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!”

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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…

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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.