Thursday, December 22, 2011

Work


(written 9 December 2011)
Today I walked away from two old women in the road.  I had been greeting both, one coming from the field.  She asked if I “dug”—farmed—and I responded simply, “Ntakweti vyaalo”—“I don’t have a field.”  “Londa!”—“Find/borrow one!”—was her response.
Now sometimes I explain that I came from a farm, that I’ve been out to harvest (not yet to plant, though I’m sure I will go eventually) with various villagers, that I have a little garden at my house and make my own organic compost, etc.  But this time I kept it simple:  “Madame, nene mwalimu”—“Madam, I’m a teacher.”  

            “Mwemwe mwalimu, musiomba!”—“You’re a teacher, you don’t work!” she said, in a manner that felt accusatory.  I tried in vain to remember how to say “You’re insulting me” in Mambwe, so I just said it in English and walked away.  I was annoyed, and though my tone was still polite, I knew that my turned back would communicate the message I was failing to translate into the vernacular.  They laughed good-naturedly, the common response to awkward situations, and l continued walking along the road to the home of a local carpenter.
            Of course, I know where they’re coming from.  Everyone here is a farmer.  Teachers farm—even if it means they go to their field only once a week, on the non-Sabbath half of the weekend, or even if they contract out most of the actual labor to “piece” workers.  Farming is not always a livelihood here; it’s sustenance, or a little extra cash, or a continuation of a fundamental component of life as it has been lived for generations, as much for the sake of tradition as anything else.
            But it’s also a fallback, the ever-reliable Plan B.  I’ve asked what someone does when he or she finishes school, or drops out, or doesn’t pass the requisite exams to enter Grade 8 and Grade 10, and the response is almost always, “Yakalima sile.”  The “sile” means “just” or “only”—they just farm.  The mentality is this: anyone can farm, and most people do, but when you have no other options, you just farm.
            But I don’t.  So I’m an oddity.  With my family, colleagues, and friends here in Zambia, I can explain the difference in the agricultural systems of our two countries, and the various jobs I’ve had in my short career, but with a random stranger on the street, I’m seen as just lazy.  I don’t work.
            Please pardon the interruption while I mount my high horse. 
            I have a degree from one of the most respected universities in the world.  (Unlike most of my classmates, I do not yet have a master’s or higher degree, mostly because I’ve been working in the 5.5 years since graduation.)  I spent the greater part of my college years consistently sleep-deprived; I took a heavy classload and was active in extracurriculars.  I did independent research and wrote a 100+ page thesis—coincidentally, about farming.  I’ve held enough jobs and volunteer positions in and since college that I’ve lost count; in 2009 I worked in four different states in four distinct parts of the U.S.  (Which, by the way, tends to complicate one’s taxes.)  In the less-than-ideal economy of the U.S. in the time before I left, I swallowed my debt-ridden, degree-holding pride and worked temp, seasonal, and part-time jobs, some of them mind-numbingly boring.  I sometimes went weeks with no more than three or four hours of sleep at a snatch so that I could balance two different part-time jobs with screwy hours in order to make ends meet.
            And, to descend from my horse and return back to the tarmac where the women and I crossed paths, my hands were sore and blistered from spending the morning and the day before slashing and raking my yard into a semblance of order, and I was on my way to the home of the carpenter to learn woodworking by helping on the bench he’s building for me.
            So, Madame, with all due respect, don’t dare tell me I don’t work, just because my work may look different from yours.  As a Midwestern farm girl, it’s one of the worst insults you could give me.  And while I respect your work—and am loving the opportunity to learn how to garden, something I hope to continue back in the States—I’ve worked very hard, even in the land of opportunity, to give myself options.  Because while I respect you and the dignity in your way of life, being a farmer is not my vocation.  And I’m trying my damndest to educate a few of your children so they, too, can have options.
            But this is hard to explain.  How do I convey to someone who is illiterate---not, mind you, unintelligent, but illiterate—that reading and writing and thinking are work?  You can’t eat a book and certainly not an abstract thesis statement.   How do I justify my work as a “Volunteer”—a euphemism that works well in American parlance but might as well be in Chinese for all the sense it makes here—that provides me with a living allowance sufficient to live in more comfort (and certainly with less distress) than the majority of people in my community, even if on the whole my living standards are still relatively simple?  How do I explain to someone who has completed only a few grades of primary school that teaching requires more than standing in front of a classroom for 7 hours a day—that the more I feed my mind, on content or pedagogical technique or language study—the better teacher I will be, and those things all take time and are my work?
            People think it might be hard here because I have no electricity and use a hole for a toilet.  Those things are child’s play.  The bigger questions—the ones that have no answers, that don’t go away—they’re what make this experience challenging.  Cultural exchange is more than sharing different kinds of foods.  It is trying to understand the core elements of what give us each meaning in our lives, what shapes the very people we are.  And sometimes, it’s hard work, but it’s worth it.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Sorry, I left my flock of doves at home today.

At a training in August, we were discussing the harassment that occasionally happens when you're a foreigner in a strange country, and one of the Volunteers who had come in my intake said, "When it comes down to fight or flight, flight is always gonna be the better option, because you don't want to be that Peace Corps Volunteer who doesn't really have the peace part down."  We laughed, but it was true.

And it's true in a lot of ways.  Most of us joined the Peace Corps, I think, because somewhere in our core (no pun intended) we believe in the basic tenets of the organization: that countries are friends when their citizens are friends.  That we have a responsibility, indeed, a privilege, to share our skills in working not only for a better country and a better financial future but also for a better world.  That the roots of war and hatred might flourish in soil rife with poverty and misunderstanding, and that by nourishing the soil with something a bit different we might grow a better future for ourselves and others.

And all that sounds lofty and noble and idealistic, which is great in the big picture.  Not so easy in the small picture. 

Because believe it or not, even the most dedicated, most effective Peace Corps Volunteers are not surrounded, Cinderella and Snow-White style, by a flock of doves.  I get just as cranky here as I do anywhere else.  When--while painting a map of the world, no less--my teenage brother dipped a paintbrush still dripping with orange paint straight into the tin of bright blue, I called him out in not such nice terms, including an English profanity, followed up by, "Musi mano!"--"No brain in your head!"  He said nothing, but walked away.  When he came back, I pulled him aside and apologized for embarrassing him in front of his friends; luckily, we have a close relationship and he knows that (a) overall, I adore him and (b) it was pretty dumb to contaminate the paint.  I wish I could say it was a one-time loss of control, but when a young girl--one of the few with enough interest/curiousity/self-esteem/all of the above to come and participate in the project--was painting Antarctica, I didn't watch closely enough.  It seemed simple enough--another pupil had covered the pencil outline in white paint; she merely needed to fill in the continent with more white.  Unfortunately, she painted above the line.  With the white paint that was, already, not enough to provide adequate coverage for the real Antarctica, below the line.  I was not thrilled, and she learned that quite quickly. 

Sometimes there's not even a real explanation for where my little flashes of temper come out.  One of my teen brothers loves to come and sit outside my house in the evenings while I go about my routine.  Sometimes we chat in Mambwe or English; sometimes he asks questions.  Most of the time--I think he's in the midst of an adolescent identity crisis of sorts--he just likes to sit silently.  While this is a cultural thing that is disarming at first, I don't mind.  In general, I enjoy his company and go about my business, granting him leave to sit or go, to talk or to remain in his thoughts.  One day, however, things were not going right.  Lots of little things, so minor I don't even remember them: I may have burned a finger or dropped some things; I know that I tipped over my water filter while trying to fill it, etc. etc.  Nothing serious.  But one thing too many happened, and I said, "You know, it's a little frustrating having you just watch me while I stumble all over everything."  Walking back in the house, I added, "Just go away!" and threw my cutting board into my hallway.  Then I went into my room, collected myself, and came back out.  I'm not sure that Davie understood every word I said in my American English, but he got the meaning; he had, indeed, gone away.  I felt bad.  I wasn't mad at him; I was just mad, as we all are sometimes, and it was awkward to have a witness to that.  So I pulled myself together and joined his family, as usual, at supper a while later, hoping that my new attitude would show him I wasn't angry any longer.  When he didn't come visit for a few days, I spoke with him directly, apologizing for losing my temper and letting him know it had nothing to do with him personally.

But that was a few months ago, and I still get less-than-cheery on a fairly frequent basis.  When teachers don't show up, when the teaching and learning aids in our first gtade classroom are pulled down for Grade 9 exams (it's a rule you can't have any kind of poster or aid in the classroom during these all-important high school qualifying exams) the week we're trying to review with our still-not-literate first-graders, when my kitten knocks over a lit candle into my lap while I'm trying to read, when someone who doesn't even know my name asks me why I can't donate money or "find a sponsor" in the U.S. to fund whatever project s/he has in mind...I am less than peaceful.  I am not a model of friendship and cooperation.  I'm cranky and snippety and sometimes downright mean.  Which, of course, is not really the point of Peace Corps.  But at the same time--this isn't a poster.  It's not a slogan, it's not a soundbite.  This is my life, and I'm here for two years, interacting with a lot of other people right smack dab in the middle of their lives.  I might really believe in all the goals of Peace Corps--but I'm still figuring out my own stuff, too.  Peace begins inside.  There's a wonderful quote: "Peace.  It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work.  It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart." (Unknown)  I guess no matter how much we believe in it, we can't create peace outside of ourselves unless we can find it within ourselves. 

