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    Due to some strange activity on my blog, I've switched! Follow this link

Cinco de Mayo in Globe, Arizona

 A Cinco de Mayo celebration carved out a small corner of a downtown parking lot in Globe. I assume it will be where all major functions take place, including the Farmers Market. The beer garden was fenced off from the food carts, barbecue and cotton candy stands, where I witnessed multiple little girls throw up slimy pink and purple acid from their bellies straight onto pavement, and then walk off swimmingly to the blown-up bouncy castle as if the past two minutes had never happened. Their moms just shook their heads and let 'em roam free.

. I was lulled out of my comfy chair around 8 pm at the sound of police sirens that seem to always blare through my windows from Friday night through to Sunday morning.

The beer garden had blared up, scrunching twice as many chairs to a table while men with potbellies and cowboy hats guzzled back their "natty ice" and their high-heeled, skirted women scraped their shoulders with  press-on nails, begging for a dance.

Out on the floor was a congregation of Globites from all types. The Latinos, the high school dance club, the old white retirees, and those beer drinkin', hell-raisin' cowboys.

It was almost as if the Mexican American war never happened and instead we just meshed in harmony-switching off Spanish and English love ballads while the crowd danced all the same, though the Latinos could easily be spotted, dancing as close as possible with passion and an artist's touch. "Margaritaville" played while little kids bought rosaries.


The whole scene brought me back to my own excursions in Mexico, dancing cumbia until the sun came up, at the tender age of 20. My, oh my, how much Life has happened since then.

Crooked Toward the Sun: Globe, Arizona

    Heat, but at least it's dry. More often than not that's the first line some new coworker or community member lets fall from their mouth once I tell them I'm from Portland.

    This week has consisted mostly of a series of small talk; pleasant get-to-know-you's and nice gestures. The community here in Globe has greeted me with open arms and are instilling in me a sense of purpose, which will be necessary to carry out an effective year of service in Americorps. When I'm introduced in meetings or community events, I receive an all-around applause. From store clerks to theatre performers to gardeners, people are genuinely interested in The New Girl in Town. And, oh, everybody knows.

    My new little abode-next to a former family-owned gun shop and home to a herd of curious javalinas, overlooking the mountains of the Sonoran Desert. My landlord led me in on Monday evening, offering a basket of fresh fruit and a caramel sundae from Dairy Queen, both of which I graciously accepted. As we sat at my new desk and she traced the rental agreements with her fake pink nails, I drifted off and gazed around at the living room, eyeing out wall and shelf space and little crevices for the modest items I managed to fit into my suitcase, wondering how I would transform this 600 square-foot, three room space into a home.


     In a couple of hours I managed to do just that. After essentially two years of traveling, I'm becoming well-versed at this. I slipped the pillowcases out of their plastic wrapping, propped up friends' paintings on shelf space and pasted Zambian chitenges over the concrete, white walls with blue putty. I dusted off the side porch, essentially three planks of splintered wood leading to the garbage and recycling, bound by a wire fence. Coasting back over the freshly-carpeted living room with bare feet, I hung my clothes in my giant walk-in closet. While unpacking the same pictures, the same paintings, and the same worn-out clothes in a new place, I hoped the old would fit in with the new. I understood from experience that I'd need to learn to adapt. Quickly.

   The first step: To become acquainted with the town's layout. Tuesday afternoon I packed my camera and headed to the old town, trying to color in an outlined map in my head with shops and parks and sidewalks suited for biking. As I walked down the main stretch, my initial glance at a telephone pole that in Portland would have offered me a sigh of relief at the sight of a concert advertisement was replaced with a gnawing stomach pain, realizing that for the next year I'll be glancing at missing persons ads--the kind in the old days you'd find on the back of a milk carton. The giant, silver apple logo has not yet taken over mom&pop microwave and stereo repair shops. Propped up next to a bar posting the sign "No firearms allowed" is a gun shop. This is middle America. This is the ol' Wild West.

