . . the bus stopped at its final destination, Kitwe at about 2am, letting us fend for ourselves finding onward travel toward Northwest Province in the middle of the night after 12 hours of being on a bus.  I was quite tired myself, and Scott kept falling asleep on the mosquito-infested benches when we heard the call "Chingola, Chingola, Chingola" from the driver of a shared taxi who was able to drop us off at a hitching junction just as day was about to break.  

At the junction, a nice policaman named Felix who usually stop cars to search before the northbound traffic goes to the Congolese border asked us where we were from, what we were doing, and told us he would talk personally to the drivers to help us find a ride.  Sure enough, after about 20 minutes he found us the bed in the cab of a semi bound for Solwezi.  The driver stopped to pick up several other paying passengers, and all I wanted to do was take a little nap at the Peace Corps provincial office in Solwezi.  Unfortunately, the office was closed for a workshop, so Scott and I decided to try to get to Mwinilunga that very same day.  We stopped at a little shwarma shop next to a gas station around 9:30 and took turns watching our bags and going to the market for needed essentials.  On my way out of the restroom, I ran into Sally, a blond Australian in an SUV doing a Shoprite run.  She was happy to give us a lift to the nearest mine where she and her husband work.  She apparently used to manage mines in Australia, but couldn't handle the Zambian men talking down to her, so she quit her management position and "is getting used" to being a housewife like all the other expatriate women on the mining compound.  She was just glad her husband could pull in a good salary here in Zambia and was quite astounded when we told her our Peace Corps stipend.  

After that mine, we waited by the side of the road for quite some time and met Richard, the self-proclaimed neighbor of the Peace Corps house.  He had a passenger in the front, drove extremely fast, and was on the phone the entire time.  I alternated fearing for my life and drifting to sleep.  When he turned off, a super friendly mine worker in a pickup truck named Jeremy gave us a lift in his cab, although he had to turn off at the third mine down mining row.  Just as we were waiting at the corner expecting that our only other options would be the late afternoon bus or a cantor truck, a white Zimbabwean ex-farmer turned mineral prospector after the Zimbabwean government seized seized his tulip farm in 2006 (Mugabe's government re-possessed all land owned by whites, no matter how many generations the land had been in the family) said he could give us a lift until his next prospecting site.  Although he went to Europe for 6 years and just recently returned to Africa, he still visits family and friends in Harare every 6 weeks.  It was about 3:30 in the afternoon, and in the past 24+ hours, we had been on seven different vehicles.  

Now that we were on a desolate patch of tarmac past the mining strip, we were exhausted and our best hope of getting to Mwinilunga was either by bus or cantor truck.  Luckily the next vehicle we saw was a cantor truck with Maggie and Brian, some of our Peace Corps friends, in the back.  We found out that the truck wasn't actually going to Mwinilunga, and we were too tired to look for transportation #9, so Scott and I made the executive decision to camp at Bryan's for the evening and try to find a hitch to our site the next day.  His neighbors looked on and greeted us in Lunda as we set up the tent, and it was nice to hear that familiar language after a week in Bembaland.  Brian was a wonderful host and made a stew of soup mix, pasta, and soya pieces.  He also heated us a hot bucket bath over the brazier and we played Monopoly cards while it started sprinkling lightly as I passed out in the tent, probably before 8pm.  Scott stayed up to play yet another game.

September 27th: Homecoming!
We both slept in past 8am, which was much needed, as it would have been hard for us to get back to the village in the dark and exhausted.  We wanted to buy eggs to make pancakes for Brian, but all the little tuk shops were out of the essentials.  I walked about 2k down the road to the school and there was no one selling eggs that side either.   Nontheless, we enjoyed eating breakfast on Bryan’s front porch, including tea, slightly gritty homemade tortillas (since there were no pancakes), jam, and apples.  Bryan noticed that he had chicks hatch the previous night and he placed the new hatchlings in a hawk-proof enclosure he made out of chicken wire.  One chick dropped from the elevated nest to the ground, and I got to hold the little hatchling before giving it back to its mother. 

Unfortunately we were enjoying the morning breakfast and chicks too much, because we heard several vehicles pass by the nearby road toward Mwinilunga from Bryan’s house.  Since there would be no buses passing by until at least 3pm, Scott, Maggie, and I headed toward the road around 9:30 to try to flag down any vehicle that might be going to Mwinilunga.  Maggie waited by the shops while Scott and I walked a kilometer to a scenic spot by the river.  We saw nothing for hours except a few completely full cars.  I read over 100 pages of my current book and we took turns drifting to sleep under a tree by the road.  At least the weather was pleasant.  Finally around 1pm, a family van passed us by, and Maggie was already in it!  Luckily they had space for two more riders.  It was a very generous Lunda family; the father had gotten a job at a mine near Solwezi, while the grandmother and child took turns greeting us in Lunda.  They were only going to a junction before Mwinilunga, so dropped us off there, while first offering us a snack.  We politely declined as it was generous enough of them to take 3 passengers plus all of our luggage!

It was about 1:30 pm, and we waited under a chota near a bar to get out of the midday sun.  Drunken men spoke to us about white people in broken English while women brought Maggie and myself a bench and we exchanged pleasantries in Lunda.  The drunk men proceeded to talk specifically to Scott about Lunda culture, especially adolescent initiation ceremonies.  One of the drunk guys did manage to flag down a vehicle for us since it was hard to see from the chota.  It was a cantor truck packed full with baskets, luggage, huge sacks full of dried fish, and over 15 people sitting precariously on top of everything.  I hung on to a piece of strapping for dear life as the truck plotted along the road in the bright sun while the wind whipped my hair around.  Unfortunately the strapping was coming off of the stinky bag of fish, so I wedged my foot between two of the sacks, hoping the leverage would keep me on the truck!  Maggie dropped at her place, and I immediately climbed down to her spot, which seemed less life-threatening.

We reached Mwinilunga BOMA at dusk and I ran to the post office to find a surprise package from Meredith and Jeff!  It definitely brightened the day of long waits and harrowing transport.  We were so close to home . . . but unfortunately we checked around town and all vehicles going toward our village had already left for the day.  We could either start walking up our road 20+ kilometers toward our village and hope for some type of transport on the rural dirt road, or splurge on a taxi.   We grabbed a quick egg sandwich and meat pie for dinner as well as bread to take to the village and opted for the latter.  It was a boy probably no older than 19; he had never even been up our road before.  A friend of his jumped in “for the ride,” and they were both very grateful for our business, asking us if we had any other work for them.  Of course we had to explain that we were Peace Corps volunteers and us taking a $20 taxi to the village was not a frequent occurrence. 

Scott and I arrived home at dusk after over 3 days of being on transport or waiting for transport.  Ryvus and Ryford had swept the area surrounding our house and even filled the water drum!  And . . . we had hatchlings of our own.  Six out of 7 of Beta Jones’ chicks had survived and were chirping and teetering around with their proud mother.  We laid our bags down, opened our package, and fell straight into bed.

September 28^th: 2 Births

We must have slept in, since the chickens were already out and about, and then proceeded to have a delicious breakfast of 5 eggs from our chickens, basil, and tomatoes from the garden.  I spent the morning doing chores including unpacking, tending the garden, sweeping chicken manure, and washing dishes thinking I could spend all day around the house just settling in.  Scott had an impromptu visit from a local NGO vehicle who had enough fingerlings (baby fish) to stock 4 ponds he helped design, including the church pond.  When he came back, we both went to visit the neighbors to see the new well they were digging by hand and their new goat milking stand.  The well is finally functional, and many neighbors are going over there with buckets.  They were proud to show how they had trained the goats to call them by name and have them jump up onto the milking stand.  Altogether, there are 2 pregnant does and 2 young does.  So far, only the very pregnant one tolerated human touch, but at least it’s a start.  The neighbors looked on, impressed that there will be milk in their very own village one day. 

I finally rode my bike to the clinic around 11:30 just to touch base after several weeks of being away.  I didn’t really expect to see many people, since many of the clinic volunteers knock off for lunch around this time.  I couldn’t have been more wrong!  There were 70+ women and their children waiting for under 5 clinic, which is basically to weigh the children to see if they are malnourished.  A different volunteer than usual was manning the scale, and he said the clinic was being audited by people from the district and the daily volunteer was helping show the government officials the records.  Usually I know when government officials are around because of a large SUV parked in front of the clinic, but I guess these three had been dropped off. 

I went in to help them find some papers they were looking for when I heard a knock at the window by Hildah the TBA (traditional birth attendant).  I thought Hildah might just be saying hello, but it seemed urgent, because she said there was an “underweight” baby in the labor room that needed more immediate assistance.  I spoke with the three auditors to see when their SUV was coming back, and they mentioned that one was actually a doctor who could probably help.  He calmly entered the waiting room and saw a baby with good color swaddled in blankets and laying by itself.  “This one looks fine,” he said, and almost turned to leave.  Luckily Hildah opened the door to the delivery room, saying, “not that one, this one.”

The baby was a pasty white, not breathing at all, and sitting like a lump while her mother mournfully looked on.  The child was still attached to her mother by the umbilical cord, which the doctor directed to have cut.  He asked if we had a suction tube in the clinic, and of course we did not.  By this point, the small child was turning blue.  He swaddled the non-breathing baby and did a series of chin tucks and repositions to get oxygen down the airway.  Time stood still and I helped hold the large bag valve mask that was far to big for this little one as years infant CPR courses rushed through my head.  The doctor was trying to get the correct angle for airflow when I volunteered to look in the main clinic building one more time for a simple suction device.

The two auditors were still in the med room, unaware of the emergency out back.  They handed me one of the newly-arrived labor kits, which of course had everything but a suction device.  Back in the labor room, the baby was turning slightly pink and produce barely audible coughs.  There was finally a very weak cry, and I called the mother to come in from the waiting room to see her child, but she would not hold her.  The baby remained wrapped up, alone, barely breathing on the birthing table, and the hospital workers heated up warm water bottles to keep the heat.  Of course I wanted to tell them she needed her mother’s skin-to-skin contact, but I felt there was some unspoken cultural taboo that prevented me from it.  I left the labor room, not being able to handle knowing if the baby continued breathing.

I went back to the main clinic, furious, saying to the auditors, “now you all know exaxtly why our clinic needs a nurse.  That baby in there almost died, and it would have if we didn’t have a doctor here happening to visit.”  They nonchalantly went about their business as if this small clinic’s problems were nothing.  Seeing how distressed I was, the head of the auditing team suggested I write a letter of complaint to the district office about the lack of any trained professional staff at our facility (there are supposed to be two).  I sat down right then and there and wrote a 2-page letter, trying to state my observations about lack of staffing at our clinic for this past year.  I highlighted that I as a Peace Corps volunteer am supposed to do health education, not direct treatment, and I am in no way a substitute for a trained nurse at our site.  I hand-passed the letter to the head auditor, looking at him directly in the eye and giving him the this is serious look.

I really wanted to go back home, but Hildah wanted me to see another live delivery (it would be my 3^rd in Zambia), and I was secretly curious to see how the little boy in the makeshift incubator was doing, so I decided to stand in for this next birth.  They had already cleaned the labor table with bleach and water and another mother was on it ready to give birth!  I asked if the woman had brought a green antenatal card just to check for any health information and scanned it for any red flags surrounding the birth.  There was no red mark in the corner like there should be for a high-risk birth, but I glanced to the left in the HIV test column, and sure enough, it was marked “R” for reactive, meaning the mother was indeed HIV+.  I went to the main clinic building to ask the volunteer tester if this was an error, since all women who are HIV+ are supposed to go to the BOMA to start taking antiretroviral drugs that can prevent the virus from being passed to the child while in utero.  He told me that she was in fact positive and after counseling, had declined the referral to the BOMA for treatment, most likely because the 20 kilometer walk was too much, along with the cultural taboo of being HIV+.

Well  . . .  too late now to get this woman to Mwinilunga for a hospital birth . . . her contractions were getting closer and closer together, and the TBA said the child was coming at any time!  We called the doctor was auditing back in to address this 2^nd maternal complication, and he recommended a regular delivery and that the child commence drugs at 6 days to prevent HIV transmission through breast milk, if the child hadn’t already contracted the virus in utero or through the birthing process.

The delivery itself went very smoothly.  Like all of her fellow Lunda women in labor, the mother made barely a sound indicating this was probably one of the most painful events of her life.  It’s against their culture for some reason to let out even a cry.  The small head poked out, and then the body, and the TBA used gloved hands to stretch the labia and catch the baby without a single tear in the mother’s skin (a good sign as far as the prevention of HIV was concerned).   I peeked over at the barely breathing baby lying in the bed next door just to make sure he was still alive.  Shouldn’t he be with his own mother? The woman in labor had two of her female village elders in the room to assist with the labor, and the elders and myself jokingly betted whether it would be a boy or a girl.  It was a girl . . . she won the bet!  As the TBA cleaned the area and cut the cord, one of the elders gently manipulated the women’s belly to coax out the afterbirth.  They immediately put the beautiful girl on the scale and she was a healthy 2.6 kg.  One elder swaddled the child as the other elder helped the mother bathe in a bucket next to the bed.  The other women came in to celebrate this happy event.

I went out into the waiting room, and the celebrating women gave me a bowl of raw honey on the comb, which they like to eat straight.  I could only stomach one bite, due to nerves from the previous two events.  The mother of the resuscitated baby was lying alone in the waiting room, clearly NOT celebrating, while her barely breathing child was still swaddled in blankets and hot water bottles in the delivery room.  I insisted that they be together, since that child would surely die if he didn’t start breastfeeding soon.  She hesitantly accepted but was internally already grieving.  The auditors’ SUV came to finally pick them up, but not before I spoke at length with the doctor about helping to arrange a simple CPR course for the clinic volunteers and birth attendants.  He said he would like to come back and teach one of these days, but he has so many clinics to audit, who knows if we’ll actually see him again.

