Wednesday, December 26, 2012

New Year's Resolutions

For 2013, I have two simple goals:

1. Remove the word "should" from my vocabulary.
2. Live in community, in honor of Ben Horne.

Merry Christmas 2012!

In keeping with tradition, I'll sum up the year in a spur-of-the-moment Christmas letter:

Happy Holidays to all!
The past year has been so full of rich experiences that I'm struggling even to begin.  To break it into pieces:

Work: I'm a volunteer in the Rural Education Development (RED) project, and my primary focus has been co-teaching at the zonal centre school a stone's throw from my house.  Terms I and II found me co-teaching Grade 9 Maths with a wonderful community volunteer teacher who has become my best friend in the village. He left to begin studies at the University of Zambia in July, so in Term III, I continued with Grade 9 Maths (sometimes with another teacher), and I also co-taught Grade 9 English with a teacher new to our school.  I'm also taking part in a study run through the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and PMI (President's Malaria Initiative), examining the use of and damage sustained by LLINs--Long-life insecticide-impregnated mosquito nets.  I've had several counterparts in this study and it has been a much-needed and fabulously interesting way to get myself out of school and into the community.  I've appreciated the trust bestowed me as people I don't know well allow me into their bedrooms (a very private space in Zambia) to examine their nets.  I've done a bit of work at other schools--paying a few school visits, organizing and conducting a book inventory at the next nearest government school--but sometimes I feel my most valuable work is one-on-one tutoring or homework help, often with my family members or other pupils on weekends or in the evenings.

I've had a chance to do some HIV/AIDS work, which boils down to informal conversations and condom demonstrations.  For example, one afternoon I was hanging out on my porch with two of my best friends, 20-something men in the village, and we were able to discuss sexual behaviours in Zambia and America, some of our own personal choices, and male circumcision.  This kind of organic idea-sharing and planting-seeds-for-behaviour-change represents what I love best about my job here--the way it seeps effortlessly into the rest of my life if I just let it.

My fabulous team of district volunteers organised a Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) in April and a Camp ELITE (Empowering Leaders in Training and Equality) in December.  Basically these camps train grade 8 and 9 youth as peer educators in life skills, gender issues, and general empowerment in single-sex camps.  (ELITE also incorporated football training.)  We also train a community counterpart, and ideally each PCV-counterpart-youth team creates a club at their school to help transfer these skills to other youth as well.  Both camps were a great success.  Making the clubs work is more challenging, but as we say here, "bit by bit."

I've done a bit of work here and there at the clinic, helping out with Under 5, and I did a test-run of sorts with a short informational lesson on water purification with mothers at a postnatal clinic session.  I'm looking forward to doing more community education through these channels in the coming months.

A community library has not gathered the impetus it needs to transition from idea to reality yet, and I'm wary of pushing my own agenda.  However, my mother and sister both generously brought books in their suitcases, and I'm trying to promote a reading culture through exposing children to those.  We have a district library that has really encouraged me with its potential, and I've been working with a few other volunteers to help put the books in order.  We have big hopes that we can help train the library staff on how to maintain this order, expand their collection, and attract the public.  It will be an ongoing project, but I hope that my work has helped the staff to build a relationship with Peace Corps and that others will continue to carry on what we're starting to really make the library a great resource for those in the district.

As a second-year volunteer, I've tried to be a good resource for newer volunteers, taking part in an orientation panel, hosting second site visit for the new Mbala district RED volunteers, and helping design and facilitate In-Service Training for the first-year RED volunteers in August.  It's empowering to be part of a great team of talented and committed individuals!

Play: I love my house and my community, and I take plenty of time for myself to sleep, sew, write, paint, and read.  I don't bike on a daily basis due to my location and how my work has been focused, but I've had some lovely rides to other volunteers' sites and town.  Larry London's music mix blaring through the shortwave radio remains one of my favourite hours of the day, and letters from family and friends are the best things one can find in Mbala!  I've tried to reconcile two distinct parts of Peace Corps/Zambia--the personal village experience and the crowd-of-other-Peace-Corps-volunteers experience, and I hosted a cool Unity Day/American independence day party that merged the two as well as I hoped.  Nights here and there in Mbala and Mpulungu, helping out with a volunteer's health day in Central Province, visiting Kasanka National Park for the bat migration, and time at the provincial house for biannual meetings, new volunteer posting, and other work/events have provided many opportunities to develop friendships within the Peace Corps family.  Of course, visits from my mom and sister Beth were big highlights of the year!

