Took what may be my last real trip out of town this past weekend, this time to visit fellow MCCers in Macha, a small community a couple hours off the main road in Southern Province.
It is always interesting getting out and seeing very different parts of the country than the one that I live in. Although there are naturally many similarities, the quiet and calm rural atmosphere paints a stark contrast in comparison with the bustling city. I think that that is what I notice the most about rural Zambia - the quietness and the sense of calm and peace. When you get into the compounds here there is lots of excitement and things happening. I guess both have positives to them and so it is nice to be able to witness the other side of the country.
Although Macha may be insignificant in terms of national history and politics, it is central to the identity of Zambian BICs. It was here 100 years ago that a Kansan woman named Frances Davidson established the first BIC mission in the country. It is still home to the largest BIC congregation in the country, the surrounding area is dotted with numerous BIC schools and Macha has a BIC hospital. The other main feature of Macha is a malaria research institute funded by Johns Hopkins University in the US. The result is that, for a rural area, there are huge numbers of white people around. When I was there, for example, we were looking around the hospital when a group of 15 white students from Messiah College (a BIC institution in the US) came around the corner. Don't see such large groups of muzunguness every day!
We spent a bunch of time looking around the area on bike seeing the sites - a dam, the school, the air strip, some villages, the water tower, etc. Pretty exciting stuff. There was a peer education workshop for which I was asked to help contribute something on media influence with another MCCer. We made as good a presentation as one can make with two minutes of prep work, but media influence didn't seem particularly relevant when many in the group came from villages where there really isn't a whole lot of media.
Probably the highlight was Saturday. A goat had been purchased and was bleating in the back yard of an MCC worker. We had someone who knew what they were doing kill it with us, skin it, and cut up all the meat which we then braiied (barbecued). Every step along the way was documented by photographs (the last time they had done this it was all videotaped; not having such technology I had to resort to still photography). The guy who did it was incredibly skilled - all the cuts were precise and nothing was wasted. I don't think I had ever participated in the killing of an animal before, at least not in such an intimate way, but still find myself firmly in the meat-eating camp. In fact, it tasted incredible!
Otherwise the weekend was just spent relaxing: visiting, watching movies, playing games, and so on.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
Malaria Moments
When I awoke on Friday I knew that something was amiss. My stomach was feeling really quite awful, but I thought that maybe the bike ride to work would make things feel better. After all, a few times I have had a queasy stomach that has settled down over the course of the day.
This time, no such luck. As I continued at work, I kept getting more and more tired,to the point where I was asleep on the director's couch. Fortunately, one of my MCC colleagues was at school working on the computers so I was able to get a ride with him to the doctor where it was confirmed: I had malaria.
I figured that this was a mixed blessing: if I had to suffer it might as well be something recognizable as opposed to miscellaneous but miserable stomach ailment. At the same time, one hears enough malaria horrible stories to want to tempt fate too much.
For the rest of the day I was confined to bed, hardly able to think let alone move. Sometimes I was chilled and had blanket after blanket piled on me, and at other times I was really hot. The upset stomach continued throughout the day, culminating in one unfortunate moment late in the afternoon. Otherwise I slept, and slept, and slept.
By Day 2 the cure had really started kicking in. I was tired and not up for a whole lot but was able to be up and about reading and watching TV and eating relatively normally. Day 3 was even better. Today I went to the clinic and was proclaimed cured. I am still pretty tired - to the point where I'm doubting my ability to teach this afternoon - but otherwise feel pretty fine. The anti-malarials I take regularly helped take the sting off it and the cure worked pretty efficiently.
I guess now I can say I have had the big M. It wasn't pleasant, but at least its over.
This time, no such luck. As I continued at work, I kept getting more and more tired,to the point where I was asleep on the director's couch. Fortunately, one of my MCC colleagues was at school working on the computers so I was able to get a ride with him to the doctor where it was confirmed: I had malaria.
I figured that this was a mixed blessing: if I had to suffer it might as well be something recognizable as opposed to miscellaneous but miserable stomach ailment. At the same time, one hears enough malaria horrible stories to want to tempt fate too much.
For the rest of the day I was confined to bed, hardly able to think let alone move. Sometimes I was chilled and had blanket after blanket piled on me, and at other times I was really hot. The upset stomach continued throughout the day, culminating in one unfortunate moment late in the afternoon. Otherwise I slept, and slept, and slept.
By Day 2 the cure had really started kicking in. I was tired and not up for a whole lot but was able to be up and about reading and watching TV and eating relatively normally. Day 3 was even better. Today I went to the clinic and was proclaimed cured. I am still pretty tired - to the point where I'm doubting my ability to teach this afternoon - but otherwise feel pretty fine. The anti-malarials I take regularly helped take the sting off it and the cure worked pretty efficiently.
I guess now I can say I have had the big M. It wasn't pleasant, but at least its over.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Winter Sets In
Some how, before coming here, I had the illusion that Africa is always hot. Let me tell you now that it is not. As North Americans are now safely beyond the grasp of winter (let's hope!), Zambia is slowly settling into it. This is not a frost and snow kind of winter but it can get pretty cold nonetheless. This is exacerbated by the fact that houses are not built to keep cold out. The exterior wall of my room is mostly window; a window which leaked heat in the hot season and now cold in the cold season. In fact, the temperature inside the window is pretty much equivalent to the outside temperature, and my bed is right by the window.
Temperatures were pretty comfortable before leaving for Zanzibar. My first taste of winter came the night after I got back and I woke up sometime very early in the morning because it was cold. I checked the thermometer on my alarm clock and it told me that it was just under 15 degrees. The next day I got another blanket from MCC which was a smart move because, when I checked the temperature the next morning, the thermometer (located about a foot above my head) was reading a balmy 12.7 degrees.
I am now decked out for winter. My bed has been reinforced with the second blanket. I had a wonderful salaula sweater but unfortunately I left it on the bus when I came home from Zambezi. I even invested about $1.25 in a touque. If it keeps getting colder I may just have to use it some time. Since the coldest months are June and July, I just might have to. On the plus side, the days are still warm and it is a lot nicer to bike on a cool morning than a hot one.
Temperatures were pretty comfortable before leaving for Zanzibar. My first taste of winter came the night after I got back and I woke up sometime very early in the morning because it was cold. I checked the thermometer on my alarm clock and it told me that it was just under 15 degrees. The next day I got another blanket from MCC which was a smart move because, when I checked the temperature the next morning, the thermometer (located about a foot above my head) was reading a balmy 12.7 degrees.
I am now decked out for winter. My bed has been reinforced with the second blanket. I had a wonderful salaula sweater but unfortunately I left it on the bus when I came home from Zambezi. I even invested about $1.25 in a touque. If it keeps getting colder I may just have to use it some time. Since the coldest months are June and July, I just might have to. On the plus side, the days are still warm and it is a lot nicer to bike on a cool morning than a hot one.
26 Hours In a Truck
Once again there has been a lapse in entries, this time due to a trip I took to Zambia's Northwestern Province. MCC was providing some blankets for the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries program there to distribute to victims of recent flooding and I got to tag along to see the sights and take some pictures of the distribution.
I was to be based in the town of Zambezi (located, go figure, on the Zambezi River). To get there, one first travels north of Lusaka, through the Copperbelt and then west into Northwestern Province. After about 600 kms you hit Solwezi, the first (and only) major town in the province. Solwezi was once a small frontier town but has recently grown rapidly, particularly due to the development of two large mines nearby. In the brief time that I spent there I thought it was a bit out of sorts with itself - a small town having to take on big town responsibility. It was as if a skinny person gained a lot of weight and their clothes didn't really fit any more. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the town but, then again, I can't think of much positive to say about it.
Perhaps my view of the town was clouded because, after leaving Lusaka at 4:45 and arriving there at 17:00ish (with several stops in Lusaka and Kitwe along the way), I was wanting to get back on the road. Alas, we had to spend many hours waiting for some people to catch up with us so they could ride on the back of the truck for the rest of the way. As night approached I wasn't particularly enamoured with the notion that the driver had been awake since 3:30 and there were still at least 10 more hours of driving to go.
A random highlight from 26 hours on the road: we were somewhere on the 230km stretch between Kitwe and Solwezi when, out of nowhere, a guy walked out of a village wearing an Oilers jersey.
All went well, however, and after driving through the night we arrived at our destination at about 6:00 the next morning, about 26 hours after departing Lusaka. I wanted to get down to business right away, knowing that my time there would be brief.
That afternoon the first blanket distribution was done - to the Zambezi District Hospital. It is the major hospital for the district and is falling apart. The mattresses are crumbling, beds are breaking, and if it weren't for some current renovation work, the building would be too. The hospital had no bedding to speak of so the blankets were eagerly welcomed and staff and administration were overjoyed. They had no money to get any bedding on their own and, with cold season setting in, were getting desperate in the search for a solution.
The crops in the Zambezi area were also completely wiped out this year. The crops, consisting of maize, cassava, and rice, were either flooded by the river (to the west) or received far too much rain (to the east). The soil there is incredibly sandy and so any attempts to fertilize were leached away into the soil. The result is that food prices are double what they are in the rest of the country, especially damaging when no one has a crop of their own to fall back on. No organizations have planned food relief for this year and the government, which proclaimed that it had taken care of the people of Zambezi, provided a sum total of 2.5kgs of mealie meal per family. That won't last a week, let alone till next harvest.
Zambezi had some interesting characters that I saw in only one day. There was the pastor who tried to raise a woman from the dead with an allnight prayer vigil. Then there was a "mad" person (the word for anyone with a mental illness) who lives in the grave yard and, rumor has it, eats stillborn babies. Probably such characters exist here too but I just don't here about them.
Unfortunately my Zambezi trip came to an end sooner than I had anticipated. On the first afternoon of my visit there I got a phone call informing me that a good friend in Lusaka had passed away. By the next day (which was the first available bus) I was back on the road to Lusaka. The bus was nice enough, although they liked to cram as many passengers on as possible and as a result the aisles were often filled to capacity for short stretches. It seemed to stop at every three-hut village along the way, which got a little tedious after awhile. The net result was that the bus quickly acquired a lovely stink of body odour. In the end, however, the bus connections all worked out very well and the distance was covered in a mere 20 hours.
I was to be based in the town of Zambezi (located, go figure, on the Zambezi River). To get there, one first travels north of Lusaka, through the Copperbelt and then west into Northwestern Province. After about 600 kms you hit Solwezi, the first (and only) major town in the province. Solwezi was once a small frontier town but has recently grown rapidly, particularly due to the development of two large mines nearby. In the brief time that I spent there I thought it was a bit out of sorts with itself - a small town having to take on big town responsibility. It was as if a skinny person gained a lot of weight and their clothes didn't really fit any more. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the town but, then again, I can't think of much positive to say about it.
Perhaps my view of the town was clouded because, after leaving Lusaka at 4:45 and arriving there at 17:00ish (with several stops in Lusaka and Kitwe along the way), I was wanting to get back on the road. Alas, we had to spend many hours waiting for some people to catch up with us so they could ride on the back of the truck for the rest of the way. As night approached I wasn't particularly enamoured with the notion that the driver had been awake since 3:30 and there were still at least 10 more hours of driving to go.
A random highlight from 26 hours on the road: we were somewhere on the 230km stretch between Kitwe and Solwezi when, out of nowhere, a guy walked out of a village wearing an Oilers jersey.
All went well, however, and after driving through the night we arrived at our destination at about 6:00 the next morning, about 26 hours after departing Lusaka. I wanted to get down to business right away, knowing that my time there would be brief.
That afternoon the first blanket distribution was done - to the Zambezi District Hospital. It is the major hospital for the district and is falling apart. The mattresses are crumbling, beds are breaking, and if it weren't for some current renovation work, the building would be too. The hospital had no bedding to speak of so the blankets were eagerly welcomed and staff and administration were overjoyed. They had no money to get any bedding on their own and, with cold season setting in, were getting desperate in the search for a solution.
The crops in the Zambezi area were also completely wiped out this year. The crops, consisting of maize, cassava, and rice, were either flooded by the river (to the west) or received far too much rain (to the east). The soil there is incredibly sandy and so any attempts to fertilize were leached away into the soil. The result is that food prices are double what they are in the rest of the country, especially damaging when no one has a crop of their own to fall back on. No organizations have planned food relief for this year and the government, which proclaimed that it had taken care of the people of Zambezi, provided a sum total of 2.5kgs of mealie meal per family. That won't last a week, let alone till next harvest.
Zambezi had some interesting characters that I saw in only one day. There was the pastor who tried to raise a woman from the dead with an allnight prayer vigil. Then there was a "mad" person (the word for anyone with a mental illness) who lives in the grave yard and, rumor has it, eats stillborn babies. Probably such characters exist here too but I just don't here about them.
Unfortunately my Zambezi trip came to an end sooner than I had anticipated. On the first afternoon of my visit there I got a phone call informing me that a good friend in Lusaka had passed away. By the next day (which was the first available bus) I was back on the road to Lusaka. The bus was nice enough, although they liked to cram as many passengers on as possible and as a result the aisles were often filled to capacity for short stretches. It seemed to stop at every three-hut village along the way, which got a little tedious after awhile. The net result was that the bus quickly acquired a lovely stink of body odour. In the end, however, the bus connections all worked out very well and the distance was covered in a mere 20 hours.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Labour Day and a Wedding
Tuesday was a holiday here (Labour Day). For each holiday there is a march past the president and then numerous speeches in front of the Freedom Statue, a significant (although disappointingly small) national landmark. I hadn't been to the national festivities for a holiday yet so I went with my host father to these ones. Not much to report there - we were late and missed the march past and the speeches were interesting enough but there is no point in repeating what was said.
My host dad had asked that morning if I could go to a wedding with them that evening, but to my surprise we also went to the ceremony straight from the Labour Day festivities. I had had no idea that I could end up in a wedding so I was wearing a T-shirt and some pretty casual trousers. When they watch their wedding video they will wonder who the scruffy looking white guy is in the back (especially since I didn't know either the bride or the groom).
The wedding and reception were in many ways a carbon copy of North American wedding events. The steps were all recognizable and the same, although maybe done in a different order than weddings I have attended. The reception included plenty of dancing and loud music and an MC who was apparently very funny in a local language I didn't understand. Most impressive was the highly choreographed dance routines by the wedding party. They had both a nicely arranged entrance (which must have lasted about ten minutes) and then another couple routines later on.
One thing I noticed is that the success of weddings seems to be measured by how many dignitaries you can attract. The presence of the local MP was mentioned on numerous occasions and on the ride back home my host parents were talking about weddings they had attended and making remarks like: "oh, that was a very good wedding. They had cabinet ministers and justices there." The guest-of-honour, who made a speech of advice to the couple (informing them to not use their cell phones as tools of infidelity), was also a former government official.
My host dad had asked that morning if I could go to a wedding with them that evening, but to my surprise we also went to the ceremony straight from the Labour Day festivities. I had had no idea that I could end up in a wedding so I was wearing a T-shirt and some pretty casual trousers. When they watch their wedding video they will wonder who the scruffy looking white guy is in the back (especially since I didn't know either the bride or the groom).
The wedding and reception were in many ways a carbon copy of North American wedding events. The steps were all recognizable and the same, although maybe done in a different order than weddings I have attended. The reception included plenty of dancing and loud music and an MC who was apparently very funny in a local language I didn't understand. Most impressive was the highly choreographed dance routines by the wedding party. They had both a nicely arranged entrance (which must have lasted about ten minutes) and then another couple routines later on.
One thing I noticed is that the success of weddings seems to be measured by how many dignitaries you can attract. The presence of the local MP was mentioned on numerous occasions and on the ride back home my host parents were talking about weddings they had attended and making remarks like: "oh, that was a very good wedding. They had cabinet ministers and justices there." The guest-of-honour, who made a speech of advice to the couple (informing them to not use their cell phones as tools of infidelity), was also a former government official.
Zanzibar Vacation
How does one encapsulate a week in paradise in a few paragraphs? I’m going to have to try, however, given the incredible holiday experience I just had.
Last week we headed off on the 44-hour train ride from Kapiri Mposhi (a town a couple of hours north of Lusaka) to Dar-Es-Salaam, where we were to meet another friend and proceed to Zanzibar. The trip got off to a slow start when I was stuck between two incredibly fat ladies for the bus ride from Lusaka to Kapiri. The day got better though, as we boarded our train, settled into the “luxuries” of our first-class cabin and prepared for a couple of days of train life. Since there were four of us we had a compartment to ourselves and this was where we spent basically our entire trip. Someone always had to remain there to protect our stuff from the numerous suspicious characters that occasionally roamed the hallways. Otherwise, it was comfortable, spacious, sleeping was easy, and we enjoyed hours of games (dice and Yahtzee being particular favourites), reading, talking, and watching scenery from our window.
All was going well until the afternoon of the second day, about 24 hours into the trip, when we stopped in Mbeya, a city in southern Tanzania, for an extraordinarily long stop. After much frustration we finally departed only to wake up that night to find the train stopped. Clearly it had been stopped for some time and it didn’t appear like it was going anywhere anytime soon. As it turned out, 16 hours was spent in the middle of no where. The cause: a derailment further ahead down the tracks that took some extensive cleaning up and track repair. Since we had acquired very few Tanzanian shillings at the border, were beginning to run out of water, and needed to contact our friend somehow, things were getting a little tight. Fortunately, we were able to convince the people on the train to accept Zambian kwacha even though we were in Tanzania and our problems were solved. Finally, we were back on our way and pulled into Dar at about 5 am on Sunday morning – 60 hours after our departure from Kapiri.
We met up with our friend and headed off to the port to catch an early ferry across the ocean to Zanzibar. Upon arrival we quickly waded through the obligatory port touts, got our Zanzibari stamp in our passports, were swamped by the intense heat and humidity, and found ourselves in a culturally and historically vibrant community that is the result of hundreds of years of international trade and interaction between Africans, Arabs, Indians, and Europeans.
The old quarter of Zanzibar Town is known as Stone Town. Normal navigation can be thrown out the window – narrow alleyways cut between the tall stone buildings. Large elaborately decorated doors frequently appear on the houses, although one has to be careful of the numerous bikes and scooters that zip up and down the “roads” while admiring these historical structures.
Our first day was spent looking around Stone Town, getting our bearings, and dealing with important logistical issues. Probably the most interesting attraction on this day was the House of Wonders, the former palace of the sultan which has now been converted into Zanzibar’s national museum. It forms an impressive landmark on Stone Town’s water front. It also is known as the site of the shortest war in history – when the British navy bombarded it the sultan surrendered within 40 minutes. I guess one could call it the original “shock and awe” campaign. Another highlight included the former slave market (Zanzibar used to be the centre of the slave trade coming out of eastern Africa until the British forced the Arabs to shut it down). An Anglican church was built on the site of the original market, although some musty basement rooms where slaves were kept in large numbers in horrid conditions have been kept for posterity.
Throughout the trip we were constantly blessed with Zanzibar’s amazing assortment of fresh fish and fruit. Surely this was the healthiest I’ve ate all year! We also ate on the ocean front all but one night. Dining room tables won’t quite be the same again. I had numerous species of fish for the first time during this trip: shark, barracuda, swordfish, a tuna steak, snapper, king fish, and I sampled some oyster, squid, and some other miscellaneous sea creatures.
Our second day on Zanzibar was spent on a spice tour. This was the only day where the rain seriously impacted our program as it rained throughout the tour and I ended up absolutely soaked. We were shown a huge number of bushes, shrubs, grasses, and trees that produce an endless array of spices. Zanzibar used to be a major exporter of spices; now most produce is only for local use although cloves remain an important export. The tour also included a visit to a nearby beach where, for the first time, I set foot in the Indian Ocean. The crystal clear warm waters and endless line of palm trees along the beach made for quite the idyllic setting. We visited another slave attraction – a cave where Arab traders hid slaves after the British had banned the slave trade. This deep natural cave along the beach was used to accumulate slaves before loading them onto boats at night time.
During our safari experience earlier in the year I had managed to get fairly close to some impressive land animals. Nothing was quite like swimming with dolphins, however. We were taken out in a boat in the ocean to find dolphins. When a pod had been found we donned snorkelling gear and jumped in to swim with them. Once they got too far away we would get back in the boat, find them again, and jump again. Often they had dived down pretty far so you could see them from above. That was cool enough, but on our last swim I turned around to find a group of dolphins no more than a few metres away from me. Pretty cool!
After a few days in Stone Town we headed off to the north of the island to enjoy the beach. In addition to enjoying the sandy beaches and crystalline waters, the guys went out fishing with some locals during the first day in Nungwi. We had boasted to ourselves that we would be hauling in huge fish, but it became quickly apparent that we were not fishing for such beasts of the sea. The tiny hooks were meant to catch little fish, which we did reasonably well, although certainly not in comparison with our local guides. That evening we got a local restaurant to cook up our fish, which they did and then served with cooking bananas and cow stomach. The next day many of us were feeling some stomach problems of our own – guess the fish got the last laugh!
On our second day in Nungwi we took a boat to a nearby island for some snorkelling. I thought it was pretty great, since I had never really been snorkelling before, although others with more experience had seen better elsewhere. In the evening we were determined to avoid the unpleasant gastrointestinal results of the night before so we looked for the most western restaurant we could find. Alas, even this approach failed, and one person on the trip ended up with some food poisoning.
During our last full day in Zanzibar we headed back to Stone Town. The guys headed out to Prison Island, an island off the coast of Stone Town, to see a giant tortoise sanctuary and do a little more snorkelling. A little souvenir shopping in the evening and the next morning rounded off the trip.
There was one last adventure in store. We had flown from Zanzibar to Dar, where we were catching a flight to Lusaka. On our way to clear the final security checkpoint to gain access to the boarding area we heard over the intercom: “Passenger E, P, P initial S this is your final boarding call for Zambian Airways flight to Lusaka.” This was then repeated for the other three members of the group. Never had I had my name announced over an airport intercom. The lucky thing was that we had just left a restaurant where we couldn’t hear any of the announcements. A few minutes later and we would have missed the flight. Its not even that we were late – the plane just happened to be leaving half an hour early.
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