I biked home and Scott had made a delicious salad with produce from our garden that was abundant after several weeks of being away.  As the clouds and thunder started rumbling in preparation for a big storm, I couldn’t help hope and pray for those two infants that just came into this world—pure survival for the small boy, and the hope for a HIV-free future for the little girl.  We brought anything that could possibly get wet inside, and Scott was about to take a solar shower when the sky broke loose and water inundated the carth.  I guess when it rains it pours . . . a good analogy for the crazy day at the clinic!

I heated water over the coals and had a luxurious bucket bath in the pouring rain.  Scott and I had a late-night dinner of onion mushroom soup as the rain lessoned, but continued spitting at intervals for the next three hours.  We didn’t even need to collect it from the roof since our water containers were already full.  I prayed again for the two babies.

September 29^th: 2 Deaths

We woke to the fresh smell of rain and damp earth like a new beginning.  I went across the road to keep up with the goat-training project, but someone forgot to close the door of their stick shelter, and they got out overnight and were currently running around happily in the bush. 

I came back home to piles of dirty laundry from several weeks of being gone piled onto three days of riding on Zambian transport, but could only do half of the big bag due to time constraints as well as worrying about limited indoor hanging space in case the rains came again!  Doing laundry in the village consists of squishing and squashing it with my feet in our big plastic tub (almost like stomping grapes!) and then  going through garment to manually remove any stains that are left with a brush.

Scott looked at the sky, waged a bet that it wasn’t going to rain today and announced that he was going to cement the roof of our newly-constructed (thanks to Scott, Brad, Ryvus, and Ryford) bathing shelter before another big rainstorm hit and literally melted the hard work from top to bottom.  His goal is to finish both the bathing shelter and storage room this week. 

I rode my bike to the clinic and was running what I thought was late for an 8:30am appointment with an HIV counselor to talk with the woman who delivered yesterday about preventing HIV transmission to her newborn child.  When I arrived, there were no clinic workers . . . just the typical 5-10 patients with various ailments and their family members cooking.  Waiting is just part of their daily lives. 

I went across the road to Hildah, the TBA’s house, and she stated that there was a death of an “old man” early in the morning just up the road.  She and her husband were just walking back from the funeral.  She also plainly told me, with no emotion, that the baby who needed resuscitation died in the middle of the night.  The mother had already taken him home to be buried.  He had not received a name, and the mother did not go through the formal grieving process as she would if she lost an older infant of child.  There would be no funeral for this little one.

The clinic worker was also walking back from the old man’s funeral, and we discussed the baby of the HIV+ mother.  Together, we decided that it would be best to test the baby to see if she had already contracted the disease in utero before we contacted the counselor.  This would enable him to figure out exactly how to best support the mother.  While he went to the clinic to give the HIV test, he asked me to go to the old man’s funeral where I would probably find both the counselor and the baby’s father seated with the group of grieving men.  I asked if it was appropriate to just call them out of a funeral and he said it was quite alright as these things usually last several days, and people moved in and out to pay the bereaved family respects.

 As I arrived at the funeral, I expected to find little circles of men gathered around fires and little circles of women cooking on the other side, as is typical in Lunda culture.  There is no memorial service per se, just circles of family and neighbors chatting and comforting the bereaved.  This was happening to an extent, although most of the men were in a shelter in the back.  Never before had I been to a funeral before the body was buried (apparently this man had died in the wee hours of the morning), and I could see inside the small mud house that there was a body inside the doorway and some women caring for it.  I went around back to the men's sitting area, but couldn't find either the counselor or the child's father that I was looking for. 

I felt very awkward interrupting this intimate ceremony for a dead man I didn't even know when I was invited to sit with some of the women outside of the house and wish them my condolances.  As always in funerals I have attended, there was very little talk about the departed one and much attention on me and my Lunda speaking abilities which Zambian foods I ate and if I could cook nshima and how many children I had.  I did manage to find out that rather than an "old man" this man was a well-respected middle-aged farmer who tends cows.  He collapsed and died suddenly without any signs of illness.  He had two young children and his wife was expecting a third.  All of a sudden, I could hear wailing and crying inside and one elder woman signaled me to take my stool inside the house. 

The body was lying on a reed mat in the middle of the empty front room, covered head to toe with a blanket.  Several women worked to remove the blanket from the man's face, and there was much discussion in Lunda about how he should best be positioned.  A man came in with a jar of Vaseline and started rubbing the departed's hands and feet to keep range in his joints.  Almost on command, the wife of the dead man and several other women began a series of ululations that were a combination of wailing, crying, and singing in a chorus.  Others either joined in the familiar mourning song or just sat on stools around the body and watched the body preparations. 

When the man finished with the range of motion, a group of five men (I assume brothers and close friends) came in the room poking and shaking the body.  They were play-acting, as if making sure the person was actually dead.  They then started the man-song of deep wailing and moaning and they did what I had yet to see a Zambian man do: cried.  The men were ready to put talcum powder on the body, so I took that as my cue to leave.  I gave some money to the family as custom at Zambian funerals so they could help feed the swarms of visitors for the upcoming 2-3 days.  I imagined that this viewing would be only several more hours since of course there was no embalming fluid, but was told that the vigil would go well into the night. 

I rode my bicycle back to the clinic with a sad heart from the unexpected funeral end discouraged that I didn't find either of the two men I was looking for.  I spoke with the volunteer HIV counselor and the day's news didn't get any better: the baby girl born yesterday was tested HIV+ as was her 6 year-old brother who had reported to the clinic with flu-like symptoms during the birth of his sister.  The baby girl had contracted the virus in utero.  I spoke with the clinic worker at length about how the clinic HIV counselors could have possibly prevented this transmission if they encouraged the mother to go to the BOMA to take her antenatal drugs back in April when she found out she was positive during routine antenatal testing.  We made a plan: find the other counselor and meet at 16:00 with the mother, father and child to discuss treatment options.  This was the first time I was involved so intamitely in a case, but felt like I should follow-through with a family who otherwise might not seek further treatment.

I rode home and Scott mixed concrete and had almost finished topping mud bricks on the bath-house.  We ate a simple lunch of tuna sandwiches.  I rode several kilometers past our house to a surreal sight: yesterday's rain had brought out swarms of flying termites.  Kids were catching them with their hands by the side of the road, and hawks circled their evening meal from up above.  I found two volunteer counselors who said they would meet at the clinic at 16:00.  I also stopped by the house of a headman down the road who was washing clothes in the dambo (shallow lake area) behind his house.  He was washing his best clothes as birds were circling in the afternoon light.  I told him that the workshop I invited him to had been moved up a day and would actually start tomorrow, and we both hoped his clothes would dry.