I love my community.  And despite the noise, trouble, and hard work I might find here, it's a pretty good place to work on the calm in my heart.  Once I find it, I'll work on those doves.

Birth Announcement

On October 23, 2011, at approximately 4:00 a.m., my youngest sister was born.

I say approximately for two reasons: (1) I was not present at the time. (2)  The clock on the wall of the clinic ward reads, permanently, 10:42. 

The story of Mirabi (also pronounced Meleby--it's pretty much the same thing, and spellings are malleable here) begins somewhere around last July.  My host parents, whose field is a few kilometers away, had been spending all their time harvesting, even sleeping in a makeshift thatch shelter in the field to protect their crops.  Although I had gone a few times to help harvest, I hadn't really seen much of them for at least six weeks.  When the maize and beans and groundnuts were all in, they returned to their home, and I noticed for the first time that my host mother seemed a bit more rotund than she had previously.  Not long after that, she was busy crocheting, and when I asked what she was making she responded, "A baby blanket," but offered no more.

As the eldest of seven, I have vague recollections of my mother's numerous pregnancies, and I know that inquiring about one's gestational status requires delicacy and tact.  In general, if someone wants you to know, she'll tell you.  No word was mentioned, but fter a few more weeks, it seemed obvious to me that she was expecting, so I casually asked, "Kwashyala imyezi inga?" = "How many months remaining?"  She laughed and said, "For what?"

Quickly, I backpedaled, just as I would have done in the U.S.  "To go back into the fields," I said.  Planting.  Whether she bought it or not, I'm not sure, but the topic never came up again.

In October, I spent a week visiting a community school about 20 kilometers away.  I cycled back early Saturday morning, got my house in order, and went to the Seventh Day Adventist church where my host family are members.  I saw my siblings but not my host mother.  Afterward, a young woman named Jane, from whom I often buy paraffin, pencils, and the like in one of the small shops that line the business area of our village, told me that my mother was in the clinic.  "Yalkulwala?" I asked; "is she sick?"  Jane tilted her head and raised her eyebrows suggestively.  "It's time?" I ventured as a second guess.  She nodded in affirmation.  It's time.  So I gathered up my little siblings/cousins (it's all the same) and headed to the clinic near our house. 

When we arrived, I found my mother resting on one of the thin clinic mattresses.  Several other women, including her grandmother and sister-in-law, where seated on the other mattress and the floor of the small room.  I took a spot on the floor and chatted with the women.  Soon, one of them broke out lunch--nshima, the staple food, and vegetables to eat with it.  We ate communally and talked until I needed to leave for a meeting with a teacher, promising to return.  In the evening, I returned and sat until dark, when I decided it'd probably be best to go home.

In the morning, my family compound was quiet.  The children old enough to work were in the field; there weren't many others around.  I spent a few hours digging in my garden, washing laundry by hand, and building the beginnings of a thatch fence for the garden, accompanied by the two little sisters whose mother had gone to the clinic a bit earlier.  A bit after 9:00 a.m., the girls and I set off for the clinic.  "Yalwala," they said, explaining that their aunt was sick.  "Awe," I replied.  "Tumakwata baby!" = No, we're going to have a baby.  Clearly, it seemed, I had not been the only one left in the dark about the forthcoming child.

When we arrived, the clinic was calm.  My mother, noticeably slimmer, was stretched out on a mattress in the delivery ward.  Her grandmother was holding the new baby girl, who had silky hair and pale skin.  Having lived this scene many times before as a proud big sister, I was struck by the clean but bare room.  There were no monitors, no IVs.  No television, no balloons, no flowers.  Just a suitcase with some personal belongings, a mother, a baby, and some family members who'd come to help.   We had only been sitting and admiring the baby for a few minutes when the other women in the room gathered up the belongings they had brought--dishes, blankets, and the like--and made sure the room was tidy.  Then we set off together--even the exhausted mother, who'd given birth only hours before--simply walking out of the clinic and crossing through a small field and a soccer pitch that separates the clinic compound from our houses.

The day continued much as usual, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.  The older siblings returned from the field in no rush, hoes over their shoulders.  They did not rush to meet the new baby or show any excitement; though I could see that they were excited, it was subdued.  There was  a strange hush of calm permeating the area. 