Love: It's impossible not to think about marriage and babies in a country where every young woman has a child strapped to her back.  That said, I'm not coming home with a spouse or a child, and I'm really happy to still be shaping my own world and figuring out my own vision for the future.  When I find someone who shares the vision, perhaps the horse and carriage will follow, but in the meanwhile I'm very happy to be unattached!

Family: I've missed some big things at home this year: the birth of fourth son, Asher, to my brother Bryce and sister-in-law Ronda; the high-school graduation of my sister Beth, and countless school activities of my other siblings Jim, Anne, and Becky, plus the occasional visit home from my soldier brother Mike.  However, I was privileged to share my Zambian home with my mom during her whirlwind tour in April and with Beth during her 5-week stay in June/July.  Between these two visits, I was able to share in a safari to Chobe Park in Botswana, visits to Kalambo and Victoria Falls, general silliness in Livingstone, and quality time roaming the areas most important in my life here.  I've also experienced some changes in my Zambian family as people tend to be a bit transient in my village, and while I'm excited that I'll get more time with my American family in the very near future, I'll be terribly sad to leave behind my Zamfam.

All the rest: Peace Corps is known to be full of ups and downs, and I've had my share of frustration, disappointment, and uncertainty about my role and my work.  Nonetheless, I'm always aware of the incredible gift that this entire experience is and of the stream of sand that marks my rapidly-diminishing time here.  I have so much I still want to learn, do, and experience in my remaining months, and I'm really excited about soaking in every moment.  I'm scheduled to leave my community around April 11th, officially 'ring out' of the Peace Corps on April 18, and spend a few weeks traveling in Tanzania before I go to my South Dakota home in May.  In June I'll be back to Cambridge with Harvard Summer School, and August will bring another new entry into one of my favourite places: The Great Unknown.

The year has been an amazing one.  I'm so grateful for good health, meaningful work, and a breathtaking environment to live in, but most of all for the wonderful people who fill my world.  Thank you for sharing your lives with me!  Wishing you all the best in 2013.

With love,
Andrea (/Rose)

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Reacquainting myself with the butterflies

(written in October/Nov/Dec 2012)

It's a funny thing, Peace Corps, or any experience living in another country.  The fact that I have a blog when I never did before implies that this is different than my previous locations and endeavors.

Or maybe not.  Maybe I'm not sharing more, just using a public forum as an efficient, reliable, and free way to communicate with people I'd otherwise be in touch with personally, over the phone, via gchat, or the swift ponies of the USPS. 

But I don't think so.  A blog is easy and efficient, but it hasn't wholly replaced other forms of communication.  I've sent a couple hundred letters, and I make use of Skype, email, text messages, and the occasional phone call.  I set up a blog before coming here because I thought I'd have things to say, things that might appeal to a broader audience.  I'm not alone.  Most of my Peace Corps colleagues have blogs; only a handful of friends at home do.  Of those I can call to mind, most of those written by people who are currently in the U.S. were temporary records kept during travel, extreme pursuits (e.g. extended hiking trips), or--in particular--time spent in other countries.

Why is this? We expect the distant to be exotic, filled with spectacular detail.  We imagine others will want to see it through our eyes, and that we will want to remember it in technicolor.  Blogging is a form of accountability, forcing us to document the experience for others and for ourselves.  In the Peace Corps, it's practically in the job description; our third goal is to share information about the culture and people in our country of service with Americans.  We even include blog activities on our quarterly work reports. 

However, this is not just an adventure, a trip, or an extended vacation.  This is my job, and my village is my community.  The people who make me crazy, touch my heart, and take my breath away are my neighbors, my co-workers, my family.  This is where I live.

Yet--as I near 20 months here--it's still pretty wild.  My village center sits abreast of a main tarmac road, and we get visitors fairly frequently.  NGOs pass through to do one-off "sensitizations," as public awareness campaigns are termed, donations are channeled through the local World Vision office; researchers from a government ministry or the university stay overnight at our school while conducting field work in the area; the occasional tourist stops by on the way to or from Mpulungu, our port town on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.  Every time these visitors stumble upon me, a sometimes-boisterous, sometimes-reserved white girl attempting to speak the vernacular and moving around at ease, clearly accepted as part of the surroundings, I can't help but gloat a little in my head: "Yep, I LIVE here." 