I bought eggs at a small stand at the road, but no one was selling bananas, so I biked toward the river, hoping to buy an entire bundle of them straight from a farmer.  I met my smiling Zambian friend, who said he had few bunches left except one of about 30 bananas (vs. the usual 70-30), so he threw in a free papaya and sold it all to me and said, "you are my customer, name your price."  I paid him 4 pin (US 80 cents), which is actually above the going rate.  I also gave him a bag of dried bananas from our solar dryer, and he says he loves them and wants to learn to dry them himself.  We exchanged cell phone numbers, because his last phone dropped in the river.  That way he could call when more bananas were ready!  I rode back home up the hill, started the charcoal brazier, and put on some lentils for tonight's dinner.  Scott kept working on his concrete project . . . luckily the sky stayed clear.

One of the counselors for this afternoon's meeting rode his bike to my house and together we cycled back to the clinic for the meeting with the newly-diagnosed children.  The father, mother, and two relatives were there, as well as two community volunteer HIV counselors.  We kept any attention away from shaming the parents and focused on the positive aspects . . . including treatment options for the two children.  The family members asked a lot of good questions, and agreed to support the mother by accompanying her and her children to the BOMA for treatment next week.  The family was very grateful for the education session, although the mother was distant/passive and definitely still grieving.  The counselors agreed that the meeting was a success, and they would like to have more like it with newly-diagnosed patients.

I rode home at dusk and took a lukewarm solar shower in the still-drying outdoor bath shelter.  I thanked Scott for all his hard work as he took over dinner and also fried some eggplant given to us by some neighbors while I was busy at the clinic.  We sat in our chota, drinking tea into the darkness, and watched the full moon rise and then hide and show itself luminously among the fast-moving clouds intermittently as the kitten ate spiders.  Life can be cruel.  It was moments like this that put things into perspective.


Follow-up:
- We randomly met Sally the Australian again at a restaurant in Lusaka.  Small world!
- Stripe, one of the female goats across the road had two does and we are now collecting milk from her.  Some of our villagers like it while some do not.
- Miraculously, all 6 baby chicks survived into adulthood--5 hens and a rooster.  We kept our alphabetical theme going and named them after states: Hawaii, Idaho, Jersey, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Georgia.

- Our clinic finally got a nurse 3 weeks ago, after over 15 months without a single professionally trained staff.  He had been away at school studying midwifery, so hopefully maternal and child health will improve quite a bit.  Unfortunately due to inadequate housing, he still rides his motorbike back and forth from the BOMA and doesn't come on days that it is broken or out of fuel.
- We're in the process of training our Safe Motherhood Activities Group, and a CPR class is definitely on the agenda for all birth attendants!
- The family with the two HIV positive children did go to the BOMA for treatment, accompanied by one of our volunteer counselors.  The mother and son still have a high CD4 count and don't yet need to commence antiretroviral drugs.  The baby girl's health is being monitored.
- We're working on a drama group to educate villagers regarding issues related to HIV/AIDS, since it is still an issue that is very taboo to talk about.  The idea is to get people with HIV diagnoses to get treatment without shame or fear.
- The kitten is still catching spiders, the moon still rises, and life goes on!

Just a few more pictures!

Enjoy the pictures Scott put up for October/November with this link:


https://picasaweb.google.com/110221855486252629515/October2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCPKXrpz62-mAOA

Happy Turkey Day Everyone!

Full Circle

Gina's Post

Scott and I just got back from our Peace Corps mid-term medicals conference in Lusaka.  Aside from a clean bill of health for both of us, our country director had us make a circle around the large chota in the Peace Corps office to symbolize that we have all spent one year in the village and have one more to go.  I truly feel like I live here now; it's been fun traveling to other provinces over the last few months and when Zambians ask me where I'm from (thinking I'll say Europe or the US), and I say in Lunda that I come from the Northwest province.

It's interesting that within the past 3 months, we've had 4 American visitors, all of whom we took to see the village.  It also took me on a walk down memory lane, since I spent about a month in Zambia in September 2006 visiting my friend Colleen, and she showed me some of the same spots that we showed our friends.  I feel like me living in this beautiful place (in the same province at that) has completed the circle.  Some of the nostalgic places included:

Victoria Falls

Back in 2006 when I was at Victoria Falls with Colleen and my sister Cynthia the water level of the falls was low enough in September (end of the dry season) that we 3 adventurous girls were told we could walk up above and look down.  Of course a guide was recommended, but being on a backpacker’s budget we just paid some local kids a few kwacha to show us the secret spot.  We walked over a sketchy narrow dam and found a bunch of local boys fishing, swimming, and doing acrobatics for us (for a price of course).   Our reward for crossing countless shallow streams was an amazing view of the falls from above, along with pictures of the Zambian adolescent acrobats in their swimming attire.

In this last trip with Scott, Brad, Jane and Julie, being 6 years older and all the wiser, we heeded the sign that said, “beware: don’t go past this point without a guide.”  Good thing, too, because not 2 minutes later did one of us spot an elephant behind some trees across the shallow Zambezi river.  We looked to our right to see an armed wildlife guard, who calmly advised us to keep our distance from the elephants.  We watched in wonder as a herd of 5-6 of these giants appeared to drink from the river, and then they began crossing . . . toward us.  There were no other tourists by then, but several local employees of the park came to see the animals.  Then the guards told us to move slowly but calmly out of the grove above the falls.  Reason: the elephants were going to cross the river and had the potential to block us in.  Although we didn’t get to see the falls from up above, seeing the elephants drink from the Zambezi near sunset made up for it.  And as a side note, it was good to see armed guards actually enforcing the rules . . . gives hope that the wildlife numbers are maybe going up again.

Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage

Colleen, Cynthia and I visited this interesting place to break up the 3-day journey to Colleen’s village in 2006.   Here’s what I wrote about it back then:

As we walked behind cages of loud primate sounds, we were told to keep hands and all body parts away from the windows as the chimps like to grab.  We then removed all watches, necklaces, and belts and handed our cameras to the professional chimp-handlers.  The gate opened and 5 young chimps named Dee Dee, Cindy, Hans, Gus, and Carla scrambled to greet us.  To our surprise, each climbed up to one of us and perched on our shoulders as we walked them through the trees.  They found their favorite play spot and coaxed us to swing with them up and down on the low branches.  Gus even snatched Colleen's shoelace when she wasn't looking and played hide-and-seek with her to get it back!  I felt like I was in kindergarten again.

We did the same thing with Brad, Jane and Julie to break up their visit to our village in remote northwestern province.  Some of the differences I noted were: 1) the pet hippo Billy that resided in front of the chimp cages had passed away.  2) Sheila, the founder of Chimpfunshi, had aged quite a bit and was now using a walker.  We only saw her briefly from her house, as she has passed on the management of her day-to-day activities to her daughter Sylvia.    3) This time, instead of telling us to wear grubby clothes for the chimp walk, they had us put on blue smurf suits and fill our pockets with biscuits to feed the chimps as they interacted with us.  Definitely don’t remember the feeding part last time.  4) Instead of camping near an amazing river, we stayed in dorms with no view but that did have hot water.  5) the $30, 30 minute bush walk we did in 2006 was now a 2 hour bush walk for $100 USD.  Guess they needed more money for the chimps!   The surprising thing was that I actually remembered some of the chimps (Sims, Cindy and Carla) from that long ago.  I couldn’t help resist giving Cindy another kiss.  I remember leaving both times with the same mixed emotions of having visited a place trying to make amends for humans’ destructive impact on this planet as well as being a first-hand witness to the striking similarities between chimps and humans.

