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.

Tag!

(written 13/14 February 2013, after reading a blog entry by an incoming Peace Corps/Zambia Volunteer)

Your blog entry

Staging completed!

I’m tucked into my sheets

Foam mattress still holding up well

Glow from my paraffin lamp and a candle

And from my phone screen

I read your day’s summary

You helped the other newcomers

I was one of the first to arrive, too

It was freezing…but sunny that day.

Leaving behind my winter coat

(But you’re from Cali.  You probably don’t own one.)

Eager, bright faces.

We all had new clothes too.

One year ago—I was with that new group

Just days after they arrived.

Shiny gear.  Too much luggage.

It breaks and changes, becomes dirty,

But not as much as you’d expect.

Like I said, mattress is still holding up.

Hit me a while back.

It’s all so transitory

I don’t know half the people here.

250 Volunteers.  Ish.

50 (ish) turn over twice a year.

We’re part of something big.

It feels so personal, so monumental, this journey

I mean, we’re both writing a blog

You prepare your heart, your bags.

You leave!  You arrive!

               and yet you find others leaving.

Laura, Sajay, Chris and Nicki—met them so briefly

And Casey, gracing our PST

They were old hands.

Been here two years!  Imagine.

We couldn’t.

That’s me now.

So full of hope, energy, nerves, you 43.

You’re on a plane as I write this.

From a committee meeting in my village.

Planning HIV prevention work.

Yup.  It’s real.  This will be your job soon.

You’ll make fire.  And bicycle a lot.

Get soaked in the rain.  Try to keep your belongings from being soaked in the rain from leaks in your thatch roof.  Or eaten by termites.  You’ll probably drop your cell phone down your pit latrine (it happens so often—you’d think we’d learn.)  You’ll cry some and laugh a lot.

You’ll call little African children—maybe the same ones sponsored by other Americans through aid NGOS—your brothers and sisters.  And mean it.

You’ll be blown away by the rainbows.

By the sky.

The slushy mess outside the Philadelphia Holiday Inn—

You won’t miss it.

Two years.  Really?  Already?

You’re just arriving.

We’re trying to wrap our heads

around the fact that we’re leaving.

You found me in your preparations to come here.

I will follow you to stay connected once I go.

TAG!  You’re It!

The Missed Details

(written 9 Feb. 2013 as an update to students in South Dakota and Florida)

I’m sitting in a mango tree before 7 am, with less than 9 weeks remaining before I leave my village.    What can I say in the way of an update?  How to discern what is relevant to you?  My blog entries have given little insights, I hope, but they are written when the spirit moves me and I take the time to sit down, reflect, and write, then later to type and post online.

I imagine I’ve skipped masses of daily details so normal to me now that they’re almost mundane:

The way my family eats dinner outside on the ground, around a collective pot and side dishes, using our fingers. 

The energy-efficient way of heating bath water in the sun (on days it doesn’t rain), in a large tub covered in plastic sheeting—mine was cut from my mattress packaging—held securely by a long strip of rubber commonly used to tie parcels to bicycle racks. 

The rhythm of pumping clean water from a borehole, or of hauling it up, hand over hand, from a well, carefully winding the rope in a coil on the ground without ever losing hold of the 10-liter bucket of water making its ascent.

 Gathering stems of long, wheat-like grass from the soccer pitch, and weaving the strands together to make a handheld broom.

Sometimes people write me letters and say it’s interesting to hear about how different life is here.  This always takes me by surprise, because I don’t feel that it is so different.  The threads of common humanity are stronger than we imagine.  I suppose it’s like wearing a pair of tinted glasses—at first, after you put them on, everything has a new shade and looks exciting, if perhaps disorienting.  After a while, however, the colorful tinting becomes natural, and what you see remains the same as it always has.  You’re mindful of the new hue, of course, but it no longer distracts you from the shapes and forms you see. 

If this is true, though, then will going back to the States be akin to removing the glasses?  And will I be disoriented there?  Perhaps, and a bit of anxiety about this has been popping up in the last few days.  Nervousness not just about the U.S., exactly, but about the things I want to do here, the ways I want to take advantage of the two remaining months.  I’m so very privileged to live here.  As a U.S. citizen, I had the good fortune to be caught up in the Peace Corps tornado and dropped down like Dorothy in a different place.  Moreover, I have more than adequate support—financial and otherwise—to live comfortably in that place, more comfortably than many of its own citizens.  My two-year-journey is to an Emerald City called “COS,” or “Close-of-Service,” and while it will be exciting to go home once I reach that destination, it will also mean leaving behind this enchanting Oz.

But Oz has its threats, too, and I’ve not been immune to its witches.  (I mean this, of course, in a purely metaphorical sense, though many Zambians believe that witchcraft is real, practiced, and powerful.)  I see things that make me, in turns, agitated, furious, and apathetic.  When a young man starts beating another, accused of theft, and people gather around to watch, including a mother with her second-grade son.  When a teacher is away from school for three full weeks in a term, leaving no lesson plans or even an attendance register behind, and the administration makes no plan whatsoever for how those pupils will be taught the curriculum, other than occasionally instructing another teacher (busy with a room of 100 pupils of his or her own) to “keep the unattended class busy.”  When grown men ask me for money—equivalent to 40 US cents—to buy alcohol.

There are days when I can’t wait to get back to the U.S., where [insert any particular problem bothering me that day here] just won’t exist.

Then I think back to the months prior to Peace Corps, when I couldn’t wait to leave my American frustrations behind.  Students who make sexually inappropriate comments to their teachers, in class, and don’t even see it as wrong; freezing cold weather; hectic schedules; church services people attend not out of any desire to praise or worship but to make sure they’ve been seen as a “good churchgoing person.”  Every one of these things was like a heavy coat in November and December of 2010 and January of 2011, a coat I looked forward to shedding once I hit African soil.  (I spent the summer of 2004 in Cameroon, so I had an idea of what I might find here in Zambia and was looking forward to certain elements of African cultures.)

I did shed those vestments, but found others to dress in.  No place is without troubles.  But the converse is also true: No place is without beauty.  Zambia is utterly filled with it, despite what is seen at surface level, what Westerners want to label “poverty” and aid by writing a check so they can go right on with their day.  There are birds here, and wildflowers, an airy cloak of nature enfolding us, and much of what is used in daily life is gleaned from the living world all around.  There are family bonds that make one’s aunt akin to one’s mother.  There is an understanding of real, physical labor, evident in the toned muscles and lack of excess fat in so many Zambians, bodies that look like sculptures, that reveal what human anatomy should look like, though the concept of dieting is completely foreign.  (In two years, I’ve had only one, naturally rotund Zambian woman tell me she’d like to slim down and ask for advice on how.  For most, the idea of reducing weight-gain-causing food intake is bizarre.  Imagine having so much money to buy sweets and fatty foods that you must conscious limit yourself—the notion is preposterous.) 

And Zambians have a sense of happiness and hope that seems only penetrable by the present, if unintended, message by Western countries that they need us.  My own presence is, in a way, part of this message, though I hope I’ve been more a symbol of cooperation and mutual learning than one of aid—that we, the USA, need Zambia as much as it needs us, that we’re all in a vast web that should be woven out of mutual respect and understanding.  That we’re all vital to the global effort for our shared development and progression toward a more equitable, prosperous, peaceful future.

So in the way of an update…that’s what I’ve got.  I’m still figuring it all out, and I’m afraid I’ve done an inadequate job of providing the rich details that fill my senses each day, but ultimately I’m happy to enjoy the remaining nine weeks in  my village, soaking in the African sun and all that Zambia has to teach me.

Brazier Making

(written 23 January 2013)

The metalsmith sat on the ground, as usual, working on a wide strip of perforated metal.  He brought a chair out of the house for me, and I sat under the mango tree, watching as he manipulated the sheet with his hands and a hammer, bending it against what appeared to be a scrap of railroad iron.  Folding over each end and then binding them together to form a circle, the brazier began to take shape.  Tracing around the form, he cut out a circle, perforating it with lines of circles by methodically pounding a bolt into the metal.  This he set inside the metal cylinder, a base for the amalasha (natural wood charcoal).  Underneath he had already made slices; now he pushed back portions of the metal to hold the base in place.  The top half provided a bed for the charcoal, the upper lip of the brazier a stable resting place for a pot.  The perforations allowed air flow to fuel the fire and ashes to fall through below.  Hence, the bottom needed a flat surface, too.  The man retrieved a beat-up enamel-coated serving platter from the house, again tracing and cutting out a circle from it.  He sealed it to the frame by folding the metal, bit by bit, around the edge, undoing it and making minor adjustments when he made a slight mistake.

I sat with him for around an hour as he worked.  A toddler climbed around his lap for a while.  “Last born?” I asked, thinking that perhaps he was even a grandchild.  “First born,” he replied, and, by way of explanation, added:  “I didn’t marry quickly.  Nacinanga—I played.”  It was endearing to see his affection for his child, who tumbled around on him as his father went about his work.

Soon the brazier was complete, save for a thin wire that would be inserted to function as a handle.  The barefoot craftsman—I don’t even know his name—constructed it in his dirt courtyard, by hand, in about two hours.  It will sell for K12,000—now, after rebasing, K12—about US $2.50.

Mushroom Hunting

(written 23 January 2013)

On my 29^th birthday, I went mushroom hunting.

In the US,  I tend to forget—or indeed perhaps have never really been aware—that foods have seasons.  We have mango season, amasuku (wild fruit) season, guava season…a season for sweet potatoes, fresh maize, and even animals like caterpillars and inswa (a type of flying ant/termite).  It’s delightful when a favorite food makes its first appearance at the market.  While some food preservation is practice—drying fish in the sun, for example—it’s generally feast or famine for a particular food.  We eat lots of mangoes for a few months, and then wait until the coming year when the blooms will bear fruit and grow heavy again. 

January is mushroom season.

I returned from a failed meeting at the clinic in mid-morning to find my sisters about to go into the woods behind my house in search if fungi.  They waited for me and we went together. The mushrooms we sought were roughly the size of an Oreo cookie; the color of irish potatoes on top and a light yellow, like sweet potatoes, on the underside.  My sisters—age 5, 7, 8, and 13—showed me how to find them and advised me as we plucked them from the ground:  “Iviola—that’s rotten,” they’d say, even though I couldn’t tell the difference.  I asked about other mushrooms I found as we walked—red, orange, yellow, even a white one with brown squarish spots, a pattern befitting an animal’s pelt; big mushrooms and tiny ones.  Today, however, they were interested only in the pale brown ones that were plentiful if one wandered around long enough in the right place.

We wandered for perhaps 30 minutes, until we’d filled a bright silver bowl they had toted from home.  Completely disoriented, I followed my sisters as they led me out of the woods and back into my yard.  Foraging is still an essential part of getting groceries here in the village.

New Year, New Money!

I squealed a little bit inside the ATM.  Or perhaps it was more like screaming.

"Hey, you, what's your problem?" I heard.

"Is that guy talking to me?" I asked my friend Derek, who was waiting beside his bike outside the ATM cubicle's reflective blue glass. I looked out and saw a man in a taxi looking back at me.

"What's your problem?" he repeated.

"New money!" I exclaimed, and we both laughed.

January 1st was the first day the Zambian government unrolled the new rebased kwacha.  There have been posters up for months depicting the forthcoming bills and coins, but this was the first day my bank account reflected the new notation and spit out crisp new currency.

Essentially, the government has cut three zeros off the end of our currency.  The exchange rate since I've been here has been roughly 5,000 kwacha for $1 USD.  In common parlance we say "5 pin," and I'm told it's because when rapid inflation happened years ago, people would literally pin together a stack of bills to equate to 1,000, so any multiple of 1,000 translated into that number of pins of bills.  Now we will say simply, "5 kwacha."  To take the place of amounts smaller than K1,000--particularly the highly useful K500 note, which has bought me many a bun, scone, and fritter--the government will soon be unveiling coins, with the name of Ngwee, which seem to me to be similar to the coins that were used not long after Zambian independence but were either institutionally phased out or just sort of faded away as their diminishing value made them useless.

The motto on the posters has been "New money, same value," but rebasing is a tricky business.  I don't know the economics of it, but I'm interested to see how it plays out.  Yesterday, running errands around town and asking vendors their prices, many people laughed as they would say, "4 thousand...4 KWACHA!"  The value of the currency has not changed, just the number of zeros.  But money is a psychology, and it does  involve a mental shift.  Currently both currencies can be used, which is a bit tricky.  The picture below shows a brand-new 50 kwacha and 100 kwacha note next to an old 50,000 kwacha and 100 kwacha note.  The two "50s" are equal in value--I can use either today to buy the same item.  But the old 100 kwacha note is just as useless as it's been for a while (procuring me perhaps a small candy, similar to a penny-candy idea) while the new 100 kwacha has the value of two new 50 kwachas.

Simple math, right?  But when you've been accustomed for years to the idea that 100 kwacha has almost no value, it's a change to think that it has a *lot* of value.  So much that some worry it will in effect become useless, as well, because in village economies that run primarily on (former denominations) K500, K1000, and K5000 transactions, for things like eggs, soap, cooking oil, and soda, it has always been very hard to use a K50,000 note.  No one has change for it.  As PCVs we are always very intentional to use a variety of K50,000 bills when in town, at big shops, on transport, etc. so that when we reach our village we will have small bills we can use for small transactions.  Now, however, there's not only a K50 bill (same as the previous K50,000) but a K100 bill.  The ATM gleefully deposits the currency in my hand, but I'm a little wary...how will I ever use this, other than on a cross-country bus ticket or in the provincial capital supermarket?

The two currencies will both be in circulation until June, I believe, so any effects will take a while to see.  Nonetheless, it's a fairly exciting thing to witness!