What next? Well having determined the success [at least in the short-term] of the methodology at the dam it was developed at, but what about other dams? The methodology has to not be location-specific, so the mobilization process was started again, this time at the Manyemuyemu Dam Community.
[If these names are starting to frustrate you, here is a trick I picked up from Clare… say the last syllable, then the last two, and so on. So:
yemu… yemu-yemu… man-yemu-yemu. It is actually pronounced more like man-yay-me-yay-me]
But wait! That’s not all! The manual has to not be user-specific. The methodology is a fusion of Nick’s and his co-worker, Ernest Melelele’s, methods, but what about other people? So now that we have a brand new Junior Fellow, lets pair him up with a different TSB officer. So currently I am running about the Zambian countryside with the previously pictured Kantu Kantu [his first name is the same as his last]. Perhaps I will find the time to write about him at a later date.
The Manyemuyemu dam was chosen because it has some severe erosion problems. The level spillway has to be level so that the water flows over it as slowly as possible to prevent erosion. The spillway is fairly level, but at the end of it things get a little less level as the water flows down into a shallow valley where the stream usually flows. The gully was not fixed after it started to develop and now… I can stand in it and ground level would be over my head. [picture to come later]. Very impressively, however, was the amount of work that the community had done in the form of fencing. An NGO had offered to provide the barb wire to fence in the dam embankment and spillway to keep it safe from livestock… all the community had to do was make and plant posts to attached the barb wire. They did that and the damn NGO backed out! But at least that means the committee is working somewhat, just need help figuring out the erosion problem. One area I see being a problem for my project is that a lot of the problems and/or possible solutions being identified by the community are all to do with needing external resources. They need to find a new donor for barb-wire and they need cement donated so they can make the spillway concrete and avoid erosion. I asked in an interview why they needed barb-wire and couldn’t use sticks and thatch which was what protects everything else in the villages, including their gardens, from their very same threat of livestock… but so far I haven’t gotten a good reason. Years of “hand-outs” style development have ingrained a dependency that is quite frustrating to the more participatory, down-up instead of top-down, ownership building development that goes on now. That being said, it hasn’t completely stopped either. That wonderful irrigation canal the community is building to better utilize their dam and improve their agriculture… not only has the materials been externally funded, but the community is being PAYED to do the work! The TSB officers don’t agree with it. Even some of the community members expressed their disbelief that people were being paid to build themselves something that would benefit them. But… the donor feels people need to be paid to work…
Back to Manyemuyemu…
Kantu and I are currently still in the information gathering stage of the manual. We have held a meeting with the community to discuss the uses, problems, and possible solutions of those problems, of the dam. At that meeting we also did a community mapping exercise which was really fascinating to see. We had the attendees split up into four groups [young men, old men, young women, old women] so that the women would not be intimidated by the men and the young not intimidated by the old. The usefulness of this exercise had been expressed to me in development literature, but seeing how detailed people know the area is really amazing. The Old Women group even made a key in the bottom of the map which denoted various types of structures [school, clinic, villages, locations of Village Headmen or subukos] and the different types of bridges. It was very entertaining watching the groups present their maps [and their ideas of uses and problems] to the other groups and all the laughter and criticism that accompanied fixing mistakes on the maps.
Now we are doing the interview part of the information gathering [where the real story is uncovered]. The interviews are conducted privately, in one-on-one sessions. Their responses are confidential and will be compiled and presented back to the community in another big meeting so that they can discuss and decide what to do. This process is to allow those meek voices in the community to be heard. We try to get a good representation of the community, but it is a particular challenge with the Manyemuyemu Dam Community as there are 9 villages that use the dam! Not only that, but the last community meeting they held was about whether or not to allow the villages beyond those 9 use the dam because some villages are closer to this dam than their other options [in the wonderful spirit of Zambian collectivism they decided to let them use the dam].
Anyway, in the mean time, interviews shall continue until the lengthy, and tedious, process of compiling and analyzing all the responses is undertaken after the EWB retreat at beautiful Lake Karibba.
Future plans of mine include doing interviews [yay! more interviews!] with TSB officers and other extension workers to find out if there are similar manuals they have used that they found very useful, what made them useful, how they would like to see a manual designed, etc. Even if the methodology is good… it doesn’t mean anything if the manual is too cumbersome to be of real use in the field. Currently I am under the impression this will be my biggest add value to the project. The methodology is quite comprehensive [with the exception of a few ideas which Kantu and I are testing that were suggested when Nick and Ernest presented the manual to a group of officers] and I will only be able to add small bits of improvement to that. Also the field skills of an EWB trained volunteer [trained in Canada], while a solid foundation, do not compare with those of extension workers who have attended post-secondary school in this field and have years of field experience. What I can do is try to translate all those skills and the wealth of knowledge contained within these officers into a manual that up and coming extension workers can gain from. But who knows, maybe my biggest add-value will show up somewhere else!
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Don’t I have a job? [Project Update Pt.1]
Looking back on what I had previously posted on my work here… well it isn’t much. Basically that was all that I knew coming to Zambia. So how does that shape up after a month?
Things got off to a terribly slow start. Unusually slow. I mean this is Africa, and things don’t move fast, but nothing happened the first couple weeks. That is because Zambia has decided that all farmers should be registered in a fat book for easy reference. I think it is a good idea, but I am not really sure what you would need that reference for. There is also the question of how quickly that information will change. In any case absolutely all MACO personnel were out in the field in a big rush to accomplish the registry. In the mean time I was left to gather any information I could about dams in Zambia, participatory approaches, etc. and take a good long look at the manual produced during Nick’s placement.
After talking with the District Agriculture and Cooperatives Coordinator [the DACCO], who is essential my boss, it became clear that he wanted the methodology that was developed to be verified. Does it work? Or is that manual a pile of wasted paper. And while refining the manual I would of course be helping communities organize themselves to better maintain communal assets like an earth dam [the direct impact on Dorothy].
I decided the first thing to do in terms of refining the manual was make sure it worked in the first place. Most of Nick’s work had been at the Mulabalaba Dam Community [it is utilized by 5 villages so I shall refer to them as a dam community]. To how things had changed in the aftermath of the mobilization, I conducted interviews with the community similar to the one-on-one interviews, prescribed in the manual, for the initial information gathering when mobilizing a community. However, people are not stupid so I couldn’t go with my usual co-workers [the Technical Service Branch officers] because if a TSB officer is standing their translating questions about how you maintain the dam less than a year after the TSB and another muzungo conducted a mobilization exercise… well you are going to tell him exactly what you think he wants to hear so they will be pleased with you. Similarly when you are asking questions you can’t lead the interviewee by saying “You use the dam for…”, because the tendency will be just to agree with you so you have to ask “What do you use the dam for?”. There is a cornucopia of little issues like that which turn a one-on-one interview into a very complicated, walking on eggshells, affair. To distance myself from the initial work as much as possible I went with a social worker who acted as an impartial translator [I explained everything to her] and asked for “dumb” questions as if I hadn’t the first clue about dams in Zambia. So instead of “What maintenance work do you do on the dam?” I’d ask “Does the dam need any work to protect it or can it be left untouched?”. My earnest efforts to get an unbiased picture of how things had changed were somewhat mitigated by the fact that a little over 8 months after Nick had left, here is another muzungo, who happens to be from Canada, asking questions about dams again. But I did what I could. Also it is difficult to gage how the newly elected dam committee [no one was happy with the old one] was doing was the fact that there was a canal project going on which was under the supervision of the committee with the help of the TSB [see picture of TSB officer Kantu Kantu standing on the canal construction]. As a result of this, most activity being coordinated had to do with the irrigation canals to better utilized the dam water.
The results of the interview were very positive. Pretty much everyone knew what was going on with the dam, knew about the rules of use and maintenance, and felt the new committee was doing a bang-up job. No severe disparities were uncovered by comparing the responses of men vs. women, individual villages, or age groups. However there was a lack of consensus on what the punishments were for breaking the rules or disobeying work orders [some examples or responses include: fine a goat which would be sold and the money put toward dam maintenance, nothing would happen, they will be arrested and taken to the city by somebody]. Also, only a fraction of the community felt that if the committee was not doing its job that their ineffectiveness would lead to the election of a new committee [other responses include: the dam will fail, nothing will happen]. Thus two minor things which could be given more focus in the manual were revealed. It shall be edited to include emphasis on asking questions about punishments and dam committee failure so that the community can discuss it together and come to a community decision on what to do that everyone knows about.
Things got off to a terribly slow start. Unusually slow. I mean this is Africa, and things don’t move fast, but nothing happened the first couple weeks. That is because Zambia has decided that all farmers should be registered in a fat book for easy reference. I think it is a good idea, but I am not really sure what you would need that reference for. There is also the question of how quickly that information will change. In any case absolutely all MACO personnel were out in the field in a big rush to accomplish the registry. In the mean time I was left to gather any information I could about dams in Zambia, participatory approaches, etc. and take a good long look at the manual produced during Nick’s placement.
After talking with the District Agriculture and Cooperatives Coordinator [the DACCO], who is essential my boss, it became clear that he wanted the methodology that was developed to be verified. Does it work? Or is that manual a pile of wasted paper. And while refining the manual I would of course be helping communities organize themselves to better maintain communal assets like an earth dam [the direct impact on Dorothy].
I decided the first thing to do in terms of refining the manual was make sure it worked in the first place. Most of Nick’s work had been at the Mulabalaba Dam Community [it is utilized by 5 villages so I shall refer to them as a dam community]. To how things had changed in the aftermath of the mobilization, I conducted interviews with the community similar to the one-on-one interviews, prescribed in the manual, for the initial information gathering when mobilizing a community. However, people are not stupid so I couldn’t go with my usual co-workers [the Technical Service Branch officers] because if a TSB officer is standing their translating questions about how you maintain the dam less than a year after the TSB and another muzungo conducted a mobilization exercise… well you are going to tell him exactly what you think he wants to hear so they will be pleased with you. Similarly when you are asking questions you can’t lead the interviewee by saying “You use the dam for…”, because the tendency will be just to agree with you so you have to ask “What do you use the dam for?”. There is a cornucopia of little issues like that which turn a one-on-one interview into a very complicated, walking on eggshells, affair. To distance myself from the initial work as much as possible I went with a social worker who acted as an impartial translator [I explained everything to her] and asked for “dumb” questions as if I hadn’t the first clue about dams in Zambia. So instead of “What maintenance work do you do on the dam?” I’d ask “Does the dam need any work to protect it or can it be left untouched?”. My earnest efforts to get an unbiased picture of how things had changed were somewhat mitigated by the fact that a little over 8 months after Nick had left, here is another muzungo, who happens to be from Canada, asking questions about dams again. But I did what I could. Also it is difficult to gage how the newly elected dam committee [no one was happy with the old one] was doing was the fact that there was a canal project going on which was under the supervision of the committee with the help of the TSB [see picture of TSB officer Kantu Kantu standing on the canal construction]. As a result of this, most activity being coordinated had to do with the irrigation canals to better utilized the dam water.
The results of the interview were very positive. Pretty much everyone knew what was going on with the dam, knew about the rules of use and maintenance, and felt the new committee was doing a bang-up job. No severe disparities were uncovered by comparing the responses of men vs. women, individual villages, or age groups. However there was a lack of consensus on what the punishments were for breaking the rules or disobeying work orders [some examples or responses include: fine a goat which would be sold and the money put toward dam maintenance, nothing would happen, they will be arrested and taken to the city by somebody]. Also, only a fraction of the community felt that if the committee was not doing its job that their ineffectiveness would lead to the election of a new committee [other responses include: the dam will fail, nothing will happen]. Thus two minor things which could be given more focus in the manual were revealed. It shall be edited to include emphasis on asking questions about punishments and dam committee failure so that the community can discuss it together and come to a community decision on what to do that everyone knows about.
Who is Dorothy?
I will be making references to Dorothy on my blog. And given that a number of people reading this include my family [I even have an Aunty Dorothy, which made the EWB-Dorothy concept a little hard for me to get used to] who don’t know this terminology so I will briefly explain her.
Dorothy is my boss. She is the boss of everyone in EWB, including the Co-CEOs Parker Mitchell and George Roter. At the end of the day, all the work we do is for her. She is an archetype. I don’t remember quite how the concept developed and got the name Dorothy, but that’s how we know her. She is the millions of people out there living in extreme poverty. She is our client. Whether she is a man or women, old or young, etc. All those faces you see on World Vision advertisements. Each one of those faces is Dorothy.
On my Myers Briggs personality type test I am an “I” [intuitive] and not an “S” [sensing] which means I am much more of a concept person than a concrete examples person. So my explanation of Dorothy is lack-lustre because for me Dorothy is an abstract concept I see manifest into a million forms everyday while I am over here. Perhaps someone from the chapter who is an “S” can leave a comment on this post explaining it better.
Dorothy is my boss. She is the boss of everyone in EWB, including the Co-CEOs Parker Mitchell and George Roter. At the end of the day, all the work we do is for her. She is an archetype. I don’t remember quite how the concept developed and got the name Dorothy, but that’s how we know her. She is the millions of people out there living in extreme poverty. She is our client. Whether she is a man or women, old or young, etc. All those faces you see on World Vision advertisements. Each one of those faces is Dorothy.
On my Myers Briggs personality type test I am an “I” [intuitive] and not an “S” [sensing] which means I am much more of a concept person than a concrete examples person. So my explanation of Dorothy is lack-lustre because for me Dorothy is an abstract concept I see manifest into a million forms everyday while I am over here. Perhaps someone from the chapter who is an “S” can leave a comment on this post explaining it better.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Order of blogs
By the way, make sure you read the blogs further down on the page first and move up. The most recent is the top one [this one at the moment]. The first three blogs are in reverse order than they should be, but it is not important for those ones and is a tad important for the latest ones.
Much Love from Zambia!
Much Love from Zambia!
The Spiritual Side of Life
Disclaimer: This one is a happy-go-lucky ramble about life is like, for me, in Zambia, and has very little to do with development and everything to do with life. It is more personal, and less professional.
I love my little room dearly. It has almost nothing in it. The bed is just 5 inches of foam covered with a couple blankets and my bundle of clothes as a pillow. My rucksack sits in the corner, empty save for the dirty clothes I put in it waiting to be hand washed in the yard on the weekend. My dress shoes sit under my bed next to my hiking shoes for trips to the field, which are in turn next to my Birkenstocks, and only my tropicals [rainbow coloured flip flops… the most common non-formal Zambian footwear] are not there as they are on my feet. All my possessions, save for the couple sets of clothes for work hanging on 5 hangers in the open closet, sit on my little table. My little collection of books, more than half of which are the Baha'i books I brought thinking they would be harder for Zambian Baha'is to get than me [it turns out they are all readily available in Lusaka]. My nalgene bottle full of water, and my nalgene with the nalgene tea/coffee press that my friend Pam gave me for my birthday. Zambians love sugar-milk-tea, which is how I refer to the way they drink their tea, being the list of ingredients from most abundant to least in your cup. I’ve fallen in with the Zambians on sugar-milk-tea. It is quite delightful. Especially because all the milk here is full cream, and if you are in a town smaller than Livingstone or Lusaka you get it in little bags straight from the dairy farmers. Here in Livingstone I get the milk satchels that get shipped from Lusaka after being processed. They are 500ml and totally sealed in plastic, which is very convenient for brewing the milk in an electric kettle [Zambians make tea by heating up milk, diluted only slightly with a bit of water, and adding the tea leaves to milk] as surprisingly the heating coils do not melt the plastic and you can pull the piping hot satchel of full cream milk goodness out of the water and make yourself tea at the office [right there is how my mornings at the office start… gloriously]. I guess this would be a convenient point to share something I have learned about myself: I can live on pretty much any kind of food, no matter if it is unappealing to me, so long as I have some sort of hot beverage to look forward to during my day. They told us Zambians don’t drink coffee, but Katalausha loves coffee. So I bought the family a big bag of Zambian coffee, ground, espresso roast because Katalausha says he likes it strong. He usually has instant coffee, but I wanted to see how Zambian coffee tastes anyway. When we made it, and despite it being night and my reminders of how it will keep them up at night, the entire family wanted coffee except for Lidia and me who enjoyed our less caffeinated tea. As we sat outside under the clear sky showing off the amazing array of stars and I poured the hot milk into cups while the family anxiously awaited their respective teas or coffees, I had a moment [which I hope you sometimes experience to because they feel great] where I was so happy to be me for my eccentricities. It seems wherever I go I ended up making those hot tea or coffee based drinks for people. There is magic in beverages I swear, they are the great undervalued parts of our diet.
My little table also bears my Leatherman multitool… perhaps the best investment ever [shout out to Duncan], and my little container of spices I got at Mountain Equipment Co-op [another great investment for the traveler]. I may have mentioned Zambians only know about one spice, salt, which to be fair I love more than most people do also [my little container has garlic salt in it… some of you know my love for salt… you haven’t seen me with garlic salt. Thanks Geoffrey, for getting me hooked on garlic this year.]. Katalausha is also an avid lover of spices like black pepper and chili flakes [I don’t have chili flakes but I do have cayenne]. Beside my mini-library sits my pile of Moleskin notebooks. I got some skeptical looks when I brought a pile of those Moleskins, but I am using everyone of them. One, the sketchbook, I gave to my sister before I left for her to use during her first year outside of high school, whether she be in university or taking a year to work and travel like I did. The one Clare decorated so eloquently for me is filled with all sorts of things that I have needed to write down as I am on this crazy journey. I am not so good at writing for my own sake, but I do write down things I am trying to work out, such as using the problem tree technique that is common in development to figure out how to tackle the changes I want to make in my life back in Vancouver [I feel it is a novel, but useful application of development theory]. I also write quite easily when I am coming up with things to say to people. So a few blogs have been written down in there, while I hope that getting them out of my head and on paper will let me sleep! My undecorated moleskin is filled with quotes from the Baha’i books as I am studying this [for me] new faith which I feel I can’t help but become apart of. Also it has random bits of other things like ideas and little poems. The little moleskin the chapter gave me never leaves my side, even when my passport does. Beside being filled with all your messages, it now also contains a list of contacts, a calendar, hand drawn maps of Zambia, Lusaka, Livingstone, and the Southern Province, lists of emails to write, or blog ideas, and everything else that comes across my path. I am hoping if I get pick-pocketed they won’t grab that little book, as I also use the little folder in the back as an emergency stash of money. And the moleskin folder keeps my photocopies of important documents, postcards, and other assorted odds and ends neatly organized.
The table is covered by a brightly coloured, beautiful chitenge [traditional Zambian cloth wrapped around the waste to be a skirt], which now has wax stains from where my reading candle has over spilled its holder.
Life in that little room, lit by my lone candle, is a glorious thing. I do yoga on average once a day [sometimes twice a day, sometimes not at all, but mostly once a day]. I do other exercises like pushups and sit-ups, or I go out to the mango tree in the back yard [sadly mangos aren’t in season till December, but when mango season comes Zambians are drawn in mangos… how I envy them!] and do chin-ups on the branches.
Happy little nights in Zambia, belly full of warm sugar-milk-tea,
dancing around to a funky Metric song in between yoga poses.
Perhaps I should listen to different music while I do yoga.
Perhaps Not.
I think I easily enjoy these living conditions more than most people. I’ve always admired monks and sadhus and other spiritual aspirants who turn their back on worldly pleasures in favour of the inward journey. And that is just how I view this temporary life of mine, like the lives of my spiritual heroes except I am also surrounded by a wonderful Zambian family which has taken me in like a brother and uncle.
At night I curl over that little candle to read books like The Tipping Point, which makes me go crazy with ideas for EWB in Canada, or When the Rivers Run Dry which makes me go crazy with ideas for EWB in Zambia, or just Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums which makes me see everything as a merry, poetic, and above all transcendental journey. My favourite definitely has turned out to be the Kerouac book. How it has inspired me for life back in Canada. I marvel at how perfect the books I chose at random before coming to Zambia all have turned out. I couldn’t have picked better.
Last night I chased Dorris around the house, had a hearty Zambian meal with my family, did some yoga, meditated, and prayed in my room, then made tea and coffee for the family before slipping back into my room containing my little foam and blanket bed, rucksack, and little table of books and moleskins and my lone candle. The cement walls are bare and dirty, their plainness only broken by random divots [by which I mean little pot holes only an inch or less deep. The only decoration is the patterned fabric that is draped over the window and serves as oversized blinds as it runs wild on the floor for a foot or two. I’ve added a bit of colour by using that chitenge for a table cloth on my little table but somehow, last night, that small extravagant addition almost seemed too much. I was tempted to remove it, and probably would have if the table underneath wasn’t in such a miserable condition. There seems to me a great wealth in living with the barest supplies. All those material things truly are a burden that you only realize when you are free of them… and how free that feels!
Yet I can picture my room in Vancouver, bare as this room here in Zambia, and I can’t stand it. Why!? Is it the ungodly bright white walls under the glare of the fluorescent lights? I think what it truly comes down to is the lighting. Even my bare little room is not the paradise during the day that it is illumined by my lone candle during the cool nights. The candles flickering lights barely reaching any of the walls except the ones in front of my as I curl over it, trying to get as much light on my book or moleskin as possible so I do not strain my eyes. Or maybe, and probably, it is just all in my head. Maybe my bare Zambian room is so perfect because that’s what the idea was: to live in a bare room while I am in Zambia. While the ide of a room in Canada is that it is only as good as the amount and quality of stuff we fill it with. Maybe it all comes down to how we construct expectations about a room. Regardless, in that bare Zambian room I am overcome with the question: What more could a person want?
[the answer, by the way, is one of those back packing espresso machines and milk steamers for camping stoves that they sell in Mountain Equipment Co-op, high speed internet, Chai [there is none here, but I can get my hands on some spices…], and all of you wonderful people back in Canada]
But until the day I return and we start living like Zen Lunatics like Kerouac, having transcendental evenings, reading poetry, and meditating on the absurdity of life while we drink Chai and smoke hookah… I will continue on in my happy-go-luck adventure here in Africa. Down dusty trails with a spring in my step and smirk on my face [which I think is more common than a big smile for me… just my way I guess]. I hope those people in Vancouver are taking advantage of the summer weather by going swimming naked in the pacific ocean, cooking on the beach, and getting in plenty of adventures.
Much Love from Zambia.
Stayed tuned for more stories from Zambia including…
nshima what?
and
The Sounds and Smells of Zambia
And if you are particularly unlikely, a scandalous photo of me taking a bath [just kidding, I will save that for facebook].
I love my little room dearly. It has almost nothing in it. The bed is just 5 inches of foam covered with a couple blankets and my bundle of clothes as a pillow. My rucksack sits in the corner, empty save for the dirty clothes I put in it waiting to be hand washed in the yard on the weekend. My dress shoes sit under my bed next to my hiking shoes for trips to the field, which are in turn next to my Birkenstocks, and only my tropicals [rainbow coloured flip flops… the most common non-formal Zambian footwear] are not there as they are on my feet. All my possessions, save for the couple sets of clothes for work hanging on 5 hangers in the open closet, sit on my little table. My little collection of books, more than half of which are the Baha'i books I brought thinking they would be harder for Zambian Baha'is to get than me [it turns out they are all readily available in Lusaka]. My nalgene bottle full of water, and my nalgene with the nalgene tea/coffee press that my friend Pam gave me for my birthday. Zambians love sugar-milk-tea, which is how I refer to the way they drink their tea, being the list of ingredients from most abundant to least in your cup. I’ve fallen in with the Zambians on sugar-milk-tea. It is quite delightful. Especially because all the milk here is full cream, and if you are in a town smaller than Livingstone or Lusaka you get it in little bags straight from the dairy farmers. Here in Livingstone I get the milk satchels that get shipped from Lusaka after being processed. They are 500ml and totally sealed in plastic, which is very convenient for brewing the milk in an electric kettle [Zambians make tea by heating up milk, diluted only slightly with a bit of water, and adding the tea leaves to milk] as surprisingly the heating coils do not melt the plastic and you can pull the piping hot satchel of full cream milk goodness out of the water and make yourself tea at the office [right there is how my mornings at the office start… gloriously]. I guess this would be a convenient point to share something I have learned about myself: I can live on pretty much any kind of food, no matter if it is unappealing to me, so long as I have some sort of hot beverage to look forward to during my day. They told us Zambians don’t drink coffee, but Katalausha loves coffee. So I bought the family a big bag of Zambian coffee, ground, espresso roast because Katalausha says he likes it strong. He usually has instant coffee, but I wanted to see how Zambian coffee tastes anyway. When we made it, and despite it being night and my reminders of how it will keep them up at night, the entire family wanted coffee except for Lidia and me who enjoyed our less caffeinated tea. As we sat outside under the clear sky showing off the amazing array of stars and I poured the hot milk into cups while the family anxiously awaited their respective teas or coffees, I had a moment [which I hope you sometimes experience to because they feel great] where I was so happy to be me for my eccentricities. It seems wherever I go I ended up making those hot tea or coffee based drinks for people. There is magic in beverages I swear, they are the great undervalued parts of our diet.
My little table also bears my Leatherman multitool… perhaps the best investment ever [shout out to Duncan], and my little container of spices I got at Mountain Equipment Co-op [another great investment for the traveler]. I may have mentioned Zambians only know about one spice, salt, which to be fair I love more than most people do also [my little container has garlic salt in it… some of you know my love for salt… you haven’t seen me with garlic salt. Thanks Geoffrey, for getting me hooked on garlic this year.]. Katalausha is also an avid lover of spices like black pepper and chili flakes [I don’t have chili flakes but I do have cayenne]. Beside my mini-library sits my pile of Moleskin notebooks. I got some skeptical looks when I brought a pile of those Moleskins, but I am using everyone of them. One, the sketchbook, I gave to my sister before I left for her to use during her first year outside of high school, whether she be in university or taking a year to work and travel like I did. The one Clare decorated so eloquently for me is filled with all sorts of things that I have needed to write down as I am on this crazy journey. I am not so good at writing for my own sake, but I do write down things I am trying to work out, such as using the problem tree technique that is common in development to figure out how to tackle the changes I want to make in my life back in Vancouver [I feel it is a novel, but useful application of development theory]. I also write quite easily when I am coming up with things to say to people. So a few blogs have been written down in there, while I hope that getting them out of my head and on paper will let me sleep! My undecorated moleskin is filled with quotes from the Baha’i books as I am studying this [for me] new faith which I feel I can’t help but become apart of. Also it has random bits of other things like ideas and little poems. The little moleskin the chapter gave me never leaves my side, even when my passport does. Beside being filled with all your messages, it now also contains a list of contacts, a calendar, hand drawn maps of Zambia, Lusaka, Livingstone, and the Southern Province, lists of emails to write, or blog ideas, and everything else that comes across my path. I am hoping if I get pick-pocketed they won’t grab that little book, as I also use the little folder in the back as an emergency stash of money. And the moleskin folder keeps my photocopies of important documents, postcards, and other assorted odds and ends neatly organized.
