Two days, 43 hours on the road, and one night in Johannesburg later…

I have arrived in Chokwe, Mozambique! Every time I tell someone that I traveled here from Lusaka by land, they look at me as if I am slightly insane but, truth be told, the trip was quite enjoyable.

Monday, however, was the most hectic, stressful day I have had since arriving in Zambia. As the hours passed, all my travel plans proceeded to crumble before my eyes: the bus I planned on taking from Lusaka to Joburg was not running the next day due to congestion at the border, all the others I found were fully booked, and as I went online to book the last available night bus from Joburg to Maputo, it filled up as I was in the process of making the reservation!! I felt utterly defeated and ready to give up and stay in Lusaka, but eventually I managed to find a seat on a “non-luxury” (meaning there was no toilet and even my little knees were jammed up against the seat in front of me) bus to Joburg and figured the rest could be sorted out once I arrived there.

I set out from the chaos of the Lusaka Intercity Bus Station at noon on Tuesday. Sam accompanied me to the station and waited for my bus to leave, which helped reduce the nerves I was feeling about the long journey ahead. The nerves returned quickly, however as the bus proceeded to stop twice within the first 30 minutes on the road. Ten minutes after leaving the centre of town we stopped to get gas, which meant everyone get off the bus, apparently because the current President’s mother was killed when a bus exploded while refueling at a gas station. The next stop was a flat tire, which took 40 minutes to change and convinced me that I was never going to make it anywhere. In between, the bus was led in prayer by an Evangelical priest who sweated his way through a lengthy and enthusiastic sermon on maintaining the “lighteousness of God” and was then dropped off on the side of the highway…

We arrived at the border with Zimbabwe at around 15:00. Borders always make me a bit nervous, for no good reason, but once the official on the Zambian side realized I was living in Lusaka he was extremely friendly. After exiting Zambia, we walked across a long bridge to the Zimbabwe side of the border. As I was walking along and chatting with a fellow passenger, I noticed a very large dog walking along the rail of the bridge. Then it dawned on me that it isn’t exactly normal for dogs to walk along rails…That’s when I took a closer look and realized that the large dog was actually a large monkey!! On the other side of the bridge there were monkey’s everywhere: sitting on the side of the road, climbing on cars, walking around with their babies on their backs… It was surreal.

The drive through Zimbabwe was beautiful while the daylight lasted, but unfortunately that was only a couple of hours. Fortunately, the onset of darkness brought with it a spectacular display of fork lightening, which made up for missing the incredible vistas we must have been passing. The hours of darkness also passed quickly thanks to my neighbour, Charity, a Swazi traveling from Tanzania where she is studying anesthesiology. She began by asking me what Church I went to, and my attempts to explain that I “don’t pray” (as they say here) led us into long and lovely conversations about religion, culture, HIV/AIDS and life in general.

We stopped in Harare at 22:00 to refuel and, for those who hadn’t brought food (everyone but me), to get some dinner. I took the opportunity to stretch my legs and get some exercise by doing some laps of the gas station, afraid to venture too far out into the streets of Harare at night. Eventually, eeryone got back on the bus, dinner in hand, which made the bus smell rather like a big roasted chicken. Charity insisted on sharing hers with me, “her sister.” Even though I had shared my food with her earlier, I was still blown away by the incredible generosity of someone who didn’t even know if she was going to be able to afford the return journey to University after Christmas.

At 04:45 we reached the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa. Leaving Zimbabwe was a matter of minutes, but as we trekked up to the S.A. side the long line of cars gave me a bit of an uneasy feeling. We lined up in a hallway, where it was difficult to see what was going on, so I snuck up ahead to take a peek, only to find the hallway opened up into an enormous courtyard with a labyrinth-like queue that looked like it belonged outside the most popular ride at Disneyland. Getting through immigration and customs took 3 hours, and 2 more were spent standing on the side of the road in the rain waiting for the bus, which was apparently held up by the dried fish someone was transporting.

When we finally hit the road again, I was astonished by the striking contrast between S.A. and Zambia or Zimbabwe. S.A. is like Europe with the occasional zebra on the side of the road. I was impressed by the first town we passed, which had a Woolworths and a beautiful park, but it was when we reached Pretoria that my jaw officially dropped. Pretoria is beautiful, pristine, modern, wealthy… everything you don’t expect to see in Africa, especially if your only point of reference in Lusaka!

As we pulled into Park Station in Joburg at 17:00 on Wednesday, the feeling of carefree adventure I had maintained throughout the previous 29 hours started to slip away. But I managed to keep my cool and, after finding out there was no possibility of getting the night bus to Maputo, I called a hostel and had them pick me up at the station and prayed that the reservation Xavi had made for a bus to Maputo the following day would work out.

Fortunately, it did. This time it was a “luxury” bus, which meant I got to watch Die Another Day and The Best of Seal: 1991-2004, and drink 2 cups of coffee. The journey was more or less uneventful, except for the border crossing where, just as I reached the front of the long, hot queue, a Mozambican cut in front of me with a pile of 6 passports for a white South African family that decided they didn’t feel like standing in line and would rather pay someone to cut to the front for them. Grrrrr… To top it off, after the immigration official spent 30 minutes getting through their passports he up and left without a word. When I finally got through, my bus was (fortunately) waiting impatiently for me on the side of the highway…

Taquidir, the driver for Medicus Mundi, the NGO Xavi works for, was waiting for me when the bus arrived in Maputo and we headed off on the 3 hour drive to Chokwe. The last 2 days here have been quiet, but very nice. I’m enjoying listening to the beautiful rhythms of Portuguese, not being hassled by the very timid locals, and sweating my yearly quota in a matter of days. It’s absolutely impossible to believe that tomorrow is Christmas, but then I think being so far away from my family and so many friends, it’s almost best. We are going to the beach for a relaxed Christmas tomorrow, then heading to Maputo for a day before taking off to Swaziland! We’re taking Xavi’s work vehicle, which is a huge luxury, so it should be an excellent adventure. I have another week after we come back, which I plan to spend on the coast of Mozambique, perhaps doing some diving, who knows…?

Well, I’m sure only my mother has made it to the end of this blog, if that. As is always the way, being precise with one’s words is much more difficult than being prolific… I do apologize.

Merry Christmas to all – may it be a day of much laughter, much love, and much eggnog!

Not Any Given Sunday

Today I awoke to a grey sky and no plans - it didn't seem like it was going to be a very special day... But, it turned out to be a fabulous one, which is always a nice surprise. This morning I was busy putting around the house, eating Mel's amazing quiche, and enjoying having internet access at home!!! This afternoon Mel let me zip around town on the bike she just got from VSO - it felt great to be bombing down the nearly-empty Sunday streets of Lusaka, and not to hear the shouts of Taxi! Taxi! as I went!! I then went to Francesca's flat for a gorgeous Sunday roast lunch and a DVD - what luxuries!

This evening, I was a very proud Auntie as I attended the annual Christmas Concert at the St Ignatius Catholic Church near my house. My nieces and nephews, Niza, Beauty, Yolanda, Diana and Hammy, insisted that I come to see them sing, and although I wasn't feeling quite up to it with all the things I need to prepare for Mozambique and all the work I have to finish before I go, I'm certainly glad I went. Let's just say there's nothing like a church full of young Zambian voices singing Christmas carols to get you in the Christmas spirit, or even bring a tear to your eye, if you are me! It was just what I needed after a few stressful weeks, and I was overwhelmed with the spirit of Christmas that filled the air of the Church, especially when the whole congregation broke into clapping and dancing for Hark the Herald Angels Sing.... As I left the Church and walked home with my young friends, I did miss the cold nip found in the night air at Christmas time in Canada, but I can still say it finally feels like Christmas here in Zambia.


As well as being a very proud Auntie today, I was also a very proud friend. Proud of my friend Sam, who painted the most amazing picture for Mel and I. He worked on it all day today, and even though I kept running to his place to sneak peeks at it, when it was finished he made me walk ten feet in front of him because he didn't want me to see it until we got to our flat! I am just blown away at how amazing it is, and what an amazing gift it was for him to paint it for us (he refuses to let us pay him!). He currently doesn't sell any of his artwork, because he had a bad experience with someone that took advantage of him and sold his paintings for a profit he never saw any of, but I think I have convinced him to give it another go.

Feeling so proud of the people in my life here makes me feel very much a part of the life of my community. That can be a hard thing to achieve when living in a foreign country, so I know I am very fortunate to feel this way tonight.

Anniversarial Reflections (and other news)

I felt it fitting to post on the 2-month anniversary of my arrival in Zambia. It’s strange that such inconsequential chunks of time as months or years should cause us to reflect more on what has passed than on any other day, but I guess that’s just the way things are…

When I look back on the last 2 months, it’s hard to know where to start. In some ways it feels like yesterday, in other ways I already feel like Lusaka is “home”. The culture, the people, the routine has once again seeped into my life so quickly, that it is hard to put this experience in context with any of the others I have had… At least today that’s how I feel.
Enough waxing philosophical, we all know I’m not cut out for it! So, let’s get on with the stories and anecdotes, eh? (Now there’s a word I haven’t used in a loooong time!)

On Tuesday we had our last Nyanja class before the Christmas break and our teacher, Stephen (an absolutely wonderful guy, but unfortunately the only person concerned with punctuality in all of Zambia), taught us some new vocab that had us all in fits of laughter. Most of them were “household” words that I guess they didn’t have indigenous names for in Nyanja, so they “adopted”, and slightly adapted, the English words brought over with colonialism. So you have:

sipuni - spoon
filiji - fridge
sitovu – stove
kapu – cup
taulo – towel
matilese – mattress
delesi – dress
etc…

I’m sure you get the idea… Coincidentally, understanding the Zambian way of interpreting English words phonetically helped me understand today why the Christmas card that my ‘nephew’, Hamilton (who pronounces my name perfectly), brought over for me was addressed to “Ashisli”…

The rains continue to fall at will, which has now caused the “grasses” to emerge, devouring what used to be the dust. Today as I made my bi-weekly trek down to Cairo Rd, the main drag in the city centre, I began to cross through the open expanse by the railway tracks that cuts into town, and could hardly recognize where I was. It used to feel like a wasteland: nothing but dust, piles of garbage and people spread out intermittently, selling roasted maize, or umbrellas, or random items of clothing. Today it looked like the Zambian version of the Emerald City: lush green grass as far as the eye could see, and huge, marshmallow-castle clouds that formed as the rains passed… It’s nice to see things “green up” a bit, but it hasn’t made me any more fond of the rains, which, when they are not soaking you from above, are forming Lake Ontario-sized puddles that last 4 days to soak you from below (I may have to join the Zambians that carry around a small cloth and brush to shine their shoes every 5 minutes). And if that’s not bad enough, last week it wasn’t just rain that fell from the sky, it was ice! Very large chunks of it that came in through the window and landed on the dining room table right in front of me!

Yesterday Sam invited me into his house for the first time. It looks small from the outside, so I have always been curious to see just exactly how so many people fit in there. As I found out, having bunk beds in the kitchen certainly helps! Sam's four younger brothers share the two beds, which are butted right up next to the stove, in a kitchen half the size of my bedroom. There isn't enough room for Sam, so he goes to a friends house a 20 min drive away every night at 23:00, and comes back for 06:00... The sitting room is crammed with sofas surrounding one of 2 TVs! (the other is in the kitchen) which I found quite amusing, for some reason. Anyway, it showed me once again how culturally different the need for space can be. But although it might not seem ideal to the average North American, it's a cozy place and all the faces inside it were smiling brightly.

Work is going well, and I must say that the last 3 weeks have been very productive and satisfying: I have helped organize and facilitate a 2-day workshop for Support Groups of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA as they are known here) on proposal writing and financial management; I participated in and helped facilitate a 2-day Strategic Planning meeting for ZARAN and then revised their 3-year Strategic Plan document; I helped facilitate a 2-day Strategic Planning meeting for TALC and then wrote the summary document which I am now incorporating in to the mega-proposal that I am supervising the writing of, which will hopefully get funding for all of TALC’s work in the coming year; I am on the Steering Committee for the NZP+ General Assembly and the Civil Society Conference on Positive Living to take place in March; and I am working on setting up a “Proposal Clinic” to provide ongoing support in proposal writing for Support Groups of PLHA, for which I am writing my own Project Planning and Proposal Writing Guide….

Yeah, lots of work! And lots of it to be done before I go on holiday to MOZAMBIQUE next Thursday – yeeeeeaaaahhhhh!!! In the end Xavi is tied up by his dissertation and his passport, so I am heading to Chokwe, the town where he is living and working, and which he lovingly refers to as “el culo del mundo” (for non-Spanish speakers, culo means a$%, the rest you should be able to figure out on your own!). Hopefully he’ll be able to get his dissertation out of the way ASAP so that we can run off to the Bazaruto Archipelago, or Inhambane, or Kruger Park in SA… Tough choices I know! But I must say, although it’s nice to be in a warm and foreign place for the holidays, Christmas just isn’t the same without the miserable weather (unless your Australian, like Mel, in which case Christmas is apparently about beers and “barbies”!).

In case I don’t get another chance, I’ll take this opportunity to wish those of you that are still reading a very Merry Christmas! Or Happy Hannukah, or whatever it is that you may or may not be celebrating in the coming weeks. May you share much joy and laughter with your loved ones and may the New Year begins brightly.

Auntie! Auntie!

I’ve always thought it would be nice to be an Aunt, and now I am one. In fact I’m Aunt to about 15 different children! Our neighbours, Simon and Dumi (Emmanuel), took to calling Mel and I “Auntie” quite early on, and now the rest of the kids that live in our apartment building and all the kids that come around call us Auntie as well, as do the group of kids I took to the swimming pool the weekend before last. It’s a bit confusing because you can never be sure who they are referring to, but it’s quite cute I must admit! Unfortunately, Auntie Duty has required us to deal with some troublesome nieces and nephews – school is out for the holidays and for some reason idle time is causing tears to be shed in 10 minutes intervals… Yesterday, Charles, a young boy from the flat downstairs, came over crying that Dumi had hurt him. Mel suggested maybe they needed to take a break from playing together and cool off, and Charles agreed, saying “Yes, because if I play more with him I will just get more madder and my head will go red and steam will come out right here!!” as he pointed to the very top of his head. The nice thing about how the Aunt system works here, is that I also have Aunts of my own – yesterday I ran into Sam’s Aunt Ruth who I met at Church and when I said “Hello Ruth!” she replied “It’s Auntie to you!”

~

In my last Nyanja class we learned the word inswa. It sounded very familiar, and I was sure it was a word I had heard a lot, especially recently. It turns out inswa is the word for flying ants, which certainly explains why I have heard so much of it recently. Flying ants come with the rains and are even more of an event, as far as I am concerned. At dusk the sky, no matter how clear, fills with inswa in a span of minutes. They aren’t particularly good at getting out of your way, so I tend to walk with my eyes open just a fraction, my hands over my ears and my mouth closed of course. Not that I need worry about one flying in my mouth – Zambians eat inswa, fried in oil usually, but as one of my young friends demonstrated to me recently, you can eat them “right out of the sky.” I must say I’m not terribly fond of inswa, especially when I have to sweep up the carpet of wings they shed all over the house…

~

Sadly I must report that this last weekend was not a terribly eventful one. I was staying at a lodge just outside of Lusaka for ZARAN’s strategic planning session. It turns out the lodge was about 8 minutes from downtown Lusaka, so Mel and I managed to get into the city on Saturday night to celebrate another Canadian friend’s birthday, which involved a visit to my first real night club here in Lusaka.

I’m up to my eyeballs in work this week, and looking forward to the weekend and to the fast approaching Christmas holidays. Still not sure quite what my plan is, but it involves seeing Xavi, which means it will be great! I hear it’s snowing in Victoria, which means hell must have just about frozen over… I hope everyone in the Northern hemisphere is managing alright, and making lots of snowmen on my behalf.

Documentary on AIDS in Zambia airing on CNN

Last night I decided to skip Nyanja class and go see a documentary on AIDS in Zambia, entitled Living with AIDS. I also had the pleasure of meeting the director, Sorious Samora from Sierra Leone, and three of the people featured in the documentary. There was an interesting panel discussion following the film that highlighted many of the shortfalls of trying to tackled AIDS through aid and development programs, and the role of the government and international donors.

If you are interested in seeing the documentary, it is airing on CNN this Saturday, December 3 (at various times, depending on what time zone you are reading this in). Check out CNN for more info.

Happy World AIDS Day!

My apologies to everyone for taking so long to update my blog. My Dad phoned last night and I think he was worried I had dropped of the face of the earth, having failed to respond to any of his emails… Unfortunately my internet access here is quite limited, and let’s face it, I’m far too much of a perfectionist to update my blog in a hurry:) I also don’t like to post anything too long, which means a lot of time in the editing room, but unfortunately this time I definitely haven’t succeeded. I apologize in advance and recommend that you make yourself very comfortable!

~

I am happy to report that last weekend was another exciting weekend NOT in Lusaka. That’s right – after 6 weeks, I finally made it out of the capital!

The weekend did begin in Lusaka, however, with a trip to the cinema on Friday night with Drew and Mwelwa, an HIV-positive volunteer at NZP+, for a dose of good ol’ N. American romantic comedy (In Her Shoes). Saturday began with a trip to the monthly craft market in Kabulonga, followed by a trip to the swimming pool with a group of six kids from my neighbourhood that I met a week or so ago. Two days after meeting them they showed up at my place to surprise me with a load of drawings they had done for me (and some home made peanut butter!) and we have been firm friends ever since. Going to the swimming pool was quite a riot as Zambians, living in a landlocked country where most bodies of water are full of crocodiles, understandably don’t quite get what swimming is all about… A lot of thrashing of the arms in legs in the shallow end is what it amounts to.

I dashed off from the pool to meet Sam at 15h to head off to Kafue. He has been going on about wanting to visit his grandmother there for ages, so when I realized I was going to go mental if I didn’t get out of Lusaka I convinced him we should go for a visit.

The journey started off with excitement as we arrived at the City Market bus station where riots earlier in the day had left the place reeking of tear gas. Apparently the riots began down the road at the church of the Universal Kingdom of God, which people had accused of engaging in satanic practices, namely human sacrifice. The 40 min trip to Kafue was overcrowded and not very eventful. It was nice to gaze out at something other than buildings and burning garbage though.

Once we arrived we had to search out a cousin of Sam’s that it turned out had moved so we never found him. We did run into his ‘grandfather’ on the street though so we went to his house for a quick visit. I use quotations because Sam couldn’t actually explain how all of his ‘relatives’ were actually related to him – family ties work somewhat differently here…

We then moved on to the farm where Sam’s four grandmothers live (see what I mean…?), which required hitchhiking down the highway a ways and then walking down a long dirt road that appeared to go nowhere. I got quite excited when we came to some banana plantations, complete with grass huts and larger than life anthills – it was starting to feel like the ‘real Africa.’ Little did I know what lay ahead…

When we reached the farm, Sam’s grandmothers ran out to greet us with elated hugs. Everything they said was in Tonga, their local language, so I didn’t understand any of it, but they seemed quite happy to have me there. We sat under the mango tree for a bit while Sam caught them up on the news of his brothers and sisters in Lusaka. Sam asked if I would like a mango, and the moment after “sure” slipped past my lips an enormous bowl of the most magnificent mangos imaginable appeared in front of me!

As I munched on mangos some of the many kids about started chasing after a chicken, which Sam explained was going to be killed for the visitor (i.e. me!). I decided if it was going to be killed for me I may as well take advantage of seeing how it was done, so I observed the whole process, from the killing, to the depluming, to the removal of the internal organs, to the cooking on the fire of every edible part of the bird, including the lining of the stomach and the intestine.

I then set out with my camera to take a few pictures of the surroundings, and the incredible, National-Geographic-Documentary-on-Africa sunset, but it turned into a picture-taking extravaganza of every person on the farm. In general, I find Zambians are fond of the camera, which makes it very difficult to take any ‘natural’ pictures, as they all want to stare at the camera, and somehow manage to lose their brilliant toothy smiles as soon as the flash goes off...

Sam and his two cousins, Sunday, who is 16 and wants to be a soldier, and Fwambe who is 18 and wants to be a DJ, then left the latrine they were busy building and headed off to fetch water, so I went along for the trip. I offered to push the wheelbarrow on the way back to the farm and when I rolled up to the fire where the women were cooking they looked up at me in astonishment and immediately began to dance and sing for me. After everyone settled down I sat on an old mealie meal sack on the ground and watched them cook the ‘village chicken’ and nshima over the fire, while various young children fell asleep beside me. It turns out village chicken, the favourite of most Zambians, is a very tough version of regular chicken, but it tasted lovely all the same. Sam and I ate inside on our own, despite my protests that they needn’t treat me like such a privileged guest, and I found out the following day that we were also the only ones to taste the chicken!

After dinner I went out to give Sam’s grandmothers the chitenges I had brought for them. I gave the first to Elizabeth, a 61 year old, chain-smoking bundle of joy who broke out into an extended song and dance around the fire when I presented her with the small gift. Apparently she was singing that God should bless me all the day, and that when she was buried she wanted the chitenge to be put in her coffin with her! I assumed that meant she liked it. Sam’s other grandmothers, Mary, Rhoda and Verit, were equally elated and together they all ran around singing and laughing like small girls for quite some time.

The evening finished off around the fire, gazing at the stars and, to my delight, discussing HIV/AIDS with Sam’s family, who were all very interested in the topic. Before heading to bed I went to use the latrine as Sam yelled, “watch out for snakes!” after me. Snakes as in pythons, apparently, although fortunately I never saw one. I slept in one of the only beds on the farm and although I was originally meant to have the room to myself, Mary, a sixteen year-old orphan with a six-month-old baby boy, said she wanted to sleep with me. So she and her baby Mathews slept on the floor between my bed and a stack of 25 kilos sacks of mealie meal. As we went to sleep she said, “if you need to wee wee in the night, tell me and I will get you a tin.”

That night, the rains, which have come and gone in small spurts over the last few weeks, decided to make up for lost time. The house I was in had a tin roof and I felt somewhat like I was in a tin can under Niagara Falls. And when I thought the rains couldn’t get any louder, the sound went from loud to deafening. It sounded like a thousand angry men were beating on the roof with large sticks. Eventually, hours later, it reduced to a soft pitter-patter and I managed to fall back to sleep. Not for long though, as the pigs and roosters were warming up their vocal cords at the crack of dawn. I was out of bed at 06:20, thinking I was getting up early, only to find that every one else on the farm had been up since 04:00! I awoke to Mary telling me that I had “brought the lains” with me, which made me feel terribly guilty, but apparently it was quite the opposite – the rains were the first the farm had seen all year and I was considered blessed to have brought them.

That day was equally as magical as the previous. I ate mangos until my stomach ached and my teeth looked like they were growing orange hair (floss is on my list of things not to forget next time around!); Mary taught me how to carry Mathews on my back in a chitenge; I had my first crack at cooking nshima; I went to collect firewood and carried it back on my head; I walked down to the river and watched the local women fish; I talked to Fwambe about life in Canada and HIV/AIDS; and I longed not to have to go back to Lusaka that afternoon. Unfortunately, the time did come for me to leave, but I took 26 juicy mangos home with me to remember them by! Hopefully it won’t be too long before I can go back for another visit.

In addition to my magical weekend in the countryside, life is filled up with all sorts of exciting activities these days. Work is keeping me very busy, especially as today is World AIDS Day. Last night I donned my AIDS Day chitenge and TALC T-shirt to attend the annual candlelight memorial where Mwelwa addressed President Mwanawasa (or would have if he had actually shown up) and today I joined ZARAN in the annual march to a stadium in the Matero compound. Nyanja lessons are going well, although tonight I am forced to choose between Nyanja and a debate with the director of a controversial video entitled Living with AIDS at the Alliance Francaise… tough! This weekend I am facilitating a Strategic Planning session for ZARAN just outside of Lusaka – sucks to work on the weekend, but apparently we are staying at a lodge with a game park, so I shan’t complain!

So life in Lusaka is good. Once you get used to a few things, like prayers before meetings, Zambians sporting toques and coats when it’s 25 degrees out, l’s being confused with r’s (“I am lushing to the store”, “the lains are coming”, “have you ever had maralia?”), and life without sushi, but I seem to be managing fine on all fronts.

For those of you who have made it to the end of this epic blog entry – get a life! Just kidding – thank you! And thank you also to those of you who have been writing emails (Mike, Laura, Page, Dave, Silje, Granny) - I always appreciate having something other than the Eldis Development Reporter in my inbox…