 

Downtown Globe

Downtown Globe

Downtown Globe

   I have never experienced culture shock like I have here. Maybe it hits so close to home because I identify with these people in a way I never could abroad. These are the people I am supposed to identify with under the creed of our nation's name and constitution. These are the people who hold political clout over the fate of my future, and the people with whom I have to collaborate and therefore try and understand. I am not just freewheelin' anymore. There's a stake here.

     I realized the nature of my fate during training when my new acquaintances at Americorps training from small-town Texas repeatedly joked around that "a town ain't a real town 'till WalMart comes around". But this is why I came. I constantly read in newspapers, hear the prejudices about these rural towns spoken by their liberal counterparts and conjure up my own opinions, and I want to see, experience and learn for myself. I want to learn the good qualities from both sides of my fellow countrymen in an attempt to eradicate the wall that keeps us all in gridlock. I want to lay concrete on my views of America.

    Food. There's a concept we all seem to understand. No matter what background; religion, political affiliation or otherwise, we all agree: Organic farming is the wave of the future. Big-buck companies spreading GMO's are to be questioned, and the large-scale, monocultural, industrialized farming techniques serve as a large disadvantage to the well-being and fertility of our nation's land and its citizens. I'm looking forward to furthering my knowledge of organic gardening, and I'm especially inspired to improve and make sustainable the Farmers' Market here that was started by an Americorps volunteer two years ago.

 I feel at peace arriving in Globe. As alien as my surroundings may seem, I know that soon I'll come to regard this place as home. What once constituted my world view will again be lifted, and my initial aversion to the splintered planks of wood that buffer the fall from my back door will soon offer a sense of comfort and belonging that comes with laying down roots, even if those roots only grow for a year. Even if those roots are a far cry from all I've ever known.

My branches are growing crooked. But this time, they're growing crooked toward the sun.

I have no choice but to jump right in. 

A Village Co-Op in Zambia Needs Your Help!

Hey all, the following is a letter Stefan wrote home requesting financial support for implementing a project in his village that will lead to a sustainable source of income and protein for village members, heightening food security. 

To make a donation, follow this link.

"To my family, friends and loyal readers on the far side of the world,

I write to you today with what humility I can muster to ask for your

assistance. This is the first - and will be the only - time I come

before you in this fashion to request outright financial support for a

Peace Corps project here in Zambia. If it made economic sense, I would

gladly ship you all out here with shovels in hand to show the people

of Mwanachama the commitment of my countrymen through a physical

display of ardent manpower. But alas, you all have your own

responsibilities and obligations on the home front and, unfortunately,

it is not just willing hands and open hearts which we need. No. Above

all else, the project which I have helped set in motion in this

village needs materials - 50-kilogram bags of cement, feed, water

drums, iron roofing, lumber, tools, hired vehicles - materials which

render this effort cost-prohibitive without outside help in the form

of hard capital.

But make no mistake; outright aid does not work. No lesson has been

more clear during my past year spent in Africa. I have seen water

towers slowly rusting in the courtyards of schools where children line

up to lower a dirty plastic bucket into a well for a drink. I have

seen decrepit hammer mills lying in a pool of soot-black machine oil

like some slain metal beast as the villagers across the yard pound

maize into flour with mortar and pestle. I have seen borehole pumps

missing their handles with metal placards on the side still legible

reading "A Gift From the People Of Japan," though years ago people

broke open the cement casing and now use the hole as a shallow well.

How many times have NGOs interrupted segments of the evening news to

flash photos of emaciated children with distended bellies rummaging

through garbage piles across your television screen? How many times

have your heartstrings been tugged asking for your "dollar a day"? I

do not intend to follow this paradigm. I do not think true

philanthropy can be achieved with a guilt trip. Whether you choose to

accept this appeal and give to this project what small token you can

manage, or whether you decide this is not your battle to fight, I will

understand. No one ever can or ever should tell you how to feel about

these issues, or what constitutes "enough." I simply write to you

today to testify on behalf of this project as one of its architects,

to share my optimism for its success without promising it, to vouch

for the organization which will be implementing it, and to leave in

your lap an opportunity to, in a small way, improve the lives of those

who have much less than you do. What you decide to do when these words

run out is your business and your business alone.