The table is covered by a brightly coloured, beautiful chitenge [traditional Zambian cloth wrapped around the waste to be a skirt], which now has wax stains from where my reading candle has over spilled its holder.
Life in that little room, lit by my lone candle, is a glorious thing. I do yoga on average once a day [sometimes twice a day, sometimes not at all, but mostly once a day]. I do other exercises like pushups and sit-ups, or I go out to the mango tree in the back yard [sadly mangos aren’t in season till December, but when mango season comes Zambians are drawn in mangos… how I envy them!] and do chin-ups on the branches.
Happy little nights in Zambia, belly full of warm sugar-milk-tea,
dancing around to a funky Metric song in between yoga poses.
Perhaps I should listen to different music while I do yoga.
Perhaps Not.
I think I easily enjoy these living conditions more than most people. I’ve always admired monks and sadhus and other spiritual aspirants who turn their back on worldly pleasures in favour of the inward journey. And that is just how I view this temporary life of mine, like the lives of my spiritual heroes except I am also surrounded by a wonderful Zambian family which has taken me in like a brother and uncle.
At night I curl over that little candle to read books like The Tipping Point, which makes me go crazy with ideas for EWB in Canada, or When the Rivers Run Dry which makes me go crazy with ideas for EWB in Zambia, or just Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums which makes me see everything as a merry, poetic, and above all transcendental journey. My favourite definitely has turned out to be the Kerouac book. How it has inspired me for life back in Canada. I marvel at how perfect the books I chose at random before coming to Zambia all have turned out. I couldn’t have picked better.
Last night I chased Dorris around the house, had a hearty Zambian meal with my family, did some yoga, meditated, and prayed in my room, then made tea and coffee for the family before slipping back into my room containing my little foam and blanket bed, rucksack, and little table of books and moleskins and my lone candle. The cement walls are bare and dirty, their plainness only broken by random divots [by which I mean little pot holes only an inch or less deep. The only decoration is the patterned fabric that is draped over the window and serves as oversized blinds as it runs wild on the floor for a foot or two. I’ve added a bit of colour by using that chitenge for a table cloth on my little table but somehow, last night, that small extravagant addition almost seemed too much. I was tempted to remove it, and probably would have if the table underneath wasn’t in such a miserable condition. There seems to me a great wealth in living with the barest supplies. All those material things truly are a burden that you only realize when you are free of them… and how free that feels!
Yet I can picture my room in Vancouver, bare as this room here in Zambia, and I can’t stand it. Why!? Is it the ungodly bright white walls under the glare of the fluorescent lights? I think what it truly comes down to is the lighting. Even my bare little room is not the paradise during the day that it is illumined by my lone candle during the cool nights. The candles flickering lights barely reaching any of the walls except the ones in front of my as I curl over it, trying to get as much light on my book or moleskin as possible so I do not strain my eyes. Or maybe, and probably, it is just all in my head. Maybe my bare Zambian room is so perfect because that’s what the idea was: to live in a bare room while I am in Zambia. While the ide of a room in Canada is that it is only as good as the amount and quality of stuff we fill it with. Maybe it all comes down to how we construct expectations about a room. Regardless, in that bare Zambian room I am overcome with the question: What more could a person want?
[the answer, by the way, is one of those back packing espresso machines and milk steamers for camping stoves that they sell in Mountain Equipment Co-op, high speed internet, Chai [there is none here, but I can get my hands on some spices…], and all of you wonderful people back in Canada]
But until the day I return and we start living like Zen Lunatics like Kerouac, having transcendental evenings, reading poetry, and meditating on the absurdity of life while we drink Chai and smoke hookah… I will continue on in my happy-go-luck adventure here in Africa. Down dusty trails with a spring in my step and smirk on my face [which I think is more common than a big smile for me… just my way I guess]. I hope those people in Vancouver are taking advantage of the summer weather by going swimming naked in the pacific ocean, cooking on the beach, and getting in plenty of adventures.
Much Love from Zambia.
Stayed tuned for more stories from Zambia including…
nshima what?
and
The Sounds and Smells of Zambia
And if you are particularly unlikely, a scandalous photo of me taking a bath [just kidding, I will save that for facebook].
Katalausha's Jazz
When you travel to a country of a very different economic situation than your home country… you feel embarrassed by your wealth [I am generalizing completely based on my personal experience here in Zambia]. For me, this wealth was my iPod. I hid it entirely for the first while here in Zambia, mostly because I didn’t want it to be a barrier between me and Zambians, but there was also the bonus of the less people who knew I had something valuable, the less likely they would try to rob me. But I couldn’t keep it hidden forever, being that I am living in a house without electricity I charge it, and my cell phone [thank you all who send me text messages], at the office. Consequently, I have had to explain it to each of my inquisitive co-workers. Once the iPod was out of the bag, so to speak, I stopped worrying about it so much. I let my family see me with it… and I am so glad I did. The ensuing discussion with Katalausha revealed his passion for Jazz, and his love for the bass guitar he can’t effectively play in his house sans electricity.
I must go on a tangent here on the culture barrier [at first I was going to call it the language barrier, but the language barrier is just the tip of the iceberg that is the culture barrier]. People think differently in different cultures. All those wonderful, deep, meaningful conversations you have with your friends… they are made possible by the level to which you are identical in culture that person. You may have different backgrounds and opinions, but you exist in the same world… speak not only the same language but most of the same slang and idioms. Your thought process is similar. Your values are similar. The vast, complex array of unspoken rules of interactions are fluidly navigated by both of you making each interaction, in a way, a sort of elegant dance. And all that is lost when you leave that extremely narrow place that is your cultural home.
As a Junior Fellow, you want to explore the painfully difficult issues pervading development… and yet how do you even begin when you realize how insecure you are about using the word “development” or even “poverty” to your co-workers. Meanwhile you are busy walking on eggshells trying not to break any of those unspoken rules that absolutely everyone around you understands as completely as you are oblivious, hoping the ones you do break don’t cost you trust with your partner organization, or that visa you need to stay in the country. Cultures are different worlds…
But all those barriers and hindrances can be shattered in an instant by something so small as Katalausha’s passion for Jazz. I like Jazz. I am not passionate connoisseur, but I very much enjoy it. To what extent that passion is common ground between me and him does not matter though, because suddenly Katalausha is a real person who makes sense to me. He is no longer another Zambian that I make pleasant small talk with , that little passion has showed me a window into who he is. He goes from being a person from another world…
…to becoming a brother and dear friend.
I must go on a tangent here on the culture barrier [at first I was going to call it the language barrier, but the language barrier is just the tip of the iceberg that is the culture barrier]. People think differently in different cultures. All those wonderful, deep, meaningful conversations you have with your friends… they are made possible by the level to which you are identical in culture that person. You may have different backgrounds and opinions, but you exist in the same world… speak not only the same language but most of the same slang and idioms. Your thought process is similar. Your values are similar. The vast, complex array of unspoken rules of interactions are fluidly navigated by both of you making each interaction, in a way, a sort of elegant dance. And all that is lost when you leave that extremely narrow place that is your cultural home.
As a Junior Fellow, you want to explore the painfully difficult issues pervading development… and yet how do you even begin when you realize how insecure you are about using the word “development” or even “poverty” to your co-workers. Meanwhile you are busy walking on eggshells trying not to break any of those unspoken rules that absolutely everyone around you understands as completely as you are oblivious, hoping the ones you do break don’t cost you trust with your partner organization, or that visa you need to stay in the country. Cultures are different worlds…
But all those barriers and hindrances can be shattered in an instant by something so small as Katalausha’s passion for Jazz. I like Jazz. I am not passionate connoisseur, but I very much enjoy it. To what extent that passion is common ground between me and him does not matter though, because suddenly Katalausha is a real person who makes sense to me. He is no longer another Zambian that I make pleasant small talk with , that little passion has showed me a window into who he is. He goes from being a person from another world…
…to becoming a brother and dear friend.
My friend Besta
I went out this Saturday night with two Zambian girls who are of a similar age to me [a refreshing change from the adults and toddlers I am normally surrounded by]. They both live in my neighbourhood, and I know them through my family. One’s name is Lweendo, and the other is Besta, and it’s Besta who this story is mostly about.
We went to one of their favourite hang-outs: The Livingstone Safari Lodge. It’s a lodge [hotel/hostel] and campground for tourists but it has a very nice, open air bar/resteraunt under the high thatched roof which characterizes lodges in Zambia. We see an old classmate of Besta’s, with her little girl, talking with Besta and the girl’s old teacher. Despite the presence of the child, the encounter seems to be romantic. Besta tells us how he broke her arm once in class because he was drunk, though I get the impression it wasn’t more than a strain. She didn’t have him arrested, she chose to forgive and forget.
Lweendo and Besta drink sparkling white South African wine while I sip a coke from the glass bottles that you aren’t allowed to take from the places you bought the coke and thus have to carry an empty bottle to trade if you want to take it to go. I was continuing my abstinence from alcohol which I later relented and drank a glass of red wine. After the initial giddiness had passed as the alcohol went straight to my head from not drinking for a while, it made me just feel sick and reaffirmed my decision to stop drinking.
We played pool (seemingly the most popular activity in Zambia, bar football (proper football, as in soccer, not American football)] or just sat and talked. Somehow we got on the subject of her planned trip to the UK, which made me ask Why the UK? This brought out the very sensitive subject, which underlay the rest of the evening, of how her British boyfriend/fiancée had dumped her this last week over something so trivial that I am convinced he lost interest for one reason or another and just needed an excuse. On her hand I can see the band of surprisingly pale skin where the ring used to be. The issue of westerners engaging in frivolous relationships with Africans while traveling, only to have the twp perceptions of how serious the relationship is grossly distant apart, becomes an awful reality watching a beautiful, sweet Zambian girl blink away tears as you listen to her choked words. I don’t even know if my idea of a broken heart comes close to what she is dealing with as I hear how devoted she was to him, how much she gave, and how little was returned. I am faced with the awe inspiring ability of a Zambian women to be devoted to a man even when getting nothing in return. She tells me she thought white men didn’t fling relationships aside so easily, that she thought it was a behavior exclusive to black men. I assure her it is a universal human capacity to hurt, though I a not sure that it is in any way “assuring”. She would be attending college here in Livingstone this year except her ex-boyfriend convinced her not to with promises that his family was going to bring her to the UK to study there.
During the periods of happier small talk, I cope with hearing about her situation by trying to come to a conclusion on whether these thatched lodges are really “Zambian” or, like so much of the “Zambian” carvings for sale, not rooted in the culture but in what tourists think African culture is. The thatched roof is what all the poor villages use. Ironically, while all Zambians are striving for the corrugated metal roof which the British brought as it is a sign of wealth despite turning the house into an oven, tourists, most of which sound British to compound the irony, are paying top dollar to stay in safari lodges with thatched roofs. In the villages I have seen women binding and cleaning the thatch which they sell to lodge owners at a small price which I don’t know if it’s reasonable or not given the work involved. I wonder if tourists appreciate the level of authenticity when they stay in these lodges.
We go back to Besta’s place for dinner and tea. And despite her being roughly my age the place is hers, both her parents have passed away years before. I am afraid to ask from what because the answer might be aids. She has an array of DVDs and we watch the movie “Honey” with Jessica Alba. In Canada I had head this movie referred to as a “Dick Flick” [being the cleverly named reciprocal of a “chick flick”, with not much substance and lots of “T & A”]. But to Besta it’s a lot more. She has an enormous passion for dancing, and even teaches dancing [the main theme of the movie. She has watched this DVD so many times I am convinced most of the skips are not from scratches but from simply being worn out. This film is filled with, what in Canada I would consider, a cheesy uplifting story about inner city, troubled youth finding salvation in their love for Hip Hop dance but which here in Zambia is something else entirely. It means the world to her, and its uplifting story I am sure contributes to that incredible strength I see in her which holds together her fragile life. She cries at the feel-good ending every time. Besta’s daughter from the boyfriend before the British one ones around the house, even happier and more full of energy than my DoDo. I’d guess her to be between one and two years old. Besta assures me, without my solicitation for assurance, that her daughter is an incredible blessing for her. I wonder if both, or either, will actually get to go to school. But I am looking forward to going out with them again next weekend, and being taught how to dance by someone who actually teaches dance. We’ll be celebrating Besta’s 20th birthday. A fact which makes me wonder if those adults I mentioned spending my time with are really that old…
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I warned you that was a dark one. I’ve written this after I had gone home from Besta’s, and after I lay in bed a while, failing to not construct these lines. Having written them down, I’ve been tossing and turning in bed, ironically just as sleepless as before. [while I type the words up, somehow they don’t seem to capture the emotion which kept me up last night, and has weighed on my chest all day]. Desperate for sleep I will make myself a cup of NeoCitran to help me sleep with cold water from my nalgene water bottle sitting on my little table by my books. For me this was a haunting experience, made all the more so by how much light I see in Besta. I can’t imagine how you are feeling reading gthis in Canada. Perhaps you’re at your office or on a laptop, perhaps sipping a three and a half dollar starbucks concoction [a scenario which problem comes to mind because if our roles were reversed I would be sitting in Wicked Café, Vancouver, sipping on of Arthur’s cappuccinos which are so good I readily liken them to liquid crack]. I’m not trying to depress you with this story, though I may have. I debated sharing this experience on so public a medium as a blog, and considered it may be more appropriate for an email to a select few who don’t mind shouldering the darker experiences. But as you can see I have decided otherwise. That’s because I wanted to remind you I am not traveling in a place of sunshine, rainbows and kittens [well actually I have seen all three, but you know what I mean]. Because I want to remind you of why members of Engineers Without Borders (perhaps you are among them) are working so hard for change.
We went to one of their favourite hang-outs: The Livingstone Safari Lodge. It’s a lodge [hotel/hostel] and campground for tourists but it has a very nice, open air bar/resteraunt under the high thatched roof which characterizes lodges in Zambia. We see an old classmate of Besta’s, with her little girl, talking with Besta and the girl’s old teacher. Despite the presence of the child, the encounter seems to be romantic. Besta tells us how he broke her arm once in class because he was drunk, though I get the impression it wasn’t more than a strain. She didn’t have him arrested, she chose to forgive and forget.
Lweendo and Besta drink sparkling white South African wine while I sip a coke from the glass bottles that you aren’t allowed to take from the places you bought the coke and thus have to carry an empty bottle to trade if you want to take it to go. I was continuing my abstinence from alcohol which I later relented and drank a glass of red wine. After the initial giddiness had passed as the alcohol went straight to my head from not drinking for a while, it made me just feel sick and reaffirmed my decision to stop drinking.
We played pool (seemingly the most popular activity in Zambia, bar football (proper football, as in soccer, not American football)] or just sat and talked. Somehow we got on the subject of her planned trip to the UK, which made me ask Why the UK? This brought out the very sensitive subject, which underlay the rest of the evening, of how her British boyfriend/fiancée had dumped her this last week over something so trivial that I am convinced he lost interest for one reason or another and just needed an excuse. On her hand I can see the band of surprisingly pale skin where the ring used to be. The issue of westerners engaging in frivolous relationships with Africans while traveling, only to have the twp perceptions of how serious the relationship is grossly distant apart, becomes an awful reality watching a beautiful, sweet Zambian girl blink away tears as you listen to her choked words. I don’t even know if my idea of a broken heart comes close to what she is dealing with as I hear how devoted she was to him, how much she gave, and how little was returned. I am faced with the awe inspiring ability of a Zambian women to be devoted to a man even when getting nothing in return. She tells me she thought white men didn’t fling relationships aside so easily, that she thought it was a behavior exclusive to black men. I assure her it is a universal human capacity to hurt, though I a not sure that it is in any way “assuring”. She would be attending college here in Livingstone this year except her ex-boyfriend convinced her not to with promises that his family was going to bring her to the UK to study there.
During the periods of happier small talk, I cope with hearing about her situation by trying to come to a conclusion on whether these thatched lodges are really “Zambian” or, like so much of the “Zambian” carvings for sale, not rooted in the culture but in what tourists think African culture is. The thatched roof is what all the poor villages use. Ironically, while all Zambians are striving for the corrugated metal roof which the British brought as it is a sign of wealth despite turning the house into an oven, tourists, most of which sound British to compound the irony, are paying top dollar to stay in safari lodges with thatched roofs. In the villages I have seen women binding and cleaning the thatch which they sell to lodge owners at a small price which I don’t know if it’s reasonable or not given the work involved. I wonder if tourists appreciate the level of authenticity when they stay in these lodges.
We go back to Besta’s place for dinner and tea. And despite her being roughly my age the place is hers, both her parents have passed away years before. I am afraid to ask from what because the answer might be aids. She has an array of DVDs and we watch the movie “Honey” with Jessica Alba. In Canada I had head this movie referred to as a “Dick Flick” [being the cleverly named reciprocal of a “chick flick”, with not much substance and lots of “T & A”]. But to Besta it’s a lot more. She has an enormous passion for dancing, and even teaches dancing [the main theme of the movie. She has watched this DVD so many times I am convinced most of the skips are not from scratches but from simply being worn out. This film is filled with, what in Canada I would consider, a cheesy uplifting story about inner city, troubled youth finding salvation in their love for Hip Hop dance but which here in Zambia is something else entirely. It means the world to her, and its uplifting story I am sure contributes to that incredible strength I see in her which holds together her fragile life. She cries at the feel-good ending every time. Besta’s daughter from the boyfriend before the British one ones around the house, even happier and more full of energy than my DoDo. I’d guess her to be between one and two years old. Besta assures me, without my solicitation for assurance, that her daughter is an incredible blessing for her. I wonder if both, or either, will actually get to go to school. But I am looking forward to going out with them again next weekend, and being taught how to dance by someone who actually teaches dance. We’ll be celebrating Besta’s 20th birthday. A fact which makes me wonder if those adults I mentioned spending my time with are really that old…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I warned you that was a dark one. I’ve written this after I had gone home from Besta’s, and after I lay in bed a while, failing to not construct these lines. Having written them down, I’ve been tossing and turning in bed, ironically just as sleepless as before. [while I type the words up, somehow they don’t seem to capture the emotion which kept me up last night, and has weighed on my chest all day]. Desperate for sleep I will make myself a cup of NeoCitran to help me sleep with cold water from my nalgene water bottle sitting on my little table by my books. For me this was a haunting experience, made all the more so by how much light I see in Besta. I can’t imagine how you are feeling reading gthis in Canada. Perhaps you’re at your office or on a laptop, perhaps sipping a three and a half dollar starbucks concoction [a scenario which problem comes to mind because if our roles were reversed I would be sitting in Wicked Café, Vancouver, sipping on of Arthur’s cappuccinos which are so good I readily liken them to liquid crack]. I’m not trying to depress you with this story, though I may have. I debated sharing this experience on so public a medium as a blog, and considered it may be more appropriate for an email to a select few who don’t mind shouldering the darker experiences. But as you can see I have decided otherwise. That’s because I wanted to remind you I am not traveling in a place of sunshine, rainbows and kittens [well actually I have seen all three, but you know what I mean]. Because I want to remind you of why members of Engineers Without Borders (perhaps you are among them) are working so hard for change.
