Returning to Zambia

It has been a complex, challenging, thrilling, satisfying yet paradoxically simple, easy, relaxing, and ultimately complete first couple of months here in Zambia.  We arrived in Lusaka in a daze after 24 hours of the mesmerizing pattern of hums, wines, and chatter composed by the combination of our South African Airlines airliner and its crew.  The first thing we saw as we walked off the plane in Lusaka was a huge advertisement for the Bank of China, “Where YOU matter”…  Yes, but who am I? 

Simple and subtle.  The Zambia we have grown to love.

Claire and I spent a week in Lusaka, hosted by a gracious Peace Corps extension Volunteer named Barbara.  She has been volunteering with KMG for the last three years, and filled us in on some of the on-the-ground successes and challenges of the program.  We spent several nights with her, recounting our journeys in South America, our hopes for the program, our lives, our futures.  She in turn filled us in about life in the village, life with the grantees, and her work with Peace Corps’ Stomp out Malaria program. 

While in Lusaka, we were also able to attend a conference on GMOs, which are just now threatening to enter this country.  With a passionate speech at the end of a hair-raising video, a local large-scale farmer assured us that Zambia’s greatest failure was also its greatest promise.  Farmers here would (hopefully) be too poor to afford the seed from this new form of genetic lottery, and so they wouldn’t be able to gamble, he claimed.  Still, at the moment Zambia has a competitive advantage – it has some of the only completely GMO-free crop in the world.  How long this will last was anyone’s guess (his was not long).  After the show I met him with interest, and he invited me to come volunteer on his organic farm, so that I could learn and diffuse some methods of productively growing crops in Zambia without fertilizer.  An exciting opportunity, to be sure.

A beautiful array of beans planted, cared for, and harvested by Bana Kulu who is at least 85.

Bemba women dressed up in their finest chitenge for their young female relative's wedding.

Finally, after what seemed like too long in the world of Lusaka (which is not, I assure you, the World of the Zambia that we fell in love with), Claire and I took the 12 hour bus to Kasama.  As we made the slow climb out of ‘civilization’ and towns into the flat expanses of high-land sub-tropical forest, familiar scenes began to take shape.  Women toted bundles of freshly-cut firewood on their heads, babies strapped behind, their bodies limber and seemingly unencumbered by the load.  Men pumped rusting, whining bicycles packed so high with sacks of charcoal that all one could see of the riders was the glare as the sun beat down on their shaved heads. Children played with sticks and their beautiful imaginations in the shade of a cassava tree – enjoying their fun, unappreciative of the timelessness of their art.  The further north we got, the thicker the bush became, and the more the air smelled like the Zambia of our hearts and memories.

We arrived just in time for "Ubowa".  Mushroom season in full-swing!

The sweet, barbequed smell of burning charcoal wafted through the bus windows, accentuated by sweat hinting (well, sometimes shouting) of cassava and maize.  Burning plastic assaulted us as we passed townships, and when we stopped for a rest, women rushed to sell bananas, peanuts, guavas, and water. The unease which the city of Lusaka had been brooding in me was relenting, as we had our first Bemba interactions, and began to remember the smiles and open hearts of the people of this country.

A city man with a farm, Ba Chileshe uses his car to haul mulch for his bananas.

When we arrived at the Kasama bus station, these open hearts were there to greet us.  Mr. Chileshe, Claire’s counterpart and friend, as well as the Country Director of KMG, was there to receive us.  He and his wife Beatrice welcomed us with open arms, and drove us to their quaint home in the village of Kapata, where we were welcomed with a sumptuous meal and hugs and greetings from their 4 grandchildren, their daughter, and Beatrice’s mother.  It was a full family, and they were so eager to welcome us and make us feel at home, which we quickly did.

Justin and Bana Chileshe dancing at a party held in Ba Chileshe's honor.

Our days at the Chileshe farm have been wonderful.  Mr. Chileshe is building us a two-bedroom house just up the road, so that we may live together for some time.  ‘Banakulu’ (grandmother) and the Chileshe’s daughter Baptista have been re-teaching us how to cook Zambian food, how to speak Bemba, and how to dance (mostly Claire). Meanwhile, Claire has been entertaining the family with her knitting learned in South America, and I astonished the children when I proved to them that the PVC pipe with holes I gifted them was actually a musical instrument. 

Bana Kulu and her beans.  She is the first to wake and last to sleep, always in the field.  She celebrates tradition and self-subsistence, chastises fertilizers, and lives as she did when life around her was more simple.

We have even had time to return to our villages.  It was in Bwabwata (the village in which Claire lived as a PC Volunteer) and Chibo (my village) that we really remembered and found the Zambia we love.  It was so nice to slow down, sit by the fire, and chat with our old friends.  We worked with Claire’s host father to identify local medicinal plants and herbs, which he assured us could cure ailments as varied as Cancer, Shuga (diabetes), and Malaria. We took time in Bwabwata to visit some of Claire’s old friends, to walk through the forest, and to remember why we chose to return to this part of the world to build our home.

Visiting with Ellyn's host family who welcomed us as their own.

The return to Chibo was also wonderful, although bitter-sweet.  We arrived in the darkness through a soggy and overgrown footpath to ponds and a farm which had not been maintained.  It was so wonderful to see my host family again, but the sadness and loss of the death of Ba Kasonde (my host father during my PC service) was palpable.  The family is still reeling, and trying to recover its sense of identity as the family leader and stalwart has passed.  Still, this is life, and we overcame the sense of grief by chatting, playing music, and dancing by the fire.  We watched the days come and go with the rise and fall of the sun, and never checked our watches. 

There is something so meaningful and spiritual about the patterns of nature.  The sun rises and sets, clouds form and pass overhead, blue skies give way to star-lit nights. Insect, plants, animals, people – all are born and decay.  Live and die.  It was during this relaxing time in Chibo, when one only senses the passing of time by the changing of surroundings and the position of the sun, that I remembered the fundamental lessons taught to me by these patient people.  In the end, it has always been the ‘uneducated’ who have taught me that intelligence does not equate with wisdom, the ‘under-developed’ who made me question my fundamental assumptions about what really matters, and the ‘uncivilized’ who have showed me what it truly means to be human.