A handshake is forever

[Cheesy alert: this blog post is for those who enjoy the most obvious *palm-to-forehead-smack* analogies.]

What am I to make of the relationships I’ve developed since arriving in Zambia at the start of May? My friend Stephanie reflects on how it must feel for families that have encountered volunteers in the past to stay stationary as volunteers come and go. For me, this place will remain alive in my memory and imagination until I return. How does it feel to be the one left behind?

– – – –

It’s 3:45am and my bags are packed to go. I said ‘goodbye’ to Isaac and my host mom Juliet the night previous. They said they would wake up to truly say a last goodbye the next morning. I shook Isaac’s hand for probably five minutes as we exchanged farewells before going to bed. I called him a friend but he insisted I was family. Considering how difficult saying a not-quite last goodbye, I am disappointed and partly relieved that by 4:15am, they weren’t awake to say goodbye. I was late for the bus, so I slipped out the gate and clamped the three padlocks shut behind me.

– – – – –

Late afternoon: Spencer and I have been in Lusaka for a few hours, and the big capital city is thrumming in the streets below our flat. An SMS lights up my phone. “Elliot you left and did not say goodbye to me. you do not see me as a true friend.” It’s from my friend Jane, next door to my home in Chipata.

The night before, I couldn’t tell Jane that I was leaving. Although I went to her home that evening, she wasn’t around and so I left without a word. It would be so easy to pick up the phone and call her again (I’ve tried three times, but her phone is off) but I find it’s so hard to find the words to explain why I didn’t try harder, or why I didn’t tell her sooner. Sometimes it’s easiest to slip away in the night.

– – – – – –

I’m packing, and the realization that I’m leaving is sinking in. I pick up sheets of paper, socks, and granola bar wrappers (that I brought from Canada, and still last me — a testament to the shortness of my time in Zambia). Under a bag I find a small lizard. I hold it on a photograph of a cave I visited with my friend Thomas. I set it down in the corner, and it is too frightened to move. When I flick out the lights it is stationary save for its lightning fast lungs expanding and contracting. I take a photo to try to remember. By morning it’s gone without any trace.

 

“Ah- This one is not serious.”

Such is the phrase that leaves Zambians’ mouths often, but perhaps not as often as we EWB volunteers like to claim. But I swear this phrase was the keystone of Isaac’s anecdote tonight. Isaac, my host-dad (in truth, he’s around 30 years old, so assign your own arbitrary familial label to indicate closeness), is mediating a marriage proposal. It’s between a young man and a woman who he has been courting for 5 years. That, my friends, is a downright eternity.

You see, it isn’t an eternity because it’s a long time; this reason alone isn’t too bad. The problem, if you could call it that, is that the young man never put a down-payment on his girlfriend. In the first 6 months, he should have given around $100 minimum to his girlfriend’s Dad. This would have indicated that he is serious enough about her. But, alas, he didn’t. And hence: “Ah, this one, he is not serious.”

Now, five years later, the girlfriend’s family is still skeptical, and insist that he pay $500 (a fortune!) to them. In a way, this will compensate for earlier non-seriousness. But the silly lad tried to circumvent Isaac who was negotiating on his behalf, and approached his future father-in-law with his own agenda. He told his father-in-law it was too darned much to pay. Father-in-Law became further disgruntled.

Isaac did damage control. Father-in-law is now asking $100, which will indicate that his daughter belongs to this young man, and vice versa. It acts as a definite barrier to other men courting the young lady. She’s taken!

These ones, they are serious.

Up-front

One week ago today, I lamented the pressure of organized religion to “give until it hurts” because God Loves Your Wallet. That church experience made me so uncomfortable, I certainly didn’t want to repeat it. But how to explain?

On my first evening with this host family, my host-dad’s brother arrived for dinner. One of the first questions was “Are you a believer?” to which I readily replied affirmative (what do I have to lose? they aren’t going to polygraph me). It’s not an unusual question to ask someone in Zambia. I just didn’t realize he was asking as the preacher at our church.