Chisemwa Cha Lunda

Crazily again, I was invited to the same traditional ceremony that I saw in 2006.  Even crazier, Brad and Jane were visiting us in the village at that very same time.  Here’s what I wrote back then:

Cynthia and I rode all our gear out the 60K on bush roads to Mwnilunga, the nearest "boma," or larger village where we were to meet up with Colleen and about 15 other Peace Corps volunteers who were specially invited by Lunda Chief Kanongesha to stay at his palace grounds. The occasion was Chisemwa Chalunda, or "tradition of the Lundas" annual festival.  We camped for the evening at another volunteer named Kristin's village, roasted pig in a big pit, and stood by the road to catch a ride with one of the many trucks that would be heading to Kanongesha's palace grounds.  Around mid-morning, the driver of a flatbed with about 80 or so singing Lundas said he could give us a lift, so we all piled in and joined in the merriment.

Kanongesha's compound was more like an assortment of solar-powered mud and brick buildings surrounded by a grass fence in the middle of the bush.  Nonetheless, as he is head of the entire Lunda tribe in Zambia, Angola, and the Congo, we were honored to participate.  After opening ceremonies consisting of singing, dancing, scripture reading, and food offerings to the chief, we were escorted onto his private greeting room.  In the room, Kanongesha adorned all of the Peace Corps volunteers with necklaces made of traditional beans and t-shirts printed with pictures of His Royal Highness and other Lunda chiefs.  In return, our group gave him some live chickens and vegetables.

More and more people arrived, transforming a tiny Kanongesha's tiny bush village into a virtual city: vendors set up shop, home-brewed corn alcohol called kachai flowed out of kalabash gourds, and drum circles lasted until the wee hours of the morning.  Around mid-day the following day, the actual ceremony began with the chief raised up on his throne-like chair by traditionally dressed warrior-dancers.  He was paraded around the cheering crowd, and then he and his wife were set up on thrones in the shade to watch groups of traditional dancers.  Under the intense mid-day sun, the crowd cheered, people danced, and the group became ever-more raucous from the kachai.  Alas, we had to leave to beat the rat race of people trying to find rides back to the boma.

The 2012 ceremony was much more intimate as it was only four Peace Corps volunteers and our tourist friends.  Since Scott and I personally new the Chief and had worked with him on Peace Corps projects, he invited us and our American friends to be honored guests.  He gave us a 3 course meal as well as wine the night before the event, and personally escorted us through the fairgrounds.  Nostalgia flashed through my eyes as a happily dressed tipsy woman asked me to dance with her.  Turns out she was a chieftainess of a neighboring tribal area and I happened to get a t-shirt of her from that same event in ’06.  So now I can say that I actually danced with the chieftainess.  During the actual event, Jane and I put on our tailor-made Zambian dresses and got many compliments from the Zambian onlookers as the only white people wearing traditional clothes.  In fact, I think I had more people ask me if they could take my picture that day than any other day in my life. Guy Scott, the vice president of Zambia actually made a cameo (1 hour) appearance via helicopter at this year’s event.  As honored guests, we stood at the receiving line in front of the chief’s palace shortly after his touchdown.  He shook our hands, asked who we were and said, “oh Peace Corps tourists.”  As much of an insider as I felt at this year’s ceremony, I guess the VP of Zambia still considers me a tourist.

Mujila Falls

This place was a magical little oasis in the Zambian sticks when we went to visit Colleen in 2006.  It was the personal home and working farm of Paul Webster, a former Peace Corps volunteer from Guatemala turned Methodist missionary who had been living in Africa for over 20 years.  After his family was evacuated from the Congo following political unrest, they started a working farm in Zambia upon the chief’s request since his people were starving.  He was one of Colleen’s closest neighbors in 2006 and actually gave us a lift in the back of his truck up to her site.  As tourists, my sister Cynthia and I marveled at the ingenuity and hard work as he used an ox cart to plow maize fields and was the first successful person in the area to milk goats (definitely before any of my goat milking experience).  While Colleen was at a workshop, Cynthia and I liked the place so much we rode bikes to the farm and picked strawberries for half a day in exchange for some of Paul’s goat-milk yogurt and a home cooked meal.  One of Paul’s welders even help me weld my bicycle pedal back on (not Peace Corps issued) after it had fallen off.

Fast forward to 2011, when Scott and I move to the Mwinilunga area and hear tales of an amazing missionary who grows just every crop imaginable . . . including strawberries!  Although I greatly wanted to return to see what had changed, time and distance precluded us from visiting, until Deanna, a fellow volunteer, arranged a workshop for Peace Corps volunteers and their counterparts at that very same farm.  I took a local headman and over 20 of us spent a week on the farm learning about properly raising pigs, goats, sheep, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, ducks, oxen, and any other farm animal you could imagine. Peace Corps volunteers also took turns teaching about things such as business management and composting.  The entire week was very hands-on and interactive (not to mention the fresh food was delicious!). Our Zambian counterparts came home inspired, as the Lunda culture is traditionally hunter-gatherer, and owning livestock has only come into play in the last few generations.    Not much at Mujila had changed except the road getting there was not as rutted, and Paul had built a new main house suitable for events like the Peace Corps workshop we helped with. 

Never once in my life did I think I’d be back up that same rural farm road hidden away in a corner of rural Africa or dance with the same chieftainess I played for Halloween in 2006 by wearing her t-shirt.  But . . . destiny had something else in mind, and I’m sure glad I’m back living and working in the Northwest province of Zambia.

More Pictures

Hi All,
We have posted some pictures recently in two photo albums.  The links for those are:

https://picasaweb.google.com/110221855486252629515/UpThroughLivingston?authkey=Gv1sRgCPah1aSv9_Xwew

https://picasaweb.google.com/110221855486252629515/UpThroughFlatdogs?authkey=Gv1sRgCKLMq9vKr7ahxgE


Also, Evon LaGrou has been in Zambia for over a week now and will be blogging about her visit to Zambia as well as other countries she is visiting.  Her blog is at:

http://evonlagrou.com/

Here's what she wrote:

It takes just over thirty minutes to travel the fourteen miles from the nearest city to Scott and Gina’s village. We have completely left civilization as we know it. There is no electricity, no running water, no stores for supplies and no taxi’s that drive past this place. Therefore, it is not possible to easily “just make a run to the store”. Women walk the entire way to the city with large baskets of garden vegetables on their heads that they will sell at the market.
We are definitely living the simple life here and no one is in a rush. We seem to wake up and go to bed with the sun around here. It is just easier than using your headlamp or dealing with the mosquitos that come out at night.
Everyone has time to welcome the new visitor. Villagers hold their right elbow with their left hand when outstretching their hand to shake mine. They give a little bow then clasp both hands together and reach to shake my hand a second time. “You do realize we are going be stopped by everyone to shake your hand on the way to the clinic.” Gina said after the third formal greeting. “I thought it was nearly a three mile walk? How will we get there on time?” “We are on Africa time. It will be fine, whatever time we arrive.”
That was definitely a different way of looking at things. The school house was the only place that seemed to run on time. I spent several days assisting at the local school, while I was in the village, teaching a math review class for ninth grade students. These students were going to take their end-of-the-year exams the following week. Only students who passed the test would be allowed to attend high school the following year. Student who continued to high school next year would have to board at the school during the week since the school would be so far away.
I don’t think I ever had students so eager to learn. We reviewed about two-hundred pages of the required math textbook. I had to write important concepts for the students on the board since the students did not have a textbook for math. Only the teacher had a book.
The first day I started teaching I had not realized that I had missed their ten o’clock break until ten minutes to twelve. I asked, “Do you want to take your break now?” I heard a unanimous “no” coming from the group. “Well would you like a five minute break?” Then one boy answered for the group, “You have already missed the break; Just keep going.” I looked at the class who were seemingly agreement and continued on. I thought to myself, “That has never happened to me in America” then continued teaching.
In the middle of my class on the first day a student rapped on the door. “Can I join your class?” “Come on and sit down.” I replied. The boy did not have a uniform on but I did no think very much of it. Not all students in the lower grades could afford uniforms. After class the same boy caught me outside the door with his brother who had been listening to my class from the window. He was actually an eleventh grade student and he wanted to prepare for his twelfth grade exam that he would take in one year. He has to pass all portions of the exam to complete his diploma or he would have to try again the following year. His brother was a twelfth grade student and he wanted help with preparing for his exams in a week. I spent a little extra time with the two students at the clinic until Gina was ready to walk home from work. They seemed grateful for the extra help.
The other comment that through me off guard while teaching was on the last day when we finished for the day. I had already returned one additional day more than planned. Since I was leaving the next day I told them I could not return but I was going to have Scott and Gina report back to me on how they had done on their test. All the kids said thank you and I hear two students shout, “God bless you.” Again, that has never happened in America. I found that the students really wanted to learn and were grateful for help in their studies. It was a pleasure to assist with their learning.
Scott had assisted with me when he was able to break away from his duties. I understand that he is continuing to help the students review as time permits. It sounds like both he and the students are enjoying it. Gina worked nearby at the clinic. Since I was teaching four to five hours straight when Gina popped to in I had her do a few stretches with the kids. They both loved it.
I spent about two hours a day walking to the school or clinic. One day the rains came on the way home so Scott and I ducked in for cover until the rains subsided. Luckily Scott had brought the cards so we could play another game of cribbage. Scott and Gina had wanted to learn how to play cribbage in order to play with the other Peace Corps volunteers. Needless to say we practiced every chance we had on the trip. However, when we stopped under the shelter to play during the rain, it did not take long to amass a small crowd to watch. The kids laughed when I shuffled the cards.
The simplest things would collect a crowd especially when Scott, Gina or I were around. Everyone was interested in their friend from America that looked so different than them. Gina and I sang songs or invited groups to do art activities in the afternoons. Gina had to try to set certain times when the children could come over so they had something to look forward to during the day but would not be outside out hut all day. Gina would make them “do work” before playing. Such as pick up a piece of trash. This helped instilled some type of work ethic as well as the importance of keeping the village clean. However, after it was time to “go home” the children never stayed home for long. The adults are so busy in the village, farming and maintaining daily life, that young children did not do much all day and loved any and all attention.
Scott, a fisheries volunteer for the Peace Corps, walked us to one of the community fish ponds. Some villagers recently sold their fish and made their first ever profit from the man-made fish pond. This had been very exciting for all villagers and provided the needed boost to keep working on the project.
Life in the village is mainly spent doing things which we take for granted; Fetching water, boiling water for drinking, heating water for bucket showers, maintaining your garden and animals (aka: one of your main food supplies), washing laundry by hand, washing dishes in a basin, preparing water with bleach to wash you hands and providing your own transportation by walking or biking to places. One of the most difficult tasks is getting the coal for cooking to burn and stay hot throughout the cooking process. My last day in the village, Gina and I cleaned a large steel drum in order to catch rain water in the rainy season. They are hoping that this will ease the number of trips to the stream to get water.
Next door to Scott and Gina, the family has two young brothers that seem to take advantage of all the experience Scott and Gina have to offer. These brothers have goats, cows, sheep and chickens. They also have made four fish ponds behind the house and dug there own well with a bucket. When I asked how they got the hole that deep they showed me where there were vertical steps straight up in the wall. I could not believe that they had dug this over one-hundred foot well without a machine. They told me they still wanted to go deeper, “until the water was to their waist.” Finally, the last day, I was in the village their pregnant goat birthed twins. They would have the first goats in the entire village that would be used for milk. Gina, who had worked with goats extensively back in the United States, had worked with the family for weeks to get this goat prepared for milking. They decided to named the goats Gina and Evon. So, now I have a goat named after me in Zambia.
I had a wonderful time with my friends and getting to know their village. I know that I was deeply touched by the people I met while I was there. One lesson learned is that the people in the village do not have much, but are happy and grateful for what they have. My stay in the village reminds me to also be grateful for the blessings I have in my life and not to take anything for granted.

Lines and Queues

Gina's Post

We'll hopefully have more village posts and pictures of our recent trips up soon, but while it's still fresh in my mind, I want to recount a funny story I had today about the bank line in Solwezi.

So it's a Saturday morning at the end of the month, which is the absolute WORST time to use an ATM in Solwezi.  This town has literally grown more than 10 times in the last few years due to the nearby mining boom, yet just has one little supermarket and a few banks.  It doesn't help that all the mines pay their workers the last Saturday of the month so the town is a literal zoo.  I would usually rather eat nshima with raw caterpillars than try to finagle my way through the "lines" and crowds on the last Saturday of the month, but we are due back in our village tomorrow, and Mwinilunga only has 1 ATM that charges ridiculous surcharges, is out of power half the time and literally eats peoples' cards the other half of the time.

I took a nice little morning jog and came across two lines of about 40 people each for the ATM's.  I saw a girl get out of a car and casually pretend she was talking on her cell phone, nonchalantly slipping into the middle of the line (which looked more like a mob of people) hoping no one would see her.  I was in the other line so didn't say anything, but got into a conversation with the guy in front of me that we needed to be careful and keep our eyes peeled for people cutting the line, or "jumping the queue" as they put it.  He agreed that he would help.

The next thing I knew, I saw a guy playing the same cell phone trick, and called him out.  His "friend" said, "but he just had to get out of line to take a call and now he's getting back in the queue" but I didn't believe it.  Luckily that caught the security guard's attention, and even though he was too timid to make the line jumper go to the back, he made an announcement that all people arriving needed to go to the back of the queue.  I called a few people out again, although some still refused to go to the back.  One cut about 5 people in front of me, and I said "how would you feel if I just stepped in front of you like this?"  He said, "bad."  And I said, "yes, that's how all the people who have been waiting feel when someone goes in front."  It got to the last straw when the guy directly in front of me invited one of his "friends" right in front with the old cell phone trick.  By then I had been in line for more than 30 minutes, but luckily I had nowhere to be because I was waiting for a friend. 

The crowd knew I was the rebel rouser and started laughing when anyone tried to cut, which did effectively send that person to the back of the line.  They knew I was policing the line and would make a big stink at anyone who tried to cut.  They asked me about bank lines in America and started teaching me Bemba, since most were from Lusaka or other parts of Zambia claiming their fortunes through the mines and didn't know any Lunda.  To no one in particular, I said, "people say your country is corrupt.  Maybe if you called people out when they did something wrong, they wouldn't try to do bad things.  But when people just stand and watch when people do bad things, they will keep doing them."  Most of the spectators just laughed, but I think (or at least hope) it made a few stop and think about their actions.  I know it did, because I overheard someone say "everyone's time is valuable.  One person cannot just think their own time is more valuable than others."  Sure enough, the line moved like clockwork from that point on.

My friend Evon arrived just as I was 2nd from the front of the line and was so appalled by so many people at an ATM she stopped to take a picture.  Once I gathered my cash, I said, "If I hadn't been policing that line for the past 45 minutes, I'd be waiting here another hour."  As we left, the people in line just laughed again in good humor, and we said goodbye to each other in English, Bemba and Lunda.  Talk about a cultural exchange!

A Hollow Sound (Scott's)

Funerals near our village are fairly common.  Up until now I have not participated fully, and only at homes where I had some connection to the deceased.  Usually my attendance involves 15 minutes or so of greeting the grievers as they sit in front of their house, men sitting on stools in one area and women sitting on reed mats in another.  Sometimes there is a crying woman, but always a fire burning, and a meal for all those attending.  Attendees are not invited, but anyone who sits down and wants to spend time with the mourners is welcome.
Gina had interacted with a family in which a male head of household had died yesterday, and she may have her own post about that.  That same man was apparently well respected in our area, and even though I did not know him I chose to attend the funeral.  It turns out it was a Sunday, and even though I was planning on going to church that day to contact some of the fish farmers I work with, all church services that day were cancelled to allow for people to attend this funeral.  Sunday services are one of the few things you can count on in rural Zambia, so when I learned this I felt obliged and interested to go.  Also, my friends Ryvus and Ryford were going, so it would be an opportunity to be able to ask questions about the funeral.
We rode our bikes past a carpenter and we could here the hammering of a coffin being built.  A little further and we dismounted our bikes as we approached the home of the person who died, as is custom to respect the mourners.  We sat down on stools in the "men's area", though as a special guest I was given a regular chair to sit in, even when I protested that I didn't need it.  We heard the muffled sounds of a group of people singing and drumming inside the house of the deceased.  Their were quiet murmurs of those arriving as they greeted the family or informal eulogies being given in smaller circles.  I got a few odd looks from children and others who were surprised to see a white person at a Zambian funeral.  After a while we heard a couple of raised voices arguing about something.  The voices turned into several and slowly elevated in volume as more and more people discussed what was happening.  Eventually the voices died down again but there was one man who was still visibly and audibly upset, so much so that people were chuckling at him as if he was over-reacting.  But Ryvus and Ryford made it clear that what had happened was a grave insult.  One man who was assisting with preparing the body for placing in the coffin (which includes rubbing the joints of the deceased with vaseline to keep them limber) had washed his hands in the same pot from which people had just recently eaten, AND he had gone back and touched the wife of the dead man on the arm.  The first offense was big enough to cause problems alone, but the second offense was grounds for accusation of witchcraft. 
That issue died down for a while and then the coffin was brought out with the body already in it, though the nails simply held the lid down without actually being fully pounded in.  I remarked how small the coffin was, about 5' long and 20" wide for a 35-yr old.  Everyone, including the man who washed his hands offensively, crowded around the coffin.  Another man explained what the man-who-washed-his-hands had done.  And a grieving wife, crying as she approached, accused the man of juju, black magic, otherwise known as witchcraft.  Apparently the man died suddently, appearing healthy up until the evening before his death the following day.  The accused did not seem sorry or regretful.  He simply stood with a permanent frown/sneer on the left side of his face and although about 50 years old, wore shorts, which is practically unheard of in Zambian culture in both rural and urban area for anyone older than pre-teen.  Not even attempting to apologize did not improve his standing with the crowd.  In a crowd grieving for the death of a respected man I watched as they started making an unspoken case against the man, looking for some kind of scapegoat to accuse for the death of a young healthy person.  The man-who-washed-his-hands was pushed away from the coffin before it was raised.  The wife of the man walked underneath the coffin in a ritual that allows the woman to forget, eventually, her dead husband so she can move on with life.  Wailing women, among about 300 mourners, followed the coffin on a 1 kilometer march up the road and into the forest to the graveyard.  The graveyard was nondescript except for a few mounds of rocks half a meter high and the freshly dug hole for the newly deceased, though Ryford and Ryvus pointed out a few other spots with subtle indications of a burial some years back.
A man said a final eulogy before 8 men nailed the lid on the coffin shut and lowered the coffin in, swiftly burying the coffin.  The hollow sound of dirt on the wooden coffin prompted another round of wailing from women and even a few men, including the one who scolded the man-who-washed-his-hands.  After the last shovel was placed on the grave, the 8 men patted the dirt down in a musical rhythm, followed by others placing rocks on top of the grave, acting as a headstone.  A eulogizer thanked everyone for coming and the mourners walked back to the dead man's house.  A woman fainted along the side of the road and was being attended to, likely because of dehydration and hunger.  Mourners particularly close to the deceased such as wives, mothers, fathers, and children spend the previous night crying and wailing and don't eat from the time of the death to the time of the burial. 
Back at the house people gathered again and were thanked for coming.  Typically this would be the end of the funeral accept for a few closer friends who would stay and console or a few stragglers who would come to pay their respects.  But the earlier insult prompted a second gathering within the funeral.  The man-who-washed-his-hands was asked to sit in a larger ring of men.  One important villager, called a headman, explained what had happened earlier in the day.  The man-who-washed-his-hands remained silent, despite obvious calls from the crowd to explain himself.  After 5 or 10 minutes of people starting at the accused, and even going so far as to toss stones at him, a group of headmen conversed amongst themselves and announced that the judging of the accused would commence the following day.  The crowd was not happy to see this go unresolved.  Others yelled that the man had already started removing things from his house and would be running off later today to avoid the judgement tomorrow.  The man's unashamed attitude only made the crowd even happier to declare the man guilty before trial.
About a week later I learned that the man had in fact left the village that evening and so did not get an official judgement.  I could tell from the crowd's attitude that judgement would not be in his favor. 

World Wise Schools, Part 2

For a background on this project, check out our April 1 post.  A few weeks ago, we had the amazing privilege of having our corresponding teacher visit us in the village and meet the kids who have been corresponding with her students in the states.  Jane and Brad helped with a third letter writing session, and the Zambian students were very proud to practice their English.  Following are just a few examples of letters from both the American and Zambian students.  Names have been omitted but we tried to keep with the original grammar.


Letters from America:

Dear Zambian student,

I go to Washington Middle School.  My favorite subject in school is art class.  I also have a big family, but I have family in Mexico, Oregon, California and Washington.  We only get together like in special occasions.  My favorite animal is a horse because you get to ride on it and because you can teach him a lot of stuff to do.  My favorite food is pizza with soda.  I am in 7th grade and I love Mexican food too.  When I grow up I want to be a cosmetologist and a fashion designer.  A cosmetologist is someone that does your hair and they do pedicure.  During summer when we are out of school I am going swimming and I'am going to Seattle. 


Dear Zambian student,

How you been doing buddy?  How's life for you?  My life is wonderful.  Here at my school we are having a problem.  In the internet on facebook is a website of like chating with friends.  On line it's fun but can be dangerouse.  Some students go to juvanile detention or get suspended by the school.  Do you have a facebook?  You can put videos, pics, and add friends and chat (that's cool to do) And see videos on facebook.  I have an 800 dollar computer and have the internet.


Dear Zambian student,

I hope you are ok?  Well I will answer your questions.  I do soccer in my house.  What do you mean by what work do I do?  I n my house of out of my house!  Well my favorite subject in school is AVID and math.  I like math because I think it is easier and it is easier to understand.  I like AVID because it shows you more stuff for education.  I have a pet named Daycy she is a dog.  Do you have a pet?  I hope I get to know you more better.


Dear Zambian student,

I am very sorry you are not feeling well I really hope you feel better.  I will try to send clothes soon, but the teacher wont let me send money and a car is too big to send you.  I think I could send you food like tamales, taquitos, and other good food.  I will pray for you so your bad problem will go away.  I would like you to be strong no matter what happens you stay happy and do your best in everything.  I really want to know how you guys make your houses and what is civics class?  I'm happy that you are still my friend and I hope we could be best friends or in short word BF.


Letters from Zambia:

Dear American student,

Thank you.  for the letter.  In my district we have 72 school.  A question ask How much does it cost to make a house.  Here in Zambia the cost of house it belter 3 million kwacha per house 5000 kwacha = 1 dollar.  In my school the subjects which deal in grade 8.  its English, lunda mathematics religious education, civics, geography,  env. science, and history.  The question which you ask what class do you have over there?  Itsgrade 5 and grade 7.  Please listen to my question.  How many sisters you have and how many brothers you have.  Then I want to tell you in my class (8) my difficult subject is english.  I am not perform well in English but all the subject I am perform well.  Then I want to tell you I am 14 years old me I have three sisters and one brother.  Then my fruit which I like is mangoes, bananas, and oranges.  I want you to see me and I want see you.  Then thank you for letter I am happy with your letter.  So good by.


Dear American student,

Am happy to receive your letter here in zambia.  The famous people in zambia are many.  but I mention some.  This are HH Hakainde Hichilema, Mr. president michael chilupya sata, senior Chief Kanongesha traditional ceremony.  Am not herd King Tut.  Even you herd senior chief Kanongesha traditional ceremony.  I know a lot of thing like making a small house including cuttings of trees for field.
I know reading like you.  E. science, zambia language (Lunda), and many things.  I like to play football only (soccer) because our place we know soccer only.  I know 50 famous people. 
On 15th September 2012 I go to the traditional ceremony to watch many thing such as young girls dancing makishi (a person putting on masks), dances and many games.


Dear American student,

I will go to Mwinilunga High School when I pass grade 10.  My favorite subject in school is English because I am doing very well when I was in grade 8 because the teacher who is teaching english in grade 8 is esprening very well and I play football (soccer) very well and is my best sport and I enjoy playing it.
Some sports that I play very well but I do not like it is netball because I think that netball are for grils.  Thus why i am not like it.  When the school ends were going play sports and the sports teachers tell me that you must puted in the football club because am playing very well in school football team thus why am writing this latter to tell you that my friend love football and here in Zambia is good sport which every person loves it.  I like go to your country but the problem is money.  Thank you my friend we meet one another in writing letters.  GOD BLESS YOU and help you in anything that you are doing at school and at home.  I think when you open this letter you feel happy.


Dear American student,

How are you?  By this time back to me, I am fine too.  Im very happy to see this letter.  I'm a young boy I am 15 years old.  School.  I am in grade 8 my favorte subject is English or science to study non and living things.  When I grow up I want to be a doctor.  I have 3 brothers and 2 sister my sister is 10 year old and my brothers are marred.  In our family, we are 10.  My father is a farmer for this summer break I visit my familiy because this is my life.  I respect my parents because are creator me.  So my friend.  Do you know Jesus?  or do you goes to church?  Pleas my friend Iam obeging you. If you can not know God, please I want you beng with God.  John chaipter 1:1.  And I have mercy when my parrents are tired I can help during the something which is not is go to fatch water to cook otever in your class do you have mathematishan?  I want every day joy and my favorite football.  My friend good bye I wish you best and God Bless you to communicate with you and me.


Dear American student,

I hope and you are fine and I am als fine.  We are 7 in our family  3 boys and 4 girls.  Dot stop your eduction!  I think you have small family like me.  And my lavely game is football.  I born in poor family and I like eat bananas, orange, sweet banana.  The distance from our home to school is about 4 km.  That is very bad.  My freind her we are they is to much dry.  I like play with animals such as goats, sheeps and othe animals.  The subject that we learn her is marth, English goegraph, lunda, religious education, civics and history those subjects are that we learn in mwinilunga.  Thank you for your letter.


Dear American student,

I am guy a and I am 15 years old.  I'm pupil of upper basic school by this moment I'm grade 8, so I will complete my school by 2016.  The key word is this I want when I grow up to see you or meet with you in America or Mexico because I don't know country where you borne but love you so much.
My favorite people is American and food mabula.  I'm very happy to find you my penpal like you.  Things in Zambia at school are more let me tell you few their is sports such as aoccur race in class we have art and study post and things around us.  Here we don't have AVID.  I have 2 brothers are not educated and my mum dad are also not educated but they working like farmers.  My young brother is in grade 8 we are in same class.  Our side we don't have rich but me myself I want to complete school.  When I complete my school I want to being with you in America or Mexico to as a doctor.
Thank you my friend face book by this moment I don't have but I send to you any time through our teacher.  I greet all family in the name of Jesus.