Disclaimer
I am not sure what the people reading this expect from my blog. If you expect to always read an uplifting story of overcoming extreme poverty or a story about how the girls in my family laugh as they teach me a Zambian dance… I’m afraid you are going to be disappointed. I think you deserve more, I think you deserve a more complete picture of the experience of a Junior Fellow. So I am warning you know, some blogs may be a bit troubling, even haunting, but I will try to warn you before those ones as best as I can.
I’m warning you now… this next one isn’t happy.
I’m warning you now… this next one isn’t happy.
DoDo
Dorris is one of my favourite people in the world. To remind you, she is the two year old daughter to Katalausha and Lidia, and is more commonly referred to as DoDo [pronounced dough-dough or doe-doe].
We first bonded over the simplest game ever: we both were wearing clothes with hoods, and I would imitate her in regards to having her hood on or off her head. That simple little game endeared us fiercely to one another. She refers to me as Uncle, [one of the few audible words she can speak, and one of the even fewer ones that are in English]. From the moment I arrive home after knocking off [which is what they call leaving work here in Zambia] she is shouting “UNCLE!” unless I am paying attention to her.
Kids are like rubber, and so one of DoDo’s favourite games is to have me toss her around the big comfy couches. Grabbing her by the legs and flipping her over her onto her stomach or back. Or simply picking her up and tossing her up into the air and catching her. She laughs and giggles like a crazy person. In between flipping her around, I tickle her. And she giggles in the way only a child can which makes me totally loose control and giggle likewise. Seriously, I can’t not giggle like a 2 year old when she is giggling.
She also likes to play games where we scare each other. She will hide around the corner and poke her head out at me and squeal and giggle because she sees me. Or I will come around the corner and grab her. Or she will simply crouch behind the armrest of the coach and I will lunch my arm over and tickle her… and she giggles and giggles.
She really likes my iPod, she loves music just like her father [foreshadowing of a blog to come]. And she loves to dance, moving her clumsy two year old body in her best imitation of the older girls in the family. What I would give to know what is going through the mind of a two year old Zambian child’s mind as she listen to music on an iPod. I get up and dance with her, a headphone in each of ears playing a funky Modest Mouse song.
The trouble with having a two year old that fond of you is they boss you around! The number of times she has repeated “tia” [“come” in Tonga or Nyanja…. I’m not sure]. She yelled at me to pray one time before we had dinner because we hadn’t prayed yet, her little hands already clasped together, her eyes continually peaking up at me to make sure I am praying to while she mumbles a totally incoherent slew of syllables that is her prayer. After she gets worn out a bit she will pat the couch and say “beppi” which means “sit” but she has confused to for “sleep”. Apparently DoDo likes to get up out of bed at night, so Katalausha and Lidia will blow out their candle and make noises which DoDo knows are coming from her parents but she plays to be scared and runs back into the safety of their bed. They explained this to me one time after DoDo had said “beppi” till I lay down on the couch beside her, and then began making funny hushing noises… she was imitating what her parents do to scare her into bed to play scare me to go to sleep also.
DoDo is the most wonderful child I know. The apple of my heart. The kind of child you can see the light that sustains the world in her gleaming eyes. But suddenly I am scared by a nagging question… will she be able to go to school? Of course the intention is that she will, but maybe there will be two many funerals within the family, which are an enormous financial burden, and they won’t be able to afford it. I know adult Zambians who haven’t done passed grade 7 because of this, and I’ve listen to how they struggle to overcome that limitation. Can you imagine being a grown up and having to go back to do grade 8 through 12? And this is the Southern Province, with an HIV rate of 18% or almost 1 in 5, which means plenty of funerals. I often see big trucks, that would normally be hauling gravel or some other material in Canada, which are filled with people, and when I ask people around me what they are doing the tell me it’s a funeral.
I fall asleep at night, snug under a couple warm blankets [the nights in Livingstone are cold] and a mosquito net, with my little bundle of non-work clothes wrapped in my hoodie for a pillow, cosy in the naïve self delusion that it couldn’t happen to her. That it couldn’t happen to my DoDo…
…still…
…but at least that delusion means I can sleep at night.
We first bonded over the simplest game ever: we both were wearing clothes with hoods, and I would imitate her in regards to having her hood on or off her head. That simple little game endeared us fiercely to one another. She refers to me as Uncle, [one of the few audible words she can speak, and one of the even fewer ones that are in English]. From the moment I arrive home after knocking off [which is what they call leaving work here in Zambia] she is shouting “UNCLE!” unless I am paying attention to her.
Kids are like rubber, and so one of DoDo’s favourite games is to have me toss her around the big comfy couches. Grabbing her by the legs and flipping her over her onto her stomach or back. Or simply picking her up and tossing her up into the air and catching her. She laughs and giggles like a crazy person. In between flipping her around, I tickle her. And she giggles in the way only a child can which makes me totally loose control and giggle likewise. Seriously, I can’t not giggle like a 2 year old when she is giggling.
She also likes to play games where we scare each other. She will hide around the corner and poke her head out at me and squeal and giggle because she sees me. Or I will come around the corner and grab her. Or she will simply crouch behind the armrest of the coach and I will lunch my arm over and tickle her… and she giggles and giggles.
She really likes my iPod, she loves music just like her father [foreshadowing of a blog to come]. And she loves to dance, moving her clumsy two year old body in her best imitation of the older girls in the family. What I would give to know what is going through the mind of a two year old Zambian child’s mind as she listen to music on an iPod. I get up and dance with her, a headphone in each of ears playing a funky Modest Mouse song.
The trouble with having a two year old that fond of you is they boss you around! The number of times she has repeated “tia” [“come” in Tonga or Nyanja…. I’m not sure]. She yelled at me to pray one time before we had dinner because we hadn’t prayed yet, her little hands already clasped together, her eyes continually peaking up at me to make sure I am praying to while she mumbles a totally incoherent slew of syllables that is her prayer. After she gets worn out a bit she will pat the couch and say “beppi” which means “sit” but she has confused to for “sleep”. Apparently DoDo likes to get up out of bed at night, so Katalausha and Lidia will blow out their candle and make noises which DoDo knows are coming from her parents but she plays to be scared and runs back into the safety of their bed. They explained this to me one time after DoDo had said “beppi” till I lay down on the couch beside her, and then began making funny hushing noises… she was imitating what her parents do to scare her into bed to play scare me to go to sleep also.
DoDo is the most wonderful child I know. The apple of my heart. The kind of child you can see the light that sustains the world in her gleaming eyes. But suddenly I am scared by a nagging question… will she be able to go to school? Of course the intention is that she will, but maybe there will be two many funerals within the family, which are an enormous financial burden, and they won’t be able to afford it. I know adult Zambians who haven’t done passed grade 7 because of this, and I’ve listen to how they struggle to overcome that limitation. Can you imagine being a grown up and having to go back to do grade 8 through 12? And this is the Southern Province, with an HIV rate of 18% or almost 1 in 5, which means plenty of funerals. I often see big trucks, that would normally be hauling gravel or some other material in Canada, which are filled with people, and when I ask people around me what they are doing the tell me it’s a funeral.
I fall asleep at night, snug under a couple warm blankets [the nights in Livingstone are cold] and a mosquito net, with my little bundle of non-work clothes wrapped in my hoodie for a pillow, cosy in the naïve self delusion that it couldn’t happen to her. That it couldn’t happen to my DoDo…
…still…
…but at least that delusion means I can sleep at night.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Zambian Home and Family
I am staying in a “compound” of Livingstone called Dambwa North [compounds are like neighborhoods]. It is not super close to “town” [the main part of L’stone], and probably takes about a half hour to walk. However, that’s where the joy of share taxies come in. A trip out to one of the compounds usually costs about 8000 Kwacha [about $2.20], however, there are certain locations you will find share taxies to one of the neighborhoods [each has a different taxi depot] and these taxies wait till they have four people ready to go and everyone pays 2000 kwacha. Then the taxi driver picks up people on his way back into town and it only cost 2000 kwacha no matter if you are the only one who ends up getting picked up or if the taxi is full. It’s a brilliant system, but as far as I know only L’stone does it, Lusaka runs on minibuses.
So I am staying with a Zambian family in Dambwa North. The head of the household is a fellow named Katalausha Shabeenzu [kat-a-loo-sha sha-baen-zoo], and he is a teacher at the Livingstone Primary school. He also is studying Math and Civics at the college here and wants to go to University of Zambia. He is married to Lidia, whose job it is to run the household. They have the most wonderful little girl [she turned two the day I am writing this] named Dorris but is more commonly reffered to by “Do-Do” [dough-dough]. But that’s not all! There is also Katalausha’s two younger sisters… Mutinta [both their names are Mutinta]. The older Mutinta has a couple of children also [Ruthie and Theresa] as well as Katalausha’s sister in-law, Sara [who is the oldest of the children]. Then throw in the mix the neighbours kids and well… that’s a lot of little Zambian girls running about underfoot. Also Katalausha’s cousin Brenda has been staying with us while she is selling fish here in L’stone. She has a little baby named Joseph… my namesake. Tyler is impossible for a Zambian to pronounce. Well, that’s not exactly true… they get something close eventually, but I am more commonly known here by my middle name [Joseph] as it is super easy. I usually introduce myself as Tyler Joseph and am just referred to as Joseph. However I didn’t do this at first so some people who have gotten used to the name Tyler won’t give it up. The younger kids in my family also call me uncle. So I have many names now! But basically I am Joseph Shabeenzu!
The family is absolutely fantastic. I really lucked out [credit to Josephine Tsui for finding the Shabeenzu family!]. I am slowly learning Tonga from them [Katalausha is from the Tonga tribe, Lidia is Nyanja]. The older women of the household like to say things to me in tonga/Nyanja [I can’t tell the difference unless I know what they are saying] and laugh that deep hearty laugh that so many Africans do when I am dumbfounded. The younger girls mostly just laugh when they have me wrap a chitenge [traditional piece of fabric worn around the waste like a skirt or, when dancing, folded so it is about a foot wide and wrapped around the hips] around my hips and they try and teach me the traditional dances.
The house does not have any electricity or running water. The previous renters ran off without paying the utility bills, so the property has an outstanding debt on it [something not uncommon here]. We get water from a hose from the neighbors house [with their permission… people take care of each other here]. There is a toilet [and not a squat toilet either] and we use a bucket to flush it. Baths remind me of when I was little and my family would go camping. We had these rubber basins that we would wash dishes in, and were also used to bath us little kids. Bathing here reminds me of that because it is done in basically the same size basins… only I am a lot bigger now! The sun sets around 18 hours [a.k.a. 6pm… Zambia runs on a 24 hour clock] so often I am having my bath by candlelight… how romantic! So if you were wondering how we deal without electricity… we don’t use flashlights [well I did but my MagLite bulb burnt out and I don’t have a replacement], we use candles. I still have the headlamp I brought, but I can’t remember the last time I used it. Candlelight is way more pleasant. And if you are just trying to find your way to the toilet in the middle of the night… the soft glow of the backlighting on my cell phone works just fine. Cooking is done on the brazier [its like a pot full of holes that you fill with charcoal and sit your cooking pots on top of]. And we eat lots of nshima. I will leave food for another post.
So I am staying with a Zambian family in Dambwa North. The head of the household is a fellow named Katalausha Shabeenzu [kat-a-loo-sha sha-baen-zoo], and he is a teacher at the Livingstone Primary school. He also is studying Math and Civics at the college here and wants to go to University of Zambia. He is married to Lidia, whose job it is to run the household. They have the most wonderful little girl [she turned two the day I am writing this] named Dorris but is more commonly reffered to by “Do-Do” [dough-dough]. But that’s not all! There is also Katalausha’s two younger sisters… Mutinta [both their names are Mutinta]. The older Mutinta has a couple of children also [Ruthie and Theresa] as well as Katalausha’s sister in-law, Sara [who is the oldest of the children]. Then throw in the mix the neighbours kids and well… that’s a lot of little Zambian girls running about underfoot. Also Katalausha’s cousin Brenda has been staying with us while she is selling fish here in L’stone. She has a little baby named Joseph… my namesake. Tyler is impossible for a Zambian to pronounce. Well, that’s not exactly true… they get something close eventually, but I am more commonly known here by my middle name [Joseph] as it is super easy. I usually introduce myself as Tyler Joseph and am just referred to as Joseph. However I didn’t do this at first so some people who have gotten used to the name Tyler won’t give it up. The younger kids in my family also call me uncle. So I have many names now! But basically I am Joseph Shabeenzu!
The family is absolutely fantastic. I really lucked out [credit to Josephine Tsui for finding the Shabeenzu family!]. I am slowly learning Tonga from them [Katalausha is from the Tonga tribe, Lidia is Nyanja]. The older women of the household like to say things to me in tonga/Nyanja [I can’t tell the difference unless I know what they are saying] and laugh that deep hearty laugh that so many Africans do when I am dumbfounded. The younger girls mostly just laugh when they have me wrap a chitenge [traditional piece of fabric worn around the waste like a skirt or, when dancing, folded so it is about a foot wide and wrapped around the hips] around my hips and they try and teach me the traditional dances.
The house does not have any electricity or running water. The previous renters ran off without paying the utility bills, so the property has an outstanding debt on it [something not uncommon here]. We get water from a hose from the neighbors house [with their permission… people take care of each other here]. There is a toilet [and not a squat toilet either] and we use a bucket to flush it. Baths remind me of when I was little and my family would go camping. We had these rubber basins that we would wash dishes in, and were also used to bath us little kids. Bathing here reminds me of that because it is done in basically the same size basins… only I am a lot bigger now! The sun sets around 18 hours [a.k.a. 6pm… Zambia runs on a 24 hour clock] so often I am having my bath by candlelight… how romantic! So if you were wondering how we deal without electricity… we don’t use flashlights [well I did but my MagLite bulb burnt out and I don’t have a replacement], we use candles. I still have the headlamp I brought, but I can’t remember the last time I used it. Candlelight is way more pleasant. And if you are just trying to find your way to the toilet in the middle of the night… the soft glow of the backlighting on my cell phone works just fine. Cooking is done on the brazier [its like a pot full of holes that you fill with charcoal and sit your cooking pots on top of]. And we eat lots of nshima. I will leave food for another post.
Random Bits of Life in Zambia
So there are a few things I want to share with you that stood out as odd to me. Ever see those shoe shining stations in malls, or on the streets [most of the time I see them it’s in a movie set in an American city]. I never understood it, who would bother making sure their shoes are always very shiny and polished? Well all of Zambia would. And it isn’t easy, let me tell you. The soil here is very sandy [and red] and so you basically are always walking through a thin layer of Zambian red soil-dust. But those shoes got to be shiny! So people carry around with them shoe brushes that they can stop as they are walking along and brush their shoes down. Sometimes they just use a small cloth.
Religion is huge here in Zambia. The missionaries certainly did their job! Zambian is extremely Christian, and there are is a large variety of churches here. I have found that in Zambia, you are nothing but the summation of the groups you belong to. I guess that’s really the case everywhere, but here the groups are more obvious while at home you are the summation of your interests/activities [for example: what types of music you like]. Here in Zambia you have your tribe, your church, your football [soccer] team. I can’t tell you how many taxies I have been in with a “This car is protected by the blood of Jesus” sticker on the dashboard where in Canada there would be a panel for the airbag. Somehow I don’t imagine the taxi has one and I hope the sticker is telling the truth! Up in the corner of the front window is usually a couple stickers proclaiming the drivers support for Manchester United, Liverpool, or Chelsea, etc. And you wear your groups on your sleeve, as it were, here. The churches have uniforms. Sometimes full outfits, other times just church chitenge’s [those traditional fabrics wrapped around to form a skirt. The political parties also have Chitenge’s]. Then within the one church there will be different groups that have gone through some sort of training so that they can better serve to go and visit people at their homes or hospitals. These groups have their own uniforms. I was told by some of the L’stone’ Bahais that on Sunday, people wearing different “uniforms” don’t greet each other [you have entire conversations with complete strangers here on a regular basis. It puts into sharp relief how little north Americans interact with each other].
As I mentioned in a prior post, L’stone is the tourist capital of Zambia. There are more Muzungos [ma-zoon-goos: “Englishmen” but now means “foreigner”] here than anywhere else in Zambia. You get so used to not seeing any white people that when I first got here I wanted to react like so many little Zambian children do… jump up and down, point, and yell “muzungo muzungo muzungo!”. But then I realize I’m white… and how white I am.
Another strange thing regarding religion… there are young Americans here to spread the faith. Seriously, there are Americans, who look roughly the age to be in University or backpacking around the world, who have come to an African country which is more Christian that the U.S. to try and convert people! I can’t wrap my head around that one.