What that means exactly, I haven't quite figured out myself.  As I started whittling away at my last six months, I had to accept that my time here is limited.  I won't always live here, so I must, as a friend advised, "suck the marrow out of each and every day."  How much I must devote myself to doing something, to "making a difference," as they say, and how much I should simply soak in as much as I can, just wake up and experience what each day brings with no agenda.  I don't know how to find the balance between those two approaches.

In Northern Province, Peace Corps Volunteers have a tradition of writing a final message on the walls of the provincial office bunkhouse when leaving the country.  One person wrote in 2005,  "Can you still feel the butterflies?"  We start blogs because we want a way to record the butterflies, as we find them.  Perhaps not just the butterflies we feel--the nerves as we enter the country for the first time, meet our training host family, watch the Peace Corps vehicle pull away after dropping us and our stuff off so that we can begin two years in our community--but the butterflies we find, too.  The beautiful creatures that flit around before me on an almost daily basis, a visual representation of all the small miracles that are all around me.  The paradox is that as I become more comfortable, I lose track of the butterflies.  As Zambia becomes normal, I can forget what a privilege the opportunity to be here is.

So back to the blog--my accountability, my link to you.  I hope that I can take advantage of the time remaining to share glimpses of Zambia, butterflies and all, with you.  Then, when I have the chance to be with you in person, perhaps we can replace the keyboard and screen with some chocolate and mugs of tea, which also create a fabulous forum for conversation exotic and ordinary alike.

Different

(begun 5 October 2012, finished 13 December 2012)

I'm not sure what it was.  The way the light hit, already high in the sky at half past six.  Maybe the way Ba Aggie asked if the friend whose wedding I'm attending tomorrow is "black, black," pinching her own forearm, "or mizungu (white)?"  When I responded that the bride is Zambian, she still wasn't convinced.  "Zambian Zambian?" she asked, seeking clarification, as opposed to non-black Zambians, whose number is few.

Maybe it was my big hiking backpack, half-empty to leave room for groceries on my return; the large bag feels more ridiculous on every trip because no one else has anything like it.  Perhaps it was just the last few weeks of thoughts: knowing that I have six months left here and wondering if I have accomplished any of the things I'd sought out to do.

There I stood on the side of the tarmac, awaiting the inevitable passage of a bus or private vehicle, thinking, "They will always see me as different."

I've gone through the bulky cultural handbook that is Peace Corps standard issue, some of it many times over.  One of the parts of adjusting to any culture, it claims, is the eventual realization that people are fundamentally different.  That culture is more than food and fashion preferences.  That we are shaped in profound ways by the setting in which we are raised.  That we view the world through different lenses, that our foundational beliefs and assumptions are not the same.  I've had my own lightbulb moments, too: a vivid one was when I stepped out of a school workshop to help the women teachers finish preparing and serving food and realized that they didn't feel put upon or discriminated against--they actually preferred cooking to sitting in an endless meeting.  I had a revelation then that any advocacy I do must be based on what people themselves want, not what I assume they want, though sometimes those assumptions are so deeply engrained in my being that I have to step outside myself to see them for what they are.

I came to the conclusion early on that it is possible to live here for two years and never really become integrated into the community.  I was dismayed.  As time has passed, I've had to constantly ask myself what I want to change to match Zambian culture (e.g., taking time to greet people and observe formalities), what I need to keep to be true to myself (e.g. reading a lot), and what I can blend to find an equilibrium (e.g. wearing dresses made by local tailors from traditional material, but in more Western dress styles.)  I've tried to respect the value of speaking the vernacular, as my experience so far has shown that language is the key that opens every door.  As I've entered the last quarter of my service and re-evaluated what I hope to achieve here, I've reminded myself that one of my "roles in development" is that of learner, and that I want to spend much of the next few months as a sponge--soaking in the rhythm of the village, savoring relationships, discovering as much as I can.

Because we are, fundamentally, different.  Nonetheless, we share many things in common, and these things can--and must--overrule our differences.  As President John F. Kennedy said in an address at The American University in June of 1963, "If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."  Our lives and pursuits look different, but the core of our existence is the same.

I will never be a Zambian woman.  I don't want to be.  I decorate my house as I want to, not following local trends, and since there are plenty of beans and leafy greens around, I've had no desire to acclimate my palate to dried fish and caterpillars.  But these things exist on the surface.  When I go to a funeral, I can't summon the wails that my fellow women deliver.  It feels artificial to me; we don't grieve in the same way.  But we all grieve, and mindful of cultural expectation, I can enter the home and sit with these women, silently paying respect, and when we gather en masse as the coffin is lowered and dirt shoveled back in place, my own tears flow unbidden, matching those around me.  We are not the same.  Integration is work and requires effort and intention.  I haven't yet reached the level of integration I had hoped for, and perhaps I never will.  Nonetheless, the fact that I can get anywhere close is incredible.  That little Zambian girls can see me as a big sister and know my moods and idiosyncracies is a miracle.  To some I am and will always be an outsider.  But a few of the people I'm close to will agree, I hope, with what artist Collin Raye says when he sings: "I laugh, I love, I hope, I try. I hurt, I need, I fear, I cry. And I know you do the same things, too. So we're really not that different, me and you."  Differences are more than skin deep, but so is our shared humanity. 

...and still to dust

In June 2011, I posted about my first experience at a Zambian funeral in my community.  The following is an addendum to that post. 

Eighteen months later, I’ve been to more funerals and paid respects to funeral homes, within my Zambian host family and circle of acquaintances, within the community at large, and even in other towns.  On a recent visit to a new volunteer’s home in my district, I had the opportunity to attend her first community funeral with her, explaining the process as best as I was able.  I still can’t force myself to wail; it is not my natural way of grieving, and though I’ve toyed with the idea of treating it as an acting exercise, the reality of death seems too grave to be treated lightly.  Instead I try to show respect in a natural way, acknowledging that sometimes I just can’t relate.  I had a visitor recently, and as we woke up—preparing to catch an early bus to the Provincial capital for a meeting—I heard a moving procession of wailing.  “Someone’s just died at the clinic,” I said; my siblings also heard it and confirmed the death, telling me it was the infant child of an acquaintance.  
“I have to go,” I told my friend.  “I know we’re on our way out, but we need to at least go visit the home.”  We placed our packs outside the funeral house, and I directed him to the small assembly of men already congregated by 6:30 a.m.  I entered the home, sitting on the floor and bowing my head down with such focus that it took me about ten minutes to recognize two of the women from my host family were on either side of me.  I sat in the simple room, deliberating over a hand-made sign that had been hung as a wall decoration which read, “It is not a mistake to be born in a poor family.”  In the center of the huddle of women, the dead infant’s mother cried out, “Umwana wane, ndapaapa weni?”—literally, “My child, whom will I carry on my back now?”  When I looked up and saw tears rolling out of my host mother’s eyes—her own one-year-old baby on her lap—I was reminded that these women aren’t just grieving out of compassion for their friend.  They are communing with her, because they understand.  My host mother lost her first-born child, Samuel, years ago.  He would have been 17 years old by now.  She knows what it means to bury a child; perhaps she is crying for her late son as much as she is crying for her friend’s loss.  I can, I hope, have compassion, but I know nothing of what it means to be a mother, and even less what it means to watch your own child precede you in death.  The women know, too, that this divides us.  That I don't really understand. 
After what felt like an appropriate amount of time, I emerged from the house and summoned my visitor.  I saw my best friend in the village—who happens to be the next-door neighbor to the funeral house—sitting among the men, and I asked him where the child’s father was.  He didn’t know, but as we grabbed our packs to leave, I saw him lying on his side, propped against the adjacent house, alone in his grief.  He had helped me with the world map we painted at the school last year, and since then we’d been casual acquaintances.  I wanted him to know that I cared, that I had come, even if I couldn’t stay.  I didn’t know what was appropriate, but I followed my impulses and walked over to him, urging my friend to go ahead up the road. 
Tears are not customarily shed in public, so it was sobering to see this man quietly sobbing.  I crouched beside him and gently placed my hand on his back, wanting him to simply feel my presence.  After a few moments, I stood and saw his eyes flicker open ever so faintly, acknowledging me.  I joined my friend on the dirt road and asked another acquaintance, as we neared the tarmac, if it was OK that I wasn’t staying all day for the funeral.  He assured me that by visiting the home, I had done what was expected, and no one would think me disrespectful for leaving to attend a scheduled program.  I recently saw the child’s father during a church service, and he gave me a broad smile when we made eye contact; as we left the service and I asked how things were going, he told me everything was just fine.  I wasn't shocked by his response; after all, the death was over two weeks ago.  Here, we bury, and we move on, at least in the public eye.
I’ve never been so aware of the fragility of life as I am here, nor have I ever wanted so vehemently to live to an old, old age.  Funerals here have helped me to remember that we only get a short shot at this endeavor, life.  When my shot’s up, my body will return to dust.