- Enjoy!
Monday, October 31, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Hailing in Rainy Season
It's hailing, yes hailing, in Mwense this afternoon.
Shaun and I have come down to the boma today to meet with the Mwense District Women's Development Association at their office in the boma. I am sitting in their office now and the hail pounding on the metal-sheet roof is deafening. It's so loud that covering my ears isn't keeping the pain of the noise away. I need to leave the office. Luckily, there is a small walkway outside where I can stand and not get as pelted by the hail as if I were standing under the mango tree outside. This walkway is still under metal sheets, but the sound has somewhere to go, rather than just bouncing around the office walls and into my eardrums.
Even out here on the covered walkway, where all of us have gathered, stray pebble-sized balls of ice pelt us. I am in the middle of this walkway, but Shaun is on the end near You And I Restaurant. He is laughing as he gets hit by the ice pebbles bouncing off You And I Restaurant's roof and onto him. The whole scene is incredible: what was just 20 minutes ago a brown, dusty ground in front of the office is now a wet, puddled clay mud carpeted in ice pebbles, little clear pebbles of ice. And just 20 minutes ago, we were sweating and fanning ourselves due to the typical and very high temperatures the end of dry season brings. Literally, when I arrived to the office after lunch it was over 100F, and now there ice is falling from the sky and covering the ground.
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| During the hailstorm, men hide under the metal sheets at You And I Restaurant |
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| During the hailstorm, a view of the mango tree in front of the MDWDA office in Mwense. |
As strange as this seems, it is actually quite normal. It wasn't until the hail started that I realized this same phenomenon happened this time last year. I don't know the scientific reason why the first big, hard rains of rainy season bring hail, but our Zambian friends tell us this happens every year at this time. I see it as is the clashing of seasons: as the hot dry season is coming reluctantly to the end of its reign, rainy season forces its way to power. There are days like today when aging dry season flexes its muscles making it unbearably hot, causing rainy season to respond (to our delight) with a thundering, stormy, cooling downpour. It makes me think of a scene I once saw on a game drive: a lion and an elephant exchanging roars and trumpets as pride and herd passed on a slender riverbank.
Rainy season had better seize that throne, or we're a bit screwed. No rain means no water for gardens, crops and fish ponds, which means no food or income. Rainy season had also better force out dry season because the rain is the only thing that cools things down. And we really need things to cool down- it's really, really hot.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Zambians Looking out for Each Other
Our counterpart, ba Godfrey, is currently hosting a woman and her infant child at his house. We had met the woman the other night, but she was very hesitant to greet us. We had assumed the woman and child were relatives of ba Godfrey's. It wasn't until yesterday we learned that in fact our counterpart did not know this woman much at all. He'd met her while he was in Mwense boma the other day checking on when fertilizer would be coming in.
The woman lives in Lukwesa, about 35km away. She walked, with bare feet and her baby on her back, to Mwense boma, where she is awaiting the judgment about her husband. A few days ago he was arrested and thrown in jail for (allegedly) stealing goats. Her husband, allegedly, set up trails of maize and other food that would lure goats into his house. As most people in these parts do not house or tie up their goats from May to December, goats roam free. So eventually, some goats came across the food laid out for them and followed it straight into the man's house. When the goats were inside, the man would shut the door and lock them in. Then, he slaughtered the goats for food to eat or sell.
Ba Godfrey told us that in Zambian culture, if he meets someone in need of shelter for a night, he must help that person by providing a place to sleep for a night or two, if he has one. Ba Godfrey and his family are good, generous people so they naturally offered this woman a place to sleep at their home in Chebele while she waits for the judgment against her husband. The judgment should come in the next couple days, and then she'll head back to her home Lukwesa.
I should add that in Zambian tradition, while ba Godfrey and his family have the social obligation to take in strangers in need, they also have the prerogative of saying, “OK, we've hosted you a few days. Next time you need a place to stay, you need to ask another family in the community because we can't support you all the time. We have our own family to support, house and feed.” When ba Godfrey added this bit to the end of his story, I thought it sounded quite reasonable and reminded me once again of the practical side of Zambian culture.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Laundry Day in the Village
Welcome! Today's blog update is brought to you from the comfort of our little house in Chebele village. It's about 10:30a and Shaun and I are just puttering about today- quite typical of our free days in the village. I am able to type up this blog entry thanks the long battery life on our handy little netbook, and also thanks to our “Zam-tricity” set-up. We have a car battery that we charge each month in the boma, and when I hook up our inverter and plug the netbook into the inverter, I am able to maintain a charge and use the computer. Cisuma saana! (“Very good!” in Cibemba)
I've spent the morning tackling the mountain of laundry we have spilling out of the dirty laundry Zam-bag, which is like a big re-usable grocery bag that zips up, hanging on the wall. (I hang it on the wall to keep creepy-crawlies and slitherers out. So far, so good.) I do all our laundry by hand, a chore I enjoy because it gives me some quiet down time (Shaun is usually elsewhere when laundry-time comes around, hahaha!). Also, splashing and scrubbing in the buckets of water keeps me cool on our hot, hot days. I am also lucky because we have little helpers always ready and willing to earn 500 Zkw (10 US cents) to fetch me a container of water, so I don't have to trudge back and forth to the stream with the laundry.
After washing and rinsing the laundry, I hang it out on the line to dry in the bright sunshine and warm breeze coming over the forested hills behind our house. The remaining, dirty water I dump out on the dry, sandy area of our front “yard” to help keep the dust down. If there are little ones around, sometimes we joke with them that it's “infula” (“rain” in Cibemba), and Shaun and I will sprinkle the water on them. The kids scatter as the giggle with delight. Last week, I did laundry was on an exceptionally hot day, so when we played “infula” it turned into a huge, hilarious water fight between Shaun and an army of kids from the village. We must have had 25 children running around our house laughing and splashing water on each other- and especially at Shaun. They were even running to the stream and back to get “ammunition”- it was great!
Friday, October 21, 2011
Reminders of Life's Fragility
Today was supposed to be the third and final of a Poultry Production Workshop we're facilitating for a Women's Group (at Road's Camp just outside Mwense boma). Sadly, tragedy has struck so we've postponed today's meeting until after the Independence Day holiday (24 October). We learned this morning that the mother of one of the women in the group had passed away sometime in the night. So, the family and community is grieving today. They will hold the funeral today and bury the woman's body this afternoon. I don't know what caused the woman's death, but perhaps solace can be found in that she was a mature woman who'd lived a full life, able to watch her children grow into adults and have families and children of their own.
Today is Friday, and since the week began we've learned each day of the death of a loved one of folks we know here. Perhaps most startling have been those deaths of a baby and a young girl here in Chebele.
On Monday, a friend ba Sally^, who lives in Mwense Central, stopped to greet us on her way to visit her granddaughter, who lives on the other side of our community. The girl was about 13 years old and attended Grade 5 at Chebele Basic School. She had been suffering for 7 years from tapeworm. Her symptoms started with pain in her stomach and grew pain throughout her body and she was now unable to eat or drink.
For most of those 7 years, the girl's parents refused to go to the Mwense Stage II Clinic just 5 km away. They preferred to use traditional medicine and practices to help their daughter. Unfortunately, these did not cure her. Finally, after years, the family took their daughter to the Mwense Stage II Clinic, only to find that at that point the tapeworm had grown so strong there was nothing the clinic could do. The clinic staff scolded the family for not bringing the girl in much sooner. The girl's condition and prognosis were so poor that the clinic staff refused to refer the girl to Mansa General Hospital, saying there was nothing that could be done there for the girl either.
On Monday when our friend visited her granddaughter, the girl was still alive. On Tuesday, we returned home from our programs in the evening to a grieving community because the girl had passed away.
On Thursday, we returned home in the afternoon to learn that a funeral was in progress for a year-old boy who'd died early that morning. We asked what had caused the death, but our neighbor said he didn't know. Just then, the funeral procession passed by our house. The procession looked to have been 40-50 men, and at the head of the group were three men carrying a small coffin, about a meter long and covered in a blue and orange chitenge. They were singing in Cibemba as they walked to the cemetery in Chebele to bury the coffin. As they passed, we all sorrowfully sat down, following Zambian custom, to show our respect for the dead and for the grieving family.
Typically, it is the role of the men to build, carry and bury the coffin during a funeral ceremony. It is the women's role is to gather with the bereaved family around the dead body, either inside the family's home or in a church, crying and wailing together. Unfortunately, Shaun and I have attended several funerals in our village, and I can tell you from experience it is a sad, sad thing. It's also a bit jarring for a westerner because the Zambian customs surrounding funerals and grieving are so different from ours. It seems the grief that we westerners internalize or process quietly over a period of time, Zambians externalize and process loudly, together, for just the day of the funeral and then life seems to go “back to normal.”
^ ba Sally is not our friend’s true name. I have changed it here to preserve her anonymity.
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