EWB has volunteers all over Zambia. And there are many different languages [72 tribes in all] so we all end up learning different languages]. I am leaning Tonga, as are a 2 other Junior Fellows I believe, lots are learning Nyanja, some Lozi, some Bemba. As a result, OVs [overseas volunteers] end up adopting the tribe. Effectively making me a Tonga. Josephine [who is a long term volunteer based in Livingstone, but she is in Canada for a bit to visit family before she returns here] is Lozi. Tonga and Lozi are tribal cousins which makes it ok for us to make fun of each other [a tribal right]. So Josephine is my cousin, Katalausha [being Tonga] is my brother, and Lidia [being Nyanja] is my sister in law as she is married to a Tonga.
Religion is huge here in Zambia. The missionaries certainly did their job! Zambian is extremely Christian, and there are is a large variety of churches here. I have found that in Zambia, you are nothing but the summation of the groups you belong to. I guess that’s really the case everywhere, but here the groups are more obvious while at home you are the summation of your interests/activities [for example: what types of music you like]. Here in Zambia you have your tribe, your church, your football [soccer] team. I can’t tell you how many taxies I have been in with a “This car is protected by the blood of Jesus” sticker on the dashboard where in Canada there would be a panel for the airbag. Somehow I don’t imagine the taxi has one and I hope the sticker is telling the truth! Up in the corner of the front window is usually a couple stickers proclaiming the drivers support for Manchester United, Liverpool, or Chelsea, etc. And you wear your groups on your sleeve, as it were, here. The churches have uniforms. Sometimes full outfits, other times just church chitenge’s [those traditional fabrics wrapped around to form a skirt. The political parties also have Chitenge’s]. Then within the one church there will be different groups that have gone through some sort of training so that they can better serve to go and visit people at their homes or hospitals. These groups have their own uniforms. I was told by some of the L’stone’ Bahais that on Sunday, people wearing different “uniforms” don’t greet each other [you have entire conversations with complete strangers here on a regular basis. It puts into sharp relief how little north Americans interact with each other].
As I mentioned in a prior post, L’stone is the tourist capital of Zambia. There are more Muzungos [ma-zoon-goos: “Englishmen” but now means “foreigner”] here than anywhere else in Zambia. You get so used to not seeing any white people that when I first got here I wanted to react like so many little Zambian children do… jump up and down, point, and yell “muzungo muzungo muzungo!”. But then I realize I’m white… and how white I am.
Another strange thing regarding religion… there are young Americans here to spread the faith. Seriously, there are Americans, who look roughly the age to be in University or backpacking around the world, who have come to an African country which is more Christian that the U.S. to try and convert people! I can’t wrap my head around that one.
EWB has volunteers all over Zambia. And there are many different languages [72 tribes in all] so we all end up learning different languages]. I am leaning Tonga, as are a 2 other Junior Fellows I believe, lots are learning Nyanja, some Lozi, some Bemba. As a result, OVs [overseas volunteers] end up adopting the tribe. Effectively making me a Tonga. Josephine [who is a long term volunteer based in Livingstone, but she is in Canada for a bit to visit family before she returns here] is Lozi. Tonga and Lozi are tribal cousins which makes it ok for us to make fun of each other [a tribal right]. So Josephine is my cousin, Katalausha [being Tonga] is my brother, and Lidia [being Nyanja] is my sister in law as she is married to a Tonga.
Where the Devil is Tyler???
Greetings to everyone who checks my blog. I am sorry for the delay in posting anything. But here I am now… so let’s get started.
For those who don’t know where I am…
I am based in Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone is the tourist capital of Zambia, and was established after Dr. David Livingstone “discovered” Victoria Falls [a.k.a. the local people showed him]. Victoria Falls is one of the 7 natural wonders of the world and is absolutely breathtaking. Livingstone is 10km away and I can see the mist from here.
I am working with the Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives [the Zambian government] on a project to rehabilitate dams. About 8 years ago, as part of another program, a number of villages applied for the construction of earth dams. Anyone who doesn’t know what an earth dam is… well it is exactly what it sounds. They pile a big mound of earth into an embankment across a river/stream and then you create a level spillway off to the side at a certain level so that when the water level gets too high, the water flows out over the spillway and does not overtop your dam [which would be very bad]. It is a bit more complicated than that as there are soil mechanics involved… but that is the basic idea. I had just finished reading a book called “When the Rivers Run Dry” which was all about how humanity is messing up the water cycle by diverting rivers into dams and for irrigation and rivers are no longer reaching the ocean. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” scares the hell out of me, but I can’t say with certainty that it is scarier than “When the Rivers Run Dry”. Pick it up, it’s a good read. Why am I mentioning it out of nowhere like this? Because it made me feel like a total jerk being as I am working on dams! But the end of the book is rather hopeful [optimism that is long overdue, before you get to that point you are convinced it’s the apocalypse because the author is so unrelenting] and talks about a bunch of things that are happening around the world, often going back to old traditions, which are really working. One of these things is rain water harvesting. And fortunately that is exactly what my project is. The streams that have been dammed are annual streams [they only flow in the rain season]. So instead of all that water being lost in a quick rush to the Zambezi and over Vic Falls, a small lake is formed. Farmers have water for their gardens, crops, and livestock. Also, the sitting body of water recharges the water table so boreholes near the dam don’t dry up! Very exciting. I wouldn’t be surprised if boreholes that had dried up before the dam are now working again [but I can’t substantiate that claim]. So I am building dams right…? Actually no. The dams are already built, as I said, about 8 years ago. But unfortunately earth is not very durable [especially when you throw water in the mix] and consequently the dams need maintenance. The catchment area needs to be undisturbed so it does erode and silt up the dam. The embankment needs to be protected from animals and people walking on it, and trees putting holes through it. My project is based around this problem… no one was doing any maintenance. So what I will be doing, as a continuation of Nick Jimenez’ Junior Fellow placement last year, is work with the Technical Service Branch [TSB] of MACO to mobilize communities to maintain their earth dams. Nick and the TSB developed a methodology and produced a rough copy of a manual detailing that methodology during his placement. There was no previous methodology for a participatory mobilization of communities with regard to Earth Dams, so aside from actually mobilizing the communities, the another aspect of the project is to refine the manual. This is all be conducted in the Kazungula/Livingstone Disctrict around Livingstone.
For those who don’t know where I am…
I am based in Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone is the tourist capital of Zambia, and was established after Dr. David Livingstone “discovered” Victoria Falls [a.k.a. the local people showed him]. Victoria Falls is one of the 7 natural wonders of the world and is absolutely breathtaking. Livingstone is 10km away and I can see the mist from here.
I am working with the Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives [the Zambian government] on a project to rehabilitate dams. About 8 years ago, as part of another program, a number of villages applied for the construction of earth dams. Anyone who doesn’t know what an earth dam is… well it is exactly what it sounds. They pile a big mound of earth into an embankment across a river/stream and then you create a level spillway off to the side at a certain level so that when the water level gets too high, the water flows out over the spillway and does not overtop your dam [which would be very bad]. It is a bit more complicated than that as there are soil mechanics involved… but that is the basic idea. I had just finished reading a book called “When the Rivers Run Dry” which was all about how humanity is messing up the water cycle by diverting rivers into dams and for irrigation and rivers are no longer reaching the ocean. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” scares the hell out of me, but I can’t say with certainty that it is scarier than “When the Rivers Run Dry”. Pick it up, it’s a good read. Why am I mentioning it out of nowhere like this? Because it made me feel like a total jerk being as I am working on dams! But the end of the book is rather hopeful [optimism that is long overdue, before you get to that point you are convinced it’s the apocalypse because the author is so unrelenting] and talks about a bunch of things that are happening around the world, often going back to old traditions, which are really working. One of these things is rain water harvesting. And fortunately that is exactly what my project is. The streams that have been dammed are annual streams [they only flow in the rain season]. So instead of all that water being lost in a quick rush to the Zambezi and over Vic Falls, a small lake is formed. Farmers have water for their gardens, crops, and livestock. Also, the sitting body of water recharges the water table so boreholes near the dam don’t dry up! Very exciting. I wouldn’t be surprised if boreholes that had dried up before the dam are now working again [but I can’t substantiate that claim]. So I am building dams right…? Actually no. The dams are already built, as I said, about 8 years ago. But unfortunately earth is not very durable [especially when you throw water in the mix] and consequently the dams need maintenance. The catchment area needs to be undisturbed so it does erode and silt up the dam. The embankment needs to be protected from animals and people walking on it, and trees putting holes through it. My project is based around this problem… no one was doing any maintenance. So what I will be doing, as a continuation of Nick Jimenez’ Junior Fellow placement last year, is work with the Technical Service Branch [TSB] of MACO to mobilize communities to maintain their earth dams. Nick and the TSB developed a methodology and produced a rough copy of a manual detailing that methodology during his placement. There was no previous methodology for a participatory mobilization of communities with regard to Earth Dams, so aside from actually mobilizing the communities, the another aspect of the project is to refine the manual. This is all be conducted in the Kazungula/Livingstone Disctrict around Livingstone.
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