Murder in Macha

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.