The Story:

Mwanachama Multipurpose Cooperative Society is a 34-member male and

female farmers co-op based in my village. It is comprised mostly of

maize farmers and vegetable gardeners, with some members endowed with

technical skills such as bike mechanics, carpentry, blacksmithing and

charcoal making. I have worked with several of them on projects

relating to agriculture - mostly gardening and composting - and one

man in particular, Patrick Kabaso, has become a close friend of mine

through our casual work interactions.

Ba Patrick is the secretary for Mwanachama Co-op, and together with

the chair and vice-chair, he approached me several months ago with the

idea of starting a poultry project which would generate income for the

organization and provide greater food security to the village. I sat

in on several preliminary meetings with the co-op executives and

general members, and developed a rough idea of the scope of this

project. Collectively, the co-op decided to raise 300 broiler chickens

in 16-week cycles and to sell them both locally in the village and to

truck them to Mansa to be sold in the open-air markets and at local

restaurants. In addition to the nutritional and income generating

aspects of the project, what piqued my interest initially was an

opportunity to vastly expand my push for conservation farming and

organic vegetable production in this village with the use of chicken

manure.

I have been hawking organic agriculture since the day I set foot in

Mwanachama, and this past growing season I cultivated all of my maize

using the pungent brown cake from a poultry farmer operating on the

outskirts of town. But where farmers were enticed by the prospect of

saving money by cutting down on their inorganic crop inputs, they were

repelled by the logistics of transporting that much chicken shit. I

would pass them on the road coming from the poultry farm in Senama

with a 50-kilogram sack of manure on the rack of my bicycle and they

would just shake their heads. And I understand why. These men and

women break their back every day fighting back the jungle in order to

eek out a livelihood and literally put food on the table, and I can

see how any added labor inputs would be out of the question. But to

have a reliable, perennial source of organic fertilizer right here in

the village - a stone's throw from the fields where it would be used -

would cure this aversion completely. And so, this project is

multifaceted, and has the potential to feed and economically empower

many people, as well as make a pivotal stride in championing organic

farming.

The co-op executives decided on a plot of land owned by a fellow

member where they will build a poultry house with all the fixings - a

cement floor, iron roof, limed and painted mud-brick walls, windows

for light and even a small office building in one corner to store

records and supplies.

Multiple budgets were written and then re-written, and I embarked on

the task of finding the money to pay for it all. Every Peace Corps

Volunteer in every participating country has access to one-time

funding source called the Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP)

Grant, whereby volunteers solicit funds from friends, family members,

former co-workers, religious groups, schools and others to pay for a

small development project of our choosing. The maximum amount we are

allowed to request is USD 4,000, and the total cost of this project

will be just over USD 3,800. The money will be raised in a dedicated

Peace Corps account managed from its headquarters in Washington, D.C.,

and when the total requested amount is reached, will be transferred to

a Zambian bank account in my name. I will then work with the co-op

leaders to spend the money as outlined in our budget submitted to

Washington, and to account for every last kwacha by means of

collecting and logging receipts. Finally, a completion report will be

submitted to Peace Corps Zambia headquarters in Lusaka before I

complete my service here in April of next year, where I will compile

all financial records of the project's implementation and at last hand

all control of the project over to the co-op."

To make a donation, follow this link.

Sickness Falls

    While in bed discussing the Periodic Table or Elements (of which I know little about) I tried to lift my head in a effort to jar a point, and suddenly the whole room started spinning. I laid my head back down and closed my eyes, trying to regain stability. Four hours of immobility passed, and the astoundingly acute vertigo feeling failed to die down.

   Stefan filled a two liter water bottle with rehydration salts and forced the whole thing down my throat. But after two concoctions, we realized that the problem may be more than just dehydration, as the tunnel vision still had hold. After using Stefan's mother's expertise derived from being an EMT, we took her advice and figured if the vertigo hadn't subsided by morning we'd find a way out of the village and into a hospital in the nearby town.