Note: I had complained about the English pastor; this man, Pastor Matthews, preaches in Chichewa.

Religion is very important to the vast majority of people here. Indeed, for my family, it’s a big part of their lives. Every meal is blessed with prayer. Their bookshelf holds exclusively titles such as “Born Again.” If I’m not up in the mornings by 6:00, I’ll be awoken by very loud praise music coming from the sitting room.

All day Saturday, I had shifted uncomfortably and scratched my head wondering how to breach this topic. How do I tell them I don’t want to attend church from now on?

Turns out direct conversation can be easier than you think. The opportunity presented itself after the electricity came back on (after eating dinner by flash-light during an outage): “What are your programs tomorrow? Will you come to church?”

A perfect chance to sit down and talk about it. I explained how last week’s service made me feel, and told him that I would prefer not to attend church. I asked him what he thought of this — not as an invitation to revise my resolution, but so we could talk about opinions and issues. He said it was “no problem” and I think he actually meant it.

Instead of attending church, I did laundry! A perfect morning, spent with my host-aunt Violet and her neice Marita.

On a side note, washing by hand has its costs. I hope you are happy, sparkling clean trousers:

Escape from Purgatory

I came down with a spot of malaria, as you may have heard from your best friend Facebook. But I’m back on the wagon (?) again and ready to go back to work! It’s amazing how quickly malaria can go away when you catch it early.

Only 12 hours into my fever, I was in the lineup at a clinic. And only 12.5 hours into my fever, my finger was being pricked and those nasty little parasites in my blood stream were crying out “Oh, shucks they found us.”

Now that I’m on the mend, I’ve moved out of Dean’s Guesthouse, my purgatory for the last 12 days. Nothing beats living in the village like living in a beautiful camping back-packers lodge on a hillside. Nothing, that is, unless you didn’t come to Zambia to live like a backpacker.

I’ve now moved into a beautiful home with a great new host-family: Mr. Isaac Soko is an NGO worker from Zambia and he’s one amazing guy to talk to. He’s what people in the development sector would call “High Capacity” and he’s also a lot of fun. His wife, who I ingenuously call Mrs. Soko, is very nice and I can’t wait to talk with her more.

In other news, I ate a cow lung for lunch yesterday. Strangely, my appetite increased once I asked “What part of the cow I am eating?” Knowing, it appears, is always better.

Here’s a glimpse of the paradise I’m living in:

Life Beginning

Babies. Girls go NUTS for babies.

I know that Zambian families are also excited about babies. My host-sister in Petauke, Kayula (kah-yoo-lah), is 8 months pregnant and she’s getting bigger by the day. The baby is positioned high up and out, so they’re almost positive it is a baby boy.

It’s hard to imagine what kind of personal impact you have on a group of people by living with them. You become intimate, even through language barriers. When I visited Petauke yesterday, I spent the morning with the host family. Mr. Chanda (host-dad) was away supervising some construction workers (they are building the market place at which the Zambian Food Reserve Agency buys ALL the maize in the land) for an hour. I sat complacently in the already strong morning sun (8am arrival from a 5am bus departure), simply sitting and enjoying their company. Only one of the 4 sisters living there can speak some English, and she happily translated everything I said to her with glee.

It’s like my word carries some grand significance. Judging from their reactions to my description of Chipata, you would think I was unfolding the secrets of Atlantis. Mr. Chanda has lived in Tanzania, Kenya and has traveled to every corner of Zambia. But coming from me, they take some joy from my account, which is altogether flattering.

However, nothing is more flattering than what came next. “It is a boy, we know!” Kayula tells me.

“If it is a baby boy, we are naming him Elliot.”

I couldn’t be more honoured. She slyly asks a few minutes later what my mother’s name is: “Eva,” I admit after some hesitation, for it’s too much! They tell me that if it is a girl (impossible!), they will name her Eva. I feel like this whole situation is too generous, for I’ve only spent a few weeks with them. But they insist.

One of the other sisters is cradling her baby boy of 6 months in her lap. “What is your father’s name?” she asks innocently. Now, this is really going too far! A Cudmore family in Zambia?

They’ve made an impact on me, too. Mr Chanda insists that “when you go back to Canada, it is like you have died. You will not remember us,” to which I flatly refuse. How could he think that? They’ll remember me, and I them.

Kayula is seated (L)

Joseph Jr., Cowboy Extraordinaire

Meet Joseph Jr., the cowboy for the Banda household. Joseph is eleven years old, illiterate, and quiet. He’s been hired, like countless other boys, to herd cattle. His family arranged for him to work for the Banda family for a four year period. Delayed entry into primary school is part of the deal, but so is working for 4 years (room and board included) to earn two cattle – one for himself and one for his family. One cattle costs approximately $300CDN, depending on the size.

Although the opportunity cost of this job is attending school at the proper age, working for four years produces a valuable asset for the cowboy to start his farm. To give you an idea of how valuable this is, only 60% of the farmers I met in Nyanje Village had direct ownership of cattle, and these farmers were mostly in their middle age.

So, yes, he gets cattle at the end of the day. Also, his family doesn’t have to feed him for that period. However, although working produces a cow, this asset isn’t like money in the bank. Cattle diseases are extremely common and usually transmitted via ticks. By the time Joseph finishes (state-provided) Primary School up to Grade 9, his cattle could very well have died from disease. Although his family would have benefitted from using his cow while he was in school, he won’t see any return.

Moreover, what is the cost of delayed education? Delaying a child’s entry to school by four years can have extraordinary implications for their mental development. When I asked all the children in my host family to inscribe their names into the front of my journal, one of the other boys had to write Joseph’s name for him. What else is out of his control?

Cowboys, Part 1

In some faraway valley, and in every village, there is a secret sect of humanity – the Zambian cowboys. These little youngsters are usually between the of age 5 and 12. They spend >12 hours daily away from home, running and skipping alongside small herds of cattle. They employ sinewy branches as whips. Most impressive of all: they possess a profound vocabulary of whistles, hisses and tsks from which they guide their cattle.

Keeping cattle requires a lot of work, especially if you are to get work out of your cattle. In Canada, cows graze in clearly marked properties and their diet is (sometimes) supplemented by feed. Unlike Canada, small-holder farmers in Zambia must let their cattle roam under the youthful guidance of cowboys.

Courageous and brunt, cowboys shout and have little care for their appearance. Eating nsima at the start of their day keeps them full until after sunset.  I wouldn’t hesitate to call them fearless. Like little warriors, these little cattle men rush ahead of cart-pulling oxen to yield the animals. Slapping their palms against the forehead of a cow, they shout to keep them at bay. Just another day in the life of a cowboy.

Roofing nails

The smell of the market: nothing is quite like a daily visit to the marketplace. Every town, village, city, highway shoulder (?) market has its own distinct smell. My first impression of Petauke’s, my current location, was not favourable. I was grumpy, sweaty, carrying all my luggage and trying to find baking soda as a gift to my host family (back on May 12). Every smell repulsed me, every invitation to view products was perceived as an insult hurled at me, and I felt like a bug under a magnifying glass with every person’s stare following me.

Now, I love the market. Much like a dog and his bowl, this is primarily because this is where I find food.

I even found curry spice on Monday, which will surely spice up my life (why do I make puns like that?). There’s the cabbage section, the salads area (salads are confusingly the word for cooking oils…ask Patrick Miller the dismay of his host family when they sent him to fetch “salad”), onions, tomatoes, baked goods and fried starchy products, and potatoes. There’s also the only lady who sells apples which are imported from South Africa (an outrageous price of $0.40 CDN each, but still I can’t resist that S.African Gold!).

Back to the olfactory sense: the fish section is the most distinct. A brief stroll by the dozens of tables selling dried fish overwhelms you. Recalling the delicious fish dishes that Ambuya cooked for me in Nyanje, I inspected the 3 most common varieties and took the plunge.

Back home, my host family was both surprised and disappointed by my selection. They informed me this was not good fish. It has spines along its back that stick in the teeth and its gills have rocks in it. In short, it is “poor person” fish. After my host mother cleaned them for me (!) it was difficult to even give them away. Several of my host mother’s friends scoffed and laughed at me when I tried to gift the fish to them. Eventually it was cooked by Mr Chanda’s second wife and fed to children (the garbage bins of a family).

Mr Chanda sent Japhet (host brother) to the highway-side market to buy me the better variety. With much guidance they were cleaned (this time by me!) and fried in salads, then the permanent fixture of tomatoes and onions. Mr Chanda told me that next time I can recognize them by their dimensions which are akin to roofing nails. Bon appetit!

Tragedy

I understand if you skip this blog entry because it isn’t a good way to start your work-week.

Last night, my host father “Mr Chanda” (because he has taken to calling me Mr. Elliot), gave me the briefing of family news from the day. With 15 children and their respective children, there are a lot of lives generating a lot of happenings. However, that’s also a lot of people connected to each other, and so a negative event can send tremors through an entire network.

Mr. Chanda’s daughter, living in the central Copperbelt Province (north of Lusaka, the capital), had called him to give notice that her son had gone missing. He has been missing for 4 days now, and they are fairly certain he was kidnapped by human traffickers.

Human trafficking is a global problem, and it is prevalent in Southern Africa. Young boys and men are often taken to labour in agriculture;  a common destination is South Africa. For those interested, the wiki link is here.

There’s no saying where he was taken or if he will return. I hope that he is returned soon. Victims of human trafficking are commonly tied to a debt which they “work” to “pay off.” Upon approaching the level of payment for their debt, they are deported as an “illegal worker.” Debt bondage is difficult to identify, let alone prosecute.

Slavery (in all its forms) is alarmingly prevalent in this modern age — we perceive slavery to be a problem that mankind solved with legal abolishment, but it is not so (even with legal abolishment, slavery is part of the modern era with Ethiopia abolishing slavery in 1931 and Saudi Arabia in 1962). Some estimates place today’s population of slaves between 12 and 27 million.

Recollecting a term paper I wrote in 2009 on human trafficking, I am almost disturbed by the academic detachment I called upon to write about such a topic. To experience it even indirectly through my host family is chilling.

Please pray for his return.

Confessional

On my first evening, my host-father Chanda sat me down as if he had a huge confession to make. I was expecting, by the graveness of his expression, for him to say: “We’re cannibals, here” or “We’re those people who eat their bread with the butter-side down.”

He began: “I am obliged to share with you something. I feel I must tell you what I am.” At this point, I am bewildered and confused about what could possibly come next. “I have two wives,” he sighed with his palms held open on his knees.

I wasn’t remotely shocked, and in fact I reacted as if he confessed that he was wearing a green shirt. The whole thing is a non-issue to me; his family’s interactions feel entirely natural.

I think it’s interesting to observe Chanda’s expectation for judgment. It’s difficult to discern if this is because I am a westerner (and he perceives tension from western norms), or because the current Zambian societal view of polygamy is shifting.

I spoke with my co-worker Eric about this. He explained some of the background to polygamy in Zambia. Sometimes marriages are plagued by quarreling. The solution to marital quarreling is the opposite of the West’s; instead of ending a marriage, some choose to increase the number of marriages. The idea is that when things boil over with one wife, the husband goes to stay with the other. Tension is diffused by spending more time apart.

In addition, polygamy has served as a traditional safety net for welfare, especially with the Chewa tribe (Eastern Zambia and much of Malawi).  When a brother dies, his wife is left without anyone to take care of her. Customarily, a brother will take his deceased brother’s now-widow as a second wife. She is part of his household and is provided for.

Nowadays, this practice is discouraged because polygamy can bring increased HIV/AIDS transmission risk. Other tribes in Zambia and Southern Africa reject polygamy altogether.

So it remains difficult to find the motivation for Chanda’s “confessional” tone. Like many experiences here, it’s impossible for me to get an unbiased observation. All the same, the conversation remains at the front of my mind these last few days.