A Transition

(written 8 May 2013)

It's 11:25 Eastern Time, and I'm an RPCV--a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer.  Here in Dulles airport in D.C., awaiting my connecting flight, things feel surprisingly normal.  The international flights were luxurious, of course; hot running water in the lavatories--imagine!  I didn't have hot running water in my house.  I didn't have cold running water in my house--or any water at all, unless I pulled it from the well and carried it in myself.  Cheese and chocolate at every meal!  Delightful.  I was overwhelmed initially by the staggering number of movies, music, and other entertainment options, but I barely slept as a result, too enamored with the sights and sounds of my personal screen and plastic-wrapped headphones.

Now I'm home, back on American property, even if my feet have not yet touched American soil.  My Peace Corps journey is over in some ways, but because the 3rd Goal (teaching Americans about the host country of my service) is ongoing (hence the reason PCVs are not "former" or "ex" but simply "Returned") I'm not in a hurry to hang up the hat quite yet  I had more things I wanted to write: about meeting the Polish priest to whom much of the credit for anything translated into Mambwe is due, about working in the district library and my love affair with books, about the meaning of luxury in the village and more.  Perhaps I'll still write some essays on these topics.  Perhaps their absence will be a reflection of the many things I wanted to do in the village and didn't.

Nonetheless, it seems dreadfully negligent to reassume my life in the USA with a blog that ends in midair, last updated over two months prior to my Close-of-Service (COS) date.  Likewise, I've done a poor job of including photos in this forum.  Thus I've decided to try and address both deficiencies efficiently.  Hence, behold my photo summary of Peace Corps: Community Exit (the last 2.5 months).

I focused this term on finishing up my work, trying to spend less time at school and more in the community, both for my sanity and to make up for a less balanced approach in the past. Rather than solo- or co-teaching a class, I worked with 7th graders doing remedial and supplementary reading.  This was really rewarding, and because we worked in the staff office, many teachers saw my literacy instruction methods and copied them.  Skills transfer!  I also made last visits to several of the schools in my zone.

The signpost for Twime, the school up the mountain which is in transition from being community-run to being a full-fledged government school.

I finished a preliminary organization of the district library's collection (a year in progress) and worked to create links between people at the local district provincial and national levels who can drive it forward.

Working with the clinic to help with Under 5 baby-weighing and health lessons and with a community committee to organize a VCT (Voluntary Counselling and Testing for HIV status) and family planning event spiced up my life.  Moving outside of the school's structure helped me to get a taste of the types of work many other PCVs do and helped prepare my community for the possibility that they get a Volunteer in the future whose project focus is on health rather than education.

An outdoor Under 5 session at the Masamba Rural Health Centre

Women were offered a variety of family planning services through partner organization Marie Stopes International

Pupils presenting poems and dances at our VCT event

Pupils wait out a rainshower in a room set aside for HIV/AIDS information.

 While efforts to organize a community library were not as successful as I hoped, I was able to leave behind books sourced from my family and the Canadian High Commission to start a community library shelf in one of the village shops.

Yes, that's my college classmate on the cover of a magazine joining our humble library shelf.  I found the juxtaposition of our two lives amusing.

Band practice at the Roman Catholic church.  The instruments are made by hand; guitar heads are made out of old X-rays.

I also tried to focus on having more time to experience Zambia.  To reacquaint myself with my role as Learner.  I pounded homemade peanut butter, sifted cassava meal, learned to use a treadle sewing machine, helped repair the thatch on my roof, hung out at the dorms, wandered the village, sat in on a church band practice, and sat more with my family and others.

Thatching my house

Sifting cassava meal

Improving the aesthetics of my house with a new coat of mud along the bottom exterior

Learning how to use a treadle sewing machine with my friend Jane

Jane happens to be much more patient with the sewing machine than am I

Getting my hair done by grade 8 and 9 pupils at the girls' dorm

The mosquito net longevity study (no photos allowed due to study protocol) gave many opportunities to interact with the community outside of my normal routine, as well.

Making nshima in a showmaker (big pot)  for my last village party

The last three months witnessed another PCV/family village party complete with dancing around a bonfire (thanks to very determined efforts by many), as well as to visits from other PCVs to my site and last visits by me to some of their sites, as well.   I was particularly privileged to take part in a traditional (if watered-down to accomodate our mizungu sensibilities) Mambwe women's initiation ceremony in my village with two close PCV friends.

Lunch with the family on party day (That's my friend Jessi, not me)

PCVs hanging out as I begin the long process of packing and giving things away

Group dinner at the NoPro house with PCVs, including our three incoming agricultural Volunteers

Mambwe initiation ceremony

Coming of age as Mambwe women

Tea at Tyler's.  He is my fellow South Dakotan, a PCV who lived about 150km SE of me for my last 7 months.

Then came the goodbyes.
To pupils, family, friends.  A last night in Mpulungu, Easter Sunday morning contemplation in the old church built years ago by the London Mission Society.  A day saying goodbye to Mbala and many of the people and businesses that have been important to me there.

Easter morning at Niamkolo church

Mpulungu at dusk

Lake Tanganyika

The Catholic church clock tower.  The third side's clock didn't say the correct time, either.

Box 420083 has brought me love from the U.S., Norway, Ireland, Antarctica, and beyond

My best friend and counterpart at Masamba, hard at work in Mbala during his term break from the University of Zambia

One of my hardest goodbyes--brothers Joseph and Davey (and unknown friend), living independently in Mbala while attending Grade 10.

My Zambian brother Davey in a shirt that says U.S. ARMY, holding a snap of my biological brother Michael, a private in the real U.S. Army.

The Mbala/Mpulungu junction at the head of the Kasama-Mbala tarmac road

Goodbye to the community at a farewell party thrown by my school, and to the pupils through my favorite circle dance with a chorus of "Bashana bashana bashana...," and assemblies.

Last moments--ordinary ones--with my Zambian family, the joy of my Peace Corps service.

Photos of family, both American and Zambian, on my sitting room wall

Packing up and giving away.  Boarding a 7:30 a.m. bus with a few belongings in the trailer in back.  Sobbing the first 40 minutes of my two-hour ride to Kasama.

My main host family: me, Ireen, Davey, Sarah, YanaSam, Meleby, and YasiSam Bwalya.

Then goodbye to the rest of Peace Corps.   A night at Chishimba Falls--our Northern Province treasure--and a costume party with most of the Volunteers from the province.  A quote on the wall, as is the custom for every PCV when s/he closes service, and an official ring-out in the PC/Z headquarters in Lusaka.

Officially ending my Peace Corps service at our office in Lusaka

Then I embarked on a holiday (vacation) to Tanzania: 3 days on a train, a Vespa "disaster" in Stonetown, healing on the glorious beaches of Zanzibar, two 20-hour bus rides sandwiching an incredibly restorative visit to parents of an old friend, and an imbasela trip to the Serengeti (the most spectacular natural celebration of Africa's flora and fauna I've ever seen).

Then, goodbye to Mama Africa, for now.  I'll be back, though I don't know when, why, or how.  I'm grateful for the Peace Corps.  In the D.C. airport, I encountered a group of young, green, army recruits bound for basic training.  As we rode the shuttle to our departure terminals, I told them of my own soldier brother, currently in Afghanistan.  I wished them well, and I hoped that they believe in what they're doing, just as I hope for Michael.

I didn't always know, and still don't, if what I did as a Peace Corps Volunteer was good.  If I made the most of it.  If we are right to be there in the way we are.

I do know, however, that I believe in the ideals of Peace Corps.  I believe in my community, and I believe in my family.  I have done my level best.  These initial hours in the U.S. have felt more familiar to me than I might have expected, but it is, after all, my home.  Nonetheless, Zambia is my home, too, and I know that I will miss it every day.

Celebration of Womanhood

(written 18 April 2013 to submit as a vignette for future Peace Corps publications)

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.

Palm Sunday

(written 15 March 2013, about an experience in April 2011)

A crowd of people had gathered around the school.  They had come from their homes, having swept the dirt courtyard, drawn water from the nearest source, prepared food (purchased in a dusty market or harvested from the field) over a fire in an outdoor kitchen structure, scrubbed clothes by hand and hung it up to dry, fed their babies, bathed their bodies, dressed in their nicest garments.  They wore bright fabrics, headscarves, suits.  Their shoes were polished, no matter how shabby.  Their faces were bright and happy, their dark skin shining.  The air was clear and mild, and quiet, pleasant banter could be heard as children played.  A few people passed out palm fronds that had been gathered earlier streamside or some other nearby place.      

As I joined the cheerful menagerie just a few days before finishing my training and being sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I thought, "This must have been what this same morning felt like, so long ago."  We were waiting for the priest, waiting to begin the Palm Sunday service and procession to the Catholic church nearby.  I've been part of many Palm Sunday services in various churches across the United States, but somehow this reenactment of Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem felt more authentic.  It seemed more natural, more real, because I supposed that some of these peoples' lives are not so different from those in the time of the New Testament.

Thoughts of hurried Sunday mornings in my family's home--hot indoor showers, dishes hurriedly thrown in the dishwasher, frantic searches for a pair of pantyhose or a missing shoe, the inevitable chorus of "Let's go! We'll be late!"--seemed so far from the rhythm of this morning, of every morning, in this village in Zambia.

It was April of 2011, but it could have been April of 30 AD.  Palm frond in hand, I had a new appreciation of, almost an experience of, what had before been just a story in the Bible.