   I'm a pretty firm believer in how much control the mind has over our physical health (knowing fully well it's a complex mixture of the two), so we tried to lighten our spirits by listening to George Carlin and watching Jim Gaffigan while I kept the entire upper half of my body propped up for the night. But sitting at the breakfast table the next morning I realized the situation in my head hadn't really improved. We had to figure out a way to evacuate the village, leaving behind our mountain bikes, our once-reliable form of transport. Taxis were out of the question on a Saturday, so Ba Manoa, the Peace Corps driver, took the risk of being scolded for a saintly action (it's against Peace Corps rules to pick up a non-volunteer, no matter one's home country), and met us near the village in his land cruiser. Smiling the whole way through, he dropped us at the hospital half an hour later.

   We shuffled up to the reception office, a carved out box in the back wall, and paid our dues of $8 for all services. Zambia, as poor a country as it is, has Universal Health Care. Only there are graver issues: Lack of medicines, equipment and space. But we could not have felt more lucky to incur a payment this cheap, as it would cost at least $100 for an initial consultation in America.

    The nurse took my blood pressure, which was extremely low, a definite surface cause of my dizziness. Within a few minutes, I was admitted.

   As Peace Corps has rules about where in Zambia to accept admittance to a hospital, and which ones are reliable in using clean syringes, Stefan had to step outside the room and make multiple phone calls in order to ensure my safety in Mansa General. I ran a low-risk of acquiring any blood-transmitted diseases here. Once we got the go-ahead, the doctor on duty opted for a saline drip and tested for malaria. I relaxed on a bare, raised bed in a bare room. Swirling around me were two more beds, a desk, some sparse metallic cabinets, a leaky faucet and a caved-in ceiling. At least there was electricity.

   The clock ticked as slowly as the saline drip, and we quickly recognized how long I'd be there, so Stefan left to get us some french fries and juice from a nearby market. While it seemed a bit uncomfortable to be left in the common hospital room, my hunger gave in all too easily.

    Lying alone on the hospital bed, getting pumped with a saline solution, of which I was already well aware wasn't an aid to the problem--we had already determined it was not dehydration--I turned my head to the side and watched as frail women unwrapped their chitenges to slip a newborn onto the beds. The babies struggled to make out their cries or intentionally move their limbs. They were trembling. The doctor would take their temperature, place a cold towel on their heads, and instruct them to enter the next room over. I couldn't understand the conversations, and arrived at my own conclusions; be they true or not. In a country where 14 percent of the population carries the disease, either HIV or extreme malnutrition were all I could come up with.

   And here I was, a spoiled American girl who let her blood pressure drop by failing to eat and drink properly and distorting her equilibrium by flying in too many planes in the past year, sitting with a saline drip after an insertion in the skin that made me cringe; A simple, harmless procedure in which a Zambian women wouldn't bat an eye. I felt like I was just taking up space. It was the first time in the country I had spent more than an hour alone, and the first time I felt a real dose of shame; the kind where you realize you are just a direct manifestation of a common stereotype about white women, and you are powerless in the moment to change. These people suffer so much more than we do, and as a result seem stronger than steel.

   But the doctor and nurses didn't seem to take note. They laughed at me, sure, but not in a malicious way. They cared for me as they would any other patient. They used what means they had to get me better, looked me in the eye, and wished me well.

Village Life- Part One

Now was time for a true test.

After 10 days of navigating through Zambia as tourists, arriving late for every complementary breakfast, sleeping in beds with freshly-washed white sheets with boxed mosquito nets and interacting with friendly, affluent Zambians, we departed the capital city and rode 12-hours north on the night bus to Stefan's village of Mwanachama, in Luapula Province.

