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: