The breeze blew lightly and dusk hinted at approaching nightfall. As we emerged from the quiet pond where the river pooled and waterbugs skittered to and fro, women begin to dab our faces and bare chests with a grey-colored paste, laughing a bit as they realized that this mud was barely visible on our Caucasian skin. They scrounged for pieces of charcoal or red clay, mixed new colors, and continued streaking our skin with these tri-color balms. They sang quietly, soothingly, words we didn’t understand. Fronds of fragrant greenery were located, twisted into sashes, and slipped over our heads and between our breasts; violet flowers were tucked into the garlands. We were wrapped in our colorful fabric chitenges to make sure modesty was preserved for our walk back into the village, then led precariously across the makeshift bridge of tree trunks. Items were placed on our heads, and the women began singing more loudly as we processed back toward the house where we would experience the third and final component of our initiation into Mambwe womanhood.
I was accompanied by two other American women who had come to Zambia as Peace Corps Volunteers in Rural Education Development, just as I had. They had visited me at my site enough to know my family and friends, and on this day—five days before my departure from the village at the close of my two years—they had come to share in a Mambwe ritual that would allow us to be in communion with each other and women of the village in an entirely new way. I had seen elements of the girlhood initiation in the past, but on this evening I was not a spectator. I was being welcomed in a celebration of the female spirit that unites us, despite origin or race.
This is what Peace Corps has meant to me—being a part of it. Being comfortable in this ceremony, perhaps ancient, in this community of people who once saw me only as an odd stranger, and more than that, knowing that those people were comfortable with me. No travel experience, however authentic, can compare to the experience of living, in all its complexity, in a community that begins as foreign and becomes your own.
As we stood by the river, being ornamented with elements of the environment by women who live in harmony with it, with each other, and with us, the three of us shared smiles of serenity and awe, blinked back tears of contentment, and gave silent prayers of thanks for this April evening in Zambia.
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