By day, the bus station in Lusaka operates like an open-air market, teeming with hawkers selling sunglasses and belts stampeding through the crowd on puddle-filled dirt ground, while stationary sellers sit behind their undercover booths filled with shampoos, hair-dye, cell-phones, batteries and various other black marketed first world items. By night, the square block has an eery resemblance of a colorfully choreographed concentration camp: Zambians lying closely together, sleeping underneath brightly-printed blankets covered so tightly around their figures they look like body bags. Once our bus rolled in and we gathered our luggage from underneath, we carefully stepped over them all to reach the main road.

Though most volunteers regard hitchhiking the 12-hours north to be the ultimate traveler's experience, the bus ride with Peace Soldier was one in itself.  I’ve been on many a long, overnight bus during the past eight months, but none could be matched with the ripe scent of freshly shat-in pants that is Peace Soldier’s trademark.

Stefan and I were taking turns cracking open the window and catching whiffs of fresh air, while Zambian pop-gospel (“Zampop”) music videos were stuck on repeat for the entire length of the journey. Forget sleeping on the night bus. We decided after this ride that we better part with the company, lest we needed a night bus again.

************

After the bus ride and taking a taxi at 4 am to the Peace Corps Provincial house in the town of Mansa, about 20 kilometers from Stefan’s village, the driver insisted that Stefan pay him in exact change.

“I don’t have it, can I owe you, say, tomorrow? You can have my cell phone number,” Stefan pleaded.

“Alright, I will call you now now so you have my number. I will come by in the morning,” the driver replied.

Three hours later, at about 7 am, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer comes knocking on the door of the room we were staying in.

“Uhhh...hey man…sorry. There’s some guy outside, he says you owe him some money.”

Stefan jumped out of the mosquito net. How was he supposed to already have exact change by now? He went to negotiate with the driver, and I assume ask a volunteer to help him out.

“Strange and irrational,” I laughed. I just might come to like this culture.

**********

That same day Stefan and I took off on our mountain bikes just before sundown, headed for his village. While I was a bit nervous to ride on the incline under the hot African sun for so long, the trip proved to be pleasurable—for the most part.

The faded red-dirt road contrasted with the early blooming stalks of maize and the occasional passer-by under a perfect blue sky equated to a perfect bike ride—the type city-dwellers lust for, I’m sure. There are no traffic laws.

But once we rode nearer to the village, outside of their respective huts where ya mayos (mothers) were preparing dinner, the kids began to multiply and chase after us. They held out their clenched fists and began screaming, “Jah man! Jah man!”

I jumped from calm to overwhelmed in a matter of seconds. “What are they talking about??” I yelled to Stefan.

“It’s a little joke I play with the kids while I’m passing by,” Stefan told me. “They yell ‘Jah man!’ and I give them daps.”

I tried to extend out my fist while little kids punched me, some as hard as they could. (I hadn't yet learned that part of the game was pulling back my fist, meaning "I won!") And once I pulled my fist back in for good to gain control of my bike again and steer clear of the potholes, the kids just punched my arms, while I stood there astounded and tried not to recoil. 

This would serve as an introduction to what I found most overwhelming about village life: Biking through the bush while little barefoot kids ran after us, attempting to latch onto  the backs of our bikes screaming ,“Jah man!”

Further along in our stay Stefan realized, after a fateful day when I’d just had it. From the corner of my eyes I saw the kids lurk from their front "yards." I knew what was coming. Once the kids started pushing the back of my bike, without giving it much thought I came to a screeching halt. I turned around, and with a deep-throated yell, I let out, “FUMAPAAA! (Leave!).” Causing Stefan to stop a few meters ahead, turn around, and start belting out in laughter.

So we developed a system. Stefan would ride ahead and stop, attract the kids’ attention, while I whizzed past and he eventually followed. It worked out pretty damn well.

*******************************

Reflections, Pt. 2- What I Saw

I'm not going back.

There's no plane ticket, nor is there any money for one. The man I love is still over there; slicing mangoes, shooing children off his porch, succumbing and playing with them, hosting garden presentations for his village. He's still waving hello and offering a "Mulishani" or "Chungulo mukwai bamayo/batata" at every happy Zambian villager passing by with yellow plastic buckets of water balancing perfectly on their heads or on bikes with "ulukasus" (garden hoes) precariously extending off the backs. And I won't see it again.