The father, unfortunately, was not there to greet his baby, nor would he be for another two weeks.  He was tending to another cycle of life; his twin sister had passed away just days before in Lusaka, the country's capital.  It made me wonder: was this lack of celebration, this business-as-usual approach to this precious new child a safeguard on emotion?  After all, death is not uncommon here, and the first few days of an infant's life can be a precarious time, particularly since they are not monitored and tested and coddled in a newborn ward, tended to by doctors.  A colleague told me that the birth of a new baby is a time of giving thanks to God because the mother has survived the dangerous ordeal of childbirth.  I saw Mirabi's entrance into the world as a parallel to my own entrance to Zambia, as she had to have been conceived right around the time my plane touched African tarmac.  It will be exciting to watch her grow...even if it's a sort of subdued excitement.
Meleby at 18 months, in April 2013

  

On Cats & Rats

I have a pet.  My first ever, really, which is quite an experience.  Her name is Lila ("Lee-lah"), which I chose for Mambwe reasons; most specifically, the verb "ukulila" means to cry or to make noise, and the first two days I had her, she whimpered consistently, meow-ing softly every 1.5 seconds.  Thankfully, she now spends a lot more of her time purring than crying.



As a farm girl, I had some affection for childhood pets, but I was never particularly close to any of them because they lived outdoors.  As an adult, I haven't gotten pets because my jobs/living situations haven't been very conducive.  And, as I explained once to a friend, "I don't want to be beholden to a dog."  I like being able to change plans, to leave for a few days, to pick up and move, and having a pet can complicate those things.

In Masamba, though, my pet serves two very useful purposes.  First, she's (as my PCV neighbor Tony would say) an assassin.  My rodent problem had reached an all-time high.  Twice on weekends I had called in my hardy teenage brothers to kill a rat I'd seen scurry across the floor.  After waking up many nights feeling vibrations on my bed, I was vindicated when I woke to the familiar sensation and discovered a mouse/rat (they're all the same to me) clinging, upside down, to the top corner of my mosquito net, not so many feet from my head.  One of the mice killed by the teenage brothers (through repeated attempts to whack it with a big stick while it raced around my spare room) had three tiny mice still suckling; they threw the whole little family into my trash pit in lieu of a funeral.  When I went back to look later, two of the babies were not dead and were trying to ascend the sod sides of the pit to escape.  Apparently there were other babies left unattended, and they do not understand mousey protocol, because about a week later I was disturbed all night by incessant seke-seke mice noises.  (A certain type of mice is called seke-seke because, I believe, "ukuseka" means "to laugh" in Mambwe, and they taunt you with their ridiculous high-pitched laughing noise.)  I also kept hearing sliding along the black plastic lining of my roof, and I finally became so paranoid that there might be a snake up there that I woke up my three teen brothers around 3:00 a.m. to come check.  Three short-clad, bare-chested teenage boys in the bedroom of a schoolteacher is not highly culturally appropriate, either here or in the U.S., but they're my brothers, and family take care of each other.  Armed with a stick, they beat at the ceiling above my bed until one little baby mouse fell out, dead, but the noise continued.  "Ali aingi," they said--"there are many."  Reassured that there were only mice and no snakes, I thanked them and went back to sleep, but in the morning I was so fed up that I took the stick myself and beat at the roof until two baby mice tumbled out and I could scoop them up with a piece of cardboard and throw them in the pit.  And all that's not to mention the rat I found dead on my stoop one day, cause unknown. 

I have a mousetrap that has proven utterly worthless, but then again I haven't made much effort to bait it.  I've avoided using poison because in some places, people eat rats, and I can't stomach the idea of possibly poisoning a person by accident.  Additionally, as annoying as it is to have live rodents in your house, I think I'd be even more troubled by a rodent that ate poison and then crawled up in the thatch and died, perfuming my house for weeks with ceremonial decomposition.

As luck would have it, I told a friend about my ongoing rodent problem, and his fiancee happened to have new kittens for sale.  A week or so and 10,000 kwacha (about $2) later, I found myself with a new companion.  Which brings me to the second purpose of my pet.  I didn't think I was lonely, but I have to say having a cat in the house made me realize the pleasure of company, even that of the feline persuasion.  I talk with her (usually in Mambwe) when I enter or leave the house; she's slowly learning to sleep on my stomach or at my side and not on my neck; occasionally I berate her for nearly burning down my house due to her carelessness around candles; in general, we interact as many roommates might.  It's delightful.

And since she came, I have heard a seke-seke in the roof only once.  I looked at her and said, "Hear that? Go get it."  I haven't heard or seen sign of a rodent since.  And hence the second phonetic implication of Lila's name: Nalyla sana.  (I am enjoying!)