Cultural Differences (Gina's Post)

At a recent Peace Corps workshop, we discussed the cultural differences between Zambians and Americans.  The Zambians who attended were not villagers.  They were well-educated ministry officials or medical professionals who were able to articulate ideas in English very well.  It’s interesting to note not only the differences that people mentioned, but the way the two groups put their thoughts on a page.  The Zambian group had a list of concrete sentences about their culture, where the American group had a scattering of short abstract phrases laid out on the paper. 

Zambian Values

1)   Greet everyone with a handshake

2)   Share everything

3)   Kneeling down to show respect

4)   You do not refer to adults by first name

5)   No talking while eating, elders wash their hands first

6)   Parents have final decision on when to marry, whom to marry

7)   Men pay a dowry, men marry women

8)   We believe in extended family

9)   The more children a couple have, the more respect they have from the community

10)   Most tribes in Zambia practice polygamy

11)   Male children are educated first (if there is lack of money in the family, females stay home to help with household tasks)

12)   Ladies must be wrapped in a chitenge wrapper

13)   Nshima (thick corn or cassava porridge) is the #1 meal in Zambia

American Values

-       individualism, creativity, originality

-       education

-       equal opportunity

-       choice/freedom

-       independence

-       geographic mobility

-       financial stability

-       recognition

-       pursuit of happiness

-       privacy

-       time

-       organization

-       rights & empowement of women

-       family

-       diversity

-       health

-       accountability

-       trust/honesty

-       professionalism

-       security

-       reliability

-       critical thinking

-       comfort

-       youth

-       competition, being #1

-       rights of people

-       speaking your mind

-       doing your best

In so many ways, the two equally educated members of different cultures have radically different thought processes.  I really like exercises like this because it helps me put work-related frustrations (especially when working with the Ministry of Health) in a cultural context and realize why some things that might seem odd to me are perfectly normal for Zambians.

Ahh... the Trees... (Scott's post)

Many people know that the trees near our home in Yakima, WA are one of the top reasons I wanted to buy that particular house.  I couldn't imagine owning a house in a place that lacked mature trees. The Zambian villages in which we stayed during our pre-service training were lacking many big trees and I was missing the comfort that large trees provide for me.  Some people prefer a Starbucks on every corner, I prefer a tree on every corner.  So I was very excited to see the large number of trees in our village when we arrived.  Not only for their aesthetic value, but because of the learning opportunity they provided for me as I described in my post about finding the perfect trees for a particular use, but also the joy of taking a bush walk into the woods to find the materials I need for building things nearly as easily as one walks through Home Depot but at much less cost (ZERO!).  This joy is shared by Zambians who live in my village, but in a way that seems unaware that it may not always be like this.  For them, finding these resources has always been possible and they do not seem to realize that continued use of the resources in the same way will eventually make their village look a lot like those villages that Gina and I stayed in during our training.  Take this for example:

One of my jobs in the village is to help people survey an area so that they can build a fish pond there.  This involves using about 13 pieces of wood to mark various points on the ground to delineate boundaries as well as information on how much dirt to dig or pile at a certain spot.  I've done this a lot and it always starts with a search for trees of the right diameter and length to chop down and use as a survey stake.  Often times the fish farmer who is chopping these trees down will find the right size for a stake but it happens to be attached to a much larger tree.  Down comes the whole tree while only 20% of the tree gets used for the stake, while the remainder is left to rot.  I ask the farmer what else he or she could use the remainder of the tree for such as firewood, stakes for other purposes, or building material, but the usual response is that there are plenty of trees around so it is not worth the work to get the job done of finding the stakes we need for this project AND for other projects.  For better or for worse, the fish farmers usually have a one-track mind. 
Some time ago I helped a woman survey an area for a pond, but after we had already cut the stakes we found out that the area was not suitable for a fish pond.  The woman abandoned the area and we resolved to search for a new area another day.  The stakes unfortunately were not valuable enough for the woman to carry home for another purpose.  I returned another day with the pair of brothers that often help me on these surveys, Ryvas and Ryford.  The area we were going to survey was known to me and I believed it to be a good spot, so we cut down the trees and collected our stakes.  During the collection, I noticed some other tree that were recently felled for some other purpose and pointed out that it could be used for about three stakes.  Ryford said that it is not fresh and proceeded to look for more trees.  I reminded him that these stakes are temporary and don't have to be fresh, so he grudgingly checked out the tree and cut two stakes from it.  Trying to teach conservation of trees here is like trying to get money from villagers to fix a borehole!  The motivation does not seem to be understood.  We all went to the location of the area to survey for a fish pond, but shortly after starting we realized that there was too much water in the soil and so it would be difficult to keep the pond from leaking.  The fish farmer knew of another place to try and I said okay, let's collect these stakes and go check it out.  The two brothers and the fish farmer all agreed that it was not worth carrying the stakes all the way to the new location and would be easier just to cut new stakes there.  "How far is it?" I asked.  "About 2 kilometers" the farmer said.  Zambians typically carry firewood at least that far on a daily basis, so I did not understand the logic of leaving behind these perfectly good stakes and avoiding the chore of chopping more trees down, just so we could avoid carrying something that is not typically considered difficult to carry.  I explained that in America if you want to build something you can not simply go into the woods and start collecting your lumber.  It costs money.  They were shocked to hear this, though they were familiar with the concept because they know people in Lusaka (the "big" city in Zambia) typically have to do this because there are not enough trees there anymore for people to use.  I also reminded them that even in relatively smaller villages, like where Gina and I did our training, people have to travel very far to find enough trees to use for the construction purposes, or else pay for wood like people in Lusaka do.  Even after reminding Ryford how he had a difficult time finding the stakes required for a tippy-tap to use at the workshop we went to together back in April, and hinting that his village was doomed to the same lack of resources if he and others continued to disregard the value of the trees they were using, I could not convince them to carry the stakes.  So we went to the next location and after I checked it to make sure it would be a good place, we chopped down what was to be the third set of stakes for one fish pond. 

This encounter reminded me how similarly many Americans think about their resources.  It seems to me that in America as it is in Zambia people seem to have the mentality that as long as it is not an immediate problem, conservation of resources is too much of an inconvenience to act upon.  I am not sure how to go about it yet, but if there is one thing I want to leave behind with the villagers, it is knowledge of the consequences of blatant waste of their trees.

How to Make Money in Zambia (Scott's post)

Earning money in Zambia is tough.  Especially in the villages, there are ZERO regularly paying jobs and selling goods to fellow villagers is rare because demand is low for many of the items that a villager has access to sell because they are easily acquired by other villagers already, like bush rope, grass for roofs, corn, and cassava.  And due to the lack of education in the village, government jobs are usually out of reach.  From an outsiders perspective it would appear that most villagers don't need "jobs" because they already have a job working their fields and producing their daily staples for their own consumption.  Most of their building products are free since they are acquired by a relatively short walk in the bush.  The few items that are considered essential are not that expensive, like salt, or soap, or they are durable, like pots and plates, and may have been used for a couple of generations before another is needed.  But those who want to save a little extra Kwacha to buy another set of clothes or luxuries have a couple of options. The most common way is for those who grow crops, which is everyone in the village, to sell some of their extra produce such as beans, tomatoes, eggplant, various green leafy vegetables, groundnuts (peanuts), pineapples, sweet potatoes, onions, and irish potatoes. Others who raise animals, in particular goats, cows, and pigs, will slaughter one occasionally and have a sale that day or even the next, which is regrettable since there is no refrigeration in the village.  Others who have a skill such as making charcoal, chairs, hoes, axes, doormats, reed mats, or clothing can make those items and sell some of them to fellow villagers but usually go to the BOMA (nearest large town with a market) because they can get a higher price there.  Still others will hire themselves out for piece work, usually involving back-breaking labor such as digging a fish pond, or assist with a fish harvest, or carry goods or construction materials from one place to another.  I've mentioned before we have some great helpers in the village to assist with brick molding, fence building, gathering tree poles for construction, etc.  After some months in the village realizing that these guys were legitimately generous and not just helping for money in return, we started arranging payment for their assistance on big jobs.  A few entrepreneurs who make a little money in one of the ways mentioned will go to the BOMA and purchase popular items like biscuits (cookies), sugar, cooking oil, tobacco, and other small items and sell them for a small markup in the village. 

Another way, which also is attempted sometimes in America but usually less successful because more people are educated and corruption is not as tolerated, is to cheat the system.  One day Ryford and I had to take a bus to a workshop.  I didn't see the ticket salesman, but got on the bus because I wanted to make sure I got a good seat.  When we saw the ticket salesman selling tickets for our bus I asked Ryford to buy us tickets while I saved our seats.  He returned with the tickets, no change, and the receipts, and I noticed that the price on the receipts was less than what I gave him.  When I mentioned it to him he jumped up and went to question the salesman.  Please note that we consider Ryford a very honest person and do not consider it likely that he would have tried to pocket the change for himself, as he has bought things for us before.  He returned with the proper change.  I spoke to other Peace Corps volunteers about this later and they confirmed that a common activity of the ticket salesman is to charge more for the bus than it typically costs and pocket the over charge for himself and maybe the driver or bus attendant.  The fact that the correct price was on the receipt told me that the bus company managers don't tolerate this kind of embezzlement, or else the ticket salesman would write the inflated price on the ticket.

On the same bus trip I observed a second way to make money in Zambia dishonestly.  The bus had standing room only.  That is, every seat was full yet more paying customers continued to come aboard.  This is not allowed in Zambia, but happens all the time, presumably so the bus company can try to make as much money as possible per bus trip.  This overbooking usually leads to elbows in the head, chickens at your feet, or someone else's luggage pressing into your knees or side for the entire bus trip, as well as increasing the danger of even the smallest of accidents.  I noticed also a young woman holding a baby in her arms sitting at the front of the bus over the engine compartment.  The bus got stopped at a checkpoint in the road. Yes, Zambia does have checkpoints in the road sometimes stationed with Zambian police.  Before the bus was boarded by an officer, the woman at the front passed her baby to a passenger further back in the bus.  The officer glanced quickly into the bus and then talked with the bus attendant briefly.  The bus attendant asked to speak to someone else, presumably someone with more authority.  The bus attendant was then shown to a small building nearby related to the checkpoint.  He greeted the officer in charge with a sheepish grin and the officer obviously knew the bus attendant.  After a few moments in the privacy of the building the attendant came out with a grin and the bus went on its way without one person getting off the bus.  From what I gathered by the body language of those involved and the woman passing her baby back out of site of the officer, the attendant made a deal with the officer to split the extra profit the company was making with the extra people it was carrying, in return for passage past the checkpoint.  The woman with the baby was probably asked by the attendant to temporarily move the baby back so that the officer wouldn't have a compelling reason to make people get off the bus or to make the bribe easier for the attendant to negotiate.

There are lots of things I like in Zambia, but mass transit is not one of them, partially for this reason.  I will appreciate mass transit in America all the more after this experience.

The Magic of Digital Photos

Just a conversation while we were making posters at the clinic for an upcoming HIV testing event:

K: I want to go to America someday.
G: Maybe someday.  But first you have to get a visa.  You have to do something unique like acting or drumming.
K: Not just HIV testing like I do?
G: That probably wouldn't get you to America because there are many Americans who do that job already.
K: Do your friends and family have snaps (pictures) of Zambia?
G: Yes we have sent them some.
K: Do they have pictures of me?
G: Yes, I think I sent them one of you with the stethoscope and also of all the TBA's dancing at the clinic.
K: That's good.  I want them to know me by name.
G: I sent the pictures to my family on a computer.  Have you ever seen a picture on a computer?
K: No.  How do they get on the computer?
G: Maybe one of these days when we are in town I can show a picture on a computer.

With that said, we are very lucky to be able to send these to you.  Few villagers have even seen a computer, much less know you can send photos halfway around the world with a push of a button.  Enjoy the "snaps" of us from the last 5 months:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=ginaord&target=ALBUM&id=5745025493620271457&authkey=Gv1sRgCOSf_OHL2daJPg&feat=email

The Yoga of Rural Zambia

I just finished a week-long workshop away from the village where I was able to practice some type of yoga asana such as sun salutations every single morning at the guest house.  As I did, I was thinking what a treat it was for my body to fall into this familiar movement pattern of stretches and breathing exercises that I have been practicing more than ten years after days of sitting and discussing at a workshop. 

Back in the States, yoga was a huge part of my life.  Some could even argue that it WAS my life as I practiced quite a bit at home, taught classes, helped manage a studio and used yoga postures and breathing techniques with various patients in the clinic, young and old.  I went to workshops, read yoga magazines and books and surrounded myself with people who shared the same values.  I was so intent on doing yoga that I dove into it head on.

Fast forward to the rural Zambian “bush” where if I tried to explain to the villagers what yoga was (luckily my Lunda vocabulary isn’t that great) I would probably get met by a bunch of blank stares . . . which is perfectly natural around here anyway for the strange muzungus.  In the village, I’m lucky to get in one asana practice per week inside the hut, but my body  (and mind for that matter) don’t crave it in the village like I used to.   Village life in itself is its own yoga, rooted deep into the red Zambian earth and filled with rhythms, movements and sounds of an earlier, simpler time.  I don’t need a mat.  I just need to open my eyes, ears and lungs to slowly take in what surrounds me.

For one thing, Scott and I are usually busy from dusk to dawn.  The days start with the rooster crowing at dawn and morning chores such as sweeping ash out of our outdoor kitchen, doing the previous day’s dishes by hand, filling our filters and bathing devices with our water needs for the day, feeding the chickens and watering the garden.  The days themselves revolve around cycling or walking and multiple meetings with villagers who always greet us with a smile, and end up with tired 3-4 hour cooking sessions that involve lots of chopping vegetables and fire-tending.  Even when the sun sets we have visitors eagerly awaiting in our outdoor kitchen  under the kerosene lantern to give us a bush note from down the road about tomorrow’s program change or hoping to get our help with some math or English homework.   If  we’re lucky Scott and I have 30-45 minutes of candlelit alone time reading in our hut before exhaustingly putting ourselves into bed, usually before 9pm.  Although we are “busy,” we are rooted and centered as mundane tasks of daily life take on a rhythm and life of their own. 

My mind and body are filled with the rhythm of nature throughout the day.  The lack of street lights, computers, cell phones (for the most part) and automobiles has opened up my senses to take in the sights and sounds of nature all around.  Even our thatched-roofed hut is open to the ventilation of the cool breeze we feel each night while slipping into pure darkness after the last candle is blown out for the evening.  If the moon is not full, the sky is open to innumerable stars and galaxies.  Some of our villagers have even asked if there are stars in America after watching us gaze at them on peaceful moonless nights, and we have to sadly report that “yes, they are there, but just not as bright.”  When the moon peeks out even to a quarter of its full self, its bright silver light casts shadows of the trees that tower above our home and the thatch of the neighboring roofs.  A full moon night basks not rouses the sleeping villagers and children into song and games of football into the wee hours of the morning.  When the joyful voices die down we often hear different choruses of happy crickets and frogs, especially after a rain.  During the rainy season the waves of rain come in an orchestra complete with the drumming of thunder and the eye candy of lightning.  We’ve seen the vegetation change from a dense green low scrub to a dry tall labyrinth of grasses and heard birds of the morning chirp at first dawn.   Instead of alarm clocks, e-mails and deadlines, the patterns of nature dictate daily life; people wake with the sun and sleep with the stars.  They plant with the rains, mold bricks out of the nearby earth  and harvest thatch for their roof during dry season, and can tell the time of day from the position of the sun.  It’s a life that makes you pause at least once a day, take a deep breath and enjoy the natural beauty that surrounds you.

The traditional Lundas utilize these same rhythms of nature every day as the women eloquently pound their dried cassava and sift into a fine dust to feed their hungry families with nshima and the men take their slashers and make song-like grass cutting sweeps to clear the tall grasses for the next season of planting.  Small children find their own hierarchy amongst each other, separating themselves between genders and age groups as they shift from games to family meals to helping with the endless family chores.  My neighbor Rasmod sings as he moves in and out of his hut, Selah huddles over her three log fire flouting the product of today’s work in the fields, Joshua sits quietly under a tree at his foot-pump sewing machine after a hard day smearing walls with cement in the town to watch his young grandsons play football, and Joy elegantly greets her fellow Lunda lady friends while perfectly balancing a 20L jerry can of water on her head and a baby on her back.  Small children ride adult bicycles carrying sweet potatoes on the pedestrian super-highway that is our dirt road, teenagers of the opposite sex playfully walk together and then separate when they see someone coming, and young school children form groups to walk 3-4 kilometers to school at different times of the day carrying their notebooks in small plastic bags on their sides.  Sunday churchgoers with two outfits to their name polish their shoes and dress in their finest to raise their voices in joyful unison, a pure celebration of life.  When Scott and I walk by, we are greeted with a handshake, a clap, a bow, and at least several lines of Lunda formalities by every single person that passes by.  When we ride by, sometimes breaking the speed that is the natural pace of the village, we still get our names joyfully shouted by the proud villagers and a small bow which we reciprocate with a hand to the heart and reply “mwani vudey mwani,” out of respect.

Yes, people in the village still experience sickness, disputes, arguments and grief, sometimes on a weekly or even daily basis.  I’ve seen a five year-old boy die in his mother’s arms hot with malarial fever after she walked with him over 10 kilometers to reach the nearest clinic.  She wailed, shook, and trembled on the ground as complete strangers from our community came to the ground to wail with her.  I’ve seen grown men bicker over village disputes over property and had friends who have lost the entire year’s bean crop to insects.  I have seen community counselors use each other to cope after they have to reveal a difficult HIV diagnosis to a pregnant woman and sat with my neighbors at an all-night vigil in front of bonfires to commemorate a brother who was stabbed in the Congo.   Although these events cause grief and mourning, I have seen the beauty and strength of the human spirit as it perseveres and the smile that show through in the wake of turmoil.  They have a very keen sense for the impermanence of life and the need to move on.

So in the village daily life is my yoga.  The pause I take every day to enjoy the crickets or gather water from the shallow spring reminds me that we all have something to give to this earth.  I am confident that my backbends weren’t as graceful as they once were and I usually tip over in what’s the name of that sanskrit balancing pose?  Why does it matter when the tall balanced stacks of vegetables the women carry on the way back to the fields resonate inside of me? My attempts of formal breathing and meditation have sneakily found their way into surprising corners of the day as the previous focus on doing has been replaced with a satisfaction of just being and watching nature and an unwavering human spirit unfold around me.  Zambia has taught me to step back and take it all in as its people slowly mould a pathway into my soul.  Inside, I am balanced.

The Price of Water

Most people in America have never thought about thid vital liquid much. You can take a warm shower pretty much whenever you want, run fancy little machines to do laundry and dishes with the push of a button, drink water that has been tested and treated right from the tap, make vegetables grow with the turn of a knob and with one little flush forget about any undesireable substances that might come out of your body. All the wastewater magically disappears into a place that is somebody else's concern. Yes there are water bills, but they are usually such a small portion of total living costs that they don't make you blink.

Since rainy season ended, Scott and I have been thinking a LOT about water lately. We think about it every time we take a 20 L jerry can of drinking water on the back of our bikes over 1km to our house from the backwoods spring, re-use every drop of dish and bathing water to feed our thirsty vegetables, or carefully measure out drops of chlorin to make sure we don't get skin infections when we bathe. We think about it when we drag it from the house washing basin to the outdoor dishwashing station and let the drops from the dishes land in a basin to keep our thirsty chickens healthy.

Before January, we were drawing our drinking and bathing water from a bore hole about 300 meters from our house. It's basically a little cement structure with a pump that the community gathers around and pumps water from a pipe that runs to the groundwater source. Sure, there was crazy floating orange substance that the district health office was unable to test ("we can only test for bacterial contamination"), but our Peace Corps issued water filter got that out really well. Others in our area have a very high iron content in their groundwater, so we're pretty sure that what it was. Even with the extra iron, there was no dirt and debris and little risk of bacterial contamination since the bore hole was an enclosed space. Even better, since the whole community gathered at the bore hole, it was always easy to find someone willing to help pump or strap the large jug onto the back of our bikes so we could take it back to the house easily. They can nonchalantly carry the same amount on the top of their heads!

One thing we noticed is that from when we moved to our village in late September until December the pump became increasingly hard to pump, and eventually it took the equivalent of a full-body workout to fill just one jerry can as the water coming out decreased to a dribble. Because it was rainy season and we got at least one torrential downpour per day, we slowly switched from daily bore hole trips to catching most of our water in buckets off our grass roof when it rained. Scott even made a nifty rain gutter out of trees, sticks and trash bag material and it worked really well.

After we got back from a January workshop we got the bad news. The bore hole had completely stopped working. No one in the village seemed to be too upset about it, as most of them had their favorite little streams and springs for bathing and drinking anyway. But with rainy season coming to an end, not only would Scott and I have to give up our bucket method, we knew that we and the villagers would have to walk about 5 times the distance in search of clean water. Even though many of them didn't see that as a problem, it would mean less water in the long run for large families to wash their dishes and hands at their homes.

I asked the district health office what they could do in terms of repair, and they said that they didn't have the money to repair it, and that because the community agreed to get a bore hole in the first place, they were supposed to have a committee set up to collect money regularly for repair and maintenance of the bore hole. I asked the district official for an estimate of how much it would cost and including the government workers' "lunch fees" of $10 each plus an exhorbitant fee of getting a 4WD vehicle up our road, it would cost over 300,000 Zambian kwatcha, close to $80 USD. Doesn't sound like too much, but worth a small fortune in village standards. Great . . . I thought, very practical to have a committee seeing as how most people in our community don't have more than an 8th grade education and make far less than a dollar a day. So we kept collecting rain water off the roof and waited for this supposed committee to meet so we could actually get the darn thing fixed.

The meeting was scheduled several times (once because of a public hearing by the headman regarding witchcraft) before it actually happened in a local church building after a Sunday service. The men sat on one side and the women on another, and the appointing of the water committee consisted of a few men discussing in Lunda which men and women should be on it. They discussed the need of building a grass fence around the bore hole and locking it during certain hours so children didn't misuse the pump and cause it to break again. They discussed everyone's need to pay, but in the end collected only 120,000 Zambian kwatcha, less than half the needed amount to fix the bore hole. Since an NGO put the thing in for free a year and a half ago, many figured that same NGO could just maintain it for eternity. Other households refused to pay on the count that they had started going back to their traditional open streams, so why would they bother paying for something they could get for free anyway. Some people said they would pay when they harvested and sold their beans but never did. Some people said they would pay when the bore hole actually got fixed. Some didn't vocalize this, but I think they were a little leery of fixing a device that spews out water topped with orange floaties, even though it was tested as biologically uncontaminated.

So in the meantime, Scott and I are getting drinking water from a little spring over a kilometer away, and our garden and bathing water from a hole in the ground about 250 meters from our house that is covered by sticks and twigs and has endless amounts of dirt, wood and grass floaties in it . . . no iron deposits though. We use a rope attached to a bucket and gradually lower the bucket. The whole ordeal takes a minimum of 3 people to uncover the hole of all its branches and have one person lower the bucket while the other fills the containers. The community-collected funds are sitting at one of the committee member's houses, unused. We'll probably have to encourage the makeshift water committee to meet yet again to discuss the importance of using a closed water source and all the available options, which are:

1) Do nothing and keep using open water sources (putting children at risk of diarrhea and skin infections) hoping that some day an NGO will come and fix the bore hole.

2) Actively pursue the NGO who put the bore hole in to fix it for free (although Scott and I have already tried this with no luck).

3) Let the village finish raising the needed 300,000 kwatcha the district requires to fix the bore hole.

4) Open up the pump with a large wrench and try to see what it is wrong and let the villagers try to fix it themselves, as they're very good at fixing things.

5) Use the collected funds to put a cement liner and lid over the hole-in-the ground well and use that as a covered water source instead of the bore hole, which is at risk of breaking again.

The whole thing is a conundrum, since on the one hand I fundamentally believe that every person on this planet should have access to clean water. On the other hand, how can people be accountable for resources that they use when they don't put money or effort into those resources? A larger question (which reaches beyond water to education and healthcare in Zambia as well) is how do you fund these public systems and make public servants accountable to the people they serve when the majority of the population does not pay taxes because they are not formally employed (which is 100% of our villagers)? Questions to ponder.

Even though it would be an easy solution, the last thing that Scott and I want to do is pay to fix the bore hole ourselves. Then we would be known as the nice chindellis (white people) who came to live in the village and fixed it. Every subsequent Peace Corps volunteer would be pressured to pay for it if it broke, when their job is supposed to be to educate people rather than give them material goods. Our next step is to hold yet another meeting with the makeshift water committee and probably the whole villagers explaining the pros and cons of the five options listed above. So the water saga continues and will probably continue until the rains start again.

Just some food for the thought the next time you lift a finger to flush the toilet :).

Chickens

Gina and I like eggs.  Even in Yakima, Washington, we thought of getting some hens so we could have our own supply of fresh eggs, with orange yolks, and hens that eat bugs mostly as they peck around our house during the day and only are stuck in a shelter of some sort at night or when they are keeping their eggs warm.  Here in Zambia, it is pretty natural for people to have some chickens so we decided to live our hope of raising our own egg-laying chickens.  We bought 2 chickens, 1 hen and 1 rooster from outside of our village to reduce the chance of inbreeding issues.  And I banded each of them to be able to identify them, with the idea that eventually we'll get to know them without the band, but also so that other villagers will know that they are ours.  A funny thing about buying chickens is that I started noticing a lot of things I never noticed before.  You know how you buy a new shirt in the States from a popular store and notice that other people have the same shirt all of a sudden, even though you had never noticed the shirt existed before you bought it?  Or when you buy a car and when you are driving around with your big smile while you are smelling that new car smell you notice that the same model and color is zipping around in what appears to be every fourth car?  It's the same with chickens.  The very same day I bought our chickens and stuffed them into a box, strapped the box to my bike, and rode my bike 25 kilometers back to our hut, I noticed that there was a rooster just next door that was much bigger and prettier than ours.  And it crowed every time my rooster crowed, along with all the other roosters in the village.  I'm not sure if they always crowed in the afternoon or just this afternoon because their was a new cock in town.  And I started noticing the difference between the different breeds of hens, some with tupees, some with colorful necks, some all black, and some with no feathers on their necks.  The first couple of days I kept our chickens in a coop that Ryvus and Ryford built and fed them there so they would get used to sticking around.  On the day that I let them out I realized how much bigger the next door neighbor's rooster was.  It was quickly apparent that our chicken was no match for this comparative bully, and my first instinct was to shoo the bully away.  But then I realized that these are chickens.  If the bully is bigger and can fight better than my rooster, then that is the rooster that I want to have knocking up my hen.  Each night the rooster and hen would come into their coop to sleep, but after about 5 days my rooster stopped coming back to then coop.  I'm not sure if the other rooster scared it away, or it was killed by some animal from the Zambian bush, or if a villager decided to have a free meal, but I didn't worry about it too much and just bought another hen to be another potential egg layer.  After a short fight to establish who was the "queen" of the coop, the two hens tolerate each other now.  We haven't had any fresh eggs yet, but it sure has been fun watching these birds up close while we wait.