I'll never again be the spectacle at the water well. Trying my hardest while the Zambian women point and laugh and cheer once I'm able. Who stop and smile and say hello once it looks natural. 

How can you let these memories just fade away?

All I can do is bring that life home with me, as much as I can afford to.

"The greatest downfall of humanity I see is not that people don't know how to love properly and purely, but that they don't know how to suffer properly and purely." I saw that lying on Stefan's shelf-a little note I wrote on the back of a restaurant menu and subsequently sent him in the mail. He must have felt a bit of satisfaction, or even elation, once he realized what he was about to show me.

 I saw parents who could barely afford to feed their children, who had to sit down one day and decide which of their seven kids was worth sending through secondary school; which one had a shot. And though these were the daily challenges, I saw them smile warmly at me, shake my hand, and take our brazier to light it for us with the remaining coals from their own dinner. I saw true compassion. And resilience. I saw that people knew how to suffer properly.

I saw kids happily holding beetles that would be cooked into a relish for dinner and eating termite dust off stakes holding a thatch roof over tomato beds, while my partner and I struggled to figure out why. 

Life isn't about comparing. Life isn't some sort of framework that we can tap into simply with our minds. It's much deeper than that. Shoot, you think it'd be so magical if we could just use an organ (that more often than not deceives us), and maybe a good education and some technology to figure it out? Life has to be felt, deeply and purely. 

Maybe no generation ever becomes more enlightened than the one preceding it. Maybe our bodies and minds are just one huge distraction from finding Truth. Maybe we're not meant to.

But it never hurts to try...



I walked away wondering,

    The answers are there. What's it going to take the human race to act on them?


Nasembilila panono. 

Reflections

Utterly confused is the only way to describe it.

After fading in and out of more intense bouts of cynicism and longing to be back in Zambia, I now am just left with feelings of confusion.

Here are my reflections from Week One...

I walked into my kitchen and my original elation at how much food was available turned into an overwhelming task of decision making. Bagels, a cereal selection that stretches past corn flakes, multiple topping options for the bagels. Trail mix, trail mix bars, plain almonds. Soy milk, regular milk, half & half. Leftover pizza, leftover pasta, leftover stir-fry. Greek yogurt, Brown Cow, Yoplait. Wheat bread, cinnamon-swirl bread, goldfish, sun chips, tortilla chips. Am I really even hungry? Or does the food just look incredibly enticing? I'm torn between what food to eat, or if I even need to be eating.


I'm torn between the girl people remember me as and the woman I'm evolving to be. My general positivity, city-girl stance, coffee-drinkin', hip-hop lovin', pseudo-intellectual talkin' but without an opinion. It's just not who I am anymore. I want the small town, I want the rubber boots and the bluegrass. I am critical, about many things, especially how rapidly technology is advancing and how numb people are to its effects, (the main one of which, I should add, is mind-numbing). I want to grow and shed and cleanse and grow more. I want to change. How do you show someone that? That who you are in one space and time does not determine who you were or who you will become?


I understand that life in the states is not like life in rural Ecuador, the Caribbean Coast, or a village in Zambia. I almost find comfort in the fact that they cannot even be compared. I can already feel the vibes which were ricochetting off me so strongly in the airport seeping in. I'm adapting. But what remains conscious in my mind are things I cannot simply adapt to; nor do I want to.

The future looks bright. The future looks grim. The present looks bright. The present looks grim. I'm positive. I'm cynical. I'm the old me, I'm the new me. And I bounce back and forth multiple times daily.


When I'm alone I will burst out into tears that only last for about a minute. Then I'm back. I'm trying to be strong. I'm trying to accept diving back into my roots. Even though I know it's not where I want to be anymore, I know it's where I need to be.

If there was a troll that I thought would lead the way, I'd stop and get to know him. Because I now understand it takes a lot of twists and turns before things present themselves clearly. Why do I find clarity only in retrospect?

I'm trusting my trolls.

"You are far too much in Love, Sir"

Ethiopian Airport. Peering out of the window during the descent, watching the dried out river beds and the roads that look like veins rather than grids grow larger as we reached nearer, a rush of calm washed over me. I somehow knew I was supposed to experience what the rest of the world, whose ignorance has prohibited them from experiencing the true beauty underneath its harsh shell, regards as the "dark continent."

When I had booked my ticket to Zambia a few months prior, its departure seem to creep up so slowly I had been convinced it would never come.  Now it was here, and an unprecedented level of apprehension crept through my stomach, clammed up my palms and cut deep into my bones. This was the first time that a force other than my intuition had led me to a foreign land. This force was love, and I was simultaneously praying it would still be strong while attempting to minimize my expectations and become more freely open to the nature of fate.

Whatever a developing country presents as far as inconveniences and challenges, Africa provides to the extreme, and I was thrust into them. After boarding the plane from Addis Ababa to Lusaka, the flight attendants were offering up warm coca-cola in small, flimsy plastic cups, while the inquisitive Zambians and I struggled to find the faintest idea of why the plane was stalling its ascent. An hour later, we were instructed back into the airport due to the deicer falling out of commission, left with a lofty promise that an emergency plane would be acquired to transport us that same day. There was no way to reach Stefan to let him know I'd be late. So as our crew of passengers was trucked to a complementary buffet while the pilots struggled to come up with a contingency plan, all I could do was picture Stefan wringing his hands in anticipation and pacing through the airport, bemoaning Zambia for its logistical nightmares he spoke so often about. But like in most situations while travelling, there was nothing I could do, and a certain level of accepting was the only way to cope.

Four hours later, half of us boarded the plane to Lusaka. As soon as I walked outside from the plane to the doors of the airport, I barely had time to look up before I was being tackled to the wall, my hair clip breaking into pieces and falling to the floor in the process. And with it, so did every ounce of premonition that had over the days repeated itself in my mind. I had made it.

We had also almost arrived at the hotel missing two-thirds of my luggage, if it weren't for the humbly sized airport and kind-natured, God-fearing Zambians.

After a 30-minute taxi ride with Stefan's trustee Ba Lison, in which we spent the entire time completely enthralled at the sight of one another, we discovered that somewhere along the line my Ecuadorian duffel bag had failed to make it inside the trunk, and deduced that Stefan had let it down in the parking lot in an effort to hold one another closer.

I neglected to let Stefan know the contents of the bag, but once he inquires anything I am abashed to offer up the truth, so I admitted that my Nikon D3000 had been inside. He began beating himself in the head for his carelessness and figured all we could do was return to the airport on the off-chance it might still be sitting on the lonely curb in the parking lot.  But as soon as we looped around the hotel parking lot, Stefan received a text message from the airport stating they had received my bag. If it weren't for my checked-in luggage failing to arrive, we would have never left a phone number, and who knows where this bag would have gone.

For those few stalled minutes, though, I had never seen Stefan so distraught. "I just want things to be perfect," he said. As I looked into his eyes, I saw that he might have been just as frightened as I was. I wrapped my arms around him and kissed his face without a care in the world. In that instant, I realized everything would turn out alright.

As Stefan insisted he go back inside to retrieve my things, the lady who had handled the other missing baggage claim handed it back to him, shook her head and smiled. "You are far too much in love, sir."

***************

     I never did receive my luggage until the day I departed, a few short days ago. The memories are already beginning to feel like a distant life, but I can confidently say this trip was one of the most impressionable experiences I've ever had, and will no doubt determine how I choose to make my next step. My worldview has once again become significantly changed.  

    So before I write any further, I just want to add that no matter what happens, thank you, Stefan. 

     Our one month spent in the village coming up...

Zambia: The Story

    I have just returned from the most beautiful eight weeks of my life.
   The only way to do this trip any justice is to hash it out in detail to the best of my ability, so as to stain it in my memory. I only know one way how: To write about it from the beginning. 

     

Here is our story: